FROM UP CLOSE, the collection of scandals labeled Whitewater seems both complex and trivial, like a swarm of dots on a TV screen. But it is neither. With a few exceptions, all the alleged crimes and improprieties fall into four slots: Whitewater Development Corporation and Madison Guaranty S&L (the "piggybank"); the activities of Hillary Clinton and three of her partners at the Rose Law Firm; sex; or cover-ups of the first three. The four-pronged configuration of events reflects one reality: for 14 years, Bill and Hillary Clinton ran with a crummy crowd, nourished in part by state-capital mores, in part by yuppie corner-cutting. They were the Masters of the Universe, Little Rock division. In 1992, the crowd, and its habits, went national.
Some of the alleged misdeeds of the Clintons and their friends are simply sleazy or embarrassing. Some are criminal. On January 20, Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske as special prosecutor to investigate the matter. But what we learn over the next year or two will depend less on Fiske than on the efforts of Congress and the press, and the curiosity of the public.
The Piggybank
WHITEWATER first came to public attention in a March 8, 1992, story in the New York Times. (It would be about the last time the Times was ahead of the curve on the case.) The story reported that the Clintons had taken tax deductions in the mid Eighties on interest payments for loans that had in fact been paid for them by the Whitewater Development Corporation, a real-estate scheme in northern Arkansas which they half-owned. Clinton, who had struggled through the Gennifer Flowers scandal only weeks earlier, asked James Lyons, a friendly lawyer, to look through his Whitewater records, such as they were. On March 28, Lyons reported that the Clintons had lost $68,900 on the venture (see "Cover-ups," below). Reasoning that bad investors can't be tax cheats, the press let the story drop.
By the fall of 1992, the Resolution Trust Corporation, which is charged with cleaning up the S&L mess, was looking at Whitewater's other owners, James and Susan McDougal. James McDougal had known Bill Clinton since the late Sixties. The two couples formed the Whitewater partnership shortly before Clinton was first elected governor in 1978. Four years later, McDougal bought Madison Guaranty, a small thrift. It got bigger. McDougal acquired a blue Bentley, and the nickname "Diamond Jim." Susan's nickname was "Hot Pants," because that's what she wore on commercials promoting Whitewater. In 1989, Madison Guaranty went under, at a cost to taxpayers of $60 million.
An RTC document named the Clintons as potential witnesses to the deeds of McDougal and his "shell corporations." The Bush Justice Department would not give the matter top priority in the homestretch of a presidential campaign, and the Clinton Justice Department let it lie. But in October 1993, the RTC prodded Justice again, and Whitewater once more became a matter of public discussion.
One subject the media have discussed has been favors McDougal allegedly did for the Clintons. Representative Jim Leach (R., Iowa) has called Madison "a private piggybank." Most of the crooked S&Ls of the Eighties benefitted their owners. But Madison Guaranty also extended itself for an array of well-connected Arkansans, including the Clintons. McDougal has claimed that in 1984, Clinton complained that he was hard up. "I asked him how much he needed, and Clinton said about $2,000 a month." Madison Guaranty put Hillary Clinton on a $2,000 a month retainer, paid through the Rose Law Firm where she worked--an arrangement that lasted for 15 months. The White House denies that Clinton sought business for his wife.
A year later, McDougal helped Clinton retire a big bank loan, possibly with the unwitting help of Madison's depositors. In the last days of the 1984 gubernatorial campaign Clinton, feeling a case of election jitters, borrowed $50,000 from a tiny bank in eastern Arkansas, run by a member of his staff. After Clinton won, he asked McDougal to "knock out the deficit." Madison held a fund-raiser in April 1985 which raised $35,000 for Clinton, but investigators suspect that $12,000 of that money--four certified checks for $3,000 apiece--was fraudulently raised. One of the "contributors" whose name appears on one of the checks denies he ever gave $3,000 to Clinton in 1985, for the excellent reason that he was a Republican college student at the time.
More serious are the favors the Clintons may have done for McDougal. The feds were taking a grim view of Madison Guaranty by 1984; the Federal Home Loan Bank Board called its lending practices "unsafe and unsound." In April 1985--the same month as the fund-raiser--Hillary Clinton earned her retainer by proposing a rescue plan for Madison to the Arkansas Securities Department. (The plan proposed that Madison be allowed to sell preferred stock, and offered, as proof of its health, an optimistic audit by Madison's accounting firm.) As luck would have it, the commissioner of the Securities Department whom Hillary's husband had just appointed was Beverly Bassett (now Beverly Bassett Schaffer), a big-hair woman who had done work for Madison Guaranty in an earlier incarnation as a securities lawyer. It doesn't get any tighter than this. In a letter addressed "Dear Hillary," Bassett okayed the plan.
Madison never got around to issuing any stock, and in the fall of 1985 the feds scheduled an audit for early next year. Enter now David Hale, a municipal judge in Little Rock who ran Capital Management, an investment firm backed by the Small Business Administration for the purpose of aiding disadvantaged entrepreneurs. Hale now claims that in February 1986, in a meeting at the State Capitol, Governor Clinton asked: "Are you going to be able to help Jim and me out?"
"That's just the way business is done in Arkansas," Hale adds.
The White House says that Hale, who is under indictment for fraud, is a liar out to "save his butt." What partly supports Hale, however, is that Capital Management in fact loaned $300,000 to that disadvantaged entrepreneur, Susan McDougal, and almost half of that money ended up in Whitewaters account, where it was used to buy 810 acres from International Paper.
These activities have to be set in the context of the Clintons' political and personal situation. In 1992 Bill Clinton looked like an unstoppable figure, a political Terminator. But he had been stopped once, in 1980, when he lost his first re-election bid for governor. He never took a race for granted after that. The Clintons' personal finances did not become comfortable until Hillary began landing on corporate boards in the late Eighties. A friend with Jim McDougal's cash flow was a friend indeed. McDougal went to bat for the Clintons, at times--allegedly--out of order. Did they do the same for him?
The Four Lawyers
IN A 1992 debate before the Illinois primary, Jerry Brown said Clinton's "wife's law firm is representing clients before state ... agencies, his appointees." Clinton replied that the Rose Law Firm was "the oldest law firm in America, west of the Mississippi," and that Brown ought to be "ashamed" of himself "for jumping on my wife." The Rose Law Firm is old, yet, as we have seen, Brown's statement was true. What else had Mrs. Clinton and the partners who crossed the Mississippi with her to Washington William Kennedy III, Webster Hubbell, and Vincent Foster-been up to?
One old case throws an ironic light on present policy debates. In 1989 Beverly Enterprises, a national nursing-home business, decided to sell 45 nursing homes in Iowa. Beverly Enterprises is indirectly controlled by the Stephens family, Little Rock banking kingpins; William Kennedy III of the Rose Law Firm (now associate counsel in the White House) handled the deal. On one day in August 1989 the nursing homes--which an Iowa judge has since ruled were worth about $47 million at the time-were sold to a Texas businessman, who re-sold them to a charitable company he controlled, backed by Iowa state tax-exempt bonds. Final sale price: $63.5 million. Not bad for a day's work. Rose Law could have collected as much as half a million dollars for shuffling the papers, to be divided in bonuses among its partners, including Hillary Rodham Health Care. Meanwhile, the nursing homes, in order to pay off their debt, were forced to raise fees.
The nursing-home deal, all perfectly legal, offered a foretaste of the Clinton health plan: everyone was screwed, except the large medical corporations and the lawyers. But some Little Rock legal practitioners skated on slimmer ice.
Also in 1989, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation decided to sue the accounting firm that had presented a clean bill of health for Madison Guaranty to the Arkansas Securities Department in 1985. Vince Foster, another partner at Rose Law and later deputy White House counsel, wrote the FDIC offering Rose's services as outside counsel, declaring, in a careful present tense, that "the firm does not represent any savings-and-loan association in state or federal regulatory matters." Foster's statement was true, but so narrowly as to be false. The Rose Law Firm did not represent any S&Ls in 1989, but it had represented Madison Guaranty four years earlier-and in the matter under investigation. One seventeenth-century Jesuit, acting undercover in a Protestant country, when interrogated by the authorities denied that he was a priest, adding silently to himself, "... of Apollo." What was good enough for the Jesuits was good enough for the FDIC. Webb Hubbell, a Rose partner who is now associate attorney general--and hence number three man at the Justice Department--handled the FDIC's case, settling the accountants' liability for the $60 million debacle at $1 million.
Two years earlier, two Rose Law Firm partners had handled a similar case for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, in similar style. The feds were pursuing a bond trader who they claimed had defrauded a defunct Illinois S&L, First American of Oak Brook. The Rose Law Firm offered itself successfully as outside counsel, and assigned Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton to the case. No one seems to have mentioned their connection to the bond trader: Dan Lasater, a restaurateur and cocaine smuggler who was a friend of the Clinton family. Lasater met the Clintons because his box at the Hot Springs race track was next to that of Virginia Kelley, Bill Clinton's mother. Lasater ended up paying $200,000, in return for dismissal of the $3.3 million suit.
Vince Foster is gone, of course, but the other three lawyers are still on call. With so much legal advice available, you would think Bill Clinton-- himself a lawyer--would have handled his troubles more adroitly. But maybe he is doing exactly what they tell him.
Sex
NIGHTGOWNS! Saxophones! Garden hoses! Tennis balls! Hot stuff!. But don't waste any time on it unless it speaks to you personally, because it won't have any repercussions. As Richard Nixon might have said, we are all fornicators now. All you'll read about here is alleged behavior that reflects on the Arkansas-Yuppie political style.
The latest Clinton sexpose was a charge made last month by Paula Jones, a 27-year-old former secretary, that Governor Clinton, in 1991, had propositioned her. Since Mrs. Jones was a state employee at the time, she would have grounds to sue for sexual harassment, which she threatened to do if an apology were not forthcoming. No apology has come forth, neither has any suit. Mrs. Jones's story, if true, confirms reports by the Arkansas state troopers and others that Governor Clinton conducted a predatory sex life not unlike the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto.
The political hook to David Brock's report, last December, on the Arkansas state troopers was that Governor Clinton had used state employees as a de facto escort service. The troopers' story was dismissed when the Clinton damage-control team accused them of assorted blemishes and grudges. But part of their tale was confirmed a month later when Sally Miller Perdue, a former Miss Arkansas, told Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Sunday Telegraph that she had had an affair with Clinton in 1983, and that state troopers had ferried him to her condo a dozen times. She said she was talking to a London paper because she had "had it with the American press. ... [T]he've protected Bill Clinton in a way they've never protected anybody in the history of America."
Miss Perdue's most striking complaint was not about the press, however, but about politics (hardball politics). In August 1992, she had met in a restaurant in Missouri, where she then lived, with one Ron Tucker. He told her that "people in high places" wanted her to keep quiet, and that if she didn't, "he couldn't guarantee what might happen to [her] pretty little legs."A colleague of Miss Perdue eavesdropped on the conversation and then reported it to the FBI. Tucker, a retired mining equipment salesman, denies everything, but his former employer remembers Tucker saying in September 1992 that "somebody from the Democratic Party in St. Louis" had asked him to shut Miss Perdue up. Nothing happened to her pretty little legs. But she says she found a shotgun cartridge on the seat of her Jeep one day. She shut up.
Cover-ups
THE PATTERN of cover-ups began with the first scandal, with the Lyons Report. The great flaw of the Lyons Report was, that if the Clintons had lost $68,900 on Whitewater as Lyons claimed--the loss that, in the media's minds, made moot their fraud--why hadn't they claimed it on their tax returns? On the other hand, they were probably wise not to have done so, since several of the checks they paid to Whitewater, which were counted among their "losses," turn out to have been repayments of loans from Whitewater.
Straightening out Whitewater's finances has been hard, since so many of the records have vanished. Susan McDougal said she gave the corporation's files to the Clintons in 1987; the Clintons can't seem to find them. No one can find the records of the 1984 Clinton gubernatorial campaign, which would include information on Madison Guaranty's 1985 fund-raiser. A gnome in the office of the Arkansas secretary of state told The New Yorker that the microfilms of the records had been stored in a former boiler room. "Bingo! It was all ruined. You'd open the drawers and stench from the acid would knock you down."
Most suspicious has been the Administration's handling of the files of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. Foster had been a friend of the Clintons and a partner of Hillary for years; he had sold the Clintons' shares in Whitewater in 1992. After Foster's body was found on the afternoon of July 20, 1993, we know that three White House staffers, including counsel Bernard Nussbaum, entered Foster's office that night. Since the room wasn't sealed until the next day, we don't know who else may have entered it before investigators arrived, on the 22nd. According to an unreleased police report, Nussbaum interfered with interviews of White House staff by directing other White House lawyers to sit in. He himself inspected Fosters briefcase, finding nothing. Four days later, an associate White House counsel taking a second look found the torn-up scraps of a depressed note in the same briefcase. Nussbaum also sifted through the papers in Foster's office, deciding what the investigators could and could not see; he gave Foster's Whitewater files to David Kendall, the Clintons' personal lawyer, citing lawyer-client privilege. A specious excuse: if Foster was their personal lawyer, why was he on the White House staff? If he was on the White House staff, why was he doing personal legal work for them? Five months later--on December 23--Clinten finally agreed to give the Whitewater files to the Justice Department, though even then he stalled, claiming that the files needed "cataloguing." The files were finally surrendered under a subpoena, meaning they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
In Washington, Clinton supporters rely on obfuscations and stonewalling. Back home, somebody may be going as far as thuggery. Sally Miller Perdue claims she was threatened in Missouri. In Little Rock, in June 1992, three goons visited the apartment of Gary Johnson, a lawyer, beat him up, and, he alleges, stole a videotape of Clinten visiting the apartment of Johnson's neighbor, Gennifer Flowers. Johnson suffered serious head injuries, and a perforated bladder, and had to have his spleen removed. These injuries were presumably not voluntary; whether they were inflicted by "over-zealous" Clinton supporters, or by enraged bookmakers, is beyond my power to guess.
Was Vince Foster visited by goons with a gun? That seems too sensational to be true. The most lurid scenario for his suicide would have him shooting himself in some inconvenient location, whence his body was taken to Fort Marcy Park. But until we have a police report--a report by real police, not the beer-and-dog-doo police who mind federal parks in the Beltway--all speculation is conservative grassy-knollism. Robert Fiske, the special prosecutor, announced on February 23 the names of the lawyers who would investigate Foster's death. My own eccentric theory of his death is that it had nothing to do with Whitewater, or politics of any kind. People who kill themselves usually suffer from woes far deeper than the proximate upheavals in their lives.
Looking Ahead
ROBERT FISKE has rented office space in Little Rock for three years. If Lawrence Walsh's performance as an independent prosecutor is any guide, he could be at work for much longer. Fiske's resume suggests a comfortable legal establishmentarian, but, like Walsh, he now has a personal interest in finding something.
We may learn more sooner from Congress. Jim Leach, the ranking minority member of the House Banking Committee, has the voice and manner of someone who hosts a children's show on public television. But on Whitewater, he has the bit between his teeth. The law requires Congress to review the activities of the RTC every six months; the latest hearing is three months late. The House parliamentarian has advised Congressman Leach that the minority may call any witnesses it likes, though the chairman-Henry Gonzalez of Texas-- could restrict questioning. "The minority," says Leach, "will attempt to demonstrate that Madison attempted direct and indirect payments of the obligations of Whitewater and its principals."
Leach was the first congressmen to note the burgeoning S&L mess, and Whitewater strikes him "as deja vu all over again. There are a lot of analogies between Madison and Lincoln," the S&L of Charles Keating. "Lincoln was a personal piggybank," which Keating tried to keep afloat "by compromising important figures in Congress [the Keating Five]. Madison is a digit and a half smaller than Lincoln, but money was sifted out, and an attempt was made to compromise the governor through campaign contributions, but also by a persistent conflict of interest"--the Whitewater partnership. "I was naive to believe at the beginning," Leach concludes, "that it was just modest embarrassment that might be borne by the Clintons. Each passing week, darker imagery appears.''
Will the darker imagery have political consequences? The White House seems to think so: the New York Times, putting the story back on page one for the first time in almost two years, reports that senior Clinton aides, including Nussbaum, were briefed by the head of the RTC on the statute of limitations concerning offenses related to Madison Guaranty. If the story simply limps along, in Congress and in a reawakened press, it must erode the cushion of support that any President needs when a peacekeeping mission bogs down, or the economy goes flat.
The great unknown is the attitude of the public. Here is a guide for focusing its thoughts. In 1992, we thought we elected the New Politics. Maybe we did, but we also elected some very old politics. We sent a gang of corsairs to Washington--sharpers and shysters and razorback banditti. In Arkansas, they lied and stole, and some of them did worse. In the White House, they lie about what they did then. When they were running for office, nobody told us what they were like; but now that they're in power, can we learn?
Mr. Brookhiser. an NR senior editor, is a columnist for the New York Observer.
HRC: A Film by Oliver Stone
Fade in. Bedroom scene--night. The phone rings. We hear the noises of a man groggily waking up. His hand reaches for the clock on the bedside table. It is 3:30 A.M. He turns on the bedside light, and we see a photo of President Bush and Congressman Jim Leach shaking hands. The photo is inscribed, "To Jim, Thanks for all you've done, George Bush." The man answers the phone.
CONGRESSMAN LEACH: [groggy] Yeah? Who is this?
MAN'S VoiCE: Good morning, Mr. Congressman. LEACH: [angry] Who is this?
MAN'S VOICE: Are you watching CNN? There's a lesson for us all. LEACH: Who the hell is this?
We hear a click. Then a dial tone. The woman next to him stirs. WoMAN's VOICE: Who was that?
LEACH: No one, Elizabeth. Go back to sleep.
Leach grabs the remote control from the bedside table, and clicks on CNN. We see the familiar CNN logo above the subscript, "LIVE FROM LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS." On the screen is a video feed of a burning office building.
REPORTER: We're here at the Worthen Tower in downtown Little Rock, where it seems that the 14th floor has caught fire--any word yet on casualities?
FIRE CAPTAIN: No word yet. We doubt anyone was in the building at the time.
REPORTER: What's on the 14th floor?
FIRE CAPTAIN: [looking at notes] The offices of KMPG Peat Marwick.
REPORTER:KMPG Peat Marwick is an accounting firm that did the controversial 1986 audit of Madison Guaranty, the S&L linked to the Whitewater scandal currently dogging President and Mrs. Clinton.
In bedroom.
LEACH: Holy smokes--
The phone rings. Leach grabs it.
LEACH: Yes?
MAN'S VOICE: Accidents happen, Mr. Congressman. Fires, suicides, murder... maybe it's time you went back to being a non-partisan consensus-building moderate Republican with a low ACU rating. What do you say? Oh, and on an unrelated note, if you vote for the Cooper plan we'll kill your dog.
Click. Dial tone.
Cut to: Little Rock, Arkansas, street--daytime.
It is early morning. Walking unsteadily down a shabby street is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, English journalist. He turns down a side street and stops in front of a seedy bar. He smiles to himself, and enters. Evans-Pritchard saunters up to the bar and takes a seat. A hugely fat bartender turns around.
BARTENDER: Too early, mister. Cain't serve you.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Actually, my man, I just came to meet a friend. Pause.
EVANS-PRITCHARD:Too early, you say?
BARTENDER: Too early. We got laws here in Arkansas. EVANS-PRITCHARD:: Coffee, then. The bartender nods and places an empty mug on the bar. Before he can fill it with coffee, Evans-Pritchard places a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Though I won't be upset to find, say, a splash of that good Kentucky whisky in my mug. In fact, I'd be grateful.
The bartender smiles a toothless smile, and fills up the mug with Maker's Mark.
BARTENDER: Came to meet a friend, say?
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Yes I did. He's called Jerry Parks. Did security work for your governor for years. And worked on his campaign for President. Do you know him?
BARTENDER: Knew him.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Knew?
BARTENDER: He's daid, mister. Shot like a dog on the streets of Little Rock.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: [choking on his whisky] Dear God ! BARTENDER: Word to the wise, brother. Get out of Little Rock. Medical Examiner are conferring. The X-rays are clipped to the lightbox. The X-rays are clearly marked: "FOSTER, VINCENT."
LEACH: No exit wound?
The Medical Examiner looks at his notes and shakes his head.
LEACH: Well, then the round must have lodged in his skull, right?
MEDICAL EXAMINER: We didn't find the bullet, Congressman.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: What?
MEDICAL EXAMINER: I don't really know how to explain it. We have an entry wound. But no exit wound. And we never found the bullet.
LEACH: But if you--
MEDICAL EXAMINER: Sir, if you want to know anything more, you're going to have to speak with the doctor who performed the autopsy.
LEACH: And who was that?
MEDICAL EXAMINER: Dr. Bernard Nussbaum.
LEACH: Bernie Nussbaum?
EVANS-PRITCHARD: He's not a coroner! He's the President's lawyer ! MEDICAL EXAMINER: I know, I know. But he said this was standard procedure. It was . .. official.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Jim, I think I need a drink.
Cut to: Rayburn House Office Building--night.
The streets of Capitol Hill are deserted. The Capitol Dome glows white in the blackness. One office window is still bright. Room 2186.
Cut to: Leach's Office, Rayburn 2186. The place is filled with papers, charts, and a few easels with large diagrams. The walls are covered with sheets of paper, all showing boxes, lines, and flow charts. On one sheet is written in big letters, "WHITEWATER," On another "MADISON GUARANTY," On another "INTERNATIONAL PAPER."
Pizza boxes litter the place. A half-empty gin bottle sits on a desk, the top off.
LEACH: Back up. Explain this to me again.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Vince Foster discovers that the Clintons didn't take the proper deduction for their Whitewater losses.
LEACH: Right. So he does some checking.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: On his own. And discovers a complicated system of financing, with Jim McDougal always at the center. The Clintons made the investment with the help of a loan.
LEACH: From International Paper. They later got a sweetheart timber deal from Governor CIinton--
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Who also got the state to build a road through the development that directly enhanced his investment--
LEACH: Meanwhile, campaign debts mysteriously disappear, and Morgan Guaranty, McDougal's S&L, has money trouble, and petitions, via its counsel, Hillary Clinton, te be allowed to recapitalize via an unusual stock offering--
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Which is approved by a state bank regulator appointed by Governor Clinton--
LEACH: And when Madison does go under, the RTC is petitioned by Rose Law Firm, of which Hillary Clinton is a partner, to be named executer--
EVANS-PRITCHARD: The petitioner's neglecting to mention that it was they who bankrupted Madison in the first place.
LEACH: So poor Vince Foster, discovering this list of possible impeachable offenses, decides to make an honorable exit, rather than face the dilemma of lying and ruining his spotless reputation, or telling the truth and ruining the Presidency of his oldest and dearest friend. EVANS-PRITCHARD: Friends. Plural. A knock. A young man, Geoffrey, enters timidly.
GEOFFREY: I brought the tape, Mr. Congressman. It was done in Little Rock yesterday, and reached our ofrices this morning. Leach jumps up and ushers him in. LEACH: Great! Thanks, Geoffrey. He takes a small package from the young man's hand, and pops it open. A videocassette spills out.
GEOFFREY: Boy, if the special prosecuter knew I had leaked the McDougal deposition tape, boy I'd be in deep trouble.
Evans-Pritchard hurries to the door. Stops. Turns around, goes back to the bar and downs the rest of his whisky. Then he exits quickly. BARTENDER: Have a nice day! Cut to: Monocle Restaurant.
The Monocle, a busy Capitol Hillarea restaurant, is packed with lawmakers, lobbyists, staffers, and journalists. It's lunch hour. Congressman Jim Leach is seated at the bar, drinking a Perrier. On the TV above the bar, there is a White House news conference going on.
George Stephanopoulos is being grilled by reporters.
REPORTER 1: . . . and what about reports of file shredding at the Rose Law Firm?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Distorted.
REPORTER 2: Is there any connection of the loan to the Clintona from International Paper and the subsequent granting by Governor Clinton of timber rights to International Paper?
STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm not going to dignify that with a response.
REPORTER 3: Why has the Justice Department so far refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests for the investigative files of Vincent Foster's death?
STEPHANOPOULOS: You'd have to ask them.
REPORTER 4: Where are the records of the 1984 Clinton gnbernatorial campaign fund-raiser? They're missing from the Pulaski County Registrar's office, from the Arkansas Secretary of State's office, and backup microfiche files have reportedly been destroyed.
STEPHANOPOULOS: WhO knows? It's 1994. That was ten years ago. Anything on health care? Anything? Anything? The Monocle.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Hullo, Congressman. Thanks for agreeing to meet me. [extends hand] Evans-Pritchard.
Leach eyes him suspiciously. Then extends his hand.
LEACH: Call me Jim, Evan.
EvANS-PRITCHARD: No, no. My name is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. My Christian name is Ambrose. My surname is Evans-Pritchard. It's a hyphenated name. Double-barreled as it were. Quite common in England, though a bit non-U, I'm afraid.
LEACH: What do you want, Ambrose? Im busy.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Right. Sorry. I'm a journalist, you see--
LEACH: If you want an interview, go through my office.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: No, no. It's nothing like that. I just--listen, do you think we could talk somewhere more private? Will you meet me in the men's room in one minute?
LEACH: The last time an English guy asked me that I popped him in the mouth.
Leach gets up to go.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Just trying to save your life, here, Congressman ! Leach stops. Turns around.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: So far, two people have died. There's been a fire. Documents have gone missing. Now, I'm a journalist. I write for the Sunday Telegraph. I'm in this to get rich and famous. You're the ranking minority leader on the House Banking Committee. You're in a lot of trouble. And if I'm not mistaken, somebody has already threatened you. So you can walk away and take your chances, or you can hear what I have to say.
Pause.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: It just might keep you from parking your car in Fort Marcy Park and making a big mess on the upholstery. Leach regards him carefully.
LEACH: Can I buy you a drink?
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Oh, well, I drink so rarely. And it's still quite early. Oh, what the hell. I'll have a gin and water. Hold the water.
Cut to: A fluorescent lightbox lights up. A hand clips on a few X-rays of a human skull. A metal pointer taps on the X-rays.
MAN'S VOICE: Here you see the entry wound. The bullet entered Mr. Foster's skull approximately here. Cause of death was instantaneous.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Any exit wound?
MAN'S VOICE: There wasn't one.
Cut to: Medical Examiner's office.
Leach, Evans-Pritchard, and the
EVANS-PRiTCHARD:Or, ahh, Deep Throat, eh?
GEOFFREY: What?
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Deep Throat?
GEOFFREY: Who?
EVANS-PRICHARD: Never mind. Leach puts the tape in the VCR and cues it up. Geoffrey is still there, though the two others are lost in thought and don't notice him.
LEACH: The problem is that we still don't know who's behind all of this.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Who has the motive, the opportunity, and the ability to orchestrate this kind of thing?
GEOFFREY: Mr. Fiske says it's all a bunch of hooey. He says he'd rather be back at Davis, Polk collecting his partnership checks.
Leach suddenly whirls around.
LEACH: What did you just say, kid?
GEOFFREY: About Fiske's checks?
LEACH: About Davis, Polk.
GEOFFREY: Mr. Fiske's firm?
LEACH: And also the firm of--
EVANS-PRICHARD: [reading file] International Paper ! LEACH: [to Geoffrey] Kid, you're a genius ! The VCR pops on, and we see Jim McDougal in tight close-up, answering questions. He is clearly drained and tired. The background is drab and institutional. The sound is tinny and hard to decipher.
A hand reaches into frame, and hands McDougal a cup of coffee. He takes it and mouths a "thank you" and shifts in his chair, which rustles the mike, and distorts the sound even more.
EvANS-PRICHARD: Stop the tape.
LEACH: What?
EVANS-PRICHARD: Stop the tape. Go back. Where someone hands him the coffee.
Leach rewinds the tape. We see the same image backwards. He stops the tape, then plays it forward again.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Slowly. Slowly. There. Stop. Someone hands him a coffee. He says "thank you" and then he says a name. Thank you someone.
LEACH: We can't hear the name because he messes up the mike.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Go back. Leach rewinds the tape, then plays it again, slowing down when the coffee appears.
LEACH: Thank you-- We see McDougal's lips. We see the name he says.
EVANs-PRITCHARD: Thank you.
GEOFFREY: Hillary? It looks like he's saying, "Thank you, Hillary." Leach and Evans-Pritchard exchange a glance.
LEACH: I think I need a drink.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: I think I could be persuaded to join you.
Dissolve to hustle and bustle of D.C.--morning. Cut to Leach's office.
Leach and Evans-Pritchard are asleep, Leach at his desk, EvansPritchard on the sofa. Geoffrey is watching the office television set. It is tuned to the Today show.
GEOFFREY: Guys? Congressman? I think you should wake up. They stir.
GEOFFREY: I mean it! Wake up! You should see this ! Leach and Evans-Pritchard struggle awake.
EvANS-PRITCHARD:What, my boy?
GEOFFREY: This.
He points to the TV and turns up the sound.
A body bag being wheeled out of a local jail. At the bottom of the screen is the NBC logo and the words, "LIVE FROM LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS."
ANNOUNCER: --all the more curious. Luckily, though, Special Prosecutor Fiske had the opportunity to depose Mr. McDougal before his untimely massive heart attack.
EVANS-PRITCHARD: Another reason why I never drink coffee.
LEACH: My God ! The silence is broken by a ringing phone. Leach stares at it fearfully.
GEOFFREY: Aren't you going to answer that?
LEACH: Why bother? I know who it is.
He and Evans-Pritchard exchange looks. Fade out.
Mr. Long is a television writer and producer living in Santa Monica.