Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (2 page)

There had been lingering echoes of the Monica Lewinsky affair, in a last-minute legal settlement that Clinton and his lawyers had signed
with Robert Ray, the successor to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. After his impeachment acquittal in 1999, his most determined enemies in Congress had consoled each other with the promise that he would surely be criminally indicted upon leaving office.

But following weeks of negotiations with Clinton’s attorneys, Ray agreed not to indict him for perjuring himself before the grand jury investigating the Lewinsky matter, in exchange for his public acknowledgment of making false statements under oath, and acceptance of a five-year suspension of his license to practice law. And now even some of the right-wing Republicans who had voted to remove him expressed relief that the Clinton wars would finally reach an armistice as a new Republican president took office.

So Clinton had left town with the grumbling muted and the cheers of hundreds of admiring friends and staff still ringing in his ears. Here at least was an end to the constant partisan warfare and the opportunity to begin something very different.

Yet that respite was to be measured not in weeks or even days but in mere hours. Scarcely had his successor settled into the Oval Office for the new administration’s first day of work, when Clinton’s old enemies in the media and on Capitol Hill had returned to full uproar, over the Marc Rich pardon and a thousand other supposed offenses. However much they might sniff and snark about “Clinton fatigue,” they never really got tired of kicking him around. And as they quickly discovered, he was an easier, more vulnerable target now.

Unlike the battles of the past, Clinton could no longer turn to a devoted phalanx of presidential assistants, press flacks, personal aides, Democratic Party officials, and congressional allies to shield him. Now he was virtually alone, without protection, as an unrelenting barrage of assaults, insults, complaints, and threats suddenly poured in from every direction.

But a pair of loyal young aides would spend nearly every moment of the next ten years with him: Doug Band, who had earned a law degree from Georgetown while working in the White House and turned down an enticing job offer at Goldman Sachs to continue working for Clinton at Hillary’s fervent request, and Justin Cooper, a native of the Philadelphia suburbs who had worked in Oval Office operations after graduating from American University. Their role in shaping and protecting his
post-presidential life on many levels—from philanthropy and politics to press guidance—would too often be underestimated.

On Monday morning, January 22, Hillary Clinton left Chappaqua early to return to Washington with Dorothy McAuliffe. Chelsea and her boyfriend had gone, too—leaving Band; Cooper; Clinton’s military valet Oscar Flores, who had quit the White House to stay with him; the Clintons’ brown Labrador retriever, Buddy; and Terry McAuliffe, who understood that this would be a good day for a friend to stay by the former president’s side.

Plainly irritated by a crescendo of criticism focusing on the Rich pardon, Clinton was grim and angry. His mood didn’t improve that evening, when the network and cable news broadcasts all featured versions of the Rich story that emphasized improper or at least unorthodox procedures—and suspicions of bribery.

“Opponents of the pardon say they think contributions by Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, who has given nearly $1 million to Democratic causes during the Clinton era, were also a factor, though Rich’s lawyers deny that,” reported NBC News White House correspondent Pete Williams. “Lawyers involved in the case today say Clinton never contacted the Justice Department for its views on pardoning Rich. . . . [With] a presidential pardon, Marc Rich is free to come back to the US, no longer facing trial in one of the biggest tax fraud cases ever.”

Unpacking books and souvenirs didn’t seem to provide much distraction for the former president. As he watched an agitated Clinton stewing all day, McAuliffe decided to stay over in Chappaqua for another night. They stayed up late talking and trying to relax over a couple of beers. By the following morning, the rumblings of outrage over Marc Rich had erupted into a national uproar.

The lead editorial in the
Washington Post
demanded to know “what conceivable justification could there be for former President Clinton, on his last morning in office, to have pardoned fugitive financiers Marc Rich and Pincus Green? Unlike most of those pardoned on Mr. Clinton’s last day, Messrs. Rich and Green have never paid a fine, served a day in jail, disgorged a single dollar of allegedly ill-gotten gains or reimbursed US taxpayers the money that is allegedly owed.”

The pardons were not only “indefensible,” roared the
Post
, but had defined him and his presidency downward: “With his scandalous present to Mr. Rich, Mr. Clinton has diminished the integrity and grandeur of the pardon power just as surely as he diminished the various privileges he abused by invoking them to defend his tawdry conduct in office. What a way to leave.”

The
Philadelphia Inquirer
asked even more pointedly: “Did Mr. Rich’s pardon have anything to do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars that his ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, has given the Democrats? Or could it relate to Mr. Rich’s choice of Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel, as his lawyer? . . . This was simply a perversion of justice.”

And on ABC News, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos had furiously denounced his old boss. “He pardoned a man named Marc Rich. You may not remember Marc Rich but he was a banker, a commodities trader, who was trading with Iran when they were holding terrorists and trading with South Africa under the apartheid regime. . . . Instead of facing trial he went on the lam, lived in Switzerland for seventeen years. His ex-wife has given $600,000 almost, over $500,000 to the Democratic Party over the last two years. This is outrageous!”

Many of the newspaper stories on the pardons quoted Rudolph Giuliani, the New York mayor and former federal prosecutor, who had originally indicted Rich and Green. On cable television and the networks, too, Giuliani was urging Congress to “investigate” Clinton’s pardons, insinuating corruption of the worst kind. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Mary Jo White, a Clinton appointee, had let the world know that she was equally furious because nobody had asked her about the Rich pardon before it was granted.

Later, McAuliffe would recall again and again how Clinton had looked during those two gray, awful days: “Just like a deer in the headlights.” As the Rich furor exploded around him, literally nobody was publicly uttering a word in his defense. Indeed, sometime on that Sunday afternoon, both he and McAuliffe noticed that none of the articles or broadcasts quoted Jack Quinn, who seemed to be hiding from the press. It was not long before McAuliffe, in anguish, picked up the telephone and called Quinn.

“Jack, the president is hanging out here,” he remembered muttering to Rich’s
lawyer, not wanting Clinton to overhear the conversation. “You did this to him, and you’re not saying anything to defend him. You did it, and he’s out here all alone.”

But Quinn was no longer the president’s lawyer, and apparently felt no responsibility to protect Clinton. With the possibility of a congressional investigation on the horizon, or worse, he was protecting himself.

“Well, Terry, my lawyers say I can’t talk,” he replied coolly.

“Your lawyers should just go fuck themselves, Jack.” The usually amiable McAuliffe’s voice was rising quickly. “This is
your
deal and you’ve got to get
your
ass out there and defend the president.”

That Tuesday evening, Clinton ventured out in public for the first time since his Sunday morning trip to the deli. He dragged a reluctant McAuliffe and Band with him to the Metropolitan Opera at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, where they were to attend a performance of Verdi’s
Aida
, starring Luciano Pavarotti, with Chelsea and her current beau, an Oberlin College music student and aspiring opera singer. It was a high-profile event, with the presidential party seated in the main box overlooking the stage for nearly five hours of heavily costumed singing—an endurance test for Clinton and his companions, none having even the slightest taste for opera, with other matters weighing on their minds.

What were they doing at the Met, McAuliffe asked himself, with a media firestorm developing around them? But it was Chelsea’s evening and he said nothing.

After the opera’s tragic finale—in which both hero and heroine are sealed up to perish together in an Egyptian tomb—the Clinton party made an obligatory visit backstage to meet the cast, shake hands, take pictures, and trade back-slapping jokes with Pavarotti. Though the great tenor was suffering from a severe cold, he seemed delighted to see the former president. Clinton smiled and laughed, too, still determined, as he had so often proved during the years of turmoil in the White House, to push trouble aside and live in the moment.

The long evening concluded with Clinton and McAuliffe driven back to Chappaqua, where they again sat up late drinking beer and fretting over the latest barrage of attacks. While they were out on what McAuliffe sarcastically described as a “double date” with Chelsea and
her boyfriend, a fresh cascade of damaging tales had gained traction in the national media. The pardon scandal seemed to be metastasizing.

On CNBC’s
Hardball
that night, host Chris Matthews—a strident and persistent Clinton critic—summed up the Rich pardon as a straightforward bribe. “This guy [Rich] took $50 million from the US government. He gets—his wife kicks in a million to the Democratic Party. The mathematics is perfect. It only costs a million to make up for $50 million.”

Then with a mixture of glee and disgust, Matthews and his guests delved into new accusations that Clinton staffers had vandalized or even “looted” the White House and Air Force One before departing on January 20—and that the Clintons had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of artwork and furnishings from the executive mansion that didn’t really belong to them.

The initial stories about the items supposedly misappropriated by the Clintons were based on a mandatory, publicly available document that they had filed with the White House Gift Office before leaving: essentially, a long list with estimated dollar values of what were, at least in their view, personal gifts from friends.

Coverage of this mundane matter began innocently enough with a brief Inauguration Day story about the list in the New York
Daily News
, which noted that the Clintons had accepted roughly $200,000 in gifts—mostly household and decorative items given by various intimates and acquaintances, including two sofas, an easy chair, and an ottoman valued at $19,900 from a New York businessman; china worth $4,920 from director Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw; and nearly $5,000 worth of flatware from actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. The official list released by the White House also disclosed receipt of a pair of coffee tables with chairs, estimated at more than $7,000—given by none other than Denise Rich.

Stories quoting anonymous sources swiftly followed, suggesting that Hillary had requested specific items she hoped friends would buy for her new Washington house in various stores, almost like a bridal shower or a wedding registry. Many of the same stories indicated that the Clintons had appropriated furniture, artworks, and other items that ought to have remained in the White House. Aside from soliciting expensive gifts from their rich friends, hardly proper conduct for an in
coming U.S. senator and her presidential spouse, both Clintons stood accused of absconding with White House furnishings that didn’t belong to them at all. In fact, Clinton had meticulously catalogued every item, including those for which he would have to pay.

Tabloids quoted former Reagan social secretary Sheila Tate—whose friends Ron and Nancy had accepted the gift of a two-million-dollar home—clucking in shocked disapproval. “Now we know why they had to have such a big house. . . . These are not the kind of gifts you take with you. It’s usually a silver bowl with your name on it.”

Daily News
columnist Michael Kramer groused: “Most First Families view the gifts they get as the nation’s property—and leave town without them. . . . But the Clintons—naturally—are in a league of their own. They walked off with close to $200,000 in furniture, china, flatware, TVs, sculpture and assorted other ‘necessities.’ ’’

A week after the first gift story, the
Daily News
followed up with a story showing that there had been no registry-style Hillary Clinton gift list—but the rest of the media simply ignored that explanatory footnote. By then the press corps had moved on to the thrilling tales of vandalism, an irresistible metaphor for many of the capital’s loudest voices, figures such as Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd, who felt that the Clintons had somehow escaped proper punishment for all the scandals and sins that the public seemed so determined to dismiss.

Here was evidence that the Clinton White House was nothing but a gang of hooligans that had seriously damaged White House offices and other public property to vent displeasure with the incoming Bush administration.

What had started as mildly amusing rumors about an alleged frat-boy prank—removing the letter “W,” a nickname and symbol of the new president, from White House typewriter and computer keyboards—quickly expanded into far more troubling tales. NBC News reported “phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices, obscene messages left behind on copying machine paper,” and more, as well as “glasses and hand towels pilfered” from the presidential airplane.

An early version of these charges popped up on the
Drudge Report
, the notorious website whose status as a Washington tip-sheet (especially on Clinton) had continued to swell ever since proprietor Matt
Drudge broke the news of the Monica Lewinsky affair in February 1998. And they seemed to be emanating directly from the Bush White House staff, in particular the new press secretary, Ari Fleischer.