Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [325]
Also, Mrs. Clinton’s demeanor in testifying about the missing Rose Law Firm billing records, and her protestations that she had “no idea” how they ended up on a table in the living quarters of the White House, indicated that her nose was growing longer each time she spoke about that topic. Ewing was prepared to tell the grand jury: “There is a circumstantial case that the records were left on the table by Hillary Clinton. She is the only individual in the White House who had a significant interest in them and she is one of only three people known to have had them in her possession since their creation in February 1992.” These records did not simply get up and walk into that room. Hillary Clinton had the motive to remove them from Vince Foster’s office after his death, because they revealed inconsistencies with her prior statements and sworn testimony. She also had an opportunity to cause them to “reappear” in the Book Room when the heat generated by the Senate Whitewater Committee began toasting her feet after the documents were subpoenaed.
Ewing would later say, making clear the depth of his skepticism concerning the First Lady’s testimony under oath, “When the records popped up on January fourth—I don’t believe it was an accident; I don’t believe it happened like they say it happened.” He knew that Mrs. Clinton had insisted, “I found them in the Book Room,” and “I didn’t know what they were.… I found these things and I called my lawyer and Kendall and they came over.” But Ewing delivered his own verdict: “I don’t think it happened like that.”
To further add to Ewing’s suspicions, OIC had come into possession of a second copy of the Madison Guaranty billing records (the originals had never materialized) when Vince Foster’s widow, Lisa, found them stashed inside a dusty briefcase in the attic of her Arkansas home in July 1997. This newly discovered set contained a document that was conspicuously missing from the version the White House had produced: namely, an old Rose Law Firm bill issued to the Bank of Kingston in July 1982 and marked “paid.” This single piece of paper flatly contradicted Hillary Clinton’s earlier story that she had not initiated the representation of Madison Guaranty and that her husband the governor had not solicited Madison work on her behalf. Although the conduct at issue might be more an ethical problem than a legal problem, her falsehoods in sworn statements were still potentially criminal.
The fifth count of the draft indictment, Ewing said as he flipped through the binder, averred that Mrs. Clinton “knowingly made a false material declaration” in 1995, when she asserted that she did not initiate Madison legal business from Jim McDougal and that a younger associate at the Rose Law Firm, Rick Massey, had secured the client. Said Ewing, “Whether she didn’t remember, obviously that’s another question. But [the “paid” document] certainly showed that her story that she promulgated was incorrect.”
Ewing believed that this long-lost document also confirmed that Vince Foster knew of the falsity of that story when it was first unveiled during the 1992 campaign—perhaps Foster or Hillary, or both, had intentionally “jerked” that bill out of the set contained in the White House. “And I don’t know what all was on his mind,” Ewing conceded later, “but I know this: Had he [Foster] been alive, he would have either been a key witness for us, or he’d have been a defendant, as far as I’m concerned.” In Ewing’s eyes, Mrs. Clinton had lied to OIC, had lied to the grand jury, and would keep