Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [185]
Interviews with Starr’s own prosecutors now confirm that—as of early January 1998—his operation was in wrap-it-up mode. Although there was still plenty of work to be finished, especially the tax fraud case against Governor Tucker slated for trial in February, the prosecutors knew that Starr was champing at the bit to get to Malibu (where the president was still holding the deanship open) before the new academic year. In fact, he seemed “disillusioned and outright angry with the pace” of their investigation. The normally mild-mannered Starr “was pushing on people to try and get the reports written and the matters closed out.” The grand jury in Arkansas already had been extended six months. The judges supervising the various pieces of the Whitewater/Madison investigation were becoming impatient.
OIC’s Washington office, originally built to handle the Vince Foster case and the Rose Law Firm billing records matter, was running out of reasons to exist. Starr moved Jackie Bennett from Little Rock to the smaller Washington office, charging him with bringing that segment of OIC’s work to a conclusion.
In Arkansas, Starr appointed a young state prosecutor from Maryland, Bob Bittman, to take over administrative duties. Hickman Ewing had gotten himself bogged down in minutiae. The Arkansas phase of the case seemed to be running in circles. Bittman was a tough, organized, orderly fellow who could free up Ewing to do what he did best—slugging through evidence, lining up facts, and trying to finalize his case. Ewing’s sights, for some time, had been focused on Hillary Clinton. Now, he had to nail down an indictment or pack up and go home. Thus was born in both cities a new OIC apparatus that would transform the face of Ken Starr’s investigation.
Hickman Ewing was personally convinced that the First Lady was culpable in the Whitewater/Madison debacle. “Her answers and her demeanor were such that I felt strongly that she was holding back,” he would say. The Memphis lawyer had also come to believe that the president was “not being candid” when it came to his feigned lack of recollection [under oath] about a host of Whitewater-related events. Ewing had six more months before the Little Rock grand jury expired. He wanted to prove, with conclusive evidence, that he was right.
Jackie Bennett, too, was prepared to bet the farm that the First Lady had dirtied her hands in the Whitewater/Madison deals. He also believed that both Clintons had stone walled OIC and intentionally withheld information by “forgetting” key facts. Tightening his jaw, Bennett later expressed his view that “a mafia-like code of silence” had come to pervade the Clinton White House. Bennett and Ewing were both prepared to crack this code before time ran out.
Another key factor nudging the dominoes into place was the appearance of a new group of Dallas lawyers willing to represent Paula Jones. Judge Susan Webber Wright, perturbed at Paula for scotching the settlement deal, had kept the case on a very short leash. A spring trial date was looming. Susan Carpenter-McMillan had now located a Dallas law firm eager to take over the Jones case, a new group of lawyers who made clear they intended to take no prisoners.
As part of the final trial preparation, Judge Susan Webber Wright had ruled that Jones’s lawyers could ask questions about extramarital relationships between Bill Clinton and other female state or federal employees within reason—that is, during the past ten years. That would cover females working in the White House and also a five-year period during Clinton’s governorship. In Judge Wright’s estimation,