Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [136]
Jim was in the trailer-cottage; Susan was living in the main house in a spare bedroom. Claudia played the role of the mediator, making sure that the former husband and wife didn’t go for each other’s throats. She recalled, “I would sometimes go to the door when Jim would come up, and I’d say ‘Jim, … if we’re going to have any bad words, don’t come in.’” McDougal would tell her, “Oh, no, baby, I’m going to be nice tonight.” Claudia would then turn to Susan and warn her, “This goes for you, too.”
There was more to it than just the ordinary friction between a split couple. “Jim could swing [in moods],” explained Claudia. “That’s what bipolarism is, and he could go from manic to depressive in very short order. So—we were always walking carefully around him.”
As he began traveling out of town for surreptitious meetings with OIC, McDougal increasingly made dark predictions that “this is going to be so much bigger than Watergate.” He would refuse to share details with Claudia, stating, “What you don’t know you will never have to attest to.” Claudia would laugh it off, but she secretly worried. One of the last things Bob Riley had said to his wife, before he died, was, “Take care of Jim and Susan. They’re going to need you.” She was sticking to her promise, but it was a complex task.
One day, Jim came up from the guest house and excitedly announced, “Oh, Amy St. Eve called. She wants to come over and have me autograph this book, Blood Sport.” It was a best-selling account of Whitewater and featured McDougal prominently. Susan told him, “My God, I don’t know how you go to lunch and sign a book for someone that’s just convicted you. But, you know, more power to you if you can do that.”
After Jim’s rendezvous with St. Eve at the Western Sizzlin down the road, he told Susan triumphantly that St. Eve was prepared to get him “the best possible deal” if he gave OIC useful information. He was now visualizing writing a money-making book, and having St. Eve provide guidance to his nineteen-year-old “girlfriend” Tamara, a Ouachita undergraduate who “was just dating Jim at the time and helping him, you know, stay medicated.” Jim danced around the Riley house telling Susan that “Amy is going to be a role model to Tamara and teach her how to dress and teach her how to maybe get to law school.”
St. Eve, after being appointed to the federal bench in Chicago by President George W Bush, dismissed these stories as colorful embroidery. “Jim and I never talked about a book deal,” she said, correcting the record. Even though McDougal did talk about Tamara, she was “one of many” young college females who surrounded him at the time; there were never any serious discussions about assisting her. “Jim liked to tell stories and embellish,” St. Eve said. “That was certainly his personality.”
The only part of McDougal’s story that was based on fact, Judge St. Eve acknowledged during a break in her courtroom work, was that Jim McDougal did autograph her copy of Blood Sport during that visit to Western Sizzlin. “I still have that,” she said with a sigh, recalling her peculiar dealings with defendant Jim McDougal, who—while a likable fellow—had evident problems when it came to distinguishing truth from fiction.
Susan and Claudia observed the transformation of Jim McDougal into an OIC witness with increasing alarm. They heard more of Jim’s schemes and strategies than they cared to hear, from Jim and his latest “girlfriend.” “They would come up here and drink and get totally … he wasn’t drinking,” said Susan. “She was drinking. He was doing medication. Smoking [marijuana] and stuff. Claudia wouldn’t allow it in the house, but they would go out on the deck or whatever, and so we knew everything.”
Susan couldn’t imagine how Jim could give Starr’s office evidence against Bill Clinton when he had “just testified in front of God and humanity that none of these things are true.” According to her version of events, Jim told her, “I don’t want to die in prison, you