Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [135]
Bill Clinton’s top advisers buckled their seat belts, not knowing where this would lead. As John Podesta would explain, Clinton’s home state was a “strange environment” filled with inscrutable political characters and dots that did not connect. Once an issue floated across the border into Ozark Mountain territory, Clinton’s White House team held its breath, placing this into the category of “mysterious Arkansas stuff.”
Just before the sentencing of Jim and Susan McDougal, which was scheduled to take place in August 1996, Jim McDougal called the Office of Independent Counsel and said he was ready to talk. Associate Independent Counsel Amy St. Eve, an attractive, crackerjack lawyer from Chicago who had assisted Ray Jahn at trial, quickly wrote to Sam Heuer and pressed for a meeting with McDougal: “We are interested in meeting with Mr. McDougal. Your client has called me several times asking about such a meeting.… Please contact me as soon as you can so we can discuss this issue.”
Heuer was floored by his client’s sudden desire to cast his lots with OIC. He called Jahn and ripped into him, reminding Jahn that the prosecutors had “no business corresponding in any shape, form or fashion” with a defendant represented by counsel. Heuer was suspicious of who had contacted whom first. He had observed that OIC and St. Eve had worked to develop a “friendly relationship” with McDougal before and during trial. It was no secret that Jim “thought of himself as quite a woman’s man.” The defense team saw the cute, button-nosed St. Eve as “flirtatious” in her dealings with McDougal. Now Heuer felt as if the Starr prosecutors, via St. Eve, were doing an end run around him.
Jim McDougal, meanwhile, was getting belligerent. He demanded to know why Heuer hadn’t already “made a deal with the Independent Counsel.” Heuer replied, “Well, Jim, I don’t know what kind of deal you want me to make.… They want you to hang a lot of things on the Clintons that you have consistently told me was not possible.”
OIC seemed particularly interested in an August 1, 1983, check for $5,081.82 paid out of one of Jim McDougal’s business accounts, signed by Susan McDougal, with a scrawled notation at the bottom that said, “Payoff Clinton.” Had Bill Clinton been paid funds, illicitly, from the Madison account? Jim McDougal had repeatedly told Heuer that there was “nothing there” on that check. Jim had also denied, under oath and in private discussions with his lawyer, that Bill Clinton had played any role in discussions with Hale on the $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal. Throughout the protracted second trial, Jim McDougal had never said a word to Heuer implicating Bill or Hillary Clinton in any wrongdoing. “No,” Heuer later insisted. “Just to the contrary.”
Sam Heuer now faced an ethical quandary. He had serious doubts that the story McDougal was gearing up to tell OIC—whatever that was—would be true. He said, “Jim, here’s what we’ll do. If that’s what you want to do, I’ll go ahead and prepare the proper papers.” Yet he also informed McDougal that he, Heuer, would have to cease representing him, “because I can’t in good conscience allow you to tell things that I have a very strong sense are not true.”
On July 30, Ray Jahn advised Sam Heuer that OIC would conduct “preliminary interviews” with McDougal to determine if he might wish to cooperate. Meanwhile, the Whitewater felon began ranting that Heuer was “more interested in Bill Clinton’s welfare” than Jim’s own interests. McDougal decided to deal with OIC himself.
With Susan McDougal’s court date still scheduled for August 20, Jim McDougal arranged for a personal audience with Independent Counsel Ken Starr, inside his tiny trailer-cottage at the bottom of Claudia Riley’s driveway in Arkadelphia. Said Susan, thinking back on this period when Ken Starr’s prosecutors began to court Jim as a cooperating witness, “That’s when I began to hate them.”
AMONG the numerous bizarre aspects of Jim and Susan McDougal’s lives after their becoming convicted felons was the fact that both