Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [460]
Susan “didn’t have a clue” if Clinton would grant her a pardon, despite rumors (initiated by her ex-husband, Jim, while he was trying to get himself sprung from prison) that the president had made a secret deal to absolve her. The extent of Susan’s lobbying effort consisted of Claudia Riley’s calling the White House and speaking into an answering machine, stating in a firm voice, “Bill, this is Claudia. I just want to call and say, ‘Do the right thing.’” For the most part, Susan was leaving the final decision in God’s hands. “If anyone in the world knew I was innocent, it was Bill Clinton,” she said, re-creating her thinking. “My God … No, I didn’t ask for [a pardon]; I got it. And I deserved it because I was innocent. And he knew it.”
In the midst of the televised coverage of George W. Bush’s inauguration, Susan and Claudia had been watching CNN when the news anchor broke in to announce that Clinton’s pardons had been issued. Susan had expected the newsman to go down the list alphabetically starting with the As. “And they said straightaway, the very first name, ‘Susan McDougal has been pardoned.’”
After checking another channel to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, Susan grabbed her coat and the two ladies jumped into Claudia’s car. “And we went and had greasy eggs and bacon at the Steak and Egg,” Susan said, recalling that day. “We ate everything we could eat. We ate and ate and ate … I hadn’t even combed my hair, and we got back to the house from Steak and Egg, and there were like twenty trucks with big satellite dishes on them at the foot of the driveway.” Claudia interjected: “It was kind of an Arkansas celebration of getting a pardon. We prayed and we drank.”
Vanity Fair ran a story about Susan McDougal titled “Joan of Arkansas,” while the Los Angeles Times Magazine dubbed her the “Steel Magnolia.” Such tributes only infuriated Ken Starr, who felt that it was “profoundly wrong” that Susan McDougal should be “lifted up and honored” when she was a “felon” who had defied a federal judge’s orders. Starr later posed the rhetorical question: “She [and Jim McDougal] were looting a savings and loan, and now she’s a great hero or heroine?”
When it came to one of the great mysteries that had stumped Starr and his prosecutors during their long-running Clinton investigation—namely, the true nature of the past relationship between Governor Bill Clinton and Susan McDougal—interviews with confidential sources and additional evidence now confirm that some intimate involvement did occur between Susan McDougal and Governor Clinton years earlier, during the period when Jim and Susan’s marriage first deteriorated, before she divorced Jim. Ken Starr had spent five years and untold resources trying to extract the truth concerning the relationship between Susan McDougal and Bill Clinton, never succeeding. Now this much can be substantiated: There was a romantic affair, albeit brief in duration.
Nonetheless, it is also clear that the brief period of intimacy between Bill Clinton and Susan McDougal, whenever it took place during Clinton’s tenure as governor, was not the reason for Susan’s refusal to answer the Starr prosecutors’ questions in the grand jury. Sources con firm that she did not wish to hurt her husband, Jim, or Hillary Clinton. However, her principal motivation had nothing to do with protecting Bill Clinton. One source expressed it by stating that Susan did not endure two years of incarceration in prison, watch her parents suffer strokes and heart-bypasses, and risk further criminal convictions in order to avoid confessing the truth about an age-old fling with then-Governor Clinton, however great his supposed prowess as a la dies’ man. In the end, this source made clear, Susan McDougal refused to testify out of an abiding hatred and distrust of Ken Starr and his OIC prosecutors, whom she believed would pursue her—regardless of the testimony she gave under oath—if her account did not suit their need.
Once she was cleared