Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [407]
The hulking former Justice Department official stood at the front door of his home, telling reporters with a mixture of puzzlement and anger, “I do not know of any wrongdoing on behalf of the First Lady and President. And nothing the independent counsel can do to me is going to make me lie about them.”
Internally, OIC prosecutors were deadlocked. Confidential memos now confirm that Julie Myers had warned her boss that a third indictment of Hubbell under the federal crimes code would pose serious “double jeopardy” issues under the Fifth Amendment. Paul Rosenzweig, one of Ken Starr’s most loyal prosecutors, cautioned Starr that this move would lead to another avalanche of bad publicity for OIC and (most likely) a humiliating loss in court due to “Hubbell’s age, complexity [of the case], alleged overreaching against Hillary Clinton etc.”
Yet the bulldogs in the office could not resist taking one more bite. A confidential OIC report titled “Hubbell Hush Money Summary” and an internal OIC memo dated October 22, 1998, now reveal that Starr’s top prosecutors remained firmly convinced that Hubbell was holding back crucial information. Specifically, OIC believed that Hillary Clinton and the White House had taken steps to “take care” of Hubbell financially, setting up lucrative consulting work for him before he went to prison. They suggested a “sinister reason” for this charity work—namely, that Hubbell knew of Hillary Clinton’s role in performing shaky jobs for Madison Guaranty, and in lying about it. OIC lawyers were convinced that Hubbell had been paid off.
So Starr and his deputies initiated new prosecutions against both Hubbell and Susan McDougal despite the risks, hoping that these efforts might recharge Congress’s stalled-out impeachment drive and allow the House of Representatives to ensnare the embattled President.
IN mid-November, Henry Hyde drafted eighty-one questions and shipped them to Bill Clinton. The chairman viewed these as akin to interrogatories in a civil case, which would allow Congress to pin Clinton down fair and square. Now, the day after Thanksgiving, Hyde took one look at the president’s responses and concluded that they were “smart-alecky,” “sarcastic” and even “smart-assed.”
For instance, in one exchange, Hyde had asked the president, “Do you admit or deny that you gave false and misleading testimony under oath?” specifically pointing to Clinton’s statement in his Jones deposition that he had received gifts from Monica Lewinsky only “once or twice.” The president had fashioned his reply in double-talk, stating that he “had a chance to search my memory” and suddenly recalled a pile of additional gifts.
Hyde had hoped that Clinton would use the interrogatory answers to “apologize in a sincere way,” employing this legal device as a vehicle to show his honest remorse and to “ask the forgiveness of God.” If he had done that, insisted Hyde, the evasive Clinton could have “closed the book” and spared himself the ignominy of impeachment proceedings. Hyde would contend, with an open expression on his face, “Nobody lusted after his scalp. I mean really and truly.”
The White House political advisers’ response was, “Tell me a better joke.” They viewed these written questions as a setup, designed to leapfrog over impeachment and to force Clinton to resign. Representative Barney Frank likened it to a matador in a bullfight after