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

was up when I returned to the residence in the evening from meetings with Senator Moynihan and Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, a Capitol Hill veteran known as the “dean” of the women Senators.

All the lights inside the residence were off. A power blackout, I was told. That was my first clue; the power never goes off in the White House. I was ushered upstairs and told to put on a black wig and hoop skirt―the Colonial look, to be sure, and an attempt to replicate the fashions worn by Dolley Madison. Then I was led down to the State Floor, where I was greeted by a dozen staffers in blond wigs representing “a dozen different Hillarys”―headband Hillary, cookiebaking Hillary, health care Hillary. Bill was disguised as President James Madison (with white wig and tights). I loved him for it, but I was glad we were living in the late twentieth century. He looks better in a suit.

WHITEWATER

On Halloween 1993, I picked up a copy of the Sunday Washington Post and learned that our old, money-losing real estate venture in Arkansas had come back to haunt us. According to unnamed “government sources,” the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), a federal agency examining failed savings and loans, had recommended the criminal investigation of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, owned by Jim McDougal. McDougal and his wife, Susan, had been our partners in the Whitewater Development Company, Inc., a completely separate entity created to hold land purchased four years before McDougal bought Madison Guaranty. Because of our past connection with McDougal, however, we were wrongly implicated in his subsequent misadventures. During the 1992

presidential race, allegations surfaced in the press―and were quickly dismissed―that McDougal had received special favors from the state when Bill was Governor because of his business relationship with us. The story faded when Bill and I proved that we had lost money on the Whitewater investment and that, while he was Governor, the Arkansas Securities Department had actually urged the federal regulators to remove McDougal and shut down Madison Guaranty.

Now The Washington Post was reporting that RTC investigators were looking into allegations that McDougal had used his S&L to funnel money illegally to political campaigns in Arkansas, including Bill’s gubernatorial reelection campaign in 1986. I was confident nothing would come of it. Bill and I never deposited money in Madison Guaranty or borrowed from it. As to the campaign contributions, Bill had supported the law in Arkansas imposing a strict limit of $1,500 per contribution per election. McDougal had already been indicted, tried and acquitted by the federal government on charges arising from his operation of Madison Guaranty before Bill ran for President.

Bill and I failed to recognize the political significance of Whitewater’s sudden reappearance, which may have contributed to some public relations mistakes in how we handled the growing controversy. But I could never have predicted how far our adversaries would take it.

The name Whitewater came to represent a limitless investigation of our lives that cost the taxpayers over $70 million for the Independent Counsel investigation alone and never turned up any wrongdoing on our part. Bill and I voluntarily cooperated with investigators.

Every time they leaked or leveled a new charge, we bent over backwards to make sure we hadn’t missed or overlooked anything substantive. But as one allegation followed another, we realized we were chasing ghosts in a house of mirrors: we would run in one direction only to have the apparition pop up behind us. Whitewater never seemed real because it wasn’t.

The purpose of the investigations was to discredit the President and the Administration and slow down its momentum. It didn’t matter what the investigations were about; it only mattered that there were investigations. It didn’t matter that we had done nothing wrong; it only mattered that the public was given the impression that we had. It didn’t matter that the investigations cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars; it only mattered that our lives and the work of the President were disrupted over and over again. Whitewater signaled a new tactic in political warfare: investigation as a weapon for political destruction.

“Whitewater” became a convenient catchall for any and all attacks that our political adversaries could design. Whitewater was a political war from the start, and it raged throughout Bill Clinton’s Presidency.

At the time, however, Whitewater seemed to me like a new twist on an old story with a familiar cast of characters―more of a nuisance than a threat.

However, in light of the Post’s Halloween article and a similar New York Times piece that soon followed, we thought we should take the precaution of hiring a private attorney.

Our personal lawyer, Bob Barnett, recused himself from Whitewater because his wife, Rita Braver, was a CBS correspondent assigned to cover the White House. Bob is a longtime Democrat, and the favorite debating partner of Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees. In mock debates staged to prepare candidates for the rhetorical styles and political arguments of their opponents, he plays the perfect Republican foil―taking the part of Vice President and then President George Bush against Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Governor Bill Clinton in 1992; playing former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney against Senator Joe Lieberman in the 2000 vice presidential debate; and even performing as Congressman Rick Lazio in preparation for my own debate during the 2000 Senate race. Bob became my counsel and adviser in 1992, and I could not have asked for a better friend in the years that followed.

Bob recommended David Kendall, his colleague at Williams and Connolly, to represent us in the Whitewater matter. We had known David for years. Although he was a few years older than Bill and me, we had overlapped at Yale Law School. Like Bill, David was a Rhodes Scholar. As a fellow Midwesterner―David was born and raised in rural Indiana on a farm―he and I had a natural rapport. Soon he became an anchor in our lives.

David was perfect for the job. He had