Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [59]
Another event jostled the dormant scandal back to life. During the fall of 1993, the Los Angeles Times was busily working on a story involving rumors that then-Governor Bill Clinton had engaged in various extramarital affairs facilitated by former Arkansas state troopers. Some of those troopers and bodyguards—the L.A. Times was reporting—were now coming forward, purportedly for money, to tell tales of driving Governor Clinton to and from clandestine meetings with females and arranging for “dates” whenever the governor spotted women who struck his fancy.
As Bernie Nussbaum would explain the ugly turn of events: “All of a sudden, people started connecting things that were not connectable: Vince [Foster], Whitewater, Clinton having affairs.”
By the early days of 1994, allegations of scandal had burst into full bloom, like a garden suddenly flowering with a dozen dark-colored, scary, potentially poisonous species, all unrelated. From this cross-pollination of tainted blossoms, an unexpected political scandal that threatened the existence of the Clinton presidency slowly emerged.
CHAPTER
8
THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR
Virginia Clinton Kelley, mother of the president, was used to watching strangers take potshots at her son. But she didn’t appreciate the relentless drubbing that Bill was taking over the Whitewater nonsense. By late 1993, Virginia Kelley was sick with cancer, her usual exuberance subdued. She was living her life one day at a time with Dick Kelley, her fourth and final husband, at their little white cottage on Bayside Road, which was situated on a peaceful lake in Hot Springs. Virginia still applied heavy makeup each morning, fussing with the white streak that accentuated her black hair—her trademark. She still enjoyed going to the horse races and sipping an evening drink with Dick, indulging in Hot Springs life. But she tired more easily. These nasty goings-on in Washington caused her to worry about Bill, wearing her down even further.
The death of Vince Foster had been a serious blow for the whole family. Virginia had known Vince since he was a little boy back in Hope. In recent years, she and Dick had even retained Foster as their own attorney. Just a week before he died, they had visited with Foster in Washington to attend to some “personal legal matters.” His suicide was like losing a son for Virginia, Dick recalled. “Oh, my goodness, when that happened to Vince—she was so broken up.”
Now with a fresh batch of stories about Whitewater, Jim McDougal, and Madison Guaranty being ginned up in the press, these attacks on Bill were taking their toll on Virginia. Years later, Dick Kelley sat in front of the cottage’s stone fireplace, a cane in hand and photos of the whole Clinton family on the wall behind him. He closed his eyes and said in a quiet drawl, “Well, she didn’t believe a thing in the world they said about Whitewater. That was clean as a hound’s tooth. There wasn’t anything wrong there. But it upset her mightily because they’d just keep hammering on him.”
By early January 1994, the “Troopergate” story had just been broken in the news. The war cry was growing louder for an independent counsel to investigate Bill and Hillary. Virginia had just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, where she had attended a concert by Barbra Streisand, her new pal from White House galas. It had been a wonderful trip, but more exhausting than usual.
Late in the afternoon of January 5, Virginia came home and settled into her favorite chair. Dick remembered the sequence of events on this evening vividly. “She drinks Scotch,” he said. “So I fixed her a drink. And I said, ‘Babe, I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘You don’t feel good.’ Virginia answered, ‘No, I don’t.’” Her appetite had been vanishing. Dick hurried