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By Root 2049 0

and Webb Hubbell would look like. Remarkable in its scope and providing a window into the thought processes of OIC never before seen, this thirty-two-page document listed witnesses roughly in order of their anticipated appearance. Some of them would be pro-prosecution witnesses; others would be hostile to OIC’s cause, but essential to making a case. Ewing had hoped and prayed that when the time came, Jim McDougal would take the stand and directly contradict the First Lady on crucial points. The Arkansas developer had been slated to be Ewing’s star witness. These hopes were now dashed with McDougal buried in a pauper’s grave in Arkadelphia. Ewing expressed his frustration: “It’s like your key witness. If what he’s saying is true, then the president and the First Lady of the United States had both committed perjury. And I believed him. And he’s dead.”

So the leadoff witness for Starr’s office would have to be FBI agent Steve Irons, who had worked on all aspects of the Arkansas investigation. He would lend the credibility of that law enforcement agency to the prosecution. He would give the jury an overview. Next would be Chris Wade, the Whitewater real estate broker and Jim McDougal’s “business partner,” who had pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud and submitting false loan applications—Wade would dump Hillary Clinton in the soup, by dint of her dealings in the failed Whitewater venture. Following Wade would come a group dubbed “Principals in Investments,” an all-star lineup that included David Hale, Susan McDougal, and former governor Jim Guy Tucker. Other planned witnesses included William Kennedy III, Hillary’s erstwhile law partner who had worked alongside Vince Foster at the White House; Carolyn Huber, who had discovered the missing billing records in the White House; Jane Sherburne, of the White House Counsel’s office, who had conducted a search of the living quarters when the Rose Law Firm documents had appeared; and Lisa Foster Moody, Vince Foster’s widow, who would be questioned about the mysterious briefcase that had turned up in her attic years after Vince’s death. The final witness for OIC would be FBI Agent Pat Fallon, a stalwart member of the Starr team, who would weave together a spellbinding summary for the jury.

By midnight, Starr’s prosecutors had heard all they needed. Ken Starr asked each member of the OIC team to cast a vote. The group was tired, but the consensus was unanimous. Even those who had worked closely with Hickman on the Arkansas phase of the case, including Jackie Bennett and Bob Bittman, voted against indicting Hillary Clinton. To Ewing’s ears, it sounded like the same old tune: “We had the president. We had him cold committing perjury.” So why “muddy it up” by indicting the First Lady? David Kendall, who represented both the president and First Lady, would undoubtedly move for a change of venue from Arkansas to Washington, arguing that the First Lady of the United States “can’t be involved in a four-to six-week trial in Little Rock.” If that move succeeded—which was likely, because Kendall was a master at litigation maneuvers—the prosecutors knew that Bill Clinton “carried ninety-seven percent of the vote” in the heavily African American District of Columbia, all of which dramatically lessened the chances of convicting Mrs. Clinton, assuming a grand jury even found sufficient cause to indict.

Paul Rosenzweig, who had spent months working on the Hillary matter, agreed that this was “one of Hick’s bravura performances.” Yet, it was evident that even Hickman Ewing at his dramatic best couldn’t make this cow fly.

“In some ways, it was kind of like Moses on Mt. Nebo,” recalled Rosenzweig. “He could see the promised land, but he wasn’t going to enter.”

Rosenzweig, like many of his colleagues, listened to all of the evidence and assessed the prospective criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton like this: “The same set of facts, if tied to an indictment of a Mafia figure who comes to the table with a presumption of guilt that most criminal defendants have, would have been sufficient circumstantial