Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [137]
So Susan “put her arms around Jim” and told him “I absolutely understand.” She consoled him: “If you can get a good deal, don’t let me stop you.”
Susan vividly recalled Jim’s shambling up to Claudia’s house one day and watching as he dialed OIC on the telephone. She remembered Jim going through a checklist of demands out loud with one of the Starr prosecutors: “I will be able to wait to be sentenced for six months” and “I will be assigned to a [lower-security] medical facility.” Jim marked a check next to each item, smiling and giving Susan “the thumbs-up,” as he said, “Yes, yes, yes” into the phone. Next he told the OIC prosecutor, “And one thing, you know, Judge Howard’s a Christian, he’s a Baptist minister on the weekends. I think it would really be good for Starr to come and say, you know, that I’ve had this Christian conversion, that I’ve become a Christian man and that, you know, I’ve seen the light and I’m going to tell the truth now and, you know, that really goes over with those Baptists, ha-ha, ha-ha!”
Susan cringed at the memory. “And he’s laughing about it, you know. And I’m just… sitting there.”
Jim hung up the telephone and proudly announced, “Starr’s coming. He’s gonna speak for me at my sentencing.” Susan replied, “Well, let me just tell you something. This is great. This is terrific news.” She turned her back on her ex-husband, telling Jim to add another demand to his list, now that he was such a buddy with Ken Starr. “Tell him my ex-wife gets probation …” she said sarcastically. Jim answered, “Oh, yeah, baby. Oh, yeah, baby, I’m—let me feel it out. And let me go see some of these people and feel them out, see who the best person is to talk to about that.”
Recalled Susan, “I knew when he started his little shucking and jiving thing, that it was never going to happen.”
SUSAN McDougal’s memory of Ken Starr’s visit to Claudia Riley’s home was forever burned in her memory. It was a hot day in August. She was out on the deck with Claudia, aware that the independent counsel himself was coming to give McDougal “the papal hug.” Susan had, by this time, developed a personal hatred of Starr, which (she acknowledged) may have clouded her recollection. Yet she would insist that this piece of the memory was crystal clear. “Three black cars, five black cars drive up. You see, I always minimize, you have to remember that. I’m not an exaggerator. Five cars drive up, black cars, and doors open and they get out like the Magi carrying gifts, you know.” As the OIC prosecutors stepped out onto the dusty driveway, Susan recalled, “I want to throw insults and to yell from the deck up here, but Claudia, always being the lady, won’t let me. I think there are certain times when you have to hurl insults, but she wouldn’t let me. And Starr gets out. And he has on this checked shirt and these [polyester] Sansabelt slacks.”
Seething, Susan watched Ken Starr and his entourage proceed into Jim’s trailer-cottage at the bottom of the driveway. She recalled, “I just, you know, just made horrible remarks to Claudia and said all kinds of things about them.”
Starr himself did not recall the details of the trip to Arkadelphia. At the time, he said, “I drove a little red compact, you know, a GSA [U.S. General Services Administration] rental.” So he was skeptical that he had arrived in a motorcade of black cars. He did acknowledge, however, that he might have been driven to Arkadelphia in an FBI vehicle. Prosecutor Amy St. Eve was present that day. She remembered only being struck by the dwarfish dimensions of McDougal’s trailer-cottage; a large framed portrait of FDR and assorted clutter gave McDougal’s home an even more claustrophobic feel. “He had such a big personality,” recalled Judge St. Eve, “it was kind of counter to his personality, the smallness.”
Neither Starr nor St. Eve recalled having any significant discussion with McDougal during this first courtesy call. Rather,