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

George Stephanopoulos opened, calmly making the political arguments for the appointment of a special prosecutor. He said that a special prosecutor would get the media off Bill’s back, that it was inevitable and that any further delay would kill our legislative agenda.

Then Bernie Nussbaum made a forceful last-ditch plea for his position. Like me, Bernie knew that the prosecutors would be under enormous pressure to come up with indictments to justify their efforts. As Bernie kept stressing, we were already turning over documents to the Justice Department, and, because there was no credible evidence of wrongdoing, a special prosecutor could not, under the law, be ordered. We could only request one, which seemed truly absurd. A political circus would be welcome compared to a potentially endless legal process.

After several heated rounds back and forth, Bill, exhausted, had heard enough. I wrapped up the meeting, asking only David Kendall to remain for a few more words with the President.

The room was quiet for a moment, and then Bill spoke.

“Look, I think we’ve just got to do it,” he said. “We’ve got nothing to hide, and if this keeps up, it’s going to drown out our agenda.”

It was time to fold my cards. “I know that we’ve got to move past this,” I said. “But it’s up to you.”

David Kendall strongly agreed with Bernie. They were both experienced criminal lawyers who understood that the innocent could be persecuted. But they were outnumbered by the political advisers who just wanted the press to change the subject. David left the room, and I picked up the phone to talk to Bill alone.

“Why don’t you sleep on the decision,” I said. “If you’re still willing to do it, we’ll send a request to the Attorney General in the morning.”

“No,” he said, “let’s get this over with.” Though he feared, as much as I did, that we were underestimating the consequences of this decision, he told me to go ahead with the request. I felt terrible. He had been pushed into a decision that he didn’t feel comfortable about. But given the pressures confronting us, we didn’t know what else to do.

I walked into Bernie Nussbaum’s office to deliver the bad news in person and hugged my old friend. Though it was late, Bernie began to compose a letter to Janet Reno, relaying the President’s formal request that the Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an independent investigation of Whitewater.

We will never know if Congress would eventually have forced an independent counsel on us. And we will never know whether releasing an inevitably incomplete set of personal documents 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. Bernie and David were right. We were being swept up in what legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin later described as the politicization of the criminal justice system and the criminalization of the political system. What had been promoted as a quick fix to our political problems sapped the administration’s energy for the next seven years, unfairly invaded the lives of innocent people and diverted America’s attention from the challenges we faced at home and abroad.

It was Bill’s innate optimism and resilience that kept him going, inspired me and made it possible to implement most of his agenda for America by the end of his two terms. All that, however, was in the future as Chelsea and I boarded the plane to join Bill in Russia.

The descent into Moscow was turbulent, and I felt queasy when I walked off the plane. Chelsea got into a car with Capricia Marshall and I got into the official limousine with Alice Stover Pickering, wife of our Ambassador to Russia, Thomas Pickering. Both had been in numerous Foreign Service postings around the world. Tom Pickering later served with distinction as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs under Madeleine Albright. While driving into town for my meeting with Naina Yeltsin, I felt sick to my stomach. The speeding motorcade, preceded and followed by Russian police cars, could not stop. The backseat of the limousine was totally clean, without a cup, towel or napkin in sight. I bent my head over and threw up on the floor. Alice Pickering appeared totally unfazed and―to diminish my embarrassment―continued pointing out the sights. She never said a word to anyone, which I deeply appreciated. By the time we arrived at Spaso House, the Ambassador’s official residence, I was feeling a little better. After a quick shower, a change of clothes and a crucial encounter with a toothbrush, I was ready to start my schedule.

I was looking forward to seeing Mrs. Yeltsin, whom I had enjoyed meeting in Tokyo the previous summer. Naina had worked as a civil engineer in Yekaterinburg, where her husband had been the regional Communist Party head. She had a hearty sense of humor, and we laughed our way through a day of public appearances and private meals with local dignitaries.

This first visit to Russia was intended to strengthen relations between Bill and President Yeltsin so that they could constructively address issues such as the dismantling of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal and the expansion eastward of NATO. While our husbands held their summit talks, Naina and I visited a hospital, newly painted in honor of our visit, to discuss the health care systems in our countries. Russia’s was deteriorating in the absence of the government support it had once received. The doctors we met were curious about our health care reform plan. They acknowledged the high quality of American medicine yet criticized our failure to guarantee health care to everyone.

They shared our goal of universal coverage but were facing difficulties in achieving it.

I finally caught up with Bill that evening. The Yeltsins hosted a state dinner that began with a receiving line in the newly refurbished St. Vladimir