President Bill Clinton

A Fateful Decision

07/10/2004

Download MS Word version of this document

David Gergen

Simon & Schuster

"A Fateful Decision"

Coming back late one afternoon to my office in December 1993, I was uneasy when I saw the incoming phone message: "Bob Kaiser: Important." Why was the managing editor of the Washington Post calling? It was like hearing that your doctor had just phoned after reading your blood tests.

Even so, I hardly appreciated that having finally gained high ground through his legislative victories, Clinton was now heading toward a cliff.

Five minutes later, Kaiser and I were connected. "You know I don’t call you very often," Bob said, "and when I do, I hope you’ll think it’s serious. But we feel we’re getting the runaround over there on Whitewater and I want you to know about it." At issue, he explained, was a letter that a Post reporter had sent to Bruce Lindsay, one of President Clinton’s most trusted advisers and longtime friend from Arkansas. The letter contained questions relating to the finances of the Clintons in the years before they came to Washington. It had arrived two weeks earlier, and so far Lindsay hadn’t answered. The Post its nose already twitchy about the Clintons’ past, was growing impatient.

"This is the first I’ve heard about your letter, Bob," I explained. "I’ll look into it and get back to you." He knew as well as I did that I was still a relatively fresh face on the Clinton team and that my arrival had been greeted there with minimal enthusiasm by the younger staff. Neither of us was sure how far my influence extended. But Bob and I had also been in the trenches during Watergate – one at the Post, the other at the White House – and we remembered how destructive the stonewalling of those days had been. We had also been on the Yale Daily News together in the early sixties, when Bob had distinguished himself even then with his investigative reporting. He’s fair but tough – and, if misled, very tough.

My first visit that night was with Mack McLarty, whose honesty and friendship I had come to prize. He didn’t seem to know about the letter, either. After making further inquiries, I suggested to Mack that Lindsay, [Mark] Gearan, and I pay a personal visit to the Post, sort out what its reporters wanted, and Gearan and I would recommend next steps. Gearan had become the new director of communications. Mack agreed, and a couple of days later, our White House trio set out for an early evening appointment. It may have been a mistake to suggest that we go to them, not the other around – would we appear too eager? – but I wanted to impress upon the Post that in this White House, we would be forthcoming.

Waiting for us was a phalanx of editors and reporters who were suspicious about that very point. They laid out a long list of complaints about a lack of cooperation by Clinton aides, dating back to the 1992 campaign, and asked that the White House let them look over a range of documents relating to potential irregularities in Whitewater and a previous gubernatorial campaign. Lindsay argued that the White House documents were incomplete and, if released, would be subject to misinterpretation. More vehemently, he complained that Post reporters had been unfair in their Whitewater coverage and that giving over more documents would only trigger new rounds of negative stories. He made a good case, but I thought the Post was more persuasive. Gearan and I, comparing notes later, both agreed that the best course was to give the Post all the documents it was requesting.

The next day, I made the case for full disclosure to McLarty. After the Post had a chance to look over the documents and begin reporting from them, we should make them available to the entire White House press corps. Of course, as reporters pored over the files, a barrage of negative stories would probably hit us. But if Watergate had taught us anything, surely it was that a president must come clean up front and take his lumps then, rather than hiding the facts, letting them be dragged out piece by piece, and stimulating his opponents to initiate a criminal investigation. The first course could be rough, but the second could be ruinous. McLarty agreed. He promised to set up a meeting with President Clinton at which Gearan and I could present our case.

The meeting was set for seven o’clock that Friday night, December 10, upstairs in the family residence with the President and Mack. Mrs. Clinton, I was informed, would also be joining us. It smelled like a debate was in the works: the Clintons’ lawyers would be making the case against disclosure while Gearan and I would argue in favor. Who knew who else might be in attendance to tip the scales? Lindsay? He would be against. Stephanopoulos? Well, maybe he would be for. Best to wait and see.

A couple of minutes before seven, Gearan and I were waiting nervously in the basement of the White House for the elevator to carry us to the family residence on the second floor. It arrived, the doors swung open and, to our surprise, out stepped Mack. He began tugging us back toward the West Wing. "It’s already over," he told us. The Clintons had had their lawyers come in early for a private discussion of the documents, had heard their arguments, and had decided not to give over anything. They didn’t even want to hear the case for disclosure!

I was furious. Not only was their decision rash and unwise – this was the worst possible way to run a White House – but I felt insulted. They had asked me to join their staff only a few months earlier on the theory that they wanted someone with Washington and press experience to provide personal counsel so they could avoid hitting more rocks. They had also promised full access. Until that moment, they had most lived up to their pledges, but here, at a crucial point, they had slammed the door shut.

My flash of anger – rare, I hoped – had an effect. I insisted upon an immediate meeting with the President, and Mack agreed. We would gather the next morning and slip in to see the President after his Saturday radio address. Mack delivered the President to his small study just off the Oval Office so that we could speak quietly over a cup of coffee. George Stephanopoulos joined us, and to my delight, he and I agreed. From the day I was forced upon him, there had been tension between us. On the same side, George and I were a good team.

The President was ready to listen. I made three arguments in favor of full disclosure: first, that the newspaper had a meritorious case and, contrary to others in the White House, I thought it had tried to be fair in its coverage of the Clintons; second, that the Nixon years left no doubt about the need for disclosure in such a case; and, third, that given the nature of the controversy, it was especially risky to take on the Post. As the newspaper that vaulted into the top rank of American journalism through its Watergate investigation, the Post would never back down on Whitewater. Indeed, it would be bristling for a fight if we poked a stick in its eye.

It wasn’t just Bob Kaiser who was tough. Post executive editor Leonard Downie had won his spurs in Watergate and was a proud, tenacious successor to Ben Bradlee. They and others at the paper already sensed that the Clinton team had misled them several times in the past. If we didn’t try to work out a fair settlement, I told the President, the Post would sic a big team of investigative reporters on the White House and that would lead other news organizations into full-throated pursuit. They could drive his presidency over a precipice.

"I agree with you," the President said. "I think we should turn over all of the documents."

But, he added, he didn’t feel he could make this decision alone because his wife had been a partner in the Whitewater land transactions. Looking to me, he said, "You’ll have to speak to Hillary and get her agreement. If she agrees, we’ll do it." It wasn’t clear why he had left it up to me to make the argument to his wife. I promised to see her.

That Monday morning, I called Mrs. Clinton’s office and asked for an appointment. "We’ll get back to you," they promised. Checking later that day, I was told that she would like to see me but her calendar was full in the next few days. "Call back." There were times when one could wander into her second-floor office in the West Wing and see Mrs. Clinton rather quickly; she was usually responsive to staff. This time, it was different: over the next several days, I got shrugs and cold shoulders. The stall was on. I couldn’t get an audience.

Having promised the Post an answer by early in the week, I reluctantly called Downie and told him we needed a little more time. He was sympathetic, up to a point. Frustrated, I went back to McLarty and brought it up with the President; again, I was told, take it up with the First Lady. The days slipped by, then a full week, and I realized that we were in a cul-de-sac. There would be no forward movement without Mrs. Clinton’s assent, and she had already made up her mind.

Finally, on a Friday afternoon two weeks after the canceled meeting in the family residence, I was informed that the next day Bruce Lindsay would deliver a one-paragraph letter to the Post responding to the request for documents. Its message, in effect: "Screw you."

Early the next week Downie called with an inevitable reply: We feel you’re making a terrible mistake. Nothing personal, but we intend to pursue this story relentlessly. And they did.

A growing number of other news organizations joined in the hunt, the New York Times and Newsweek among the most prominent. Coverage of Whitewater intensified, and within a few weeks, other tantalizing tales were floating out of Arkansas. A drumbeat started up for the appointment of an independent counsel by Attorney General Janet Reno, forcing the Clintons at last to turn over all the papers to the Justice Department and to call for the independent counsel themselves. The Clinton presidency was in free fall. On January 20, 1994 – exactly a year from the inauguration – a former federal prosecutor, Edward Fiske, was named independent counsel. "There are no limits on what I can do," Fiske warned and he meant it. By August, when he stepped down, he had opened a broad range of investigations of the Clintons. His successor was a former solicitor general and federal appeals court judge. Within months, Kenneth Starr became a household name.

Perhaps the appointment of an independent counsel was inevitable for the Clintons. I don’t think so. I believe that decision against disclosure was the decisive turning point. If they had turned over the Whitewater documents to the Washington Post in December 1993, their seven-year-old land deal would have soon disappeared as an issue and the history of the next seven years would have been entirely different. Yes, disclosure would have brought embarrassments. Among other items, Mrs. Clinton’s investment in commodity futures apparently would have come to light. But we know today that nothing in those documents constituted a case for criminal prosecution of either one of the Clintons in their Whitewater land dealings. There wasn’t anything truly serious there, and disclosure would have shown that.

More to the point, by disclosing the documents, we would have punctured the growing pressure for an independent counsel. Edward Fiske and Kenneth Starr would never have arrived on the scene, we might never have heard of Monica Lewinsky (who had nothing to do with the original Whitewater matter), and there would have been no impeachment. The country would have been spared that travail, and the President himself could have had a highly productive second term.

So much can turn on a single decision in the White House.

It is tempting to blame Mrs. Clinton for the refusal to disclose. She should have said yes from the beginning, accepting short-term embarrassment in exchange for long-term protection of both herself and her husband. She listened too easily to the lawyers and to her own instincts as a litigator, instincts that told her never to give an inch to the other side. Whitewater was always more a political than a legal problem.

But to blame Mrs. Clinton is to accept the false premise that she was supposed to be in charge. She was not. Voters elected her husband to run the government, and he is the one who bears responsibility here. Decisions made within a White House about what to release or withhold from the press belong in the end to him. Should he not have listened to his own inner voice? Why didn’t he go to his wife and persuade her that it was in their mutual best interest to take a different path? Why didn’t he take charge?

Those questions ran headlong into something fundamental about Clinton and about the style of leadership he brought to Washington.

      home, biography, publications, appearances, commentaries, photos, contact

Copyright © 2004, David Gergen.