In 1992 the most powerful office in the world was won by the Governor of an obscure and impoverished Southern state… who promised America a new deal…
Bill Clinton: A country of boundless hopes and endless dreams. A country that once again lifts its people and inspires the world. Let that be our cause, our committment and our new covenant.
Six years on, the world held its breath as the most intimate details of Bill Clinton’s adulterous sex life were published via the internet.
Clinton: I, William Jefferson Clinton do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.
Bill Clinton had come out of the blue to end 12 long years of Republican rule that seemed to have entrenched the right in power.
Congratulations!
Clinton: Let us resolve to reform our politics so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. Let us put aside personal advantage so that we can feel…
Clinton’s agenda for change, radical only in the American context, has exposed deep ideological rifts in his society, and made him bitter enemies.
Where Kennedy was stopped by a bullet, Clinton’s opponents have tried to assassinate his character. Clinton has faced scores of detailed investigations into his murky past and an endless series of reports of his wrongdoing.
This is the man who brought the Clintons into the tangled web of Whitewater. Once a millionaire banker and land developer, Jim McDougal was a friend. He persuaded them to invest in 200 acres of undeveloped land in Arkansas. They gained a 50% share in the Whitewater Development Corporation.
Jim McDougal: So I will say to you that the hour of your destiny has struck. Whether this party goes on to greatness or to failure lies in large measure in your hands.
This is the White River in Arkansas. One of America’s best for carp fishing and an idyllic place to retire. In the early 70’s lots were selling everywhere in the mountains.
Ernie Dumasformer Arkansas newspaper editor: You can see how beautiful it is. It’s one of the remotest parts of the state and in the 1970’s a lot of people were moving from the mid-west. People were retiring into pretty elaborate retirement communities throughout these mountains.
The Clintons were locked into an ill-timed $203,000 loan with Jim McDougal.
Ernie Dumas: Interest rates were rising dramatically if you remember back in the late seventies. Under Jimmy Carter interest rates rose to 20, 21 %. People were not borrowing money for this kind of thing. And he was having to borrow money.
And so were the Clintons, on the eve of Bill’s first run for Governor, when he desparately needed it for campaigning. But in 1978, at the age of 32, Clinton succeeded in becoming Governor of Arkansas.
Clinton: I, Bill Clinton, do solemnly swear….
With neither age nor a personal fortune on his side, Clinton became the youngest Governor in the whole of America. But he played down his outstanding achievement.
Young Bill Clinton: I never think about it unless someone else brings it up. I’m trying to be the best, not the youngest.
That same year Jim McDougal bought himself a bank - Madison Guaranty. Soon afterwards he began paying off Clinton’s share of the Whitewater loan. The bank went bust in 1989 & Jim McDougal was jailed for fraud and conspiracy.
Republicans alleged that McDougal had funneled money from his bank into the Whitewater corporation and then into Clinton campaign funds. The Clintons have still not been cleared over Whitewater, and Jim McDougal died in prison this year.
In 1978 Hillary took the family finances in hand. Through the Chicago Mercantile exchange she began gambling in risky cattle futures trades. In just 10 months she made a staggering $100,000 having put up a paltry 1,000. Her trades were handled by one of their best friends, Jim Blair, who also worked for Arkansas’ biggest industry: Tyson foods.
Little Rock financial brokers fed suspicion about how she did it, and were later also questioned by the Public Prosecutioner.
Roy Drew,Little Rock financial broker: It is a stretch of the imagination for me to believe at this point that she could have taken $1,000 and made $100,000 with it.
As their 70’s investments returned to haunt them the Clintons courted the media.
Bill Clinton: You come back here, we’ve got to answer questions, they’re not through with us yet.
They treated the American people to the unique spectacle of their leading family exposing their financial affairs live on national television.
Bill Clinton: Good evening ladies and gentlemen…
The President distanced himself from Jim McDougal and the Whitewater deal.
Bill Clinton: He’s always told you that I had nothing to do with the management of Whitewater. That Hillary had nothing to do with it.
Hillary Clinton: I stopped trading in July of 1979.
Hillary allowed her futures trading to be scrutinised in the first live press conference by a first lady.
Hillary Clinton: There isn’t any evidence that anybody gave me any favourable treatment.
Forget the fact that Bill Clinton is the poorest President to take office this century… he has been made to account for every penny he’s ever earned.
Bill Clinton: And we’ve given them all the information, and everybody’s computers say we haven’t behaved like previous Presidents, we haven’t stonewalled, we haven’t backed up and we haven’t done anything, we’ve just given them the information.
Time and again Clinton has won over a doubting electorate.
Questioner: With recent news reports about the First Lady’s cattle futures earnings and with all the Whitewater reports, many of us Americans are having a hard time with your credibility. How can you earn back our trust?
Bill Clinton: Well first of all, I haven’t been accused of doing anything wrong. I’m waiting for the first credible source to come out and say what I did was wrong. (applause)No-one has accused us of doing anything illegal. We were attacked for losing money, we’ve been attacked for making money…
Back at the beginning of the greedy 80’s, while Whitewater lost money and Hillary made it, Governor Clinton infuriated big business in Arkansas. He took on the timber industry for its widespread clear-cutting in an outright rejection of money politics.
He took on the truckers and the power company. His radical team seemed a threat to almost every industry in Arkansas. It was his downfall at the 1980 election, as big business threw their weight behind his opponent.
Including Tyson Foods, a giant poultry company which later worked closely with Clinton when he began to put big business first.
Frank White, a Republican businessman, bankrolled by his business colleagues was about to teach Clinton the most fundamental lesson of his political career.
Crowd: We want Frank! We want Frank!
Frank White: I’m going to walk out of the room tonight a winner.
He did, and Clinton’s brief spell in power was over.
Young Bill Clinton: I regret that I will not have 2 more years to serve as governor because I have loved it… I have probably loved it as much as any person who has ever loved this office.
The young governor was devastated. He’d wanted to change the world and big money politics had beaten him. Before the next election, Bill Clinton had wised up and given one of his now familiar wide-eyed television apologies.
Young Bill Clinton I’ll have to admit that sometimes I did lose the forest for the trees and it was a mistake because so many of you were hurt by that and I’m very sorry for that.
The reborn Bill Clinton swept back into the Governor’s office in 1982. This time he had no intention of giving it up.
Young Bill Clinton: I have been given something that few people get in life… a second chance to serve the people of this state.
In the next decade Bill Clinton would strike deals with industry. He’d build a reputation as the governor business could talk to.
Bill Clinton doesn’t have a personal fortune but he’s close to plenty of people like Don Tyson who do and would help him raise money.
He made Arkansas a model state for Democratic business solutions. By the time he ran for President he was famous for what his critics called crony capitalism.
Our wages are higher, our factories are busier, our water is cleaner and our budget is balanced - we’re moving ahead.
Floyd Brown: What we see in Arkansas are back door connections. Conflict of interest, friends helping friends and really a small group of cronies running the state for their own personal, political and financial gain.
Roy Drew: The way the state has been set up, it is almost like a rigged card game.
In 1985 Bill Clinton decided to bring “Wall Street to Main Street”. He created a new agency which sold tax free bonds guaranteed by the State to finance business expansion and create jobs. Much of America was built on bonds but Clinton wanted to give the State more control.
It was called the Arkansas Development Finance Authority - and while it boosted business it made him enemies of those who thought Clinton was using it to pay off his political friends.
Roy Drew: ADFA became a conduit from which Bill Clinton could peddle influence.Q: I think you described it as a cash cow.A: Among other things. I’ve used cruder terminology on occasion. I’ve used piggy bank.
Larry Nichols: It was set up to provide loans to people Bill Clinton wanted to provide loans to and that was it.
This year Larry Nichols published a book on Clinton’s sex, drugs and campaign finance scandals since the 1980’s. He was marketing director at the ADFA in 1988.
Nichols: No sir, I was there in February ’88 and I left September ‘88.
When I went to work at ADFA I realised very soon that I was in the middle of the good ol’ boy political machine that has been around Arkansas for over a hundred years. This was the epicentre.
A professional Clinton critic, it was Larry Nichols who brought nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers to the public during the Presidential campaign.
Gennifer Flowers: Yes I was Bill Clinton’s lover for 12 years…
Nichols set the tone of future exposes of Bill Clinton.
Nichols: Three points and I’ve used them all the way through. He’s got a mole on his butt, a fetsish for oral sex and an extremely small penis.Now I know that’s gross… but in every case as I would interview women there were the ones who had and the ones who had not. And there was the other one that I don’t tell anyone - which is the tiebreaker.
But Clinton’s personal morality aside, there was something rotten in the State of Arkansas in the 1980’s. Something which Bill Clinton may have had knowledge of and which goes back to his attempt to fund industry through the state’s bond business. Dan Lasater was a flamboyant millionaire and big campaign fund-raiser for Clinton until he was jailed on cocaine charges in 1986. He was later pardoned by Clinton.
Nichols: Dan Lasater had been known in the area and it was no secret that he was big into cocaine. He had wild lavish parties of cocaine and he was the person selling the original bonds at ADFA.
Many thought he was also selling cocaine to Bill Clinton’s brother Roger. A cocaine addict, Roger Clinton was employed as Dan Lasater’s chauffeur.
Roger Clinton: He loved singing the hymns and the gospel music…
Lasater was also involved in massive money-laundering. One county clerk was recruited to give his name to a false trading account.
Dennis Patrick: It’s very frightening to know what had happened to you. I mean there’s certainly a reason to kill a man for a hundred million dollars, or knowledge of a hundred million dollars.
Dennis Patrick survived three attempts on his life to reveal documents which show huge amounts of money being traded by Lasater’s company.
The way he explained it to me is he knew how to trade the stocks and bonds in an account that would make me money.There’s 11 million 700 thousand. Then there’s a million, 5 million, 4 million, 2 million.
Q: You were worth a lot of money in those days?
A: Well, on paper - obviously someone was worth a lot of money… it obviously wasn’t me.
This man claims he knows a major source of Lasater’s black money when he was recruited by a Lasater crony.
In 1984 Terry Reed got involved in a covert operation run by the CIA in Clinton’s Arkansas. It was flying weapons from Mena airport to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.
Terry Reed: This was a CIA or Government run operation, provided Government cover. We were not low profile ourselves. I based myself right out of this airport.
Bill Alexander: A number of the C-130’s were used during the 1980’s to transport small arms and ammunitions from Mena to support the war effort in Central America and those same contract carriers would be used to bring drugs back to Arkansas on their return flights.
Terry Reed claims he only found out later about the smuggling of cocaine back into America. But he did see the huge sums of cash generated by the operation. His book tying Clinton to the Mena activities became a US bestseller.
The CIA had broken Congress’ laws by aiding the Nicaragua rebels. Secrecy was paramount so Reed says drops were made on isolated properties.
Reed: The purpose of this whole clandestine effort was to avoid detection by US customs as the aircraft which had been to Nicaragua did not want to have to declare its contents.
Republicans still point out that the arms-for-drugs scandal was happening right under Governor Clinton’s nose, involving some of his close business associates.
Reed: Drugs have a way of corrupting local officials, have a way of corrupting governments.
Q: Was it a corrupting influence in Arkansas?
A: Yes, I think so. But we don’t know the extent of that corruption.
Q: Could that have gone as far as the Governor’s office?
A: One should not speculate without evidence, not on where it could have gone, it could have gone anywhere.
Kenneth Starr decided to steer clear of investigating Clinton’s knowledge of the actvities at Mena airport.
Oliver North: I sought approval of my superiors for every one of my actions and this is well documented.
At the time a marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North took the wrap for the arms to Nicaragua operation.The Reagan administration came under intense scrutiny, but Clinton escaped unscathed.
Announcer: Welcome to the second 1996 Presidential debate between Senator Bob Dole, the Republican nominee and President Bill Clinton the Democratic nominee.
In fact mud can just seem to slide off Clinton’s back.
Bob Dole: There’s no doubt about it that many American people have lost their faith in government. They see scandals on an almost daily basis. It seems to me we ought to face up to it and the President ought to say tonight that he’s not going to pardon anybody he was involved in business with who might implicate him later on.
Bill Clinton: I don’t want to respond in kind to all these things. I could. I could answer all of these things tit for tat. No attack ever created a job, or educated a child, or helped a family make ends meet.
America’s right-wing still claims that the death of Vince Foster, a Whitehouse Lawyer who committed suicide, was just one of up to 40 suspicious deaths linked to the Clintons.
Clinton’s past connections have provided endless grist for his enemies to concoct a plethora of plots and alleged unprosecuted felonies. (Pause) He’s certainly not the first President to have criminal associates.
But his own state police force, his own security chief and sundry state troopers have told tales of his debauchery.
And all the President’s women, have lined up for retrospective revenge… or simply lined their own pockets.
Bill Clinton’s character assassins are many and varied and if none of them has had a clear shot, they’ve each had a chance to wound him.
Bill Clinton: A country of boundless hopes and endless dreams. A country that once again lifts its people and inspires the world. Let that be our cause, our committment and our new covenant.
Six years on, the world held its breath as the most intimate details of Bill Clinton’s adulterous sex life were published via the internet.
Clinton: I, William Jefferson Clinton do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.
Bill Clinton had come out of the blue to end 12 long years of Republican rule that seemed to have entrenched the right in power.
Congratulations!
Clinton: Let us resolve to reform our politics so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. Let us put aside personal advantage so that we can feel…
Clinton’s agenda for change, radical only in the American context, has exposed deep ideological rifts in his society, and made him bitter enemies.
Where Kennedy was stopped by a bullet, Clinton’s opponents have tried to assassinate his character. Clinton has faced scores of detailed investigations into his murky past and an endless series of reports of his wrongdoing.
This is the man who brought the Clintons into the tangled web of Whitewater. Once a millionaire banker and land developer, Jim McDougal was a friend. He persuaded them to invest in 200 acres of undeveloped land in Arkansas. They gained a 50% share in the Whitewater Development Corporation.
Jim McDougal: So I will say to you that the hour of your destiny has struck. Whether this party goes on to greatness or to failure lies in large measure in your hands.
This is the White River in Arkansas. One of America’s best for carp fishing and an idyllic place to retire. In the early 70’s lots were selling everywhere in the mountains.
Ernie Dumasformer Arkansas newspaper editor: You can see how beautiful it is. It’s one of the remotest parts of the state and in the 1970’s a lot of people were moving from the mid-west. People were retiring into pretty elaborate retirement communities throughout these mountains.
The Clintons were locked into an ill-timed $203,000 loan with Jim McDougal.
Ernie Dumas: Interest rates were rising dramatically if you remember back in the late seventies. Under Jimmy Carter interest rates rose to 20, 21 %. People were not borrowing money for this kind of thing. And he was having to borrow money.
And so were the Clintons, on the eve of Bill’s first run for Governor, when he desparately needed it for campaigning. But in 1978, at the age of 32, Clinton succeeded in becoming Governor of Arkansas.
Clinton: I, Bill Clinton, do solemnly swear….
With neither age nor a personal fortune on his side, Clinton became the youngest Governor in the whole of America. But he played down his outstanding achievement.
Young Bill Clinton: I never think about it unless someone else brings it up. I’m trying to be the best, not the youngest.
That same year Jim McDougal bought himself a bank - Madison Guaranty. Soon afterwards he began paying off Clinton’s share of the Whitewater loan. The bank went bust in 1989 & Jim McDougal was jailed for fraud and conspiracy.
Republicans alleged that McDougal had funneled money from his bank into the Whitewater corporation and then into Clinton campaign funds. The Clintons have still not been cleared over Whitewater, and Jim McDougal died in prison this year.
In 1978 Hillary took the family finances in hand. Through the Chicago Mercantile exchange she began gambling in risky cattle futures trades. In just 10 months she made a staggering $100,000 having put up a paltry 1,000. Her trades were handled by one of their best friends, Jim Blair, who also worked for Arkansas’ biggest industry: Tyson foods.
Little Rock financial brokers fed suspicion about how she did it, and were later also questioned by the Public Prosecutioner.
Roy Drew,Little Rock financial broker: It is a stretch of the imagination for me to believe at this point that she could have taken $1,000 and made $100,000 with it.
As their 70’s investments returned to haunt them the Clintons courted the media.
Bill Clinton: You come back here, we’ve got to answer questions, they’re not through with us yet.
They treated the American people to the unique spectacle of their leading family exposing their financial affairs live on national television.
Bill Clinton: Good evening ladies and gentlemen…
The President distanced himself from Jim McDougal and the Whitewater deal.
Bill Clinton: He’s always told you that I had nothing to do with the management of Whitewater. That Hillary had nothing to do with it.
Hillary Clinton: I stopped trading in July of 1979.
Hillary allowed her futures trading to be scrutinised in the first live press conference by a first lady.
Hillary Clinton: There isn’t any evidence that anybody gave me any favourable treatment.
Forget the fact that Bill Clinton is the poorest President to take office this century… he has been made to account for every penny he’s ever earned.
Bill Clinton: And we’ve given them all the information, and everybody’s computers say we haven’t behaved like previous Presidents, we haven’t stonewalled, we haven’t backed up and we haven’t done anything, we’ve just given them the information.
Time and again Clinton has won over a doubting electorate.
Questioner: With recent news reports about the First Lady’s cattle futures earnings and with all the Whitewater reports, many of us Americans are having a hard time with your credibility. How can you earn back our trust?
Bill Clinton: Well first of all, I haven’t been accused of doing anything wrong. I’m waiting for the first credible source to come out and say what I did was wrong. (applause)No-one has accused us of doing anything illegal. We were attacked for losing money, we’ve been attacked for making money…
Back at the beginning of the greedy 80’s, while Whitewater lost money and Hillary made it, Governor Clinton infuriated big business in Arkansas. He took on the timber industry for its widespread clear-cutting in an outright rejection of money politics.
He took on the truckers and the power company. His radical team seemed a threat to almost every industry in Arkansas. It was his downfall at the 1980 election, as big business threw their weight behind his opponent.
Including Tyson Foods, a giant poultry company which later worked closely with Clinton when he began to put big business first.
Frank White, a Republican businessman, bankrolled by his business colleagues was about to teach Clinton the most fundamental lesson of his political career.
Crowd: We want Frank! We want Frank!
Frank White: I’m going to walk out of the room tonight a winner.
He did, and Clinton’s brief spell in power was over.
Young Bill Clinton: I regret that I will not have 2 more years to serve as governor because I have loved it… I have probably loved it as much as any person who has ever loved this office.
The young governor was devastated. He’d wanted to change the world and big money politics had beaten him. Before the next election, Bill Clinton had wised up and given one of his now familiar wide-eyed television apologies.
Young Bill Clinton I’ll have to admit that sometimes I did lose the forest for the trees and it was a mistake because so many of you were hurt by that and I’m very sorry for that.
The reborn Bill Clinton swept back into the Governor’s office in 1982. This time he had no intention of giving it up.
Young Bill Clinton: I have been given something that few people get in life… a second chance to serve the people of this state.
In the next decade Bill Clinton would strike deals with industry. He’d build a reputation as the governor business could talk to.
Bill Clinton doesn’t have a personal fortune but he’s close to plenty of people like Don Tyson who do and would help him raise money.
He made Arkansas a model state for Democratic business solutions. By the time he ran for President he was famous for what his critics called crony capitalism.
Our wages are higher, our factories are busier, our water is cleaner and our budget is balanced - we’re moving ahead.
Floyd Brown: What we see in Arkansas are back door connections. Conflict of interest, friends helping friends and really a small group of cronies running the state for their own personal, political and financial gain.
Roy Drew: The way the state has been set up, it is almost like a rigged card game.
In 1985 Bill Clinton decided to bring “Wall Street to Main Street”. He created a new agency which sold tax free bonds guaranteed by the State to finance business expansion and create jobs. Much of America was built on bonds but Clinton wanted to give the State more control.
It was called the Arkansas Development Finance Authority - and while it boosted business it made him enemies of those who thought Clinton was using it to pay off his political friends.
Roy Drew: ADFA became a conduit from which Bill Clinton could peddle influence.Q: I think you described it as a cash cow.A: Among other things. I’ve used cruder terminology on occasion. I’ve used piggy bank.
Larry Nichols: It was set up to provide loans to people Bill Clinton wanted to provide loans to and that was it.
This year Larry Nichols published a book on Clinton’s sex, drugs and campaign finance scandals since the 1980’s. He was marketing director at the ADFA in 1988.
Nichols: No sir, I was there in February ’88 and I left September ‘88.
When I went to work at ADFA I realised very soon that I was in the middle of the good ol’ boy political machine that has been around Arkansas for over a hundred years. This was the epicentre.
A professional Clinton critic, it was Larry Nichols who brought nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers to the public during the Presidential campaign.
Gennifer Flowers: Yes I was Bill Clinton’s lover for 12 years…
Nichols set the tone of future exposes of Bill Clinton.
Nichols: Three points and I’ve used them all the way through. He’s got a mole on his butt, a fetsish for oral sex and an extremely small penis.Now I know that’s gross… but in every case as I would interview women there were the ones who had and the ones who had not. And there was the other one that I don’t tell anyone - which is the tiebreaker.
But Clinton’s personal morality aside, there was something rotten in the State of Arkansas in the 1980’s. Something which Bill Clinton may have had knowledge of and which goes back to his attempt to fund industry through the state’s bond business. Dan Lasater was a flamboyant millionaire and big campaign fund-raiser for Clinton until he was jailed on cocaine charges in 1986. He was later pardoned by Clinton.
Nichols: Dan Lasater had been known in the area and it was no secret that he was big into cocaine. He had wild lavish parties of cocaine and he was the person selling the original bonds at ADFA.
Many thought he was also selling cocaine to Bill Clinton’s brother Roger. A cocaine addict, Roger Clinton was employed as Dan Lasater’s chauffeur.
Roger Clinton: He loved singing the hymns and the gospel music…
Lasater was also involved in massive money-laundering. One county clerk was recruited to give his name to a false trading account.
Dennis Patrick: It’s very frightening to know what had happened to you. I mean there’s certainly a reason to kill a man for a hundred million dollars, or knowledge of a hundred million dollars.
Dennis Patrick survived three attempts on his life to reveal documents which show huge amounts of money being traded by Lasater’s company.
The way he explained it to me is he knew how to trade the stocks and bonds in an account that would make me money.There’s 11 million 700 thousand. Then there’s a million, 5 million, 4 million, 2 million.
Q: You were worth a lot of money in those days?
A: Well, on paper - obviously someone was worth a lot of money… it obviously wasn’t me.
This man claims he knows a major source of Lasater’s black money when he was recruited by a Lasater crony.
In 1984 Terry Reed got involved in a covert operation run by the CIA in Clinton’s Arkansas. It was flying weapons from Mena airport to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.
Terry Reed: This was a CIA or Government run operation, provided Government cover. We were not low profile ourselves. I based myself right out of this airport.
Bill Alexander: A number of the C-130’s were used during the 1980’s to transport small arms and ammunitions from Mena to support the war effort in Central America and those same contract carriers would be used to bring drugs back to Arkansas on their return flights.
Terry Reed claims he only found out later about the smuggling of cocaine back into America. But he did see the huge sums of cash generated by the operation. His book tying Clinton to the Mena activities became a US bestseller.
The CIA had broken Congress’ laws by aiding the Nicaragua rebels. Secrecy was paramount so Reed says drops were made on isolated properties.
Reed: The purpose of this whole clandestine effort was to avoid detection by US customs as the aircraft which had been to Nicaragua did not want to have to declare its contents.
Republicans still point out that the arms-for-drugs scandal was happening right under Governor Clinton’s nose, involving some of his close business associates.
Reed: Drugs have a way of corrupting local officials, have a way of corrupting governments.
Q: Was it a corrupting influence in Arkansas?
A: Yes, I think so. But we don’t know the extent of that corruption.
Q: Could that have gone as far as the Governor’s office?
A: One should not speculate without evidence, not on where it could have gone, it could have gone anywhere.
Kenneth Starr decided to steer clear of investigating Clinton’s knowledge of the actvities at Mena airport.
Oliver North: I sought approval of my superiors for every one of my actions and this is well documented.
At the time a marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North took the wrap for the arms to Nicaragua operation.The Reagan administration came under intense scrutiny, but Clinton escaped unscathed.
Announcer: Welcome to the second 1996 Presidential debate between Senator Bob Dole, the Republican nominee and President Bill Clinton the Democratic nominee.
In fact mud can just seem to slide off Clinton’s back.
Bob Dole: There’s no doubt about it that many American people have lost their faith in government. They see scandals on an almost daily basis. It seems to me we ought to face up to it and the President ought to say tonight that he’s not going to pardon anybody he was involved in business with who might implicate him later on.
Bill Clinton: I don’t want to respond in kind to all these things. I could. I could answer all of these things tit for tat. No attack ever created a job, or educated a child, or helped a family make ends meet.
America’s right-wing still claims that the death of Vince Foster, a Whitehouse Lawyer who committed suicide, was just one of up to 40 suspicious deaths linked to the Clintons.
Clinton’s past connections have provided endless grist for his enemies to concoct a plethora of plots and alleged unprosecuted felonies. (Pause) He’s certainly not the first President to have criminal associates.
But his own state police force, his own security chief and sundry state troopers have told tales of his debauchery.
And all the President’s women, have lined up for retrospective revenge… or simply lined their own pockets.
Bill Clinton’s character assassins are many and varied and if none of them has had a clear shot, they’ve each had a chance to wound him.