It was under Johnson's tutelage that Hale finally made his "proffer" about Clinton-not to the U.S. attorney, but to right-wing activists in Washington, and then to the news media. "I told him that with the influence the Clinton Administration and their friends had in the Federal court system here in Arkansas, that the only chance he had to help himself and his country was to see that all the facts were made available to the major news outlets throughout the world. I helped him get that project in motion."

Johnson later tried to suggest that he hadn't contacted Hale until after he read about Hale's problems in the Arkansas newspapers, but in fact they had been in touch months earlier. He also spread misinformation about Hale's supposed relationship with Clinton. "The Hale family," he told the ultraconservative Washington Weekly, "was a meaningful part of the Clinton Administration when [Clinton] was Governor of Arkansas. Clinton appointed David to a municipal judgeship." Both assertions were false. In fact, as a close observer of state politics and a Republican himself, Johnson surely knew that Hale was no friend of the Clintons. Not only were most of Hale's business associates prominent Republicans, but he had helped manage the campaign of Clinton's opponent, Jim Guy Tucker, in the bitter 1982 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Hard feelings persisted on both sides following that contest, to the point that Clinton and Tucker could scarcely speak of each other without snarling.

Sometime in August, Justice Jim Johnson called David Bossie, his associate from the 1992 presidential campaign, at the Citizens United office in Washington, saying he had "a friend who was in trouble." He assured Bossie that Hale could implicate Clinton in his own financial misdeeds. Bossie promised Johnson he would call Hale, but he didn't have to. At Johnson's urging, Hale called Bossie instead within minutes.

For two hours, Bossie listened with mounting excitement as Hale recounted his tale of woe. He was being set up as "the fall guy" by the Clinton-appointed federal prosecutor, Paula Casey, because she didn't want to act on his accusations against the McDougals, Tucker, and Clinton. As governor, Hale claimed, Clinton had "pressured" him in early 1986 to make an illicit $300,000 loan from Capital Management to a firm controlled by the McDougals called Master Marketing. The purpose of that loan, said Hale, was to "clean up" the Democratic "political family" in Little Rock, a reference to Clinton, the McDougals, and Tucker. On the deal's other end, he continued, there was an inflated $825,000 Madison Guaranty real estate loan provided by McDougal, which allowed Hale to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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