Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [73]
AS Robert Fiske swiftly lost favor with the Republican power base that had lauded his appointment, Congress marched forward, reauthorizing the independent counsel law by a three-to-one margin. Republicans who had spent decades fighting the law in the wake of Watergate and Iran-Contra now found an ironic satisfaction in supporting it: What was good for the goose, after all, was good for the gander.
White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler told President Clinton to take a deep breath and remain calm. All would be fine. “No court would ever get rid of an independent Republican like Fiske and put someone else in,” Cutler assured the president. Assuming the independent counsel statute was signed back into law, it was inconceivable that Attorney General Reno would recommend anyone other than Fiske to continue the work. On June 30, Clinton affixed his signature to the independent counsel reauthorization bill—as he had pledged to do during his 1992 campaign—calling it “a foundation stone for the trust between the government and our citizens.”
That same day, Attorney General Janet Reno wrote to the special three-judge court that oversaw independent counsel investigations, formally requesting that Fiske be reappointed under the revived statute. Criminal Division Chief Jo Ann Harris assumed this was a pro forma matter. The entire Justice Department believed that Fiske was bulletproof. His “reputation for integrity and competence” was so stellar that Congress had even included a provision in the statute specifically permitting the reappointment of Fiske. Harris said, “It certainly never crossed my mind that the court would not understand, for a whole lot of reasons, that the best thing they could do was just appoint Fiske and let it go on. I think she [Reno] felt the same way.”
But many surprises awaited those who wagered on the outcome of this particular presidential scandal.
PART TWO
PURSUING THE PRESIDENT
CHAPTER
10
PAULA CORBIN JONES
In January 1994, just as a second wave of tremors from Vince Foster’s death shook the White House and stirred the Whitewater pot, a new threat to the Clinton presidency emerged. At the time, it seemed like a mere nuisance. It came in the form of an article in a hot new conservative magazine, the American Spectator, written by a young muckraker named David Brock.
The Spectator story possessed a far-out tabloid quality even when it first appeared on the newsstands. On the cover was featured a cartoon that depicted Bill Clinton sneaking out of the governor’s mansion at night carrying his shoes, with the provocative title “His Cheatin’ Heart.” The inside headline read: “Bill’s Arkansas bodyguards tell the story the press missed.” What followed was akin to a thirteen-page racy novelette about Governor Clinton’s secret sexual exploits with dozens of women, mostly unnamed. This was accompanied by an account of Hillary’s wild, screaming, door-kicking tirades when she caught Bill on the prowl. In a titillating and irreverent twist, Brock’s article also asserted that Hillary was “intimately involved with the late Vincent Foster.” The conservative journalist reported that Hillary and Vince had been seen by troopers “embracing and open-mouth kissing.” The story even asserted that Foster, famous for his sober Presbyterian bearing, had on one occasion “squeezed [Hillary’s] rear end” and “put his hand over one of Hillary’s breasts,” winking as he gave a thumbs-up sign to Trooper Larry Patterson. Hillary, the story recounted in bodice-ripping prose, “just stood there cooing ‘Oh Vince, Oh Vince!’”
Brock’s article also described eyebrow-raising locker-room talk between Governor Clinton and his troopers. The future president purportedly told Trooper Patterson that “he had researched the subject in the Bible and oral sex isn’t considered adultery.”
The Spectator article ushered in a new scandal that the tabloids swiftly dubbed “Troopergate.” It delighted some commentators, while