Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [124]
When it came to Hale’s allegations that Governor Bill Clinton had secretly jogged to Jim McDougal’s satellite office located in a trailer on the Castle Grande property, where he had pressured Hale to make a loan to benefit the McDougals and Jim Guy Tucker, the president dismissed this story as a bunch of bull. During his years as governor, the president said smoothly, he did enjoy jogging around Little Rock—he still took an occasional run at the White House. But he was never in good enough shape (the president smiled and straightened his suit coat) to jog the ten or twelve miles from the governor’s mansion to McDougal’s trailer-office on 145th Street. The only time he had visited McDougal’s Castle Grande location to say hello, he said, he was dressed in a suit and tie, on his way to tour the Siemens-Allison plant nearby.
On cross-examination, when OIC prosecutor Ray Jahn sought to establish that President Clinton could have jogged to McDougal’s office from the governor’s mansion, then hitched a ride to McDougal’s trailer-office on the Castle Grande site, wearing his jogging clothes (as alleged by David Hale), the exchange grew testy. Jahn tried to establish every which way that there was “no physical prevention, no moral prevention, no logical prevention that would have prevented you from having done it.” Clinton finally threw up his hands: “I wasn’t in handcuffs and chains, if that’s what you are asking.” The jurors nodded their heads, apparently sharing the president’s frustrations.
Judge Howard adjourned the proceedings at 5:58 P.M., just in time for Sunday dinner, Arkansas time. Most participants in the Map Room appeared weary from the day’s workout. President Clinton, in contrast, looked strong and unruffled. His lawyer David Kendall had not uttered a single objection during the entire five-hour testimony. It had been a virtuoso performance by Clinton. He took a few minutes to show his former business partner around the Map Room, walking Jim McDougal across the floor that FDR had once maneuvered in his wheelchair. Here, the president pointed out where Roosevelt had stuck pins on maps depicting the Atlantic Theater on the east wall and the Pacific Theater on the west wall, to trace military movements and ship positions during the war. “We’re both great admirers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” McDougal later told the press, beaming. He was pleased that Bill Clinton had carved out time to show some true Southern hospitality toward old friends.
With respect to later speculation that President Clinton had made a secret deal to pardon Jim or Susan McDougal, during their five-minute stroll around the Map Room, both Susan McDougal and Bill Clinton would dismiss that as silly. “There was no such conversation,” Susan later said. “For heaven’s sake, Jim would have told me.” At the time, Susan pointed out, few observers expected her to be convicted; she was a peripheral figure in the trial. The idea that Clinton had promised her a deal during a fleeting conversation with her manic husband (who was certain he would be acquitted) seemed “far-fetched” at best. Clinton himself called it bunk: “I always had somebody with me, and they were always together the whole time they were there,” said the president. With respect to Jim McDougal’s later story that there were promises made of a pardon if he and Susan protected the president, Clinton would shake his head and disregard it as the fabrication of a desperate man: “He didn’t say any of this until they nailed him and he didn’t want to go to jail.”
On that day, McDougal seemed perfectly fine with the proceedings in the White House. There was a sense that Bill Clinton and his erstwhile Arkansas friends “had hit a home run.” As the Whitewater defendant greeted a cavalcade of journalists outside the White House gate, he declared himself “satisfied” with the president’s testimony, stating: “I did not see that he made any inconsistent statements.”
When asked by one reporter what he and the