Rewriting History Part 8

After the election, when n.o.body was looking, the Clintons pa.s.sed the hat and built the pool.

After years of making a lawyer's six-figure salary, augmented by Bill's income and the substantial perks of his office, Hillary still saw herself as a victim who had sacrificed a life of financial security.

The fact that she lived in a mansion, surrounded by servants, chauffeurs, and other staff, seems not to have mattered.

At the other end of Bill's political career, Hillary again took extraordinary risks to make money. The prospect of losing their government-subsidized luxurious lifestyle at last apparently drove Hillary into panic.

No surprise: It would take a truly extraordinary annual income to afford all the perks that came for free with the governorship of Arkansas, much less the presidency. Not only is the White House one of the most luxurious residences in the world, it offers a panoply of cooks, florists, beauty experts, drivers, cars, jets, helicopters, pilots, a vacation home at Camp David, a movie theater, pool, Jacuzzi, tennis court, hot tub, bowling alley, workout gym, the presidential box at the Kennedy Center, any painting at the National Gallery, elegant parties, the ability to invite any entertainer to perform anything at any time or any thinker to lecture: The Clintons had the world at their fingertips, a combination of privileges that's not for sale at any price.

Faced with such a prodigious loss, at the end of her husband's presidency Hillary reached out for money in every way she could. As with her Arkansas swimming pool, her solution was to solicit donations and gifts, taking huge political risks in the process.

Like bookends on Bill's career, Hillary's early greed in Whitewater and the commodities scandals, and her later greed in her huge book deal, call for gifts, and ma.s.sive expropriation of furniture and other presents intended for the White House, triggered financial scandals that almost eradicated the good work her husband was trying to do in between.

In part, her latter-day avarice was disguised as a need to pay the ma.s.sive legal bills she racked up defending her investments and Bill's affairs. But one wonders if these legal bills are, in fact, ever going to be paid, or if they live on only as an excuse for Hillary's acquisitiveness. The Clintons' financial statements show continued debt for legal work, and few payments, despite their ma.s.sive increases in income. They certainly are in no hurry to pay their lawyers, even as they rake in money hand over fist.

But mere acquisitiveness does not explain Hillary's grasping. After all, the Clintons have shown an amazing ability to make money after their White House years. Bill's book deal exceeds $10 million; hers was worth $8 million. Added to that, of course, is the former president's almost unlimited ability to make money giving speeches. So why the grasping materialism and financial insecurity? Why take the kinds of risks she has?

Her sense of ent.i.tlement seems to have lingered long after any perceived financial need has been satisfied. By the end of her husband's governorship, Hillary had come to embrace the idea that she was the one who gave up the beckoning blue chip legal career in downtown New York or Chicago, forsaking a cushy future for a life on the hustings in Arkansas. Repeated constantly, this account of history - revisionist though it may be - lay at the core of Hillary's self-image.

And even at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Hillary would point out, she could never make the kind of money she might have earned, because of the demands on her schedule - campaigning for her husband, heading the education task force, not to mention doing the job of Arkansas first lady. The leaves of absence and days away from the office made it impossible, even here, to realize her financial potential.

Her sense of deprivation and feeling of ent.i.tlement were interdependent. Was she not sacrificing everything to promote the public good through her husband's election to public office? Had she not ventured into the heartland of deprivation - the 49th state - to bring progress and enlightenment? When she received material compensation, minimal as it was, was that not truly her just reward for such sacrifice?

It is likely that this sense of ent.i.tlement - not simple greed - was what led Hillary to take the risks she has to make money. For all of her vaunted discipline, this is the one area where her self-control goes on frequent, extended holiday. Her need to extract what she feels is just compensation for all her good work is one of the controlling forces in her life.

Such avarice is very dangerous in politics. Politicians and presidents are always being offered opportunities for personal enrichment. Some are ethical. Others are not. Anyone in public life needs sensitive antennae to tell which is which. Of our recent presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr. clearly had an internal sense that made them back off when there was an ethical question. Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton did not.

Where is Hillary likely to fall on that list? Some might argue that Hillary's newfound wealth will eliminate the temptation to cross the line. But Hillary's refusal, in Living History, to admit that there even is a line - or that she has ever crossed it - gives one pause.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

All elected officials, and the members of their immediate families, must make a special effort to resist propositions that entail conflicts of interest. If they wish to avoid reproach (and prison), they must be able to distinguish between an honest offer and an obvious bribe.

Thus far, Hillary has had three narrow escapes during her political career. Her dealings in commodities, the Whitewater real estate deal, and her legal representation of the Madison Bank at the Rose Law Firm all might easily have ruined her, and dragged Bill down as well. But her lengthy defense of her conduct in Living History reminds one of the Bourbon kings of France, of whom Talleyrand reportedly observed, "they learn nothing and they forget nothing."

Scandal one, the commodities deal, raises serious questions. The only reason there was not a public inquiry about this issue was that the statute of limitations had lapsed by the time it was disclosed. And the timing was no accident: The Clintons had concealed Hillary's trading profits by refusing to release their tax returns for the relevant years. By the time the media had unearthed the scandal, and pressure for a prosecution started to build, she was out of the woods.

In Living History, Hillary writes that her trading gains were "examined ad infinitum after Bill became President," and that "the conclusion was that, like many investors at the time, I'd been fortunate." But the only truly fortunate thing about the affair for the Clintons was the fact that Hillary managed to avoid any investigation. And just to be clear about the record: There was never any official investigation of her trades - only the work of enterprising investigative reporters. And thus there was no consensus "conclusion" that Hillary had just been lucky. That self-serving judgment was hers alone.

At around the time when her husband was being elected governor in 1978, Hillary began investing in commodities futures, under the guidance of her friend Jim Blair. There she parlayed a $1,000 investment into $100,000, making more than $6,000 on the first day. Hillary's advisors, attorney Jim Blair and broker Robert L. "Red" Bone, were especially knowledgeable about the flow of cattle onto the market: Blair was actively working as outside counsel for Tyson Foods, and Bone had also been a.s.sociated with the company. By gauging and antic.i.p.ating the ups and downs of the industry, they were able to give Hillary key guidance about her investments. And, as numerous reporters have since established in great detail, Hillary's advisors were rewarded handsomely, in any number of ways, for the insights they shared with the first lady of Arkansas.

The Clintons knew that their commodities trades would sound alarm bells if they ever came to light. I know, because I watched them try to cover them up.

In 1982, as they were campaigning to win back the governorship, it became obvious to me that the Clintons were determined to hide something on their tax returns from public view. During the campaign, I urged them to release their income tax returns. It would be a good issue against Frank White, the Republican inc.u.mbent we had to beat. After all, I figured, Republicans often resist releasing their tax returns because of their business dealings. And I had totally bought into the myth that the Clintons were frugal, parsimonious people who cared little about money; what could they ever have done that might look embarra.s.sing on a tax return?

So I asked Bill if he and Hillary would make their returns public, so that we could challenge White to reveal his.

"Of course," Bill answered. "No problem." But when the time came to release them, he turned finicky. "I'll give them out for the last two years only," he said.

"But what about the time you served in office as governor?" I asked.

"No," he replied firmly. "I'm only releasing two years."

"But if we are going to use the issue against Frank White, we need to release returns for the years you were governor. Otherwise, why should he have to?"

Bill glared at me; the discussion was clearly over. The Clintons released their tax returns, but not for 1978 or 1979. Why not? I wondered. When the scandal about Hillary's winnings in cattle futures emerged, I had my answer: They were apparently anxious to hide her profits, lest there be questions about insider trading - or for a quid pro quo with Blair of state action in return for private benefit. After all, how did Hillary acquire the ac.u.men to turn $1,000 into almost $100,000 in such a specialized market?

When the question was first raised in public, Hillary claimed that she had studied the Wall Street Journal to educate herself on the market. But then the Journal pulled the rug out from under her. Having examined its archives, James Stewart reported in Blood Sport that "It was obvious that they would have been of scant value to any trader. Ultimately . . . the first lady backed off the claim, acknowledging that it was Blair who had guided her trading."

Was Hillary's trading based on insider information and hence illegal? The difference between legal and illegal inputs in commodities trading, it turns out, is quite a hair to split. But, as judges are fond of saying, we do not have to "reach" that issue. The real question is, why did he share it with Hillary Clinton? Hillary acts as if friendship were the sole reason. But here's what Blair and Tyson Foods, his client, got from the Clintons over the years: - The New York Times reported that "Tyson benefited from a variety of state actions, including $9 million in government loans, the placement of company executives on important state boards and favorable decisions on environmental issues."

- Blair was appointed chairman of the board of the University of Arkansas by Governor Clinton.

- President Clinton named Blair's wife, Diane, to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

- As Arkansas attorney general, Clinton intervened in a lawsuit that helped Tyson Foods.

- Governor Clinton reappointed a Tyson veterinarian to the Livestock and Poultry Commission, which regulated Tyson Foods.

- When a Tyson plant leaked waste into a creek that eventually polluted the water supply of the town of Dry Creek, Arkansas, the state never enforced an order making the company treat its wastes. After nearby families began to get sick, Clinton had to declare the town a disaster area.

- According to the Times, Ron Brown, Clinton's secretary of commerce, "reversed course and inst.i.tuted rules that would allow Arctic Alaska (a Tyson subsidiary) and other big trawlers to dominate the nation's $100 million whiting catch."

Although James Blair was never charged with any wrongdoing, he was not helping Hillary and Bill Clinton solely out of the goodness of his heart. Only their deft concealment of the transactions, until the statute of limitations had put them out of reach, helped the Clintons avoid scrutiny for their behavior. And this is no mere archaeological artifact to be dug up by those seeking to skewer a future Hillary candidacy: Senator Clinton's misleading account of the affair in Living History clearly puts the issue back into play - lies, obfuscations, and all.

For example, Hillary writes that "Our tax returns from 1979 . . . had been audited by the IRS and our records were all in order."

Not true. In fact, Hillary did not report her commodities profits on her 1980 tax returns; indeed, she reported a loss of $1,000.00. In April 1994, Clinton attorney David Kendall had to announce that the Clintons were paying $14,615.00 in additional taxes, interest, and penalty on their underreported income for these years.

And Hillary keeps up the charade that she figured out which investments to make on her own. In Living History, she writes: "I started looking for opportunities I could afford [to invest money]. My friend Diane Blair was married to someone who knew the intricacies of the commodities market, and he was willing to share his expertise."

The world is filled with people who are willing to be very, very nice to those in power. Newly elected officials are suddenly inundated with new best friends, and many of them come bearing gifts. Hillary's failure to wonder why Blair's husband was so willing to share his expertise can, perhaps, be chalked up to naivete. She was, after all, only thirty-two at the time. But it's a little more difficult to forgive her continuing, blithe refusal to see through his generosity, even at the mature age of fifty-six.

And Hillary also knows that after she cashed out, the brokers who a.s.sisted her were prosecuted by market regulators for the same kind of practices that allowed Hillary to ama.s.s such huge profits. She does admit, in Living History, that they did not make out as well as she did. What she neglects to mention is that they were investigated and punished.

The Washington Posts account suggests what probably happened. Hillary's brokers would "allocate losing investments to some of [their] clients in order to benefit preferred customers." John Troelstrup, then regional counsel for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said "one aspect of the investigation by the exchange focused on 'block trading/ in which . . . [they] entered large numbers of contract orders without identifying the appropriate client accounts." According to Troelstrup, their conduct "could give someone the opportunity, to divy up trading profits and losses however they saw fit" - that is, to credit clients like Hillary with the winning calls, and other, less prized clients with the losing ones.

For such conduct - intended to help Hillary and other favored customers - the brokerage firm's president was eventually suspended from trading for six months, the firm itself was fined $250,000, and Hillary's broker got a three-year suspension.

Did Hillary's narrow brush with the law teach her a lesson? Her self-righteous defense of her commodities profits suggest otherwise.

Even now, it is hard to fathom Hillary's decision to take such appalling political risks right at the beginning of her husband's governorship. When the profits came rolling in, Hillary must have known she was getting preferential treatment from someone who expected state favors in return. Otherwise, why would she have gone to such lengths to avoid releasing her tax returns for those years?

Scandal two, the Whitewater real estate deal, was another clear conflict of interest. Behind all the complexity, it looks like another straight quid pro quo.

Here's what Bill and Hillary got: - Jim and Susan McDougal paid 91 percent of the costs a.s.sociated with the deal, but let Bill and Hillary Clinton retain 50 percent of the equity.

- When the property began to lose money, the McDougals paid off the loan the Clintons had taken out to finance their down payment.

- McDougal hired Hillary, at a retainer of $2,000 per month, to represent the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan a.s.sociation as its attorney.

- Jim McDougal held a fund-raiser that netted $35,000 for Bill's gubernatorial campaign.

And here's what McDougal got: - Clinton appointed McDougal's close friend, Beverly Lambert, as Arkansas Banking Commissioner. McDougal also got "control" of the Savings and Loan Board through several appointments he says he "arranged." Clinton, McDougal explains, was "amenable" to his suggestions to fill these positions.

- Lambert approved McDougal's purchase of a bank in Kingston, Arkansas. "It was good to have the right connections in state government," McDougal said.

- Clinton named Beverly Ba.s.sett, McDougal's candidate, as securities commissioner.

- Ba.s.sett allowed Madison to issue preferred stock to raise capital. Hillary was McDougal's attorney on the deal.

- Clinton sat in on a meeting McDougal had with the state's Health Department after a state inspector refused to grant septic permits to a subcontractor on one of his developments. McDougal got the permits. As the banker put it: "if I kept up my connection with Clinton, I would never encounter any bureaucratic roadblocks."

The Whitewater investment turned out to be ill-timed. Interest rates soared in the next few years, which cut into the demand for vacation homes. The cash flow that was to have paid the mortgage never materialized, and the deal lost money. But McDougal decided to bail out the Clintons: "I felt a responsibility," he claimed, "for bringing the Clintons into an unprofitable deal and I decided to make the payments myself rather than ask Bill and Hillary for more money."

The Clintons keep saying that they never made money on the deal, but that misses the point. McDougal stopped them from losing their shirts. There was nothing complicated about this cla.s.sic quid pro quo - a largely questionable relationship between a governor and his wife and a banker/developer. The fact that McDougal was insulating the Clintons from losses, rather than paying them profits, matters little. A favor is a favor.

Hillary cut some big corners during the Whitewater deal - and Living History indicates that she's still cutting them. Instead of coming clean on Whitewater, or even avoiding the subject, Hillary perpetuates the cover-up, using the occasion to revisit the Clintons' shopworn roster of hollow Whitewater defenses. To review them one by one: In Living History, HILLARY writes: "Jim [McDougal] asked us [the Clintons] to write checks to help make interest payments or other contributions, and we never questioned his judgment."

The fact is: They paid only about one tenth of what McDougal paid for Whitewater.

HILLARY writes: "Bill and I never deposited money in Madison Guaranty and never borrowed from it."

The fact is: According to McDougal, the Clintons got at least two payoffs, one for $27,600 and another for $5,081.82.

HILLARY writes: "Bill . . . knew he hadn't done anything as Governor to favor McDougal ..."

The fact is: As noted above, Bill did plenty to help Jim McDougal. HILLARY writes: McDougal never hired her for legal work; it was really "Rick Ma.s.sey, a young lawyer at the Rose Law Firm," who arranged for the retainer. She was listed as "the billing partner," she claims, "because Ma.s.sey was merely an a.s.sociate."

The fact is: Ma.s.sey denied her story under oath - and McDougal says he hired Hillary because Bill asked him to.

HILLARY writes: When McDougal offered to buy the Clintons out of their half of Whitewater, "I thought it was a great idea." The fact is: According to Stewart's Blood Sport, when Susan McDougal wanted to buy the Clintons out, Hillary said: "No! Jim [McDougal] told me that this was going to pay for college for Chelsea. I still expect it to do that!"

HILLARY denies that she "knew of any money that could have gone from Madison [Bank] ... to any of [her] husband's political campaigns."

The fact is: Certainly she knew that Madison had aided his fund-raising efforts: On page 327 of Living History, Hillary herself mentions a fund-raiser at the Madison Bank.

HILLARY claims that the final report of the Office of Independent Counsel on Whitewater exonerated her - that the report found no wrongdoing.

The fact is: All the Independent Counsel said was that "the evidence was insufficient" to prove that the Clintons did anything wrong. Why were they unable to find the evidence? Well, Jim McDougal was dead and Susan was jailed for contempt rather than cooperate with the investigation. She was probably waiting it out expecting a presidential pardon as payback for her silence. She ended up getting one. So who was there to testify? The IC's final report was a far cry from exoneration.

Hillary writes warmly of Susan McDougal for choosing years in jail rather than answer Starr's questions. "Susan was suffering in jail for refusing to testify before the Whitewater Grand Jury."

But Hillary hasn't always been so nice about Susan McDougal. When it looked as though she might turn on the Clintons, Hillary told me: "She is such a liar. She worked for [the famous conductor] Zubin Mehta and stole his silver. She's crazy, unstable, and totally dishonest. You can't trust a thing she says." (Susan was eventually acquitted of stealing from Mehta.) Probably the best indication of the Clintons' actual culpability in Whitewater is that they didn't get their legal fees reimbursed by the federal government. According to the statute under which the Independent Counsel operates, anyone who is the object of a special prosecutor's scrutiny is ent.i.tled to reimburs.e.m.e.nt for legal fees if charges are not filed and if the targets of the inquiry "show that a career prosecutor would not have pursued a similar investigation or delved as deeply."

But the panel that reviewed the Clintons' pet.i.tion for $3.5 million in reimburs.e.m.e.nt ruled that their request was without merit, and awarded them only 3 percent of the amount requested (the amount due their lawyers for reviewing the final report). By contrast, President Ronald Reagan was reimbursed for 75 percent of his legal costs in the Iran-Contra scandal; George H. W. Bush got 59 percent. The clear message: Regardless of the final, inconclusive verdict, any competent prosecutor would have smelled something rotten in Whitewater.

STONEWALLING.

The real reason the Whitewater scandal remained in the headlines year after year, however, had less to do with the initial deal than with the Clintons' ongoing efforts to cover up the scandal. Rather than provide the press with the information it craved, Hillary "locked down" - in the words of former Clinton aide Lanny Davis - and stonewalled Ken Starr's investigation. At several critical junctures in the twisted trail through Whitewater, all Hillary had to do was to face the media honestly and let them have all the doc.u.ments. After all, the amount involved in the scandal was petty, it was a long time ago, and it all happened long before Clinton became president. But instead she refused. Over and over again, she cited privacy while her husband claimed executive privilege. It was a disastrous policy - and one for which she nevertheless shows no regret.

In Living History, Hillary blandly insists that she cooperated fully with federal investigators, saying that she instructed her lawyer, David Kendall, "to advise the government investigators that we would voluntarily provide them with all doc.u.ments and cooperate with a grand jury investigation."

Others remember differently. No sooner did Jeff Gerth's initial story about their investment with the McDougals appear in the New York Times than Hillary's damage control team went into overdrive. Gail Sheehy reports that their tactics became known among Clinton campaign staffers as the "f.u.c.k you, Jeff Gerth" strategy.

Sheehy relates how "a whole subgroup [in the Clinton campaign] was tasked with defusing this [Whitewater] bombsh.e.l.l. Hillary put Susan Thomases in charge of it. ... Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster, were a.s.signed to examine all of the Whitewater records and those relating to the Madison Bank . . . they decided what to 'give up' to The New York Times . . . [Finally Thomases] provided fewer than twenty doc.u.ments."

No doubt this is because, as the New York Post reported on January 20, 1996, Hillary told federal banking officials that in 1988 she had sent many of the key doc.u.ments about her work for Madison Guaranty to be shredded by the Rose Law Firm.

In her answers to written interrogatories, Hillary said that "While I have no personal recollection ... I am informed that the Rose Law Firm . . . asked its members to review their old files to determine whether the firm could save money by reducing the number of closed, stored files. I cooperated with this effort and indicated that many of my closed client files, apparently including certain files relating to the firm's representation of Madison Guaranty, did not need to be retained."

The Post noted that "Mrs. Clinton's decision to have her Madison records destroyed came at a time when Madison was collapsing amid fraud allegations. The S&L failed the following year costing taxpayers an estimated $65 million." Sheehy describes the doc.u.ment destruction in more dramatic terms: "After hours, in the dimly lit Rose Law Firm offices, Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell scoured [Hillary's] records. . . . Withheld were Hillary's billing records, which over the years were to take on the dark nimbus of a smoking gun. The firm's computer hard drives were later 'vacuumed.'"

In Living History, Hillary claims that when the Washington Post first asked for information about Whitewater, she wondered, "Should we answer questions? Show them doc.u.ments? If so, which ones?"

Hillary decided to stiff the media and release the doc.u.ments to the Justice Department alone, which Clinton controlled. The press, of course, smelled something fishy, and stepped up the drumbeat for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Even Democrats demanded that Clinton ask his Justice Department to name one. Hillary resisted every inch of the way, but her refusal to turn over doc.u.ments had started a forest fire she could not control.

Reflecting on this unfortunate series of decisions, Hillary sees a situation that called not for more candor, but less. "We will never know whether releasing an inevitably incomplete set of personal doc.u.ments to the Washington Post would have averted a special prosecutor. With the wisdom of hindsight, I wish I had fought harder and not let myself be persuaded to take the path of least resistance." (Reminder: The doc.u.ments were "inevitably incomplete," of course, because she had shredded them!) While I was working for the Clintons, I had a firsthand experience with the tactics they used to distract, delay, and derail the work of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. The episode concerned the Clintons and U.S. District Court Judge Harry Woods.

In Living History, Hillary blasts Starr for getting Woods disqualified from presiding over the Whitewater prosecutions of Jim and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. "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."

Yet in point of fact, Judge Woods had just been overturned - on a Whitewater-related case. And one more fact goes unmentioned in Living History: Woods was an old Arkansas buddy of the Clintons, one who had been invited to the White House and even slept in the infamous Lincoln Bedroom.

In July 1995, Janet Reno had intervened in Whitewater by advising Judge Woods that, in her opinion, Starr had jurisdiction to prosecute a potential player in the Whitewater scandal. Shortly thereafter, an emissary called me on behalf of one figure, who was alarmed at the possible ramifications of Reno's move. The emissary reached me late one Friday night, and said he had a message for President Clinton from this old Arkansas acquaintance. "Furious" at the president, the acquaintance had "screamed": "If Clinton is going to play the game that way, you tell that son of a b.i.t.c.h that I know all about the IDC."

IDC was another name for a shady real estate deal more commonly known as Castle Grande - a phony setup where McDougal used Webb Hubbell's father-in-law as a front man to buy property because federal regulators wouldn't let him do it himself.

The attorney for the IDC/Castle Grande deal? Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton had a dilemma. If she admitted she did the legal work on IDC/Castle Grande, she would be acknowledging that she helped a deal go through that was later found to be fraudulent. But she had billed Madison for her legal work on the deal as part of her effort to justify the $2,000 monthly retainer the bank was paying to the Rose Law Firm. On the other hand, if she claimed she hadn't done the legal work on IDC, it would raise questions about overbilling her client - possibly landing her in the same soup as Webb Hubbell, whose overbilling had resulted in a criminal conviction and time in federal prison. She was between a rock and a hard place.

To complicate matters, Hillary had already testified, under oath, that she had never worked on Castle Grande, but in her testimony had never mentioned her work on IDC, the other name for Castle Grande. To be sure, she had left herself an out: Hillary later told Barbara Walters that she "did work for ... IDC" - but claimed that it "was not related to Castle Grande." As Joyce Milton writes: "when she was asked [about Castle Grande] she decided not to take the risk of telling the whole truth. Like her husband . . . she seemed to see testimony under oath as a kind of word game, in which she gave answers that might be technically compliant, but that appeared to be lies to people who did not have the benefit of Ivy League law degrees."

All of this raised even more suspicion when the relevant billing records disappeared. When they finally turned up a year later, they showed that Hillary had actually billed for sixty hours of legal work for Madison. In Living History, Hillary describes this work as "minimal." Some might argue that sixty hours isn't exactly minimal; either way, though, it's easy to see why the implied threat to reveal the story of IDC would have alarmed the Clintons. After receiving the call from Arkansas, I called Bill Clinton at the White House residence at 12:30 A.M., waking him up. "I have some information you need to hear about," I said as Clinton answered the phone blearily.

"Can it wait until Monday?" he asked, instantly awake. "No," I replied, obviously implying that we shouldn't discuss the matter over the phone.

"Come to see me right after the radio address tomorrow," Clinton said and hung up.

I asked Eileen to accompany me on the trip from Connecticut to Washington. I knew the elves on the White House staff would be surprised to see me in the building on a Sat.u.r.day, but my wife's presence would make them more likely to chalk the visit up as a social call. But that didn't stop George Stephanopoulos from nosing around, trying to figure out what I was up to. (Years later, in his book, George recalled my alerting him to Clinton's problems with Reno.) Eileen and I joined the president in the Oval Office right after his speech. I let Eileen, the lawyer, tell him the story of the call. As he listened, the president turned white - whiter than I had ever seen him. He sat heavily in his desk chair and let out a sigh, running his hand over his face.

"What do you think he meant?" Clinton asked.

"I don't know, but I think he thinks you know," she answered.

Clinton was silent for a few minutes, and then fell all over himself thanking us for coming to give him the information. Before I left, though, he pointed his long forefinger in my face angrily and hissed: "Janet Reno is the single worst mistake I ever made. The worst appointment I have ever made."

After Eileen and I returned home to Connecticut, Clinton called me late that night. "I just wanted to thank you for coming to see me today," Clinton said. Then he added, "I took care of that problem." We hung up.