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

message, but nobody could predict whether asking for a special prosecutor would quiet the drums. By the time we had landed at Andrews Air Force Base and helicoptered to the White House, Bill was obviously tired of the debate. He had to go back to Andrews to fly to Europe that night for long-scheduled meetings in Brussels and Prague about the expansion of NATO, followed by a state visit to Russia to address President Boris Yeltsin’s concern about NATO’s plans to move eastward. Before Bill left, he made it clear to me that he wanted the Whitewater issue resolved one way or another, and soon.

I had planned to join Bill in Moscow for the state visit on January 13. At Virginia’s funeral, we decided that I should bring Chelsea because we didn’t want to leave her in the White House at such a sad time. I knew a decision about the special prosecutor had to be made before we left. That Sunday, a number of leading Democrats appeared on the political talk shows to voice their support for a special prosecutor. None of them could explain exactly why this step was appropriate or necessary. They seemed to be caught up in the moment and wary of pressure from the press. The momentum kept building, and my own determination was wearing down.

My gut instinct, as a lawyer and a veteran of the Watergate impeachment inquiry staff, was to cooperate fully with any legitimate criminal inquiry but to resist giving someone free rein to probe indiscriminately and indefinitely. A “special” investigation should be triggered only by credible evidence of wrongdoing, and there was no such evidence.

Without credible evidence, a call for a special prosecutor would set a terrible precedent: From then on, every unsubstantiated charge against a President concerning events during any period of his life could require a special prosecutor.

The President’s political advisers predicted that a special prosecutor would eventually be forced on us and argued that it was better to appoint one and get it over with. George Stephanopoulos researched previous independent counsels and cited the case of President Carter and his brother, Billy, who were investigated for a disputed loan to a peanut warehouse in the mid-1970s. The special prosecutor requested by Carter completed his investigation in seven months and exonerated the Carters. That was encouraging. By contrast, the investigation into what was known as “the Iran-Contra affair,” begun in the Reagan-Bush Administration, had continued on for seven years. In that case, though, there was illegal activity by White House and other governmental personnel in the conduct of our nation’s foreign policy. Several Administration officials were indicted, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Lt. Col. Oliver North, who worked on the National Security Council.

Only David Kendall, Bernie Nussbaum and David Gergen agreed with me that we should resist a special prosecutor. Gergen considered a special prosecutor a “dangerous proposition.” Bill’s staff trooped in to lobby me, one after another, each delivering the same familiar message: I would destroy my husband’s Presidency if I didn’t support their strategy. Whitewater had to be pushed off the front pages so we could get on with the business of the administration, including health care reform.

I believed that we needed to distinguish between holding our ground when we were in the right and giving in to political expediency and pressure from the press. “Requesting a special prosecutor is wrong,” I said. But I couldn’t change their minds.

On January 3, Harold Ickes, an old friend and adviser from the 1992 campaign, had joined the administration as Deputy Chief of Staff. Bill had asked Harold, a sandy-haired, hyperkinetic lawyer, to coordinate the upcoming health care campaign. Within days he was diverted to organize a “Whitewater Response Team” composed of several senior advisers and members of the communications staff and counsel’s office. Harold was the best advocate to have in your corner during a fight. Like Kendall, he was a veteran of the civil rights movement in the South―in fact, Harold had been so badly beaten while organizing black voters in the Mississippi Delta that he had lost a kidney. Although he had spent most of his early life avoiding his legacy―at one point he worked breaking horses on a cattle ranch―he was the son of Harold Ickes, Sr., one of the most significant players in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet. Politics pumped through Harold’s veins, and the White House seemed to be his natural habitat.

Harold did his best to keep the Whitewater debate under control, but the turmoil continued in the West Wing. Each news story brought us closer to a fateful decision. The day after I returned to the White House from Hot Springs, Harold told me that he had reluctantly concluded we should request a special prosecutor.

On Tuesday evening, January 11, I arranged a conference call with Bill in Prague.

David Kendall and I met in the Oval Office with a handful of Bill’s top aides for a final debate on the issue. The scene reminded me of a cartoon I had seen: A man stood in front of two doors, obviously trying to decide which one to enter. A sign above the first door said, “Damned if you do.” The other said, “Damned if you don’t.”

It was the middle of the night in Europe. Bill was worn out and exasperated after days of hearing nothing but Whitewater questions from the media. He was also heartbroken about losing his mother, the one steady presence throughout his life and his chief cheerleader, offering unconditional love and support. I felt sorry for him and wished that he didn’t have to deal with such a crucial decision under these circumstances. He was terribly hoarse, and we had to lean in close to the black, batwing-shaped conference phone to hear his voice.

“I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” he said, frustrated that the press didn’t want to talk about the historic expansion of NATO that would soon open the door to the former Warsaw Pact nations. “All