Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [125]
After commenting on his possible 105-year prison sentence and answering the last of the reporters’ questions, McDougal now turned to one engaged journalist and popped the question: “How would you like,” he asked with his most charming Southern gentleman’s smile, “to buy us a sandwich?”
THE same Sunday as Clinton’s testimony, Newsweek reported that FBI analysts had identified First Lady Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints on Rose Law Firm billing records that had appeared mysteriously in the White House residence back in January. This new development added more question marks to an already-baffling whodunit.
The “disappearance” and “reappearance” of the Rose Law Firm billing records re mains one of the true mysteries of the prolonged Clinton scandals. The missing sheaf of computer printouts had been generated on February 12, 1992, by an unknown law firm employee, detailing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s work there for the McDougals and Madison Guaranty. This period corresponded to the beginning of Bill Clinton’s race for the presidency; the Whitewater- and McDougal-related issues were well known as potential bumps in the road to victory.
The 116 pages of newly materialized records were relevant for a host of reasons. The Senate Whitewater Committee, predominated by Republicans and guided in its investigation by hard-charging Special Counsel Michael Chertoff, saw the billing records as the Holy Grail. They hoped the records would answer the question, Had the First Lady and her closest advisers lied to federal investigators in describing her role vis-à-vis Jim McDougal’s corrupt business enterprises?
There were also issues about whether Mrs. Clinton had a conflict of interest in appearing before the Arkansas Securities Department and its top commissioner, Beverly Bassett (whom Hillary’s husband had appointed), in doing work for Madison Guaranty. There were issues about to what extent Mrs. Clinton was involved in the Castle Grande project for Madison—a deal that now appeared to be riddled with fraud and built atop an unlawful pyramid scheme. There were questions about whether Mrs. Clinton had lied to authorities about how the Rose Law Firm came to represent Madison, and her role as billing attorney (she had tried to place much of the responsibility for initiating and handling this account in the hands of Rick Massey, a young junior associate at the firm, but he contradicted her).
In prior sworn testimony before the Resolution Trust Corporation, the First Lady had minimized her involvement in the Madison account. Specifically, she had claimed to have “little or no” involvement with McDougal in the Castle Grande project, which was now awash in criminal sewage. The hunt was on to find out what Mrs. Clinton knew and when.
There was no dispute that Vince Foster, Webb Hubbell, and Hillary Clinton had all handled copies of the billing records during the 1992 campaign in an effort to protect Hillary’s flank. Hubbell, earning a temporary reprieve from federal prison to testify in front of the Senate Whitewater Committee, had acknowledged that Vince Foster was the last person he had seen handling the records. The Senate committee had issued multiple subpoenas to obtain the records; in each case, the documents were reported missing in action.
Now, this one-inch stack of papers had suddenly “appeared” in clear view on a table in the Book Room on the third floor of the White House residence in August—discovered there by Carolyn Huber, a White House aide who handled the Clintons’ personal correspondence. Huber, the former office manager at the Rose Law Firm who now worked for Mrs. Clinton in the White House, identified the documents as those relevant to Ken Starr’s investigation. They contained notations, in red