THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1993
July
Suicide of Vince Foster becomes a cause celebre among Clinton conspiracy mongers
- July 20: Deputy White House counsel and Hillary Clinton's former law partner Vince Foster commits suicide by shooting himself with an old handgun on a grassy hillside in Washington's Fort Marcy Park.
"Travelgate;" suicide of Vince Foster
His body is discovered around sunrise by US Park Service police officers. Foster had become increasingly depressed over attacks from the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets over the firings of employees of the White House travel office; he leaves a suicide note torn into pieces in his briefcase that reads in part, "I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience, and overwork. I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct. No one in the White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or standard of conduct, including any action in the travel office.... The FBI lied. ...The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received from the travel staff. The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and covered up a prior investigation... The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and their loyal staff. The [Wall Street Journal] editors lie without consequence. ...I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport." Republican investigators will attempt to link Foster's suicide to the impending Whitewater investigation, and will allege that Foster was murdered to cover up either the Clintons' alleged impropriety, an affair between Foster and Hillary Clinton, or both. Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing billionaire who bankrolls the anti-Clinton efforts, will say in 1995, "The death of Vincent Foster: I think it's the Rosetta Stone to the whole Clinton administration." No documentation of any kind is ever found to support any of the allegations, though conspiracy theories about Foster's death abound to this day, with tales that Foster "knew too much" leading to his suicide, or even possible murder. Foster's death will be investigated at least four times, including by the Starr commission; all investigations will find that Foster indeed committed suicide, and the initial police investigation proves to be accurate. - Still, some, including authors Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, feel that the Travelgate scandal is a thin reason for Foster to commit suicide. Undoubtely his depression contributed to his decision to end his life. Foster's suicide comes on the same day as Little Rock municipal judge David Hale has his apartment searched by the FBI, an interesting coincidence for those who believe Foster shot himself over the impending Whitewater allegations; Hale will later level sensational charges against the Clintons over the failed land deal, including the lie that Bill Clinton "pressured" him into loaning $300,000 to realtors Jim and Susan McDougal. Some believe that Foster knew too much about Hale's allegations and feared that he would implicate Foster in the Clintons' alleged wrongdoing; though the FBI later testifies that no one leaked word of the search warrant's issuance, and the FBI finds nothing to incriminate either Foster or the Clintons in Hale's files, conspiracy theorists still draw their own conclusions. One of the most dramatic, if meaningless, attempts to prove that Foster's death was a murder is carried out by Republican congressman Dan Burton, who conducts an amateur ballistics test in his backyard with a .38 revolver and a watermelon.
- Veteran Clinton smear artists Larry Nichols and Larry Case, once they learn of Foster's suicide, immediately decide that it has something to do with the allegations of sexual misconduct against Clinton that they have striven for years to prove. They believe it has something to do with the long-rumored (and never documented in any form) affair between Foster and Hillary Clinton. Hillary's former law partner Webster Hubbell, in his autobiography Friends in High Places, explains the resentment against Hillary: she was the first woman to make full partner in the upper-crust Rose Law Firm, and her close personal relationships with the Foster and Hubbell families provokes resentment in the tight, conservative community centered on the Little Rock Country Club. She was a focus of tremendous speculation and gossip, and the sullen country clubbers started numerous rumors, including tales of her affairs with both Hubbell and Foster as well as wild stories of her closeted lesbianism. No one who knew Foster believed such tales of an illicit affair for a minute: he was painfully shy and reserved, and Lisa Foster was a close friend of Hillary's. But Case, in particular, sees the Foster suicide as an opportunity to once again peddle his smut. He and Nichols had never acted on their impulse to turn on their Republican backers, and were relieved when, instead of exacting vengeance upon them, the newly ensconced president ignored them entirely. Once again, they saw an opportunity to make their fortunes by smearing Clinton's reputation.
- Nichols tells Case that he knows of a tape, asked about by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, that contains a 1990 conversation between Rose Law Firm employees gossiping about the affair between Foster and Hillary Clinton. Nichols knows the tape is worthless, but nevertheless he and Case think they can use the tape for their own benefit. Days later, Nichols spreads the unfounded rumor that Foster had committed suicide because of a story he had learned would be printed in the Washington Times alleging the affair (the Times had no plans to print any such article). Nichols tells Case, "I'd sure like to be in the middle of this one. You and I can do sh*t the media can't do. We can lie, and get the information, and then give it to the media. I don't know why the media don't figure this out. You walk up to somebody and flash your New York Times ID, they're going to clam up. If you go out and get them drunk, you don't even have to wire yourself. Just take a little pocket recorder. You can get all you need...." Case has no way of knowing that Nichols would use the Foster suicide to become a national figure and make a large amount of money; he also has no idea that Nichols will abandon him along the way. (CNN, Executive Intelligence Review, Wikipedia, H.R. Clinton, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- July 20: The new policy for gays in the military, popularly known as "don't ask, don't tell,"
Minority rights
is explained in the New York Times, which quotes guidelines just issued by the Pentagon: "sexual orientation will not be a bar to service unless manifested by homosexual conduct. The military will discharge members who engage in homosexual conduct, which is defined as a homosexual act, a statement that the member is homosexual or bisexual, or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender." Clinton is savaged on both left and right for the policy -- the left because of Clinton's tepid support of gays in the military after much stronger pro-gay rhetoric in the campaign, and on the right for being "insensitive" to the needs of the military. (One reason why Clinton will often fail to draw the enthusiastic support of liberal Democrats and other progressives is this policy.) The actual policy is drafted by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, and has been continued unchanged during the following Bush presidency. Though the military continues to oppose openly gay service members, most observers feel that it is merely a matter of time until all restrictions on gay and lesbian service will be lifted. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia) - July 21 - November: FBI agents raid the offices of Capital Management Services in Little Rock, carrying out boxes of files belonging to the company's owner, David Hale.
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
Hale is a businessman and municipal judge who has bilked the Small Business Administration while purporting to serve the business interests of minority and disadvantaged clients. Evidence shows that Hale may have put as much as $3.4 million of tax dollars in his own pocket. His own stupidity and self-importance played large parts in bringing the investigators down on his firm. An SBA staffer later tells Congress that Hale's embezzlement scheme is the most brazen he's seen in his 25 years with the agency. As authors Joe Conason and Gene Lyons write, Hale was "[p]ublicly...a pillar of the community; privately, he was an inveterate con artist." He had the gladhanding social skills, and the family and fraternity connections, to become a minor figure of influence in Little Rock business and political circles. Always determined never to let partisan politics get in the way of profit, Hale formed a number of friendships with local politicians, including longtime Clinton enemy Sheffield Nelson (Hale will be routinely misidentified as a Clinton appointee, but in reality Hale was appointed by Clinton's predecessor Frank White, who allowed him to run for election to the bench after his appointed term had expired, an action prohibited by the state constitution). - Privately, Hale is as reprehensible as he is publicly admired. Professing to be a devout, family-values judge, he secretly carried on a long affair with his secretary, and worse, swindled her grandparents out of their family farm (they later successfully sued him). His crimes as a businessman were suspected enough around the local community that one business associate had gone to the SBA in Washington to warn them of Hale. An eccentric as well as a criminal and a moral reprobate, Hale is the only judge in Little Rock to use a bulletproof shield in front of the bench (Hale's court handles misdemeanors and traffic violations). And though he claims frequently to have been a "close personal friend" of Clinton's, he never donated any money or time to Clinton's numerous political campaigns (but has donated plenty to Republican causes), and, in the wake of the FBI raid, he immediately turns to Clinton's most bitter enemies.
- Hale's new lawyer, an associate of Nelson, finds that Hale will be charged with multiple counts of felonious fraud in a federal courtroom; the lawyer contacts another lawyer, Randy Coleman, in the White House counsel's office, where he intimates that Hale's arrest might cause trouble for "our mutual clients," the McDougals. Coleman also suggests that the Clintons may be dragged into Hale's difficulties. Coleman later admits in Senate testimony that his reason for contacting the White House counsel's office was to try to provoke an overreaction that he could exploit for his client. Coleman provokes no such response, so he tries his luck with the new US attorney in Little Rock, Democrat Paula Casey. Casey finds Coleman's proposals brazen and unacceptable: in return for unspecified information about unspecified crimes committed by unspecified members of the Arkansas "political elite," Coleman says, Hale should be allowed to plead out with a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor. Instead, prosecutors offer a much sterner, and more typical deal: plead to a felony and offer evidence about others he conspired with to commit crimes. Coleman then begins agitating for a special prosecutor, and accuses Casey of refusing to consent to the plea bargain because of the "potential political sensitivity and fallout regarding the information which Mr. Hale could provide to [Casey's] office." He also restates his assertion that Hale can provide a wealth of evidence against a number of unnamed Arkansas officials. Instead of buying what a Justice Department official later terms "a pig in a poke," on September 23, Casey indicts Hale on four felony counts of defrauding the US government.
- Hale has been receiving political and legal advice from white segregationist and power broker "Justice" Jim Johnson, a perennial Clinton nemesis. In fact, during much of Hale's initial legal machinations, he lived with Johnson at "White Haven," the Johnson farm. Johnson, of course, blames Clinton for Hale's legal troubles, and avows that he will not let the Clintons "cover it up." Hale finally makes a proffer of information -- not to Casey, but to right-wing activists in Washington, and then to the credulous news media. Johnson says that Hale can't get a fair shake in Arkansas due to Clinton's supposed stranglehold on the state's legal system, and that his only chance for justice is to present his case to the media. Johnson tells the extremist Washington Weekly that Hale was an integral part of Clinton's administration in Arkansas, and that Clinton had appointed Hale to the judiciary. Johnson, of course, is lying; most of Hale's business associates are Republican enemies of Clinton, and Hale had helped manage the campaign of Clinton's Democratic opponent, Jim Guy Tucker, in the bitter 1982 gubernatorial primary. Johnson calls David Bossie, his associate from Floyd Brown's Citizens United, to say that he has "a friend in trouble" who can implicate Clinton in a myriad of financial misdoings. Bossie listens eagerly as Hale recites a litany of false accusations against Clinton, including the tale that Hale was being judicially abused by Clinton's "creature," Casey. Hale tells Bossie that Clinton had "pressured" him into making a $300,000 loan from his firm to a business controlled by Jim McDougal, Clinton's managing partner in Whitewater. The purpose of the loan is to help Clinton solidify his control over Arkansas's Democratic Party. He says that in return, McDougal loaned Hale $825,000, of which he pocketed a substantial amount. Hale later embroiders his tale with several fanciful accounts of meetings with Clinton, including one on the steps of the Arkansas Capital and one at a trailer where McDougal kept an office. Hale offers no dates for these meetings, and has no documentation of any kind showing that any of them ever took place. As for the documentation proving the loans, he says, the FBI stole it. (Both Hale and McDougal will eventually be proven to have forged and altered dozens of documents to support their stories of Clinton's criminal behavior.)
- Assistant US attorney Fletcher Jackson later testifies that he never saw the documents that Hale alleges he and his colleagues stole, in particular a letter supposedly from McDougal to Hale promising that Clinton would repay the $300,000 loan. Jackson doubts that the letter ever existed. Worse, in previous testimony from 1989 concerning the collapse of McDougal's Madison Guaranty, Hale discussed the $300,000 loan, but never mentioned Clinton having any connection whatsoever with the missing money. Nor did Hale ever mention Clinton during McDougal's 1990 fraud trial. Facts such as these will never be mentioned by media reports of Hale's stories.
- It quickly becomes clear that Coleman intends to try Hale's case in the media, in hopes of creating a public furor over Whitewater and forcing Casey to either reconsider the offer of a plea bargain or force her off the case entirely. When local newspapers refuse to make hay of Hale's allegations, Coleman, at Sheffield Nelson's urging, takes his story to Jeff Gerth, the New York Times reporter who had written such a lurid and inaccurate story about Whitewater in March 1992. Hale agrees to give Gerth all the juicy details, but when Gerth looks for confirmation from McDougal, he finds that McDougal has no memory of any $300,000 loan discussions with either Hale or Clinton. Gerth is also rebuffed by Casey and the Clinton White House lawyers. Gerth therefore stays in close contact with Hale and Coleman, and Hale, in return, keeps in touch with Jim Johnson. The Times editors are at first unwilling to print a raft of unverified allegations from an indicted felon about the president, but Gerth takes unusual steps to get his story in print. He begins shuttling between Coleman and the FBI's offices in Washington, essentially becoming a liason for Hale and Coleman with the FBI, offering the FBI and the Justice Department informal and baseless "proffers" of information. Of course, this is a gross violation of the most fundamental ethics of journalism. The chief of the Justice Department's Fraud Section, Gerald McDowell, later says, "it looked like Coleman was using Gerth to send messages to the FBI and the Department of Justice in Washington and telling them, giving them, in effect, proffers, but not in any useable form. [Gerth's conduct is] totally inappropriate." Regardless of Gerth's outlandish behavior and Hale's complete lack of reliability, after hearing Gerth's messages, Justice Department officials decide to force Casey to recuse herself from the case, partially under pressure from conservatives such as senator Lauch Faircloth (see below).
- Even with a new prosecutor on the case, Coleman has little interest in dealing with the courts, but puts his faith in the media. After Coleman's numerous contacts with national media figures, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff begins chasing after the story. Though he, too, hears Hale's lurid tales of Clinton's financial dealings, he can find no evidence supporting Hale's claims. At this point, RTC investigator L. Jean Lewis issues a new set of criminal referrals against Jim McDougal's Madison Guaranty, after her first set of referrals had been rejected as politically motivated and shoddy. When Gerth, Isikoff, and other reporters learn of the referrals, they redouble their efforts to confirm Hale's stories. Lewis and her boss, Richard Iorin, have continued to work almost exclusively on the Madison collapse, ignoring other financial institutions ten to twenty times larger with far more damning evidence of their criminal behavior. On October 6, Lewis claims that Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt arrives at her office, but Lewis chases her off, saying that Schmidt breached the most basic tenets of professional courtesy and refusing to discuss the referrals. Lewis's outrage is interesting in light of Schmidt's October 31 story in the Post, which relies heavily on internal documents about Madison and Clinton that she could only have received from Lewis. Passing such confidential documents to reporters is a firing offense, and warrants criminal charges. The Kansas City office of the RTC is engulfed in controversy over Lewis's leaks, and Lewis is removed from the Madison case and reassigned.
- Schmidt writes that, according to Lewis, funds from Madison had been illegally diverted to the 1986 Clinton gubernatorial campaign; not only do reporters from several national newspapers pick up on Schmidt's story, but Schmidt herself is promoted from the humdrum financial beat to the Post's Whitewater "special project" team. From here on, the Times and the Post will be in competition with each other to print the most scandalous and outrageous allegations against Clinton, ethics and evidence be damned. Hale himself is transformed from an adulterer and embezzler into a credible source and Clinton victim. Brown and Bossie take to the right-wing talk radio armada to build their case against Clinton, and in the process make Citizens United a primary source for any reporter interested in Whitewater. Bossie in particular oversees Hale's media contacts, in one case standing just off-camera during an interview with NBC news prompting and directing Hale's commentary. Naturally, such coaching is never mentioned in the news reports. Hale tells interviewers that federal prosecutors are far more interested in protecting Clinton than finding the truth about his crimes: "We want you to come over here and plead guilty and shut up," he says he was instructed. Although Hale is telling egregrious lies about his plea bargain attempts, his lies suit his greater purpose: to get a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Clintons. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
