Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [128]
“Well,” Hale drawled, “if we didn’t pay it, then you would have regulators coming in and investigators coming in and we’d all go to jail.”
After Hale’s first day of testimony, Jim McDougal told the press that Hale was “a recreational liar.” Leaning on his cane, McDougal predicted to a USA Today reporter: “I think he’ll be exposed as a liar, thief and con artist.”
That night, the host of CNN’s Inside Politics declared that the dormant Whitewater saga had suddenly been brought back to life and that “Mr. Clinton’s exact ties to the matter could come into sharp focus this week.” David Hale quickly made good on that prediction. On the second day of his testimony, he placed Bill Clinton at the epicenter of a key fraudulent deal.
In early 1986, Hale told the jury, he had received a call from Jim McDougal summoning him to meet with McDougal and Governor Clinton at the Castle Grande property. When he had arrived at the remote location, Hale testified, the only vehicle there was McDougal’s Jaguar. Governor Clinton, he seemed to recall, was dressed in jogging clothes. McDougal and Clinton were standing around “cussing” and “talking politics and this sort of thing.” Small talk turned to business. According to Hale, the group discussed obtaining a loan for McDougal and Governor Clinton in the amount of $150,000, which would be put in the name of Susan McDougal’s advertising firm. Clinton offered to secure the loan through “raw land” in Marion County—that is, the Whitewater property. But McDougal said that wasn’t necessary: “Susan’s financial statement was strong enough to handle it.”
Hale’s testimony was murky on specifics. Yet he recalled enough to tell the jury that—at Jim’s request—he eventually doubled the amount and agreed to loan Susan McDougal’s company $300,000. Governor Clinton allegedly insisted: “My name can’t show up on this.” Jim McDougal said not to worry—the $300,000 loan would be made in Susan McDougal’s name alone.
When asked by lead prosecutor Ray Jahn, “Who did you look to as far as this loan is concerned, who were you looking to as far as repayment?” Hale replied soberly, “I was looking at Jim McDougal and Bill Clinton.”
Susan McDougal’s attorney, Bobby McDaniel, expressed disgust after the judge adjourned the jury for the night. “What you heard from David Hale today,” he said, “is a different story than what he’s said before. It’s a fabrication, period. Bill Clinton is his meal ticket to a lighter sentence.” Jim McDougal, toting his cane and briefcase across Capitol Avenue to the pink Legacy Hotel where he had rented a cheap room, ridiculed Hale’s testimony. “I sort of wanted to kick his butt,” McDougal told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “But then I saw what poor condition he appears to be in physically, and then I couldn’t work myself up to want to beat up on the guy.”
Ken Starr, who happened to be working in OIC’s secret office in the bowels of the federal court house, emerged to tell reporters that he was taking the trial “one day at a time” and that Hale’s testimony did not necessarily mean that the president was a target. Prosecutor Jahn clarified that there were no plans to name the president an unindicted co-conspirator, “as of now.”
GOVERNOR Jim Guy Tucker was attempting to use his ties with the media to paint Ken Starr as a zealot and a partisan who was manufacturing criminal charges to weaken the Democratic administrations in Washington and Arkansas. Although stories were creeping into the papers about Starr’s private legal practice—especially his participation in the Wisconsin school voucher case financed by the ultraconservative Bradley Foundation and his representation of two large tobacco companies directly at odds with the Clinton Justice Department—for the most part, these charges were not sticking.
President Clinton, watching the trial of Governor Tucker and the McDougals unfold from inside the White House, still thought it reeked of politics. Clinton suspected OIC’s ultimate goal was to “get [Tucker] to say something adverse about me in