Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [145]
KEN Starr’s prosecutors would continue to insist that they just wanted straight answers, not a litany of excuses. If Susan McDougal had said, “I didn’t tell him anything, I just took the records over to the governor’s mansion, and that was it,” OIC would have played the cards dealt to them. Ray Jahn later insisted that they were not targeting Bill Clinton or anyone else. “We’re not that kind of prosecutors.”
Some OIC lawyers, who preferred to speak off the record, were personally convinced that Bill Clinton had attended the meeting at the Castle Grande trailer with McDougal and Hale. They figured Clinton needed money to pay off the Whitewater debt, and that Susan intentionally decided not to testify, because “she might slip up and tell the truth about how much knowledge he [Clinton] had about this whole transaction.” Of course, this was all speculation behind closed doors. All the Starr prosecutors knew for sure was they needed to hear Susan McDougal’s testimony, and to get certain questions answered, under oath.
On the morning of September 9, Susan McDougal surrendered herself to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Little Rock. She was placed in a five-by-ten-foot concrete holding cell for processing. Then the Whitewater defendant was constrained in shackles and leg irons, an unusual measure, and led outside, where a line of media people snapped pictures and shouted questions at her.
McDougal threw back her head, jutted out her chin, and walked defiantly toward the awaiting prison van, which drove her to a jail cell in the women’s pod of the Faulkner County Detention Center, an overcrowded facility in the dead center of Arkansas.
In the White House residence, President Clinton watched the television intently as the evening news showed these photos of Susan McDougal in shackles. Ordinarily, aides recalled that Whitewater events did little to faze Clinton—he did not get “emotionally involved” in Whitewater distractions. This night, however, was a notable exception. One individual present recalled that Clinton “blew his stack.” It was as if he had a “serious personal reaction” to this particular event—one that aides had never witnessed before. Some of those in the room suspected they knew why.
CHAPTER
17
PAULA JONES GOES TO WASHINGTON
When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its one-sentence order granting certiorari (agreeing to hear the appeal) in the case of Clinton v. Jones in the summer of 1996, the White House popped open champagne bottles. Lawyer Bob Bennett had accomplished his job: the Democratic National Convention would soon be convening amid balloon and fanfare in Chicago. “Getting it past the election was humongous,” one adviser close to the president later said. Even the conservative Washington Times observed that Clinton had won a victory in getting this “reprieve.” Paula Jones’s embarrassing sexual harassment suit now had been put “on ice.” Oral arguments in the Supreme Court were not scheduled until well after the November election between President Clinton and Senator Dole. Once entrenched for a second term, White House advisers were confident, Clinton would be safe from this bear trap.
Their plan might have been successful, if it were not for the appearance of Susan Carpenter-McMillan, who signed on as the new spokesperson for Paula Jones. Carpenter-McMillan was the embodiment of everything that made lawyers