Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

in for his interview in the Treaty Room, the President’s study on the second floor of the residence. Representing the White House were Abner Mikva, a former Congressman and federal judge, now White House counsel, and Jane Sherburne, an experienced litigator who had left her private law firm to handle legal issues attached to the investigation.

They were joined by our private attorneys, David Kendall and his partner Nicole Seligman, two of the smartest and most caring people I’ve ever known. Starr and three other lawyers sat on one side of the long conference table we had brought in for the interviews. We sat on the other.

As he came out of his interview, Bill told me his encounter with Starr had been amiable, and, to my amazement, Bill had asked Jane Sherburne to give Starr and his assistants a tour of the Lincoln Bedroom next door. Somewhat characteristically, I was not prepared to be as charitable as my husband, and this was only the first illustration of the differences between Bill’s way of dealing with Starr and mine. We were both in the eye of the storm, but I seemed to be buffeted by every gust of wind, while Bill just sailed along. The idea of hardcore Republican partisans rummaging through our lives, looking at every check we had written in twenty years, and harassing our friends on the flimsiest of excuses infuriated me.

The Republicans opened up a new front when Al D’Amato, the Republican Senator from New York and Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, convened hearings on Whitewater. I have since made my peace with Senator D’Amato, now one of my most prominent constituents, but the hearings he and his fellow Republican Senators and their staffs conducted inflicted great emotional and monetary damage on innocent people.

Despite Fiske’s finding that Vince Foster’s death was a suicide unrelated to Whitewater, D’Amato seemed to be fixated on Vince’s death, and he paraded past and present White House aides in front of the cameras to grill them about the sad event. Maggie Williams, normally centered and strong, was brought to tears by relentless questioning about events surrounding Vince Foster’s death. It was unbearable to watch Maggie raked over the coals again and again and to know that her legal bills were mounting daily.

D’Amato called my friend Susan Thomases a liar as she tried to answer his questions.

Her decades-long struggle with multiple sclerosis had impaired her memory, and she tried as hard as she could to respond to the bullying interrogation. I couldn’t console her or anyone caught up in this nightmare, because any discussion I might have with someone about any matter the investigators chose to ask about could suggest collusion or coaching. I had to avoid any discussion that could cause someone to answer “Yes” if asked whether he or she had talked to me.

Standing on the sidelines, unable to speak out to defend my friends and colleagues, or even to speak to them about the injustices they were enduring, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And it would get worse before it got better.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

The arrest of a dissident is not unusual in China, and Harry Wu’s imprisonment might have received scant attention in the American media. But China had been chosen to host the upcoming United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, and I was scheduled to attend as honorary Chair of the U.S. delegation. Wu, a human rights activist who had spent nineteen years as a political prisoner in Chinese labor camps before emigrating to the United States, was arrested by Chinese authorities on June 19, 1995, as he entered Xinjiang Province from neighboring Kazakhstan.

Although he had a valid visa to visit China, he was charged with espionage and thrown in jail to await trial. Overnight, Harry Wu became widely known, and U.S. participation in the women’s conference was cast into doubt as human rights groups, Chinese American activists and some members of Congress urged our nation to boycott. I sympathized with their cause, but it disappointed me that, once again, the crucial concerns of women might be sacrificed.

Typically, governments (including that of the U.S.) limit their foreign policies to diplomatic, military and trade issues, the staple of most treaties, pacts and negotiations. Seldom are issues such as women’s health, the education of girls, the absence of women’s legal and political rights or their economic isolation injected into the foreign policy debate.

Yet it was clear to me that in the new global economy, individual countries and regions would find it difficult to make economic or social progress if a disproportionate percentage of their female population remained poor, uneducated, unhealthy and disenfranchised.

The U.N. women’s conference was expected to provide an important forum for nations to address issues such as maternal and child health care, microfinance, domestic violence, girls’ education, family planning, women’s suffrage, property and legal rights.

It would also offer a rare opportunity for women from around the world to share stories, information and strategies for future action in their own countries. The conference is held roughly every five years, and I hoped my presence would signal the U.S. commitment to the needs and rights of women in international policy.

I had been working on women’s and children’s issues in the United States for twentyfive years, and, although women in our own country had made gains economically and politically, the same could not be said for the vast majority of women in the world. Yet virtually no one who could attract media attention was speaking out on their behalf.

At the time of Harry Wu’s arrest, my staff and I were deeply involved in planning for the conference. But there were already grumblings from the usual suspects in Congress who felt the United States should not participate. Among them were Senators Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm, who announced that the conference was “shaping up as an unsanctioned festival of anti-family, anti-American sentiment.” Some members of Congress were skeptical of any event sponsored by the United Nations and