Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [138]
After the OIC prosecutors left, Susan McDougal marched down to the trailer to interrogate Jim; she was revolted when she saw cheap gifts on the counter. “And they had brought Jim his favorite candies. He had these kinds of mints that he liked and he had M&M’s. They had brought him these presents and Starr told him, you know, how glad he was that Jim was cooperating.”
McDougal’s codefendants and their lawyers were certain they understood what was driving the Starr prosecutors’ sudden interest in a mentally troubled man like James B. McDougal. George Collins, who watched his client Governor Jim Guy Tucker get convicted, expressed admiration for Starr on a professional level. “I mean, I like Kenny Starr in a way,” said Collins. “He was always polite to me; he’s a magnificent lawyer. I don’t rank with him, not within a thousand miles. But he always treated me courteously and as an equal, which I am not.”
Despite this profound professional respect, Collins felt that the Starr prosecutorial machine was noticeably different from his predecessor’s. The Fiske people, he said, were “doing a criminal investigation.” Ken Starr’s team, he felt in his gut, was “doing a president hunt.”
Collins had told his client bluntly at one point, “They want Bill Clinton. If you can give them Bill Clinton, it’s all over.” Tucker’s response, according to his lawyer, was that the only incriminating information he possessed about Clinton was that “when he moved out of the governor’s mansion, he left Chelsea’s goldfish behind and didn’t try to take care of that goldfish.” Said Collins, “Jim Guy would not lie to save his own self.”
Prosecutor Ray Jahn defended Ken Starr and his lawyers by saying that such attempts to “demonize” them after the Whitewater convictions constituted a serious “injustice.” It was true, he said, that some people on the OIC team “obviously had a great deal of personal animosity for the Clintons.” But Starr himself was not one of those persons. “He never, never targeted the Clintons,” said Jahn.
Hearing a recounting of Jahn’s comments, Collins cleared his throat and said, “Well, fine. And if you put your tooth in your shoes, the fairy will bring a dime.”
Seated in his Chicago law office and having seen a great deal during his half-century career as a litigator, Collins did not feel bitterness toward Ken Starr or his OIC prosecutors. Yet he suffered no delusions when it came to where OIC was headed with its unusual investigation. Reflected Collins, “It was a strange time and the purpose was to hunt the great bull elephant and they never quite brought him down.”
MANY of those who observed Jim McDougal after he became a cooperating witness for OIC saw a man who was prepared to bend and stretch in any direction necessary to escape jail time. James Stewart, the Harvard Law School graduate and award-winning author of Blood Sport, spent considerable time with McDougal during this period. Although Stewart’s book was not particularly sympathetic toward the Clintons, he still maintained a healthy skepticism when it came to McDougal’s postconviction epiphany.
Stewart’s first meeting with Jim McDougal, well before the trial, said a great deal about this eccentric interviewee. McDougal had arranged to meet the author at a Total 66 gas station in Arkadelphia, just off the interstate. “It was kind of a cloak-and-dagger thing,” Stewart recalled, “where I was supposed to sit there in the car reading the Wall Street Journal, and that’s how he would know who I was.” After this meeting befitting two international spies, the pair proceeded to lunch at the Western Sizzlin, a “dreadful” experience for Stewart because “he [McDougal] was talking about his heart attack and he was … eating so much saturated fat that I thought he would, you know, drop over right during our meal.” Stewart recalled with clarity that McDougal “flirted with the waitresses in there. All of them knew him by name … fawned