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By Root 2112 0

” of Clark’s recommendation that McDougal be given dry-cell status, opening a black leather satchel and throwing a stack of papers onto the desk, stating coldly, “You might want to refer to these.” The young doctor observed that the papers were copies of the entire psychology file regarding McDougal—a file that was normally off-limits to anyone other than the medical staff. In a calm voice, Clark tried to explain the basis for his handling of McDougal’s case. The agent’s face turned severe when Clark told him that McDougal had repeatedly questioned why he was on the “suspect list” in the first place, when there was no “triggering event” involving drug use that would have justified receiving a “shot” (or a charge of wrongdoing). The agent replied angrily, “That’s another issue that does not concern Psychology.” The man demanded to know if McDougal had ever “seen in writing that he was on the suspect list.” When Clark responded that he had no knowledge on this score, the agent’s face seemed to indicate relief.

The dark-suited man then began a line of questioning that was especially troublesome to the young psychologist. He told Clark that prison officials had known nothing about his dry-cell memo until after McDougal’s death. The man narrowed his eyes and said, “No one outside of Psychology had ever seen your memo. It was a surprise to everyone.” The doctor shot a look of disbelief at his interrogator and countered, “That’s ridiculous.” Not only had he sent the memo to the captain at the Fort Worth Unit, but he had also sent a second copy to the case manager, Philip Shanks, to be placed in McDougal’s file so that there was no chance it would be forgotten during his parole hearing.

The agent’s face tightened and he reiterated, “I’m telling you, the story is, no one had ever seen your memo.”

Clark objected again, explaining how McDougal had specifically requested that the dry-cell memo and the letter from Hickman Ewing be placed in his packet for the parole hearing so that nothing happened to them. At this, the agent screwed up his face and said, “Mr. McDougal was never going to be paroled.” Clark was stunned. He tried to correct the record by interrupting: “What do you mean he was never going to be paroled?… He was eligible for parole in late April.”

The agent repeated firmly, according to Clark’s handwritten notes of the meeting: “I’m just telling you—Mr. McDougal was never going to be paroled.”

Clark glanced at his watch. It was now nearly five o’clock. The meeting suddenly “went from bad to worse.” The stern-faced special agent flipped through the stack of documents from McDougal’s file, holding up Clark’s original dry-cell memo in which he had questioned the urinalysis procedure that had been repeated the night before McDougal had died. The federal agent now looked up and said to the young doctor, “Will you recant your statement?”

This moment was frozen forever in Clark’s mind. He would later say, “And what stuck out to me was the word ‘recant,’ in that I had never been asked to ‘recant’ before, and that’s one of those words I was just thinking, ‘Okay, what an odd word.’ It’s a word that’s not used very often. With my theological training, I thought of ‘recant’ in terms of having real significance regarding ‘denying one’s faith,’ so that word was one that stuck out for me.”

The young psychologist stared at the man and said, “No, I will not. I will not recant.”

The agent stood up stiffly. He assumed an especially unpleasant demeanor. “This meeting is over,” he said. The man in the suit then gathered up the pile of documents and placed them in his satchel. He instructed Clark that the doctor should “speak to no one about the meeting.”

Then, as the man turned to open the door of the cramped office to leave, he issued his parting words with a dark look crossing his face: “It’s getting extremely hot in your office, Dr. Clark.”

CHAPTER

38

THE INDICTMENT OF HILLARY CLINTON

One piece of the investigation headed by Ken Starr that has remained locked in a secret vault—despite the airing of dirty laundry and