Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [329]
Hubbell’s lawyer John Nields later commented that the charges were particularly unfair to his client. “People normally don’t get prosecuted for not paying taxes,” Nields would emphasize. “They get prosecuted for lying about how much they earn or not filing returns. Failure to pay taxes is not prosecuted as a crime: debtor’s prison was abolished a long time ago.” As well, there was a serious Fifth Amendment self-incrimination issue, because OIC was building its case using records that it had compelled Hubbell to produce pursuant to subpoena.
To add to the ignominy, Starr’s office also hauled Hubbell’s wife (a political appointee employed in the Department of Interior) and the Hubbells’ college-aged son before the grand jury, sifting through their financial records and making life a living hell for the whole family. It was as if Hubbell was being squeezed from all directions. His lawyer observed: “If there was supposed to be some crime he knew about, I can’t tell you what it was.”
The House committee investigating Whitewater-related matters meanwhile released tape recordings of conversations from inside federal prison between Hubbell and his wife, his lawyer, and others close to him. Republican Chairman Dan Burton of Indiana—a Clinton detractor who had once fired a rifle at a watermelon to re-create the shooting of Vince Foster to “prove” it was murder—handed over transcribed recordings to the media, suggesting that Hubbell was hiding information to protect the First Lady.
Democrats on the House Committee, however, smelling rotten politics, quickly discovered that the Hubbell prison tapes, as released, were riddled with “alterations and omissions,” and that Representative Burton had “systematically edited [them] to delete references to exculpatory information.” Burton’s top aide, avowed Clinton enemy David Bossie, was forced to resign for his role in the episode. Yet the message was clear—the congressional Whitewater committee was joining forces with Starr’s office to exert maximum pressure on Hubbell, until he became more cooperative.
OIC also got tough with Susan McDougal. The recalcitrant Whitewater witness had just defied Starr’s office a second time, again refusing to answer its questions. On May 4, just days before the Arkansas grand jury was set to shut down, Starr’s prosecutors took the unusual step of indicting Susan McDougal for criminal contempt and obstruction of justice. Starr urged President Clinton to intervene and to convince McDougal to cooperate. The White House shot back that it would be “entirely inappropriate” for the president to badger a putative witness whom Starr’s office had already put through the wringer.
Susan McDougal, still incarcerated in a federal facility in Los Angeles, had spent eighteen months locked up for civil contempt—the maximum ordinarily permitted by law because it equaled the duration of the grand jury’s term. In a rare interview granted to BBC Tonight inside the prison walls, she rejected the notion that Ken Starr could make her talk, no matter what scheme he cooked up. Seated in a space bedecked with an American flag, with a narrow window behind her to let in a sliver of light, McDougal appeared worn out. Her ex-husband was now dead; creeping cold sores were visible below her bottom lip. Yet the prisoner, dressed in a brown V-necked prison shirt, looked surprisingly composed. Susan stared into the camera with eyes alert and told the interviewer, “Kenneth Starr is a dangerous man. He is a man with an agenda.… And that’s why I have decided not to deal with him.” McDougal added, looking straight into the camera, “It’s a battle to the death.”
YET the luck of special prosecutors, like the fortunes of politicians, can change as swiftly as the color of a chameleon.