Hell To Pay Part 13

Elizabeth McCaughey, an a.n.a.lyst with the Manhattan Inst.i.tute, wrote a devastating critique of the plan in the liberal New Republic.

Republicans gleefully began to call the proposal "Hillarycare."

Former Quayle Chief of Staff William Kristol acted as a kind of high-tech Paul Revere, blast-faxing a memo that warned Republicans that the future of their party--and the free economy--would rest on the utter defeat of any version of Hillary's plan.

In truth, it was not much of a contest. The obsessive secrecy of the plan was its worst political shortcoming, one that drew a rebuke early on. In March 1993, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lambeth ruled on a lawsuit filed by the a.s.sociation of American Physicians and Surgeons, finding that Hillary and the top-tier, elve-person task force had blatantly violated "open-meeting" laws. The White House was in a bind. Hillary could avoid the law if she were deemed a federal employee, but that would const.i.tute nepotism. If she were not such an employee, she and her cohorts were acting illegally. The White House counsel's office chose instead to argue that Hillary was neither fish nor fowl, just the "functional equivalent" of a federal employee.

Judge Lambeth scolded President Clinton for deliberately ignoring the open meeting laws. "While the court takes no pleasure in determining that one of the first actions taken by a new president is in direct violation of a statute enacted by Congress, the court's duty is to apply the laws to all individuals," he said.Even after receiving an order to post advance notice of meetings, the White House chose to disobey. In time, Magaziner (who confided to friends that the secrecy rules were forced on him) became the scapegoat, and lived for some time under investigation and fear of an indictment.*55 The first federal judge to experience the contempt with which the Clintons treat subpoenas and testimony under oath, accused the White House of being "dishonest with the court." He added, "Some government officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse than the underlying conduct."*56 Hillary went into high spin. She played some defense, ridiculing the notion that her plan was "socialist," telling readers of Parade magazine how scared she had been by the visions of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and George Orwell in 1984. "I find it so amusing when people think that I'm in favor of big government or big anything, because I'm not."*57 She sprang into "war room" mode.

Hillary instigated a mean-spirited campaign of call-in critics to blast Congressman Cooper when he unveiled his own alternative plan on radio talk shows. Hillary allies Senator Harris Wofford and Tom Daschle of South Dakota ridiculed Cooper's plan as "rock-bottom Wal-Mart."*58 The Democratic National Committee ginned up a campaign to save Hillary's plan, with Hillary working overtime as an editor of political copy and videotape. Hillary's aides lobbied the House Ways and Means staff so ferociously that Democratic chairman Dan Rostenkowski called them "paranoids."*59 Rostenkowski had little patience with Hillary's "with us or against us" style of negotiating.

Ultimately, Hillary tried to revive her plan with an outright campaign of vilifying insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Industry, predictably, did not take this lying down.

They produced and aired the "Harry and Louise" ad campaign that undercut and subtly ridiculed Hillarycare.The ads fomented public opposition far beyond the health care plan itself. It crystallized disgust with liberal Democrats, a building anger that would eventually end their forty-plus years of rule in the House of Representatives, making Hillarycare one of the most self-destructive political maneuvers committed by liberal Democrats in this century.

Hillary handled the growing public reaction against her plan by trying to create a new set of villains. She branded the insurance industry as liars: "It is time for.., every American to stand up and say to the insurance industry, 'Enough is enough. We want our health care system back.'" She lashed out at Representative Cooper. She flew around the country and was astonished to find hecklers in the audience. At a rally in Seattle, demonstrators carried "h.e.l.l Hillary" signs. She had to turn up the microphone and shout to be heard over the protestors.

Hillary saw enemies everywhere, and saw any dissent as a Republican put-up job. "She's a glib speaker," noted a retired family pract.i.tioner who had seen her up close. "She can really rattle off the answers. But she doesn't like you to argue with her."60 When a health insurance agent asked the perfectly reasonable question of what would happen to his job under her plan, Hillary answered, "I'm a.s.suming anyone as obviously brilliant as you could find something else to market." Then she added, just for fun, "I can't go out and save every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America."*61 It did not seem to occur to Hillary that hecklers were prompted by her own tendency to attack, and counterattack, that her biggest problem was her own thin skin. Hillary's moral standing to take on corporate medicine was also compromised when it was revealed, in the spring of 1994, that she was profiting from her attacks as her hedge fund shorted her health stocks.

It soon became apparent that the health care campaign was a frantic race into oblivion.

Her desperation showing, Hillary now saw opposition to her plan as nothing less than an a.s.sault on American democracy. "This personal, vicious hatred that for the time being is being aimed at the president, and, to a lesser extent, myself, is very dangerous for our political process," she said.*62 Without directly repudiating Hillary, Bill Clinton tried to signal that he was ready to compromise. "Clinton seems to be waffling," a prominent Oregon Democrat said. "He puts out this 95 percent, and Hillary says, 'No, universal coverage,' and all of a sudden Bill's saying, 'Yeah, universal coverage.' It's like she hit him over the head with a frying pan."*63 Bill would praise a Senate bill, and then Hillary would denounce it as an "untested approach."

It was George Mitch.e.l.l who performed the act of mercy, sitting down with the Clintons in August 1994 to tell them that no version of their plan could pa.s.s the Senate. A few months later, the American people went to the polls and took out their frustrations on Democratic members of Congress, most of whom were actually opposed to her plan. Democrats not only lost control of the House, but major Democrats like House Speaker Tom Foley, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and Texas Governor Ann Richards were tossed out of office.

Hillary's poll numbers confirmed that she was at the center of voter dissatisfaction. Five months before the election, an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that 51 percent of respondents felt that the first lady had too much influence.

Depressed, Hillary absented herself from political and strategy meetings in the White House. Her co-presidency had slammed into a retaining wall.

"Remind me," she asked an aide, dripping with self-pity. "Have I ever done anything right in my life?"*64

NINE.

WHITE HOUSE PLUMBER.

"He knows that all values are relative, in a world of political relativity."

-- SAUL ALINSKY, RULES FOR RADICALS.

DEATH ON THE POTOMAC.

Hillary's first two years in the White House were a litany of disasters. Her health care initiative was not only a bipartisan disaster, it was exposed as a colossal piece of political knavery.

Hillary's exalted ethical opinion of herself, which she repeatedly invoked to friendly reporters, was not shared by the Washington press corps that exposed her early refusal to put her investments in a blind trust.

Numerous White House staff still had temporary pa.s.ses after nine or more months on the job. Many could not receive necessary clearances due to reports of recent drug use and tax problems. Ultimately, the White House had to operate a random drug testing program in order to obtain FBI clearances.

The relentless investigations of Jeff Gerth at the New York Times began to peel off one layer of lies after another on Whitewater, exposing such a tangle of political and business dealings that the appointment of an independent counsel became inevitable. Her role in the Travel Office firings was widely suspected from the beginning.

Her nominees for attorney general had been failures. Her early interest in Lani Guinier ended in a withdrawn nomination and a lost friendship. The new surgeon general, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, was a walking embarra.s.sment who felt it necessary to publicly promote teen masturbation. Her old Watergate mentor Bernie Nussbaum was fired by her husband. Her Rose Law Firm partner Webb Hubbell was indicted on mail fraud and tax evasion charges. Janet Reno was receiving withering criticism over her handling of the Waco-Branch Davidian disaster that left eighty-four people dead and almost ended Reno's Washington career before it had begun. The congressional Democrats had marched like lemmings off a cliff to the beat of Hillary's drum.

And there had been much more.

But worst of all for Hillary was the death of Vince Foster in July 1993.

The case is curious, poignant, and, like many suicides, mysterious.

Foster's wife, Lisa, had never wanted to move to Washington. She stayed in Little Rock until June, leaving Foster to live alone in an unfamiliar and very tough city.

Foster himself seemed to waver between attraction and repulsion for his new job, with repulsion often winning out. "No one back in Little Rock could know how hard this is," Foster told Skip Rutherford, an aide to Mack McLarty. He told an Arkansas lawyer, "You try to be at work by 7 in the morning, and sometimes it's 10 at night when you walk out just dog-tired. About the time you're thinking, 'What a load,' you turn around and see the White House lit up, and the awe of where you are and what you're doing hits you. It makes you realize it's worth it."*1 Over time, his characterizations would dwell less and less on how much it was "worth it," and more on how he could get out of his job alive. And there was another thing. Webb Hubbell, among others, noticed that Foster appeared depressed by Hillary's lack of attention to him. Foster's relationship with Hillary, always complex, was now strained and fraught with tension.

Foster saw himself as the protector of and counselor to Hillary, sometimes a big brother, sometimes a pseudo-husband, sometimes a calm port in a stormy sea. But no lawyer could have protected her from her mistakes, from the daily pummeling she was getting over health care and the Travel Office. Someone else might have been glad that only Bill Kennedy and David Watkins had been officially reprimanded.

But according to his friends, Foster felt guilty. He was depressed over the lawsuit against the health care task force, worried about problems with the Clintons' tax returns and, some have suggested, depressed at the blood spilled at Waco.

But more than that, there was almost a sense of betrayal. Foster's experience at the White House had turned his self-image upside down.

Foster was not used to having his integrity criticized or compromised, or as being regarded as anything but a top-flight litigator. One of his Rose Law Firm partners was quoted saying that Foster had never suffered a defeat.

Now he felt overwhelmed, even incompetent, to deal with an avalanche of trouble and with Hillary's violent fits of temper about how everything was going wrong. Foster not only dealt with the Clintons'

personal legal affairs, dating back to the tangled webs of Arkansas, but also with the fallout from the seemingly innumerable and unending political scandals.

During the investigation of Travelgate, Foster joined Watkins in denying that the first lady had a significant interest in the Travel Office firings. Foster knew that this statement would soon be tested, in congressional hearings and perhaps even by a prosecutor.

Days before his death, he had called his good friend Jim Lyons about the need for outside counsel for the Clintons. His loyalty to Hillary kept putting him in positions that forced him to choose between compromising his principles or failing to be a stalwart protector of Hillary. Foster knew he had to "defend" Hillary regardless of what her role might have been.

Then came a Wall Street Journal editorial that asked "Who Is Vincent Foster?" The White House had made the inexplicable and utterly stupid decision to refuse to supply the Journal with a picture of Foster, so the inset art in the column had a cutout of Foster's face, a silhouette with a question mark in the middle. By this time, Foster had begun to lose weight, subsist on junk food, and take antidepressants.

In another place, his distress might have been more noticeable. He was obviously stressed, but then who wasn't in the battlefield environment of the White House's first year? All seemed well on his last weekend, when he seemed to have enjoyed himself with his wife and the Hubbells. Their host was Nathan Landow, a wealthy donor whose eagerness to please would later allegedly lead him to attempt to buy Kathleen Willey's silence about being groped by the president.

The Tuesday after Landow's retreat, July 20, 1993, Foster left the White House to drive up a beautiful green expanse of the George Washington Parkway. He pulled into Fort Marcy Park. He parked his car and stood at a rise where one can see across the Potomac River valley, put a gun to the roof of his mouth, and squeezed the trigger.

TRENCH WARFARE.

Artful and heavy-handed White House damage control began immediately.

Foster possessed many of Hillary's personal records. Hillary was at her mother's home in Little Rock when Mack McLarty called at 9:45 PM and notified her of Foster's death. The President was appearing on Larry King Live that night. Following the call that evening and into the early morning there was a flurry of telephone exchanges between Hillary and Maggie Williams, Harry Thomason, and Susan Thomases.

Thomases paged Bernie Nussbaum at about 8:00 4 the next morning--then more calls between Hillary, Nussbaum, McLarty, Williams, and Thomases. No mention is ever made of a call to Lisa Foster.

By the next morning, Nussbaum was imposing strict restrictions on how Foster's office would be searched by official investigators. It would not be until 5:00 PM that day that an agreement was reached--and not until 10:00 Aw the following morning, July 22, that it actually took effect--to allow investigators into Foster's office.

It was soon revealed that the night of the suicide, Maggie Williams and Patsy Thoma.s.son went into Vince Foster's White House office.

Williams and Thoma.s.son have both denied under oath that they were doing anything other than wanting to "feel the presence of Vince" or looking for a suicide note.

Shortly after lunch, the day after the suicide, Nussbaum gave a verbal description of the files in Foster's office, but refused to allow investigators to see any of them. For the remainder of the day, Nussbaum and Williams separated Hillary's and Bill's personal files from White House business and Foster's personal files. Secret Service agent Bruce Abbott would later testify, that he saw Craig Livingstone, Hillary's director of White House security under the command of Nussbaum, carry a briefcase and several loose-leaf binders out of the White House. Maggie Williams was also seen by Secret Service agent Henry O'Neill leaving the office with a stack of file folders. All this was denied by Williams and Livingstone.

Six days after the suicide, according to the White House, a suicide note was found torn into pieces at the bottom of Foster's briefcase.

The first thing the counsel's office did was to patch the note back together and inform Hillary and then Susan Thomases. Hillary directed that Mack McLarty, President Clinton's chief of staff, not tell the president about the note until a decision was made about turning it over the the Justice Department. It then took the White House thirty hours to decide to turn it over to the FBI and Park Police who were investigating the incident.

Throughout the crisis, Hillary kept a firm hand on the investigation.

She had seen Richard Nixon destroy himself by erecting a stone wall, then giving ground with investigators, then trying to build another stone wall. Hillary did not give ground. She did not want the Justice Department to have "unfettered access" to Foster's files, according to testimony from a.s.sociate counsel Stephen Neuwirth. The stone wall remained secure, even after her chief of staff and other White House aides watched as their reputations were sacrificed during investigations of the special prosecutor.

Hillary's people seemed more than willing to suffer embarra.s.sment to protect her from embarra.s.sment. Some time later, White House lawyer Jack Quinn even tried to rewrite the factual record, deleting words in the t.i.tles of memos, changing "HRC's Travel Office Chronology" to "Chronological a.n.a.lysis of Travel Office Events."

"HRC Role" became "Draft chart a.n.a.lysis and comparison of various Travel Office investigations." The removal of the first lady's initials from White House memos, said Chairman William Clinger, brought "a scent of obstruction of justice... [to the] changing of doc.u.ments in an attempt to rub out.., the role of the First Lady."

Throughout my investigation, facts surrounding Hillary seemed to be erased from memory or "deleted."

FILEGATE.

The next big challenge was the revelation that the White House had been illegally collecting secret, sensitive, and personal FBI files of nine hundred-plus Reagan and Bush officials, including the files of the fired Travel Office staff.

Past administrations kept such files under lock and key, and carefully limited access to them. Even the president could not have access to them, except, perhaps, on a strict "need to know" basis.

In a counsel's office run by Hillary's lieutenants, these files were shipped over wholesale from FBI secure rooms to the White House and were kept in an open vault, where any secretary, any intern, could leaf through them. That is if Craig Livingstone approved.

"The prior system of providing files to the White House relied on good faith and honor," FBI Director Louis Freeh publicly complained.

"Unfortunately, the FBI and I were victimized." It was quite clear that the FBI director had been stunned to learn that the White House had so misused the FBI's records, damaging his credibility and the FBI in the process, and making it appear that the FBI would be used for political purposes by White House opposition researchers.

"When I worked in the White House," said a former Bush aide, "the people who handled personnel security, were very, b.u.t.ton-down, very discreet. When one goes into government service, a contract is made.

You allow the FBI to review your most intimate secrets--your personal, financial, and employment history--in exchange for an understanding that this stuff is used only to gauge your fitness to work near the president and to be granted the security clearance needed to review highly cla.s.sified doc.u.ments."

Under Hillary, this very sensitive job went to Craig Livingstone, a former bar bouncer and a professional dirty trickster who had distinguished himself by following the Bush campaign dressed up in a chicken suit. He was also well known in Democratic circles for "opposition research"--that is to say, dirt digging. Dennis Casey, a former aide in Senator Gary Hart's campaign in Pennsylvania, recounted to me how Livingstone came to him to offer up dirt on former Vice President Walter Mondale in the 1984 primary.

In his deposition of Linda Tripp, Larry Klayman asked who had hired Craig Livingstone: TRIPP: I can only tell you who Craig Livingstone told me hired Craig Livingstone.

Q: What did he tell you?

TRIPP: He told me Mrs. Clinton hired him.

Q: When did he tell you that?

TRIPP: Relatively shortly after my arrival in the counsel's office, when he asked me how I managed to get a job like that. So I asked him, how did he manage to get a job like that?

Q: Where was he when he made that statement?

TRIPP: In the counsel's office ....

Q: Give me an example of how he led you to believe that he was acting at the direction of Mrs. Clinton?

TRIPP: Well, there were times when he was very frustrated with me personally, because I wouldn't let him in to see Mr. Nussbaum, who had an extremely busy schedule and who clearly had made it rather plain to me that he didn't have any wish to deal with Mr.

Livingstone, and that [Livingstone] should deal with Bill Kennedy ....

Q: To continue, what was it that Mr. Livingstone told you, by way of example, that created your belief that he was trying to convey that he was acting on behalf of Mrs. Clinton?

TRIPP: He would talk into his watch and act as though he were a covert agent. He didn't have an ear piece.... It was a regular watch.

Q: Was he talking to Mrs. Clinton at the time?

TRIPP: He would like you to believe so.... Overall, the impression I had was that he, as I said, was well connected, and that he had a direct pipeline into Mrs. Clinton. Whether or not that was true, I never formed an opinion one way or another. I didn't see them having lunch. It seemed a form of self aggrandizement. It didn't seem necessarily true. However, that said, this is a man whose very existence in that position in the White House was beyond comprehension for someone like me ....

Q: Did Mr. Livingstone ever tell you that he had access to the White House residence?

TRIPP: Oh, on more than one occasion, yes.

Q: On how many occasions?

TRIPP: Several times. Remember when I say this, please put it in context. He--and you couldn't know this--but he, for instance, was in the process of trying to date one of my volunteers; so we received often very unsolicited, bizarre information that none of us cared to know, about access and his access, his proximity to the first family.

None of this fazed any of us, but clearly impressed him.

Early on, Hillary used Livingstone to track down the leaker responsible for stories about her throwing things (such as lamps) during arguments at the White House residence. Harry Thomason, according to his notes, even suspected that "two agents" had been "talking [to] Bob Woodward." She also invested more trust in Livingstone after Foster's death. This "cop without a gun" was the one sent to confirm that the body found in the park was Foster. He was the one trusted to help clean up the mess in Foster's office.

After Foster's suicide, Tripp testified that Livingstone "seemed to have more access. He seemed to be over more. He had a different air, completely different demeanor. He was more confident .... "

The White House spin on how it came to be that Livingstone had been illegally collecting FBI background files was that it was a matter of miscommunication between Livingstone, the FBI, and the Secret Service. But it was difficult for anyone in Washington to believe that the same White House that allowed hundreds of their own staffers' security clearances to languish, including that of press secretary Dee Dee Myers, had a dispa.s.sionate interest in examining and maintaining the personnel files of the previous administration.

The question of "Who Hired Livingstone" set off a remarkable public show of "hot potato." White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and William Kennedy shrugged their shoulders. Hillary even denied knowing who he was.

Former FBI agent Gary Aldrich recounts the beginning of Livingstone's tenure: "There was an investigation to find more than $150,000 worth of equipment lost or stolen from the inauguration. This equipment had been in the charge of Craig Livingstone." When Aldrich suggested that the security post should be held by someone "squeaky clean,"

Aldrich said, White House Counsel William Kennedy cut him off, saying, "I guess I see your point, but it doesn't matter. It's a done deal. Hillary wants him."

A White House intern undermined Hillary's denials of knowing Craig Livingstone by testifying before House investigators that he overheard the first lady warmly greet Livingstone in a White House hallway.

Some writers have speculated that the FBI files were gathered to defend the White House staff against the slow security clearance of its personnel. Other observers surmised that the White House sought ammunition to point to Bush or Reagan appointees whose foibles were overlooked.

The Clinton administration was eager to have the public accept these rather benign explanations. On the Clinger committee, I was always struck by one anomaly in this explanation, one fact I can never put out of my mind: Why were these files in the hands of an opposition research specialist?

Cracks later began to appear in the more innocent explanations. One big crack appeared in the syndicated column of Bob Novak. Leslie Gall Kennedy, the ex-wife of William Kennedy, the a.s.sociate counsel who became Hillary's ally at the Rose Law Firm, told Judicial Watch lawyers that Kennedy "brought FBI files from his White House office to their home in Alexandria." Several times, she said, she observed him "making entries from the files into a database he maintained on his lap top computer." The reason? Leslie Gall Kennedy testified that her then-husband told her the files were "intended to make FBI file information accessible and useful to the Clinton administration."*2 Whether Mrs. Kennedy actually saw FBI files is being investigated by the Starr team.

Hillary elsewhere expressed a similar appet.i.te for maintaining intelligence files on individuals. WhoDB, a White House database, was developed by FOB Marsha Scott at a cost to the taxpayers of more than $1.6 million. Known among the staff as "big brother," it tracks the vital statistics, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, diet, political a.s.sociations, and s.e.xual preferences of more than 350,000 members of Congress, state and local officials, journalists, and supporters and donors from the lists of the Democratic National Committee.