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
1997:
February
- February: Webster Hubbell, the former deputy attorney general convicted of fraudulent law practices unrelated to the Clintons, completes his sentence, finishing out his term at a halfway house. Hubbell, like fellow convict Susan McDougal, has been under tremendous pressure to "flip" and testify for the OIC. Kenneth Starr is convinced that Hubbell, along with other close Clinton friends such as Vernon Jordan, could provide evidence that would put both the Clintons in jail for numerous crimes if they would just talk. Starr issues a blizzard of subpoenas against Hubbell and every friend, family member, and former business associate Starr can find, all to no avail. No one, even Starr, is sure what Hubbell might know; he has already testified time and again before Starr's grand juries as well as before several Congressional hearings.
- Susan McDougal has a far more difficult time. Incarcerated with the worst violent criminals in her maximum security prison (a tremendous inequity considering the relatively mild nature of the crimes she was convicted of), she has been steadfast in her determination to refuse to cooperate with the OIC, even after being pressured by, not just OIC prosecutors, but Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff and ABC news producer Chris Vlasto. She holds Starr personally responsible for the miserable conditions of her incarceration, and is outraged by the chummy treatment her former husband, Jim McDougal, who was convicted of far worse crimes, is receiving from Starr. Her staunch denials of McDougal's claim that she carried on an affair with Bill Clinton fall on deaf ears, while the allegation is pumped for all it is worth by Starr. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- February 8: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter says on MSNBC, "My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." (Washington Monthly)
- February 17: Kenneth Starr announces that he is leaving the Whitewater investigation as of August 1, to accept a position at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, a position as dean partly funded by conservative bankroller Richard Mellon Scaife. A firestorm of controversy and criticism from both right and left persuades Starr to postpone accepting the position until after completing his investigation.
- Starr's timing is odd, considering just the week before, the OIC had launched a fresh media barrage against Clinton, precipitated by James Stewart in the New Yorker. Based on interviews with Jim McDougal, who has been crafting and fabricating his story with the coaching of OIC lawyers for months, the story says that Clinton did indeed participate in the fraudulent $300,000 loan discussed by him, McDougal, and OIC star witness David Hale, though McDougal's story differs materially from that originally attested to by Hale. Stewart also states that Clinton and Susan McDougal had had an ongoing affair (a lie first concocted by the OIC's Hickman Ewing which Jim McDougal had repeatedly asked his ex-wife to corroborate); as a sidebar attack on Susan McDougal, who has earned the OIC's ire by refusing to lie about her relationship with Clinton, Jim McDougal says his ex-wife is the one who asked Clinton to get involved in the fraudulent loan. Stewart reports that McDougal first learned of the supposed affair in 1982 when he was accidentally patched into a lurid phone conversation between the two, a tale even Stewart has trouble swallowing and which local phone company officials acknowledge was, at the time, technologically impossible. The OIC arranged a visit by Stewart to the incarcerated Susan McDougal, who denies the entire story and reminds Stewart that her ex-husband has been diagnosed with a severe mental disability. A second story, by the Associated Press, appears in the media, based on a lengthy interview with David Hale, now serving time in Texarkana. Hale's story, reported by Pete Yost, reiterates a number of the tales he told on the witness stand in the Tucker/McDougal case, tales which were systematically proven false. But Hale steps over the OIC-drawn boundaries by claiming that most of the documents that would have proven his stories were stolen by the US attorney's office. The OIC had ensured no mention of this allegation were ever made in court, thus denying the Tucker and McDougal lawyers an opportunity to ask him further, potentially embarrasing questions about the tale and no doubt prompting a flurry of FBI agents taking the stand to deny the allegation. Hale's revelation ensured that his credibility as a future witness against the Clintons would be nil. It is notable that none of the interviews -- with either of the McDougals or with Hale -- could have taken place without the permission and the intervention of the OIC.
- Perhaps the most damaging blow to the OIC comes in a virtually ignored story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. That story reveals that four mock juries convened by the OIC had returned innocent verdicts against both Bill and Hillary Clinton. The closest result was an 8-4 verdict acquitting Hillary of all charges. The story says that the OIC needs to "fine-tune" its investigation, recommending further interviews of discredited state troopers Larry Patterson and Roger Perry. Starr's office denies that the mock juries were ever convened, and a week later, the source of the story retracts his assertions; reporter Rodney Bowers believes that the OIC pressured his source into recanting. Buried in the story is the potentially explosive revelation that the OIC, frustrated by its complete inability to find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing against the Clintons, are now pursuing a new avenue -- snooping around in the raft of lurid and almost all-disproven stories about Bill Clinton's sex life. The OIC, perhaps worried that FBI agents would balk at such gamy assignments that were well outside its purview, employs private investigators to gather information. More to the point, Starr does not want to risk his own reputation by revealing his pursuit of dirt on Clinton's sexual past, particularly after some media reports have questioned his ethics and his political partisanship.
- The conservative media is apoplectic about his announced resignation, led by New York Times columnist William Safire, who snarls that Starr has a "warped sense of duty," accuses him of being afraid of the counter-attack led by Clinton political consultant James Carville, and calls him a "craven counsel" who should, if he doesn't have the belly for the investigation any longer, turn the investigation over to deputy Hickman Ewing. The Times editorial page, which had called for Starr's resignation in April 1996 over repeated reports of egregrious conflicts of interest, now admonished Starr to stay and finish the job he had started. The ire of the media's conservatives is understandable, in light of the Newsweek cover story in late 1996 that featured broad but vague promises from Starr of indictments against numerous government officials as well as the president himself, along with a list of potentially criminal acts by the Clintons and their aides. The article did not mention Starr's plans to move to Malibu, which were already in the works by the time the article hit the stands. Starr is reportedly shocked by the media outcry. Combined with the revelation in the Washington Post that his chair at Pepperdine was funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Starr reconsiders and announces he will stay on as independent counsel.
- One effect of the Starr announcement, and the revelation that Scaife funded the Pepperdine endowment, is that some of the less credulous in the media begin putting together some of the pieces of the anti-Clinton conspiracy, realizing that Scaife is behind many of the groups that have flung Clinton accusations for years -- Accuracy in Media, the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens United, the Western Journalism Center, and Scaife's own newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Some even touch on Scaife's support for the American Spectator, but reporters will not discover the existence of the Arkansas Project for another year. (James Carville, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
