High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton

In any event, the troopers didn’t sell their silence and, consequently, didn’t get jobs with the federal government—or half a million dollars in “consulting” fees. They didn’t even get a book deal with a $400,000 advance, as Webb Hubbell did. (Hubbell’s book was fittingly titled Friends in High Places.) The troopers’ only financial “gains” were (1) not being fired from their state jobs, though they were forced to give up their moonlighting jobs, and (2) patching together a few thousand dollars from conservative groups.

  PRISONER BLUES

  We aren’t waiting for any new facts to come out. It is a known fact that Webb Hubbell could not possibly have done anything on his own to earn half a million dollars in consulting fees after a disgraceful resignation and impending criminal indictment, just as it is a known fact that Mrs. Clinton could not have parlayed a $1,000 investment into a $100,000 return in cattle futures simply by reading the Wall Street Journal.

  No one thinks this could be true. These preposterous things should be laughed away. But it’s considered unseemly to laugh out loud when the president and the president’s men lie to us.

  The first article of impeachment against President Nixon charged him with obstruction of justice. Most seriously, the article accused Nixon of “approving, condoning, and acquiescing in, the surreptitious payment of substantial sums of money for the purpose of obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses, [or] potential witnesses.”

  Even with the release of the Nixon tapes, and his complete perfidy laid bare, the worst that can be said about Nixon is the least that Clinton is willing to admit. Nixon can be heard on the tapes discussing the possibility of raising money for the Watergate defendants. The Clinton administration had a full-court briefing in the White House on the subject of paying Hubbell.

  After Nixon discussed the idea of paying the Watergate burglars, however, that money was never paid. Hubbell actually got paid—more money, in fact, than he had ever earned in a single year of his life before being indicted. Both Nixon and Clinton maintained that they never thought of the payments—conceptual in Nixon’s case and actual in Clinton’s case—as “hush money.”27 Both said they only wanted to help defray the living expenses of the defendants and their families. Both said they expected nothing in return.

  What might either president have sought in return?

  The Watergate defendants could not have implicated Nixon in the break-in, for the simple reason that Nixon had nothing to do with that. What they could have done is ratted out the president for trying to prevent national security leaks. After secret security codes in the Pentagon Papers had been leaked to the New York Times, Nixon had hired his private band of “Plumbers” to plug the leaks. He paid the Plumbers through donations funneled through his campaign committee. That’s what Nixon wanted to hide. (Nixon used campaign donations to protect national security from the communists; Clinton, as we will see, took campaign donations to sell out national security to the communists.)

  This time, not only were payments actually made, but they were made to a defendant who, according to Clinton’s Whitewater partner, James McDougal, “knows where the bodies are buried.”28

  If Nixon’s talking about paying living expenses—or “hush money”—amounted to “a violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States,… and [a] violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,”29 what is more than half a million dollars in “consulting fees” that was actually paid to a witness against the president?30

  PART FOUR

  Corruption

  Chapter Seventeen

  White House Coffees

  Back in 1992 Clinton promised America “the most ethical administration in the history of the Republic.” Of course, he also promised a middle-class tax cut.

  In any event, having warmed to the theme that he, Clinton personally, was virtue and goodness personified, his 1996 campaign ran a commercial that oozed, “As Americans, there are some things we do simply and solely because they’re moral, right, and good.” His campaign could afford slapstick commercials like this one because of the extensive White House coffees and Lincoln bedroom sleep-overs for major campaign donors during his first term in office.

  THE PLAN

  The impetus to put the president’s time on the auction block came from an understandably panicked reaction to the 1994 election by leading Democratic Party officials. On February 28, 1997, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, speaking on Larry King Live, noted, “There was such a money frenzy…. Clinton began this process in ’95 when it looked like he was dead, that the Republicans were going to elect a president. The Republicans had taken over Congress, and there was a kind of panic that overtook the White House.”

  In fact, the plan was hatched on Christmas Day 1994, and apparently Clinton himself was the ringleader. “It was Christmas 1994. Hillary and Chelsea were in New York on a holiday jaunt. The president was home alone, feeling blue. The Democrats had lost badly, and were blaming him.”1 So to “cheer up” the commander in chief, his deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes, presented Clinton with Democratic National Committee (DNC) finance chief Terry McAuliffe.

  McAuliffe proposed that Clinton start selling access. He was the president, the leader of the free world, commander in chief—a money magnet. By making himself available to deep-pocket supporters he could raise enough money to ward off primary challengers and bury the Republicans. “It was the first positive news he’d had,” McAuliffe told Newsweek. McAuliffe concluded the breakfast meeting with the famous words, “Mr. President, this is the last discussion you’ll ever have to have about money.”2

  Just eleven days later, on January 5, 1995, McAuliffe sent Clinton’s secretary, Nancy Hernreich, a memo slotting three days that month for Clinton to meet twenty “major supporters for breakfast, lunch, or coffee.” Another ten people, wrote McAuliffe, could be invited on golf outings or morning jogs with the president. The purpose of these meetings would be to “offer these people an opportunity to discuss issues and exchange ideas with the president,” wrote McAuliffe. “This will be an excellent way to energize our key people for the upcoming year.” Not a bad way to pull in the dough either. Hernreich passed the memo on to Clinton with the query, “Do you want me to pursue?”

  Clinton’s response will someday appear in the anthology of famous Clinton quotes alongside “kiss it.” He wrote: “Yes, pursue all 3 and promptly. And get other names at [$] 100,000 or more, [$] 50,000 Ready to start overnights right away. Give me the top 10 list back, along w/the 100, 50,000” (emphasis added). The “overnights” were Clinton’s own little brainstorm; “It was not anyone else’s idea; it was mine,” Clinton told the National Journal.3

  THE WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATION

  Clinton’s explanation for the note was: It was taken out of context. This, despite the fact that the entire memo had been produced, handwritten notes and all. It seems the proper “context” is that Bill and Hillary Clinton just happen to be friends with a lot of people who happen to make large donations to the DNC. And his mother died that year.

  I think that first of all, if the note is understood in its accurate and proper context, there’s nothing wrong with it…. I think what I was telling her is that, you know, we’ve been out of touch with a lot of these people for two years and we’ve had a lot of work going on in Washington and we’ve had, both of us had lost a parent, and we just hadn’t kept in touch with people like we should have, and that’s what I was saying.4

  Classic Clinton. He needed to start selling the Lincoln bedroom because both he and Hillary had “lost a parent” that year.

  Before Clinton offered this telling explanation, the White House press office had released a list naming 831 of the overnight guests, thus far, and divided them into various make-believe categories having nothing to do with their status as prospective campaign donors: 370 Arkansas “friends,” 155 longtime non-Arkansas “friends,” 111 “friends and supporters” the
Clintons had met since 1992, 128 “public officials and dignitaries,” and 67 representatives from the world of “arts and letters.”

  This self-released White House list did not mention the largedonor, soon-to-be-friends category, whose names were forwarded to the White House by then-DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen. Documents made public months later would reveal, as one fund-raiser said, that “Marvin Rosen had the final say over who would stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. The decision was usually based on how much money people had given or were willing to give later on.”5 “[W]hat I was telling her is that, you know, we’ve been out of touch with a lot of these people for two years and… both of us had lost a parent….”

  When these other internal White House lists appeared, some of Bill and Hillary’s “friends” had asterisks by their names—indicating payments were being made in installments.6

  In fact, at least 938 people stayed overnight at the White House during Clinton’s first term, according to documents released by the White House in February 1997.

  THE SHOPPING LIST

  Even before the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress—and before Bill and Hillary had each “lost a parent”—a memo had circulated through the DNC to Harold Ickes at the White House proposing the sale of various White House perks to raise campaign cash. The April 1994 memo, written by an unidentified Democratic staffer, was addressed to Martha Phipps, a top DNC aide. The shopping list proposed selling seats on Air Force One and Two, as well as “[b]etter coordination on appointments to boards and commissions” as some of the ways “to reach our very aggressive goal of $40 million this year.” Phipps faxed a copy of the memo to Ickes.

  The proposed shopping list of the president’s perks to lure large contributions included:• Two seats on Air Force One and Air Force Two trips

  • Six seats at private White House dinners

  • Six to eight seats at all White House events, such as Jazz Fest, official visits, and ceremonies

  • Places on official delegations abroad

  • Better coordination on appointments to boards and commissions

  • The right to eat in the White House mess

  • Visits to the White House residence and overnight stays

  • Guaranteed Kennedy Center tickets

  • Six spots in the audience for the president’s weekly radio address

  • Photo opportunities with “principals”—that is, President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice President and Mrs. Gore

  This memo might have been written off as the fantastical scribblings of an exuberant (and irrelevant) campaign staffer—if some of the anonymous staffer’s ideas had not eventually been implemented with gusto. By the fall of 1995 the DNC had begun assembling complicated budgets for “fund-raising events”at the White House—including the White House coffees. They methodically listed the amount “projected” to be raised from each event, and the cash each eventually took in.

  Long before the threat of Newt Gingrich was there to justify any maniacal fund-raising events in the White House, Clinton was hosting breakfasts at the White House for the express purpose of raising money to promote Hillary’s health care plan.7 (Ironically, just the thing that led to the Republican takeover of Congress.) The “friends” invited to the health care breakfasts contributed about $50,000 to $100,000 a piece, raising about $1 million in all.8

  “POLITICAL FUND-RAISING IS CRITICAL”

  There is no question that the president and vice president were intimately involved in the use of the White House for fund-raising purposes. Clinton, Gore, and senior White House staff were kept personally abreast of each month’s fund-raising intake and projected tallies for future events.9 White House officials met weekly with DNC officials to plan White House fund-raising events. Harold Ickes forwarded status memos to the president and vice president on these strategy sessions. Clinton often handwrote comments and suggestions on the memos.

  The Clinton fund-raising coffees were strictly private and were never listed on the president’s public itinerary, despite Clinton’s after-the-fact declaration at a March 7, 1997, press conference: “I almost wish that one of you [reporters] had been in all of these coffees....”10

  The coffees were supposedly scheduled to allow people to talk about things and share their convictions, the president said on March 7, 1997, after the story had come out when a subpoena forced Harold Ickes to hand over documents to House investigators.

  Monthly schedules of coffees and their projected revenue were compiled and continually updated—and reviewed by Clinton and his top White House staff. Anticipated revenues, respectively, included for example: January 17, 1996, $400,000; January 25, 1996, $400,000; January 26, 1996, $400,000; and February 6, 1996, $400,000. In some cases the documents amount to precise spreadsheets with running totals breaking out projected total revenue and total funds in hand, reported the New York Times.11 In a July 14, 1996, memo on raising $3.2 million, Clinton-Gore campaign manager Peter Knight states that just one coffee would bring in approximately $350,000 and another coffee, $600,000.12

  Besides many coffees marked as being attended by POTUS (President of the United States), documents show others denoted as FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States), VPOTUS (Vice President of the United States), MEG (Mary Elizabeth Gore, a.k.a. Tipper Gore), and SHALALA (Donna Shalala, secretary of Health and Human Services). The latter’s projected contribution intake was $100,000.

  A January 19, 1996, memo by White House aide Evelyn Lieberman to then-Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and Harold Ickes stated: “[T]he political staff implored the schedulers to add a series of small coffees… to the president’s schedule…. They believe there is considerable urgency to their request. Attached is their proposed list of 27 coffees…. Political fund-raising is critical….” Lieberman concluded the memo by stating that its recommendations would require approval from the president. Evidently such approval was, as they say, not unreasonably withheld.

  In 1995 and 1996 alone, the White House, in cooperation with the DNC, held at least 103 coffees for 358 selected guests. These meetings, held in the White House Map Room, generated $27 million for the Democratic Party (that’s an average of more than $75,000 per attendee). Typically, each coffee was budgeted to raise $400,000 in contributions.

  At least four Democratic fund-raising officials have revealed that former DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen explicitly advocated selling access to the president through the $50,000-ahead coffees. “I can’t count the number of times I heard, ‘Tell them they can come to a coffee with the president for $50,000,’” one official who worked under Rosen told the Los Angeles Times. “It was routine. In fact, when staffers said, ‘This is all I can raise,’ they were told, ‘Keep selling the coffees.’”13

  Prominent New York City attorney and Democratic fund-raiser Melvyn Weiss said that offering coffees to potential contributors was part of the Democrats’ strategy. Weiss further said, “I brought people down and I would say, ‘I really think that you should consider helping the party.’ They would say, ‘What kind of contribution would be appropriate?’ And I would say, ‘We have a trustee program, and if you want to give $50,000, it’s up to you.’”14

  A DNC fund-raiser told Nynex Corporation executives that they would receive invitations to White House coffees if they joined the DNC’s “Managing Trustees” program and agreed to donate $100,000 to the Democrats. Nynex sent a $35,000 check to the DNC on August 21, 1995, and on September 5 Nynex President Donald Reed attended a coffee. “I think it is fair to say that there was an understanding that if we became a trustee member [by donating $100,000 to the DNC], there was going to be an invitation to a White House coffee,” said Nynex Executive Vice President Thomas Tauke, a former GOP congressman from Iowa. Elaborating on his description of the DNC fund-raising approach, he added only that Nynex was a longtime Democratic supporter.15

  Both Alexis Herman, then-director of Public Liaison and current secretary of Labor, and President Clinton attended a coffee on May 13, 1996, at which
top banking executives got to chat with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, DNC officials Donald Fowler and Marvin Rosen, and Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig. After news of this meeting made it into the press, both Herman and Clinton acknowledged that the event was inappropriate and should not have occurred. Yet neither Clinton nor Herman saw fit to cancel the meeting at the time. The bankers gave $332,654 to the DNC around this time.16

  WHITE HOUSE SPIN

  When Clinton’s deceased-parents excuse for turning the White House into a very pricey bed-and-breakfast disintegrated under a mound of White House memos, damage control from the White House was just as frantic as the fund-raising had been. (Maybe it was all that coffee.) White House Deputy Counsel Lanny Davis said, “We don’t sell access.” In point of fact, Davis elaborated, no one had been actually “required” to write a check in order to attend the coffees.

  Davis did allow that it was “[in]appropriate” for the president to be entertaining a two-time convicted criminal, Eric Wynn, just months after his second conviction.17

  DNC spokesperson Amy Weiss Tobe said there “were no price tags for White House coffees” but conceded that “it appears that some may have tried to put a price tag on coffees at the White House.”18 Technically, that’s true. The price tag varied.

  That is precisely the aperçu that Clinton administration spokesmen have been at pains to avoid. Mike McCurry promoted the theory that it’s not a fund-raiser unless tickets are sold, even if the event is an element in a campaign-related financial program. He said in late February 1997 that the coffees were “technically not used for fund-raising, but they became an element of the financial program that we were trying to pursue in connection with the campaign.” Expanding on this interesting new distinction, McCurry explained: “…I’ve been to [fund-raisers]… you buy a ticket… you have to buy a ticket to get in. These were not events in which you had to buy a ticket to get in, nor was there any solicitation of funds made by the president at the occasion, and that’s why they were not fund-raisers.”