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

Ickes. First, we wanted the staff to focus on the important work of the Administration. Second, if an issue is everyone’s business, it becomes no one’s responsibility.

Third, Fiske’s team was sending so many subpoenas that we had to have an organized system for searching files and providing responses. And finally, if staff members talked about Whitewater with Bill or me or among themselves, they would become more vulnerable to lengthy depositions, legal fees and general anxieties.

I was particularly worried about members of my own staff―Maggie Williams, Lisa Caputo, Capricia Marshall and others who had worked so hard and were being rewarded with subpoenas and frightening legal bills. Once Maggie was caught up in the investigation, I couldn’t seek her advice about it or offer her any comfort. It’s a tribute to her personal strength and the fortitude of everyone working for me that nobody complained or walked away from the challenges we faced.

David Kendall was becoming my main link to the outside world, and he was a godsend.

From the very beginning, he advised me not to read newspaper articles and not to watch television reports about the investigation or any of the related “scandals.” My press staff summarized what I needed to know in case I was questioned by the media. David urged me not to dwell on the rest of it.

“That’s my job,” he said. “One of the reasons you hire lawyers is to have them worry for you.” David, of course, read everything and worried obsessively about what would happen next. I’m something of an obsessive personality myself, and these were hard instructions to follow. But I learned to let David take over the watch.

Every few days, Maggie would poke her head in my office and say, “David Kendall wants to talk to you.” When he came in, she would leave the room. At each meeting, David continued to unravel the story of Jim McDougal and his personal and financial dealings, and I learned something every time.

I tried to deal with the new information by myself. I talked to Bill only when something critical came up. I tried to spare him so that he could concentrate on the duties of his office. It’s often said that the President has the loneliest job in the world. Harry Truman once referred to the White House as “the crown jewel in the American penal system.”

Bill loved his work, but I could see the political war taking its toll, and I tried to protect him from whatever I could.

David was able to fill in most of the gaps in the record, which supported our contention that we had lost money on the Whitewater deal and were never involved in McDougal’s wheelings and dealings with his S&L. David also brought us some uncomfortable news about errors he had found in our old financial documents. He had sifted through every piece of paper we could find like a miner panning for gold, and he had come up with a few lead nuggets. One was a mistake in the Lyons report that calculated our Whitewater losses at more than $68,000. We had to reduce that figure by $22,000 after David found that a check Bill had written to help his mother buy her house in Hot Springs had been incorrectly identified as a Whitewater loan payment. David also discovered that our certified public accountant in Little Rock had made an error on our 1980 tax return. An incomplete statement from a brokerage firm led him to claim a loss of $1,000

for us when, in fact, we had made almost $6,500 on trades. The statute of limitations had expired, but we voluntarily decided to make things right with the state of Arkansas and the IRS by writing a check for $14,615 for back taxes and interest.

As more of our financial records were released or found their way into the press, they generated additional stories. In mid-March, The New York Times ran a front-page article headlined TOP ARKANSAS LAWYER HELPED HILLARY CLINTON TURN BIG

PROFIT. The story accurately reported the profits I had made in the commodities market in 1979. But it falsely implied that our close friend Jim Blair had somehow engineered my windfall in order to gain influence with Bill Clinton on behalf of his client Tyson Foods. The story was filled with inaccuracies about Blair’s and Don Tyson’s relationship with Bill when he was Governor. Yet again, I wondered why such stories were printed before they were verified. If Tyson had Bill in his pocket, as the Times alleged, why did Tyson back Bill’s opponent Frank White in the 1980 and 1982 Governor’s races?

Jim was generous enough to share his expertise in trading commodities with his family and friends. With his help, I got into this volatile market and turned $1,ooo into $100,000 in a short time. I was lucky enough to lose my nerve and get out before the market dropped. Could I have done it without Jim? No. Did I have to pay my broker over $18,000 in brokerage fees on my trading? Yes. Did my commodity trading influence Bill’s decisions as Governor? Absolutely not.

Once the story about my commodity trading broke, the White House enlisted experts to review records of my trading. Leo Melamed, the former head of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and a Republican, warned that if we asked for his opinion, he would give it, regardless of the impact. After a thorough review of my trades, he concluded that I had done nothing wrong. The controversy, in his opinion, was “a tempest in a teapot.” I wasn’t surprised by his conclusions. Our tax returns from 1979, which had reported the significant increase in our income from the commodity trades, had been audited by the IRS, and our records were all in order. In fact, the IRS also audited every return we filed for every year Bill was in the White House.

I now realize that the constant accusations had taken their toll on my relations with the press. I had kept