http://www.sgvtribune.com/Stories/0,1002,929%257E505770%257E79%257E,00.html

Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 12:49:48 AM MST

Susan McDougal still defiant
Whitewater figure speaks on legal fight
By Emanuel Parker
Staff Writer

PASADENA Calif-- She served 22 months in seven prisons in four states. Her
ex-husband James McDougal, she said, died ailing and naked in a concrete
solitary confinement cell. And all because of the couple's involvement in
the Whitewater affair with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Susan McDougal told
Pasadena Rotary members Wednesday. Her speech at the Pasadena Hilton was
on "The Realities When the Justice System Goes Awry."
McDougal -- who said she has not forgiven Independent Counsel Kenneth
Starr for the five-year legal battle they engaged in -- was sent to prison
after being convicted in the first Whitewater trial in 1996. She was
released in 1998.
"I went to jail. I remember that first day. I needed to go to jail, that
was the best place for me," she said. "It was the safest place to put
Susan McDougal that day because if I could have got at Kenneth Starr he
would have been a hurt man, as they say in Arkansas."
McDougal repeatedly said a 1985 $300,000 loan she signed for, along with
her husband, was not used to secretly finance a political campaign by
then-Gov. Clinton of Arkansas. She said James McDougal used the money to
purchase and develop land for the Whitewater Development, an Arkansas real
estate venture of the Clintons and the McDougals.
She served 18 months in prison for refusing to answer questions in front
of a federal grand jury and 3 1/2 months of a two-year prison term for her
felony convictions before a federal judge released her because of medical
problems.
McDougal said it was easy to trace the loan and see where the money went,
but prosecutors never did it.
"A lot of anger came because I believe they knew the charges against me
were false," McDougal said. "I believed in my heart they could find those
documents and they knew where that money went, and that it had not gone to
Bill Clinton."
She said independent prosecutors told her she would be found guilty and go
to prison unless she testified against the Clintons, which is what
happened.
Independent Counsel Robert Ray's final Whitewater report on March 22 said
the Clintons were innocent of any wrongdoing in the $73 million Whitewater
investigation.
McDougal's last-noted public appearance in Pasadena was at the 1999 child
molestation trial of Michelle Holden, then the wife of then-Mayor Chris
Holden. She said she came to show support for another woman who was "a
political victim" of prosecutors.
McDougal also hit the headlines in 1998 when a Santa Monica jury acquitted
her of embezzling $150,000 from conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife, Nancy,
for whom she worked as property manager and bookkeeper.
While Clinton granted her a last-minute presidential pardon in 2000,
McDougal said he never thanked her.

"I got a pardon, that was a pretty big present. I can vote now, that was
quite a thing," McDougal said.
She said she never was close to the Clintons. When she and her husband
separated and divorced, "I lost them in my circle of friends. The Clintons
were Jim's friends, and I never talked to the Clintons about Whitewater."
Her husband feared dying in prison, she said, and urged her to agree to
testify against the Clintons to secure his release. He remained bitter
toward her for not backing him when he decided to cooperate with
Whitewater prosecutors, she said.

-- Emanuel Parker can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4475, or by
e-mail at [email protected].

Wotta bitch.  Not much of a looker either, but a lot better looking than Hillary.  Therefore Slick was no doubt playing "hide the salami" with this one too.

Ah yes.  The Presidential legacy continues . . .