The American Spectator

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(Page 2 of 10)

p>Having recently spent a good deal of time in Arkansas with people who were close to the Clintons in their Little Rock years, I'm fairly certain that it was less a lack of professional interest in the subject, and more the lack of on-the-record sourcing due to the strong-arm tactics acknowledged by Wright and Stephanopoulos, that kept what could have been one of the biggest political stories of the campaign from seeing the light of day. br> /p>

II

Much has been written of Clinton's fascination with JFK, dating back to the time he was introduced to the president while visiting Washington as a teenager in 1963. When Clinton returned from Washington, he announced to his mother that he was going to enter politics. This past September, President Clinton summoned journalist Richard Reeves, the author of the recent biography President Kennedy, to the White House to discuss his book. Reeves writes of how Kennedy and his handlers worked hard to keep stories of the president's womanizing out of the papers, much as the Clinton campaign would do some thirty years later:

[Kennedy] understood an important fact about the press and scandal: respectable journals generally avoided being the first to report on rumors or evidence concerning sex. But he knew that once something had been printed, no matter where, newspapers and magazines quickly quoted each other, using the first publication as a peg for their own reports…. The idea was to stop the first mention.

Clinton followed his idol's strategy, and thus far he's been amazingly successful. On the Flowers tapes, Clinton is heard saying, "They can't run a story like this unless somebody said, 'Yeah, I did it with him.'" Given the way Flowers was made an example of by Wright, Blumenthal, and others, women who have been linked to Clinton were less likely to come forward. But aside from the women, there was another group of sources sought after by reporters in the fall of 1992 because they were uniquely positioned to have first-hand knowledge of the subject: the dozen or so Arkansas state police officers assigned to the governor's security detail both before and during the presidential run.

Under state law, these troopers are charged with safeguarding the first family of Arkansas, as well as the grounds of the gubernatorial mansion in downtown Little Rock. In practice, at least during the six terms that Clinton held office, the troopers functioned as chauffeurs, butlers, bodyguards, errand boys, and baggage handlers. They did everything for the Clintons, from receiving and placing telephone calls to changing bicycle tires and cleaning up after Socks the cat (who apparently retches with alarming frequency).

In late August and in September and October, I spent more than thirty hours interviewing four state troopers who had worked for the Clintons at various times over the years; in total, their experience covered most of the period from early 1979, when Clinton first took office, to January 16, 1993, when Clinton left Little Rock and flew east for his presidential inauguration. The meetings took place after I received an unsolicited tip that a group of Arkansas troopers was considering coming forward to tell all they knew about the Clintons, including extensive first-hand information about Bill's philandering.

The troopers' proximity to the Clintons had prompted reporters from many national news organizations to seek them out for interviews in 1992, calling them at home all hours of the day and night for weeks. Up until last fall, when I interviewed them, they had not talked. I spoke with the troopers separately and in various combinations and then re-interviewed them several times on tape to test and re-test their account for inconsistencies and embellishment.

Ultimately, two of the troopers, Larry Patterson and Roger Perry, decided to go on the record with the material and allow their names to be used in this piece. At that point, they retained two lawyers: Cliff Jackson, a former Oxford classmate of Clinton's, who had accused Clinton of lying about his draft history in a series of media interviews in 1992; and Lynn Davis, a former director of the Arkansas state police and a former prosecutor. [FOOTNOTE 3: The process of getting the material from Patterson and Perry on the record was a long one. In October we signed a written agreement authorizing me to publish this piece in this magazine while protecting their right to sell a book later. So great was their fear of retaliation from what they called "the Clinton machine," that the troopers then had Jackson make inquiries about establishing a defense fund to cover potential legal costs and lost income that could result from coming forward. In early December, however, the troopers decided to go on the record with no such protection, in order to guard against the potential criticism that they had been induced to talk for money. To allay my own concerns on this issue, I requested and received written assurance from Jackson prior to publication that no money had been paid or promised to his clients by anyone for disclosing any information.]

The troopers also spoke on the record and swore to affidavits furnished to the Los Angeles Times, which may make use of some of the material for a broader piece being developed on how the Clinton campaign kept these and similar stories from surfacing in 1992. The other two troopers have decided against going public at this time; their recollections are included here only if what they related to me in our off-the-record interviews corresponds with specific experiences they confided contemporaneously to one or both of the on-the-record troopers.

The troopers seem to have mixed motives. They say they are moved by public-spiritedness. They have come forward now because they believe the reckless personal behavior and poor judgment they witnessed by then-governor Clinton, if continued by the president, a subject on which they cannot speak authoritatively, could constitute a risk to the national security of the U.S. by making the president easy prey for blackmailers.

But as with all sources, there is also an element of self-interest and score-settling in their decision to speak to the media. As the troopers see it, Clinton behaved ungratefully and even rudely toward them after election day. "We lied for him and helped him cheat on his wife, and he treated us like dogs," Patterson said. When one of the troopers asked Clinton to sign some photographs for his family after the election, he said the president-elect snapped: "I don't have time for that s ---." Clinton assured Patterson that he would secure for him a lateral transfer within the state police organization before leaving office, but he never found five minutes to make the telephone call. (The current governor, Jim Guy Tucker, later did.)

There is also a prospective financial interest. Patterson, 47, the articulate senior member of the group, with twenty-seven years of service in the state police, and Perry, 43, with sixteen years of service, hope to collaborate on a book about life at the governor's mansion. Perry, who worked for Clinton in his first term, returned to duty at the governor's mansion in 1989 and remains on Tucker's detail. Patterson had worked for Clinton on several special assignments before assuming full-time duties in 1987. They both served Clinton until his last day as governor in 1993.

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