A L S O+T O D A Y Bombing Kosovo NATO launches its first airstrikes against Yugoslavia, ushering in a new era of the Kosovo crisis Thunder from Yeltsin Dissed by NATO over Kosovo, Moscow pulls out of the alliance's peace partnership and cancels a date with the White House Where does Elizabeth Dole really stand on abortion? By Daryl Lindsey She's dodged it for 20 years -- but the question won't go away   T A B L E+T A L K Hillary's political future: Will she land in the Senate or the Whitewater fallout zone? Opine in the Politics area of Table Talk   How-to, why-not and what-for -- find it all at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Jesse Ventura Inc. By G.R. Anderson Jr. The marketing of Minnesota's leader raises the question: Who owns the governor? (03/23/99) Go home, Kenneth Starr By Suzi Parker The independent counsel has shone a surreal spotlight on Little Rock (03/22/99) When white means "weak" By Russell Morse It's no fun being the newest minority in California today (03/19/99) Chaos in Colombia By Matthew Yeomans The killing of three American environmentalists won't stop the struggle between the U'wa tribe and big oil companies (03/19/99) Star Wars lite? By Joshua Micah Marshall The Democrats cave on building a missile defense system (03/18/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		SUSAN MCDOUGAL'S MOMENT OF TRUTH | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - From politics to banking and back, the McDougals rode a roller coaster: success one day, failure the next. In 1986, federal regulators forced them out of their failing savings and loan. By then the couple was estranged and in financial straits, and their troubles included the foundering Whitewater investment with the Clintons. McDougal said her husband's health was poor and she struggled to solve the problems herself without letting on how bad things were. "I didn't want to tell Bill and Hillary Clinton,'' she said in tears, because she was too proud. The jury sat stone-faced as McDougal's supporters shared in a tear or two as they listened to the testimony. As James McDougal plummeted into deeper depression and attempted to bounce back from a stroke, he felt as if friends like Clinton and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker -- who was convicted with the McDougals on Whitewater-related fraud charges -- had abandoned him during troubled times. "When trouble hits, everybody runs," she said. By the end of the day, she had cast doubt on her former husband's motives for cooperating with Starr. She testified that James McDougal felt abandoned by Clinton, and told her "he was going to pay back the Clintons.'' Republican activist and Little Rock lawyer Sheffield Nelson, James McDougal told her, was willing to "pay him some money'' for talking to the New York Times about Clinton, and in 1992 he told her that, in fact, one of Clinton's political enemies was paying him to tell the New York Times about Whitewater. She said her husband also told her he discussed Clinton's past "in a conference call with the Bush White House'' during the presidential campaign, and felt the Bush administration would give him a job if they stayed in office. Eventually, James McDougal told prosecutors that Clinton lied in his videotaped testimony for the 1996 trial. James McDougal was a beaten man, his ex-wife said, until "he struck a deal with the independent counsel." Geragos attempted to show that the independent counsel had a history of striking deals with those who held information that it wanted. Those who didn't agree were threatened with prosecution. Susan McDougal said she was offered a proffer of immunity in exchange for her testimony against the Clintons in 1996, but such a deal made her think "something was up." On Monday, Geragos won a skirmish over whether the judge would allow defense witness Steve Smith to say whether he believed Starr's prosecutors were seeking the truth in using him in their investigation. Smith, who pleaded guilty in 1995 to a conspiracy charge in the Whitewater investigation in exchange for his testimony, told the jurors, "I think they were seeking truthful information that would conform with their theory of the case. They sort of had a story line about what happened." Smith said Starr's deputies would listen if he had some information that conformed to their thinking, but they weren't interested if his information didn't fit their ideas. He testified that former associate independent counsel Amy St. Eve handed him a "script" to read to grand jurors, which he said contained inaccuracies that made him fear a perjury charge if he read it as written. Smith testified that he read the statement after he and St. Eve made changes to it. Starr's office denies the charge. McDougal told the jury that defying the independent counsel wasn't easy for her, or her family. "It's been a long road, a very long road ... and it was not an easy decision to make," McDougal told the court. SALON | March 24, 1999 Suzi Parker has written frequently about Arkansas politics for Salon. The Associated Press contributed to this report.