Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

more tenuous than the many political and financial conflicts which should have prevented Starr’s appointment in the first place and should have required Starr’s resignation at several points along the way.

Starr used a trumped-up conflict-of-interest complaint to remove from a separate case one of the most prestigious jurists on the federal bench in Arkansas because the judge had ruled against him. This case was unrelated to Bill and me; it didn’t even involve Madison Guaranty, the McDougals or anyone associated with the Whitewater investment. Starr had used his power as independent counsel to indict Jim Guy Tucker, the Democratic Governor of Arkansas who succeeded Bill, on fraud and conspiracy charges involving Tucker’s purchase of cable television stations in Texas and Florida. In June 1995, Starr was using threats and indictments as a tool of intimidation, threatening everyone he could and offering to cut them deals if they would say something―anything!―to incriminate Bill or me. U.S. District Judge Henry Woods was assigned the Tucker case and, after examining the facts, threw out Starr’s indictment of Tucker because it had nothing to do with the Whitewater investigation. Based on Woods’s reading of the independent counsel law, Starr had exceeded his authority. Starr appealed the decision and asked that Judge Woods be thrown off the case.

Judge Woods, a former FBI agent and distinguished lawyer, had been appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter. At seventy-seven, he was wrapping up a stellar career as a jurist and a champion of civil rights in the South. In more than fifteen years on the bench, Judge Woods had earned a reputation for fair, nearly airtight decisions that were rarely overturned―until he got in Starr’s way.

The three judges sitting on the federal court panel that heard Starr’s appeal were conservative Republicans appointed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals by Presidents Reagan and Bush. The three judges granted both of Starr’s requests, reinstating the indictment and agreeing to remove Woods, not because they believed he would be biased, but because critical newspaper and magazine articles about him might cause the “appearance”

of prejudice.

This unusual and unprecedented ruling offended me as a lawyer. A prosecutor should not be allowed to throw a judge off a case because he doesn’t like a ruling. And, in this case, Starr did not first make an application to Judge Woods to recuse himself. If he had, the judge could have defended himself, responded to Starr’s contentions, set the matter for a hearing and made a record. Since Starr made the motion first in the Court of Appeals, Judge Woods did not have any opportunity to reply.

The disparaging news reports that the appellate judges used to disqualify Judge Woods could be traced back to justice Jim Johnson, an old segregationist politician in Arkansas who had once earned the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan in his race for governor and who despised Bill and Judge Woods because of their liberal New South views on race. Johnson’s op-ed piece attacking Woods and nearly everyone else in Arkansas politics ran in the rightwing Washington Times. The op-ed was full of false information that most other media accepted as fact. After his removal, Judge Woods told the Los Angeles Times. “I have the distinction of being the only judge in Anglo-American history, as far as I can determine, who was removed from a case on the basis of newspaper accounts, magazine articles and television transcripts.”

I felt terrible that Jim Guy Tucker and his wife, Betty, had been caught up in Starr’s fishing expedition. Despite Starr’s effort, Jim Guy, who had lost the primary election for Governor in 1982 to Bill, wouldn’t lie about us. This didn’t prevent Starr from pushing ahead with another indictment that put Tucker on trial with Jim and Susan McDougal in Little Rock, Arkansas, in March 1996.

This time Tucker and the McDougals were charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, misapplication of S&L funds and making false entries in S&L records. Most of the accusations against them could be traced to David Hale, a shady Arkansas Republican businessman. The indictment alleged that Hale had connived with Jim McDougal to get loans from Madison Guaranty and from the Small Business Administration for various projects, including for land deals or for companies of Hale, the McDougals and Jim Guy Tucker; that these loans were not repaid; and that the uses of and justifications for the loans were falsely described. The twenty-one-count indictment made no mention of Whitewater Development Co., Inc., the President or me.

Hale was an accomplished thief and a con artist-and he was motivated. He was cooperating with Starr in the hopes of avoiding a long prison sentence for his previous crimes.

The Small Business Administration, which had lent Hale’s company millions of dollars intended to benefit small businesses and low-income people, reported that it had lost $3.4

million due to Hale’s improper activities, self-dealing and prohibited transactions. The SBA finally placed his company in receivership, and in 1994, Hale pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the SBA of $900,000, but his sentencing was postponed until just before the McDougal/Tucker trial two years later. His story had changed greatly over time, and he was eager to provide whatever testimony the prosecutors wanted. The defense lawyers argued hard to convince the judge to admit testimony about Hale’s connections with rightwing activists, financial payments from the OIC, his more than forty phone calls with justice Jim Johnson before and since his deal with Starr, and the free legal counsel he received from attorney Ted Olson, an old friend of Kenneth Starr and a lawyer for the Arkansas Project and for the American Spectator, the rightwing propaganda publication.

Olson would later mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee about his involvement in these activities during the consideration of his nomination to become Solicitor General under President George W Bush. Despite his evasiveness, he was confirmed.

Although the presiding judge at the McDougal-Tucker trial wouldn’t admit evidence of most of Hale’s lucrative connections into court records and the full story would not come