A Woman in Charge (61 page)

Two days before Christmas, on the defensive again, the White House agreed to release to the Department of Justice, but not to the press, the Clintons' tax returns and specific papers related to the Whitewater purchase. Kendall had prevailed on Justice officials to secretly subpoena the documents so they would no longer be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and therefore not available to the press or to Congress. A statement for the press released by the White House concerning the handover of the papers made no mention of the subpoena. This was just the kind of fancy footwork that always seemed to trip up the Clintons, and when it was revealed a few days later, Bill and Hillary were wounded again.

 

H
ILLARY WAS NOT
wrong that old enemies in Arkansas, in conjunction with organized right-wing groups and the mega-wattage of talk radio, were hard at work. The unprecedented campaign against a sitting president and first lady, well organized and increasingly effective, continued. The roles of Sheffield Nelson, who in the 1990 gubernatorial campaign had pushed to publicly identify some of Bill's women—and misidentify some who were not—and Cliff Jackson, an Arkansas lawyer who had befriended Clinton at Oxford, in disseminating venomous tales of Clinton's past were indisputable. Some were based in truth, others in fantasy. Jackson's own political ambitions in Arkansas—as a Republican—once had been similar to Bill's, but went nowhere. At Oxford, Jackson had counseled Clinton on avoiding the draft, and he was eager to disclose the details (and did) when Clinton sought the presidency; and it was Jackson who led the state troopers to David Brock. Nelson, Jackson, and others with old axes to grind were in close touch with newer ideological enemies, who viewed “Clintonism” as a plague to be eradicated. Across the Potomac, in northern Virginia, David Bossie and Floyd Brown (he had produced the Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential campaign of George Bush) had set up shop as Citizens United, an organization that existed largely to fight the pestilence (and geared up again in 2007 for Hillary's presidential campaign). They issued a constant stream of lies, half-truths, devilish gospels, and conspiratorial epistles that told a tale of perdition and evil, and were peddled by the pair to mainstream news organizations, Republican offices on Capitol Hill, and right-wing talk show hosts especially. The distance from Citizens United to Rush Limbaugh and televangelist Jerry Falwell could sometimes be measured in milliseconds.

But however accurate Hillary's perception of an organized threat against the Clintons, she seemed unable, or unwilling, to grasp the desire of less antagonistic citizens, members of Congress, and the press to be given straightforward, timely responses to legitimate questions being raised by the stories, whatever the origins of the information and of the motivation of those promoting them.

Bill believed his own White House staff had failed to develop and execute an aggressive but reasoned public defense months before, when problems had so obviously been building and would have been more manageable. But largely at Hillary's insistence, he had decided consistently against taking actions that might have won them some favor by reasonably full and prompt disclosure. Instead, they had chosen a narrow, legalistic approach that relied on containment, and had entrusted much of the response largely to Bruce Lindsey instead of encouraging a broader process of internal discussion and coherent planning.

In mid-December Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes took on the assignment of forming a Whitewater response team, which began meeting twice a day as the problems seemed to careen further out of control, regardless of any order Ickes or anyone else could impose. The biggest obstacle, in the view of many of those deeply involved, was Hillary's continued objection to asking for a special prosecutor, and the failure to release information publicly on a timely basis. “It was Hillary who made the decision [to keep resisting],” said Lindsey's wife, Bev, herself an aide to the president. “She is the practicing lawyer in the family. Bill is the theoretical lawyer…. And I think they both felt that they could tell people there was nothing there and people would believe it. The staff realized it wasn't working. So all they could do was keep bringing it up…but that angers her and each time they brought it back to her, there was more tension.” Something similar would happen during the year of Monica Lewinsky denial. But for now, the backing of Kendall and Nussbaum, neither of whom was particularly astute about recognizing the relative revulsion of ordinary citizens to slick lawyering, only seemed to reinforce her certainty.

The first few days of the New Year were consumed with divisive internal debate about whether to appoint a special prosecutor. Hillary was unyielding in her opposition, as were Lindsey, Nussbaum, and Kendall. She argued that permitting a high-profile investigation by a special prosecutor would further distract attention from health care reform and other legislation that she and Bill wanted to push forward. An independent counsel would also cost the Clintons a lot of money, and such an investigation could be endless.

“Sadly, the Whitewater affair is exploding into a press frenzy,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman wrote in his diary on January 3, 1994. “It's mostly a testimony to the press mania and the crazed world of Washington.” Two days later he wrote: “This Whitewater situation is one big mess. Administration perceived as stonewalling; ‘There must be something to hide.' Big issue is independent prosecutor. Lots of speculation that HRC is the one who handled this in Arkansas…. White House seems engulfed in this and is mishandling it.”

It was hardly lost on those arguing about a special prosecutor that Hillary, along with the president, would be the subject of any special prosecutor's inquiry. Maggie Williams had told Altman, “On Whitewater, HRC was paralyzed by it,” according to another note he made. Then Williams had added: “HRC ‘doesn't want [an independent counsel] poking into 20 years of public life in Arkansas.'” Unless the Clintons' Whitewater problems were “defused,” health care reform would die, Williams warned.

In the first days of 1994, while Hillary was absorbing new revelations about Bill's sexual past, Betsey Wright was rummaging through some gubernatorial records in Arkansas at the behest of Hillary and the Clintons' lawyers. She came upon a series of canceled checks written on the account of the Whitewater Development Corporation. Adjacent to the checks was a carbon copy of an urgent telephone message to the governor from Jim McDougal, the Clintons' Whitewater partner, urging him to appoint Beverly Bassett Schaffer as commissioner of the Arkansas Securities Department, the state regulatory body that oversees the savings and loan business. Schaffer was appointed by Clinton shortly thereafter, and then assumed jurisdiction over McDougal's attempts to keep his failing S&L from being closed down.

Wright had been searching for campaign finance materials that might be necessary to answer questions by investigators, to segregate them from other gubernatorial papers being archived in Arkansas. In the process, she said, “I accidentally found some Whitewater documents. They were not what I was looking for at all.” As soon as she found the message from McDougal, she phoned Hillary at the White House.

“I told her that I found the phone message about Jim McDougal calling to support Beverly Bassett Schaffer for securities commissioner,” Wright related. “And [Hillary] said, ‘Oh, I'm sorry you found that.'

“And I said, ‘Well, you know, they're carbons or copies, you know, it doesn't matter.'”

Hillary then told her, “There's going to be an investigator, a [special] counsel or something…. You've got to get a lawyer.”

Discussing the matter many years later, Wright explained: “Well, I mean, okay. I mean who am I to argue with a lawyer [Hillary] about when I need a lawyer?”

Hillary's advice to get a lawyer was not specifically a response to finding the checks or discovering the message from McDougal, Wright believed. Rather, Hillary appeared to be advising her that it was likely that a special prosecutor would be appointed, and that they would therefore
all
need their own private legal counsel. Wright was unaware of the furious debate underway in the White House about whether to accede to demands that a special prosecutor be appointed. Hillary was adamantly against it, of course, but given what she told Wright, she must have sensed already that she was going to lose the argument.

Following her conversation with Hillary, Wright also told the president's top personal aide, Bruce Lindsey, himself a lawyer, about finding the checks and the telephone message, and that, in addition to engaging her own lawyer, she intended to turn the material over to the Clintons' personal attorney, David Kendall.

At a meeting in McLarty's office later that first week of January, Stephanopoulos made the case for an independent counsel to Hillary. “Assuming we did nothing wrong,” he said it would be advantageous for a special prosecutor to confirm it. If they didn't ask the attorney general to appoint one now, it seemed inevitable that Congress would pass the Independent Counsel Act and the Court of Appeals would impose its choice of a counsel. The White House, by resisting, appeared to be hiding something.

Hillary lashed back at Stephanopoulos, accusing him of never believing in the Clintons in the first place. She began to cry. Shocked at her reaction, the room was quiet. Hillary soon regained her composure and barked out her expectations: she wanted them to mount a campaign and fight back.

Whitewater overshadowed everything. A subsequent meeting was convened by Ickes to discuss whether Hillary's opposition could be contravened. Ickes wondered if Secretary of State Warren Christopher or Bob Barnett should be enlisted to talk to her. But most people felt it would be impossible for anyone to get her to change her position—not even Bill. Nor was it clear that Barnett would disagree with her. Another White House document marked “Confidential: Second Draft, Summary of Arguments Re: Whitewater” listed reasons to oppose appointment of a special prosecutor, including that it “may result in focus on friends and associates of the president, begin to squeeze them and may make some subject to indictment.” Notes from the meeting that Ickes convened show that Nussbaum, who had spoken to Betsey Wright in the previous weeks about how to defuse the situation, was predicting that “Indictments will be Betsey Wright.”

 

H
ILLARY AND
B
ILL
were asleep when the phone rang in the early morning hours of January 6. Dick Kelley, Virginia's fourth husband, was on the line to tell the president his mother had died in her sleep at their home, on the outskirts of Hot Springs. She had been fighting breast cancer since 1990, and had surgery that year to remove a lump in her right breast but the cancer spread. Later she had undergone a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and frequent blood transfusions once the cancer had invaded her bloodstream.

The Clintons started making phone calls to family members and close friends, and brought Chelsea into their bedroom to break the news. Chelsea had lost her grandfather, Hillary's father, six months before.

Virginia had been the great influence on Bill's life. She had persevered through hard knocks, inculcated in him her optimism and drive. She loved placing her two-dollar bets at Oaklawn racetrack, and the attention of men. She had buried three husbands, two of whom had drank and abused her. Her home was filled with mementos of Bill's high school years and his accomplishments in Boys Nation. She had worked long hours and paid most of Bill's tuition to Georgetown. “I got my stamina from my mother,” Clinton once said. Her last conversation with her son had been two nights before she died: “Mother called me at the White House,” Bill recalled. She had just returned home from a trip to Las Vegas, her favorite city. She had been thoroughly enjoying herself and told him she had loved Barbra Streisand's concert, during which the singer had dedicated a song to her and had introduced her to the audience. Virginia had seemed strong and “was in high spirits” on the phone. “She just wanted to check in and tell me she loved me.” He knew the end was near, but he “wasn't ready to let her go.”

Clinton's gregariousness, his fun-loving nature, his glad-handing, his hugging, his empathy, his ability to focus on whomever he was talking to—all those were traits he'd shared with his mother. In high school, he had “showed more affection toward his mom than any of us showed toward our moms,” said a childhood friend. “You could tell they were close and drew on each other.”

Hillary believed that Bill and Virginia shared great optimism, along with a tendency to repress unpleasant thoughts or memories. He had nearly photographic recall, yet for decades he had blocked out painful scenes involving his abusive stepfather, Roger Clinton, as had Virginia.

The next morning, January 7, Bob Dole appeared on
CBS This Morning
and attacked Bill's conduct in handling the Whitewater matter, arguing for the appointment of a special prosecutor. “I hate to even discuss these things today, but I think it's fair to say that it appears, from what we know this morning, that the White House worked with the Justice Department on the subpoena,” Dole said. “These [tax returns and other documents] weren't turned over voluntarily. They worked out a subpoena in an effort to protect the privacy of the records. It's almost unbelievable that the White House would work with the Justice Department in a matter of this kind…. I think it cries out more than ever now for an independent counsel, and it seems to me that Attorney General Reno must move at this point. You know, they've known since December 24 or 25 that the subpoena was going to be issued. We were told by White House sources, not the president, they were being turned over voluntarily, and I just believe it's gotten out of hand now.”

Though Bill and Hillary said they didn't normally watch the morning talk shows, their bedroom television was on that morning—for “background noise” in the residence. When they heard Dole, Bill became “utterly stricken,” Hillary said; he was being hit when he was down and that violated his personal canon. A few years later, when Dole learned how hurt Bill had been, Dole wrote him an apologetic note, which Clinton deeply appreciated.