Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [313]
Claudia had no intention of turning this into a sideshow, especially with the national media swarming around. Still, when it came to the likes of McDougal—whether in life or in death—it seemed pointless to follow a normal path.
On a chilly Friday in Arkadelphia, a small congregation of friends and curious onlookers assembled at a hilly grave site to pay their final respects to James Bert McDougal, the onetime Whitewater mastermind. Reporters and a half-dozen camera crews huddled together as a Dixieland band marched up the hill playing, “When the Saints Go Marching In,” a selection that Jim had told his minister he would appreciate as a final send-off. Along with the jazzy sound of brass horns, a note of irony hung in the March air. Ewing delivered a passionate eulogy that seemed both bizarre and fitting for the occasion. The OIC lawyer who had helped put McDougal in prison was an evangelical Christian and had personally requested to speak at the burial service. He stood at the grave as flags rippled, extolling the virtues of the felon convicted on nineteen counts of fraud and conspiracy. With gray clouds blocking out the sun, Ewing offered thanks “for the life of Jim McDougal,” praying aloud, “Lord, you created him as a very unique person. You knit him together in his mother’s womb those many years ago. Now he’s gone. Lord, we thank you for the joy that he brought to people’s lives.”
The Starr prosecutor went on to tell the small congregation of mourners that Jim McDougal had been a defendant, an adversary, and later a cooperating witness. In the end, Ewing told those assembled, he had also become a friend.
As the musicians raised their glinting horns and played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” McDougal’s inexpensive casket was lowered into the Riley family plot beside his former mentor, the late Lieutenant Governor Bob Riley. McDougal’s minister placed a single stone on the coffin to symbolize his fervent prayer that there would be “an end to throwing stones” in American government and politics. Claudia Riley likewise placed a stone on the casket, tapping it gently. One distant relative of McDougal’s left the grave site in disgust, telling a reporter that Ewing should have never been permitted to speak at the service. “The pressure of being put in jail,” said Shirley Davis of Jackson County, Arkansas, “the confinement and the humiliation of being put in prison—it killed Jim.”
Yet Claudia didn’t worry about such things. “I don’t think that anybody thought that anything dealing with [Jim] would be inappropriate,” she said. “Because Jim was off-the-wall most of the time.”
After the funeral service, Ken Starr’s chief prosecutor wandered up to the Riley home. Here, Ewing sipped iced tea and munched on cookies, telling Claudia before he left, “You know, I genuinely loved Jim McDougal.” Claudia Riley would later reflect, “And it really was, it was like a black comedy. Jim would have liked it.” She hastened to conclude, “But his death, his death was strange. There will never be any answer.… It [just] wasn’t right.”
OIC had its own doubts. Although Hickman Ewing would never go so far as to suggest that the White House was involved in McDougal’s death, he certainly felt the Clinton people had welcomed it. “People in the Federal Bureau of Prisons were putting him in places he shouldn’t have been put,” Ewing said. “Once he cooperated, in the spring of 1998, we were full-court pressing on Hillary.… There’s a grand jury in Little Rock that could indict Hillary. And they [the Clinton White House] are trashing me. I’m sure they were glad that Jim was dead. Could it be that people in the Bureau of Prisons sympathetic to the Clintons said, ‘Don’t cut him any slack?’ They knew who he was. They weren’t going to do anything to bend over backward to help us. It was just very unfortunate the way he died.”
Those inside the White House disavowed any connection to McDougal’s death in a Texas prison. As one adviser