Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton - Softcover

Joe Conason is editor-in-chief of The National Memo and an editor at The Investigative Fund. A widely published columnist and reporter, he is the author of several books, including Big Lies, and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. He lives in New York City with his family.

Man of the World CHAPTER ONE

On the first morning he woke up as a private citizen there was nobody around to serve breakfast to Bill Clinton. For eight years he and Hillary had lived in the White House, where staffers and servants rushed to meet every need; and for ten years before that, they had lived in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, where similar if not quite equal personal service had always been available at any hour.

It was Sunday, January 21, 2001—and that was all over now.

Both Clintons rose to face their new life somewhat exhausted from the long ordeal of Inauguration Day, which had begun in the White House greeting the new occupants, then continued through the ceremonial investiture of President George W. Bush amid snow and sleet, a protracted farewell with hundreds of friends and staffers at Andrews Air Force Base, and an unusually long journey from Washington to their new home.

Under the foreboding sky, a freezing downpour had grounded the Marine helicopter that was supposed to transport them from the capital, and had later slowed the usual hour’s drive from John F. Kennedy Airport to Chappaqua, roughly forty miles north of the city. There they had ended the day dining late at a local restaurant with daughter Chelsea, their close friends Terry McAuliffe and his wife Dorothy, and Douglas Band, a former deputy assistant to the president who had agreed to stay with Clinton into his post-presidency.

Nobody had known just how tired the former president was until he fell fast asleep in the Chevy Suburban that brought them all from Kennedy Airport to Westchester.

When the Clintons came downstairs on that first morning, the former president and first lady realized that not only was there nobody available to prepare breakfast for them, but that they had no idea how to make even a cup of coffee in their sparsely furnished and rarely occupied new home. Neither did any of the others standing around in the kitchen with them. But everyone needed caffeine, badly.

“Let’s go get some coffee,” said Clinton.

The first executive decision of William Jefferson Clinton’s post-presidency was to venture into the snowy little town to visit the local delicatessen and bring back some coffee and sandwiches. Pulling on a bright yellow fleece sweatshirt over his T-shirt and jeans, Clinton joined Band in an armored Cadillac limousine, driven by a Secret Service agent, followed by another vehicle with four more agents.

Clinton noticed the first hint of trouble a few minutes later, when they arrived at Lange’s Little Shop and Delicatessen on King Street, the town’s main drag. The deli’s Sunday morning crowd of customers was friendly enough, with a few people shouting “Eight more years!” and “We love you, Bill!” But reporters were milling on the sidewalk, too. When they spied Clinton’s small entourage pulling up, a few began to bark questions. At first he could barely hear what they were saying.

“Why did you pardon Marc Rich?”

Alarmed, Doug Band leapt out of the back passenger seat and walked around to the other side of the car, where Clinton already had stepped out. He put an arm around Band’s shoulder and whispered softly but firmly: “I’ll give you five minutes to clear all this away.” He didn’t want the armored limousine and all the agents swarming around the closed street. He wanted to arrive in his new hometown more in the style of an ordinary citizen.

Minutes later, Clinton ventured into the crowded deli, where spontaneous applause lit his face with a smile. While Band placed their order, including an egg-salad sandwich for Clinton, he shook hands with his new neighbors, posed for cell phone snapshots, and signed autographs on scraps of paper.

There was no means of escape from the gang of perhaps a dozen or so reporters, which felt to Clinton and Band like a horde of hundreds who suddenly had total access to the former president. Nor did Clinton feel he could simply walk away without answering any of their questions—some friendly, some not so friendly. New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney, who had covered both Clintons for years, would later write that the president appeared “in a chatty mood,” relaxed and rested as he mingled with neighbors and reporters.

“So far it’s been wonderful,” Clinton said of life after the presidency. On his first night in Chappaqua he had slept “like a rock,” he added—and no, he hadn’t bothered to read the Sunday papers or turn on the television yet.

With pleasantries out of the way, what ensued was an impromptu press conference. The journalists peppered a wholly unprepared ex-president with inquiries about the scores of pardons and commutations—totaling 177—he had signed during his last day in the White House. Mostly he responded to the questions in generalities, offering a promise to prepare a memo on the “pardon process” for his successor, and a short lecture on compassion toward former sinners.

“The word ‘pardon’ is somehow almost a misnomer,” said Clinton. “You’re not saying these people didn’t commit the offense. You’re saying they paid, they paid in full.” In fairness, he suggested, “we ought to be more open-minded” about individuals who have discharged their debt to society.

Perhaps those deserving of compassion included people like Susan McDougal, the Whitewater figure who had refused to implicate the Clintons in wrongdoing and spent miserable years in jail, or Henry Cisneros, the former housing secretary convicted of paying off a mistress with public funds, who had left office in disgrace. He had pardoned both of them. Arguably even a repentant narcotics smuggler who had done serious time might deserve consideration. That “paid in full” category, however, most assuredly did not include Rich, the “fugitive financier” holed up in a luxurious Swiss chateau while refusing to face multiple charges of tax fraud and violating the U.S. embargo against Iran.

Why would you pardon him?

“I spent a lot of time on that case. I think there are very good reasons for it,” Clinton replied, and referred further inquiries to Rich’s Washington attorney, Jack Quinn, who had formerly worked for him in the White House counsel’s office. Quinn could explain the legal theory behind the pardons of Rich and his business partner, Pincus Green, who had faced similar charges, fled to Switzerland with Rich, and received a pardon, too.

At last Clinton said he needed to go home, to continue the weekend’s work of unpacking with Hillary, who was thrilled to have a private home again and always loved to organize anything and everything. Sitting in the house were well over a hundred boxes of books alone. He needed time to get himself together, he chuckled, and get some more sleep.

But back on Old House Lane, reporters and TV crews would soon line up on the street, outside the tall white security fence surrounding the Clintons’ rambling Dutch colonial residence. Notoriously unfriendly to the press and sensing a media emergency, Band placed a call for help to Howard Wolfson—a tough and loyal pro who had handled press and communications for Hillary’s Senate campaign the year before. Wolfson dutifully drove up from the city and, before sundown, Clinton stepped into the chilly air outside for a photo opportunity and a few offhand remarks so that everyone else could finally could go home, too.

The newly sworn junior senator from New York stayed inside all day, wisely insulating herself from even the appearance of entanglement in her husband’s latest burgeoning crisis. That afternoon, a familiar atmosphere of tension loomed over the house, a feeling that things might be descending once again from bad into much, much worse.

The former president could be excused, perhaps, for mistakenly expecting his departure from Washington to be less dramatic and more cheerful. His approval ratings on leaving office were exceptionally high, matching or exceeding those of such titans as Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the end of their presidencies. Although much of the valedictory discussion had lamented a presidency disrupted by scandal, his administration’s long list of accomplishments had not been ignored. Offering an editorial verdict on his “mixed legacy” and his failure to fulfill an innate potential for greatness, his frequent critics on the New York Times editorial page nevertheless conceded that he had established an impressive record of progress on the economy, the environment, social justice, equal rights—and acknowledged that his bold engagement with a changing world had enhanced American prestige as well as prosperity.

There had been lingering echoes of the Monica Lewinsky affair, in a last-minute legal settlement that Clinton and his lawyers had signed with Robert Ray, the successor to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. After his impeachment acquittal in 1999, his most determined enemies in Congress had consoled each other with the promise that he would surely be criminally indicted upon leaving office.

But following weeks of negotiations with Clinton’s attorneys, Ray agreed not to indict him for perjuring himself before the grand jury investigating the Lewinsky matter, in exchange for his public acknowledgment of making false statements under oath, and acceptance of a five-year suspension of his license to practice law. And now even some of the right-wing Republicans who had voted to remove him expressed relief that the Clinton wars would finally reach an armistice as a new Republican president took office.

So Clinton had left town with the grumbling muted and the cheers of hundreds of admiring friends and staff still ringing in his ears. Here at least was an end to the constant partisan warfare and the opportunity to begin something very different.

Yet that respite was to be measured not in weeks or even days but in mere hours. Scarcely had his successor settled into the Oval Office for the new administration’s first day of work, when Clinton’s old enemies in the media and on Capitol Hill had returned to full uproar, over the Marc Rich pardon and a thousand other supposed offenses. However much they might sniff and snark about “Clinton fatigue,” they never really got tired of kicking him around. And as they quickly discovered, he was an easier, more vulnerable target now.

Unlike the battles of the past, Clinton could no longer turn to a devoted phalanx of presidential assistants, press flacks, personal aides, Democratic Party officials, and congressional allies to shield him. Now he was virtually alone, without protection, as an unrelenting barrage of assaults, insults, complaints, and threats suddenly poured in from every direction.

But a pair of loyal young aides would spend nearly every moment of the next ten years with him: Doug Band, who had earned a law degree from Georgetown while working in the White House and turned down an enticing job offer at Goldman Sachs to continue working for Clinton at Hillary’s fervent request, and Justin Cooper, a native of the Philadelphia suburbs who had worked in Oval Office operations after graduating from American University. Their role in shaping and protecting his post-presidential life on many levels—from philanthropy and politics to press guidance—would too often be underestimated.

On Monday morning, January 22, Hillary Clinton left Chappaqua early to return to Washington with Dorothy McAuliffe. Chelsea and her boyfriend had gone, too—leaving Band; Cooper; Clinton’s military valet Oscar Flores, who had quit the White House to stay with him; the Clintons’ brown Labrador retriever, Buddy; and Terry McAuliffe, who understood that this would be a good day for a friend to stay by the former president’s side.

Plainly irritated by a crescendo of criticism focusing on the Rich pardon, Clinton was grim and angry. His mood didn’t improve that evening, when the network and cable news broadcasts all featured versions of the Rich story that emphasized improper or at least unorthodox procedures—and suspicions of bribery.

“Opponents of the pardon say they think contributions by Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, who has given nearly $1 million to Democratic causes during the Clinton era, were also a factor, though Rich’s lawyers deny that,” reported NBC News White House correspondent Pete Williams. “Lawyers involved in the case today say Clinton never contacted the Justice Department for its views on pardoning Rich. . . . [With] a presidential pardon, Marc Rich is free to come back to the US, no longer facing trial in one of the biggest tax fraud cases ever.”

Unpacking books and souvenirs didn’t seem to provide much distraction for the former president. As he watched an agitated Clinton stewing all day, McAuliffe decided to stay over in Chappaqua for another night. They stayed up late talking and trying to relax over a couple of beers. By the following morning, the rumblings of outrage over Marc Rich had erupted into a national uproar.

The lead editorial in the Washington Post demanded to know “what conceivable justification could there be for former President Clinton, on his last morning in office, to have pardoned fugitive financiers Marc Rich and Pincus Green? Unlike most of those pardoned on Mr. Clinton’s last day, Messrs. Rich and Green have never paid a fine, served a day in jail, disgorged a single dollar of allegedly ill-gotten gains or reimbursed US taxpayers the money that is allegedly owed.”

The pardons were not only “indefensible,” roared the Post, but had defined him and his presidency downward: “With his scandalous present to Mr. Rich, Mr. Clinton has diminished the integrity and grandeur of the pardon power just as surely as he diminished the various privileges he abused by invoking them to defend his tawdry conduct in office. What a way to leave.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer asked even more pointedly: “Did Mr. Rich’s pardon have anything to do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars that his ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, has given the Democrats? Or could it relate to Mr. Rich’s choice of Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel, as his lawyer? . . . This was simply a perversion of justice.”

And on ABC News, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos had furiously denounced his old boss. “He pardoned a man named Marc Rich. You may not remember Marc Rich but he was a banker, a commodities trader, who was trading with Iran when they were holding terrorists and trading with South Africa under the apartheid regime. . . . Instead of facing trial he went on the lam, lived in Switzerland for seventeen years. His ex-wife has given $600,000 almost, over $500,000 to the Democratic Party over the last two years. This is outrageous!”

Many of the newspaper stories on the pardons quoted Rudolph Giuliani, the New York mayor and former federal prosecutor, who had originally indicted Rich and Green. On cable television and the networks, too, Giuliani was urging Congress to “investigate” Clinton’s pardons, insinuating corruption of the worst kind. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Mary Jo White, a Clinton appointee, had let the world know that she was equally furious because nobody had asked her about the Rich pardon before it was granted.

Later, McAuliffe would recall again and again how Clinton had looked during those two gray, awful days: “Just like a deer in the headlights.” As the Rich furor exploded around him, literally nobody was publicly uttering a word in his defense. Indeed, sometime on that Sunday afternoon, both he and McAuliffe noticed that none of the articles or broadcasts...