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By Joe Conason and Gene Lyons

March 2, 2000 | Although the campaign to scandalize and destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton involved politicians at the highest levels of the Republican Party, it also attracted freelance operatives whose motives were more pecuniary than ideological. During the 1992 election campaign, two of the most energetic of those in pursuit of scandalous allegations was a pair of raffish Arkansans named Larry Nichols and Larry Case.

A disgruntled former state employee fired at then-Governor Clinton's behest after he got caught using a toll-free state phone to solicit funds for the Nicaraguan Contras, Nichols played a key role in bringing Gennifer Flowers' allegations of her alleged 12-year affair with Clinton to The Star tabloid newspaper. (A musician and composer of ad jingles, Nichols shared the same talent agent with Flowers.) He later went on to national fame as the narrator and star of "The Clinton Chronicles," a Jerry Falwell-sponsored videotape which alleged that the president was involved in drug-smuggling, money-laundering and murder.

The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton By Joe Conason, Gene Lyons St. Martin's Press, 413 pages Nonfiction

Case was a colorful Little Rock private eye with a flair for searching out the sexual secrets of public figures.

Forming a sometimes uneasy partnership during the summer of 1992, Case and Nichols hooked up with several tabloid newspapers and television programs that promised to pay them top dollar for scandalous revelations about the Clintons. The team also formed mutually beneficial friendships with several reporters from the establishment press who were camped out in Arkansas that summer seeking information about the Clinton's sex lives.

As was his custom, Larry Case tape-recorded virtually all of his telephone conversations with Nichols and his newfound media friends, which is perfectly legal in Arkansas. For reasons best known to himself, he turned those tapes over to the authors.

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Not long after Larry Nichols told reporters about the enormous sums the tabloids were prepared to pay for smut about Bill Clinton, he took on an informal partner to help him earn his share. Nichols's new associate was Larry Case, the Little Rock private detective with a reputation for digging dirt on local public figures. The big, bearded Case was an inveterate gossip with a gleefully dim view of human nature; he operated on the assumption that everybody was guilty until proven innocent. He liked heavy-caliber handguns and microcassette tape recorders.

Between them, Nichols and Case quickly established ongoing relationships with the Star, the National Enquirer, and the TV programs "Hard Copy" and "A Current Affair." Through Nichols's extensive connections with Sheffield Nelson and the Arkansas Republican Party, the pair also formed jolly, mutually beneficial ties with reporters and producers from the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Cable News Network, and other mainstream outlets. What few of his sophisticated new friends ever surmised was that Case habitually recorded his telephone calls, and often went around wearing a wire. This is perfectly legal in Arkansas. At times, he can be heard on tape assuring people he's not taping them, when in fact he is. (Following a later dispute with Nichols, whom he derided as a liar, a fraud, and a cheat, Case decided to share his tapes with the authors.)

Case and Nichols hoped to get rich by derailing the Clinton campaign, a quest they began in early 1992 with great confidence. In Arkansas, private detectives are licensed and regulated by a division of the state police. Case had cultivated a few friendly troopers who slipped him copies of investigative materials, including surveillance videos from the 1985 drug case against Roger Clinton, the governor's younger brother. Those tapes became a featured part of his inventory. Typically, Case's potential customers from Washington and New York didn't know that portions of those tapes had been broadcast on local television years earlier. For the right price, he bragged, he could produce videotapes that showed Bill Clinton himself sitting next to a bowl of cocaine at a party thrown by a flamboyant Little Rock financier named Dan Lasater. Due partly to evidence provided by Roger Clinton, Lasater had also gone to prison for possessing cocaine and giving the drug away to his friends. Case's idea of this tape's market value was more than a million dollars.

He and Nichols soon found themselves occupied full-time, frantically interviewing women of all ages and descriptions who were willing to accuse Clinton of sexual impropriety. With Case's tape recorder silently running, the pair regaled each other with bawdy imaginings about everything from Hillary Rodham Clinton's alleged frigidity to what would later be called the "distinguishing characteristics" of her husband's genitalia. When Betsey Wright talked to the Washington Post about suppressing "bimbo eruptions," she was thinking primarily of Case and Nichols.

Next page | Clinton's Oklahoma paramour?