Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [442]
As Chief Justice Rehnquist’s administrative assistant would note, such a move could have cut off Clinton’s escape route. “If Judge Wright had held the president in [criminal] contempt first,” posited Jim Duff, “if that had happened, along with the strong condemnation that the Democrats had drafted … there might have been a different outcome.”
At least one source close to Judge Wright during that period confirmed that she had weighed the criminal-contempt option and then consciously chose to take a different path, after the impeachment proceedings sputtered to a conclusion, treating Bill Clinton as she would have treated any other civil defendant who had fibbed under oath.
Only after Ken Starr’s office and Congress had intervened prematurely, wrecking her civil case and making hash of the judicial process, did Judge Wright return to her courtroom and take steps to restore the dignity of this case that fell within her jurisdiction. Although President Bill Clinton would forever remain miffed by Judge Susan Webber Wright’s decision to impose civil contempt, which in turn set him up for disbarment in his home state of Arkansas, that decision had another unseen consequence.
It left Clinton in office for the remainder of his presidency.
THE same day in mid-April that Judge Wright issued her surprise order, Susan McDougal walked out of a different federal courtroom in Little Rock a free woman, having beaten Ken Starr’s latest and final effort to convict her on charges of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice. As soon as jurors found McDougal innocent on the obstruction counts and declared that they were “hopelessly deadlocked” on the criminal-contempt charges, U.S. District Judge George Howard, Jr., had declared a mistrial, ordering federal marshals to release the Whitewater felon. Susan’s attorney, California superlawyer Mark Geragos, told the press: “If anything should put a stake through the heart of Kenneth Starr, this should be it. This guy should pack up, should get out of here. I’m happy to be the one, along with Susan, to wish him a bon voyage. Get the heck out of Arkansas and do it now.”
Outside the court house in Little Rock, Susan McDougal pushed the hair out of her eyes, declaring, “This is the first day that I haven’t been indicted in years, so I’m a little numb from it.”
Juror Michael Nance, a truck driver from Little Rock, shared with reporters his reasons for concluding that McDougal had not “willfully” violated Judge Wright’s court order: He had based his verdict upon the testimony of Susan McDougal herself. Ending her self-imposed silence by answering all the questions originally propounded by the grand jury, Susan had disavowed any knowledge of wrongdoing by Bill or Hillary Clinton in connection with Whitewater, Madison Guaranty, or any of Jim McDougal’s dubious business dealings, putting these questions to rest.
Nance paused on the court house steps, telling a reporter that he and other jurors had concluded that there was an “innocent reason” for Susan McDougal’s eighteen months of silence, namely, her abiding fear that Independent Counsel Starr would “charge her with perjury” unless she falsely implicated Bill and Hillary in a crime. Whether or not this conclusion was rational, explained the forty-eight-year-old juror, he certainly believed it was the reason “why Susan didn’t talk.”
Waving to a throng of onlookers, Susan McDougal stepped into an awaiting car, wearily commencing the hundred-mile drive back to Camden, Arkansas, where she would begin the long process of forgetting about her past. She would do her best to block out memories of her dead ex-husband; of her bygone days as a failed business partner with Bill and Hillary Clinton; and of the man she detested more than any other mortal who walked the face of the earth—Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
EPILOGUE
WHITE HOUSE EXODUS