Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [39]
Sheffield Nelson was an ideal person to broker this story to the national media. He was more than happy to oblige Jim McDougal. Nelson had lost to Bill Clinton in the bitterly fought gubernatorial contest of 1990; he had a score to settle. He was also co-chair of the Republican Party in Arkansas, which put him in a good position to enlist help. One person whom Nelson immediately turned to was Larry Nichols, an offbeat former state employee (and sometime mercenary soldier in Nicaragua) who had sued Clinton during the 1990 campaign, claiming that he was wrongfully fired from his job. Nichols had been the person to first unleash the “bimbo” stories against Clinton, convening a press conference on the state capitol steps and listing five women with whom Clinton allegedly had affairs, including the sexy blond lounge singer Gennifer Flowers. At the time, this had sent shock waves through the Clinton gubernatorial campaign organization. As Nichols himself later acknowledged with pride: “I knew sex sells.… I figured I’d pop in with a lawsuit.” Now, Sheffield Nelson was joining forces with Nichols to get anti-Clinton stories fed into the national media.
Records contained in the files maintained by McDougal’s own lawyer confirm that these efforts were successful. One transcript in those files reveals that Nelson called Jim McDougal to his office (without contacting McDougal’s attorney), tape-recorded the conversation, and openly fished for damaging information relating to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker, and other political foes. At one point in the conversation, Nelson specifically told McDougal that the Times reporter Jeff Gerth would be calling to ask McDougal questions about Whitewater and that Gerth would want to know “what you’re sayin’” that might implicate the Clintons.
Soon afterward, McDougal was meeting with Gerth at the Western Sizzlin in Arkadelphia—McDougal’s favorite hangout—telling his story to Gerth and turning over his remaining papers relating to the Clintons and Whitewater.
Jeff Gerth’s article appeared on the front page of the New York Times on March 8, 1992—a crucial moment in the presidential campaign—just two days before the Super Tuesday primaries in six Southern states. In a piece titled “Clintons Joined S&L Operator in an Ozark Real-Estate Venture,” Gerth became the first journalist in the national press corps to bite on the Clinton-McDougal bait. Although the details of the Times story were somewhat sketchy, laden down with inconclusive facts and figures, the clear implication was that the Clintons might have engaged in inappropriate business dealings with McDougal while Clinton was governor, and that certain Whitewater records might have “disappeared.” (McDougal later admitted that he burned some of the papers after his 1990 trial.)
Both the transcript of the conversation between Sheffield Nelson and Jim McDougal and the Gerth article that appeared shortly thereafter are significant for what they did not reveal—namely, statements by McDougal that would suggest any serious wrongdoing by Bill or Hillary Clinton. At this moment in his topsy-turvy life, McDougal had no obvious motive for lying, especially to help the Clintons. His criminal prosecution, he believed, was over. He was feeling emotionally wounded and angry toward the Clintons. He had no apparent reason to protect them, especially after his run-ins with Hillary and the devastating phone call from Bill when his mother was on her deathbed. Even in that context, nothing in the surreptitiously recorded conversation with Sheffield Nelson or in the interview with Jeff