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

In late May 1998, conflict broke out again between Ethiopia and Eritrea over a disputed border. Thousands were killed and the promise of peace for both peoples was tragically delayed. Bill sent Tony Lake, his former National Security Adviser, and Susan Rice, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, to the region. Eventually the Clinton Administration helped broker a peace agreement. I can only hope now that the potential I saw for a better future―complete with popcorn and dancing―can be realized in both nations.

When Chelsea and I returned from Africa, we regaled Bill with our adventures. His summit with Boris Yeltsin had been productive, but not nearly as illuminating or exotic as our trip. Bill’s leg was healing, but he was still hobbling around the White House on crutches. The Republican opposition wasn’t about to allow a time out for injury. A month earlier, in February 1997, Kenneth Starr’s prosecutorial career took a bizarre turn when he announced that he was resigning as independent counsel to accept a position at Pepperdine University as Dean of the law school and head of its new school of public policy.

But Starr’s exit strategy backfired when rightwing pundits blasted him for quitting the investigation before finding something to implicate us. At the same time, some in the media picked up a thread that directly connected the supposedly impartial independent counsel to one of his decidedly partisan patrons. It turned out that Starr’s Deanship was to be underwritten by a generous gift from Richard Mellon Scaife, a regent of Pepperdine University. Within days, Starr bowed to pressure from the right and changed his mind about taking the job. He apologetically announced that he would stay on as independent counsel until his work was done.

I don’t know if we would have been better off with or without Starr. But one possible consequence of Starr’s remaining at the OIC was an even more desperate effort to find anything to justify the continued investigations. David Kendall, who constantly monitored the media coverage of Whitewater, noted an increase in stories emanating from Starr’s office. Newspaper reports indicated that OIC investigators were revisiting “sources” in Arkansas, such as the trooper bodyguards, to probe the President’s personal life. Meanwhile, Jim McDougal had made a deal with prosecutors for a reduced sentence.

He was eager to grant interviews, and changed his story, once again trying to implicate Bill and me in his schemes. His ex-wife, Susan, was suffering in jail for refusing to testify before the Whitewater Grand Jury, which she insisted was a trap to charge her with perjury for telling the truth. Anyone who believes that prosecutors can’t abuse the American criminal justice system should read Susan’s book, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk: Why I Refused to Testify Against the Clintons and What I Learned in Jail. It’s a chilling account of the abuse she suffered from Starr’s crowd and a sobering reminder that protecting our freedom depends on guaranteeing the rule of law for everyone.

Members of Starr’s team, and Starr himself, appeared to be leaking secret grand jury testimony, which was against the law. In a New York Times Magazine article on June 1, 1997, Starr questioned my truthfulness and alluded to possible obstruction charges. For David Kendall that was the last straw, and he suggested it was time for a counteroffensive.

He wrote a letter, which Bill and I approved, accusing Starr of a “leak and smear”

campaign in the media. Three former special prosecutors, including a conservative Republican former U.S. Attorney, publicly agreed with Kendall that the OIC’s behavior was outrageous. But the public relations war continued.

Meanwhile, the Paula Jones sexual harassment case got a second wind. Back in January, Bob Bennett, Bill’s lawyer in the Jones case, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that a President should not be burdened by defending civil lawsuits while in office. Bennett’s point was that if this was allowed, any President could be tied up in litigation brought by his political enemies or by publicity seekers, and it would erode the ability of the Chief Executive to perform his duties. But on May 27, 1997, all nine justices concurred that the President’s privilege did not extend to civil suits, and Jones v. Clinton could go forward. I thought it was a terrible decision and an open invitation for political opponents to sue any President.

Chelsea chose to go to Stanford, three thousand miles away, and I looked ahead to her high school graduation and departure for college with a knot in my stomach. I tried not to reveal my looming sense of loss to her, fearing I might spoil this special moment in her life. I comforted myself by spending as much time with her as I could, and I commiserated with other mothers suffering from impending separation anxiety during a month of intensive preparation for a hallowed Sidwell Friends tradition: the Mother-Daughter Show. Mothers of Sidwell daughters are encouraged to take part in an evening of comic sketches that poke gentle fun at their graduating seniors. I teamed up with several moms of Chelsea’s friends for skits in which each of us played the part of our daughters.

My role involved a lot of pirouetting like a ballerina and chatting on the telephone about plans to go out. The opening scene required us to drape ourselves in sheets like togas and sing “I Believe I Can Fly.” I was able to get in touch with my inner ham, but fortunately for Chelsea, my voice was drowned out by the other mothers during this opening musical number.

The graduation ceremony of the Sidwell Friends Class Of 1997 was much like any other, except that the President of the United States gave the commencement address. He brought me to tears when he asked the graduates to recognize that their parents might “seem a little sad or act a little weird. You see, today we are remembering your first day in school and all