The defense attorneys believed that once the jury... The defense attorneys believed that once the jury knew that Hale had lied about my role in his dealings with the McDougals and Tucker, his entire testimony would be compromised and the prosecutors case would collapse, and therefore the defendants themselves did not need to testifyThere were two difficulties with the strategyFirst, against all advice, Jim McDougal insisted on testifying in his own defenseHe had done so in a previous trial arising out of the collapse of Madison Guaranty in 1990, and he had been acquittedBut the manic depression from which he suffered had progressed since then, and according to many observers, his rambling, erratic testimony damaged not just himself but also Susan and Jim Guy Tucker, who did not testify in their own defense, even after McDougal had unwittingly imperiled them
The other problem was that the jury didnt have all the facts about David Hales connections to my political adversaries; some of them werent yet known, and others were ruled inadmissible by the judgeThe jury didnt know about the money and support Hale had been receiving from a clandestine effort known as the Arkansas Project
The Arkansas Project was funded by the ultra-conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife from Pittsburgh, who had also pumped money into the American Spectator to fund its negative stories on Hillary and meFor example, the project had paid one former state trooper $10,000 for the ridiculous yarn accusing me of drug
chanel wallet smugglingScaifes people also worked closely with allies of Newt GingrichWhen David Brock was working on the Spectator article featuring the two Arkansas state troopers who claimed they had procured women for me, Brock had received not only his salary from the magazine but also secret payments from Chicago businessman Peter Smith, the finance chairman of Newts political action committee
Most of the Arkansas Projects efforts centered on David HaleWorking through Parker Dozhier, a former aide to Justice Jim Johnson, the project set up a haven for Hale at Dozhiers bait shop outside Hot Springs, where Dozhier gave Hale cash and the use of his car and fishing cabin while Hale was cooperating with StarrDuring this time Hale also received free legal advice from Ted Olson, a friend of Starrs and a lawyer for the Arkansas Project and the American SpectatorOlson later became the solicitor general in President George WBushs Justice Department after a Senate hearing in which he was less than candid about his work for the Arkansas Project
For whatever reasons, the jury convicted all three defendants on several of the charges against themIn his closing, the lead OIC prosecutor went out of his way to state that I was not on trial and that there had been no allegations of wrongdoing directed at meBut Starr now had what he really wanted: three people he could pressure to give him something damaging on us in order to avoid a jail sentenceSince there was nothing to tell, I didnt
louis vuitton duffle bag worry about it, though I regretted the cost to the taxpayers of Starrs far-flung efforts, and the mounting casualties among people in Arkansas whose principal sin was that they had known Hillary and me before I became President
I also had serious doubts about the jury verdictJim McDougals mental illness had progressed to the point where he was probably not competent to stand trial, much less testifyAnd I felt that Susan McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker might have been convicted only because they were caught up in Jim McDougals downward mental spiral and David Hales desperate effort to save himself
May was a relatively quiet month on the legislative front, which enabled me to do some campaigning in several states and to enjoy some of the ceremonial duties of the presidency, including the presentation of a Congressional Gold Medal to Billy Graham, the annual WETA-TV In Performance concert on the South Lawn, featuring Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt, and a state visit from the Greek president, Constantinos StephanopoulosWhen we were involved in high-stakes foreign and domestic problems, I often had a hard time relaxing enough to fully enjoy such things
On May 15, I announced the latest round of community policing grants, which brought us to 43,000 of the 100,000 new police officers Id promisedThat same day Bob Dole announced that he was resigning from the Senate to pursue his presidential campaign full-timeHe called to tell me of his decision and I wished him
chanel bags to buy wellIt was the only sensible course for him; he didnt have time to campaign against me and be majority leader, and the positions the Senate and House Republicans were taking on the budget and other matters were hurting him in his presidential race
The next day I called for a global ban on anti-personnel land minesThere were about 100 million land mines, mostly relics of past wars, just beneath the surface of the earth in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin AmericaMany of them had been there for decades but were still lethal; twenty-five thousand people were killed or maimed by them every yearThe damage they were doing, especially to children in places like Angola and Cambodia, was awfulThere were a lot of them in Bosnia, too; the only casualty our troops had suffered came when an army sergeant was killed trying to pick up a land mineI committed the United States to destroy four million of our own so-called dumb, or nonself-destructing, mines by 1999 and to help other nations with their demining effortsSoon we would be financing more than half the cost of demining worldwide
Unfortunately, what should have been a life-affirming event was marked by yet another tragedy, as I announced that our chief of naval operations, Admiral Mike Boorda, had died that afternoon of a self-inflicted gunshot woundBoorda was the first enlisted man ever to rise through the ranks to the navys highest positionHis suicide was triggered by news stories alleging that he had worn two
buy chanel purse Vietnam battle ribbons on his uniform that he hadnt earnedThe facts were in dispute and, in any case, should not have diminished his standing after a long career marked by devotion, stellar service, and evident courageLike Vince Foster, he had never had his honor and integrity questioned beforeTheres a big difference between being told that you are no good at your job and being told that youre just no good
In mid-May, I signed the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act, which funded medical and support services for people with HIV and AIDS, the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of twenty-five and forty-fourNow we had doubled the money available for AIDS care since 1993, and one-third of the 900,000 people with HIV were receiving services under the act
That same week I also signed a bill known as Megans LawNamed after a little girl who had been killed by a sex offender, the legislation gave states the power to notify communities of the presence of violent sex offenders; several studies had shown they are rarely rehabilitated
After the ceremony I flew to Missouri to campaign with Dick GephardtI really admired Gephardt, a hardworking, smart, kind man who looked twenty years younger than he wasEven though he was the Democratic leader in the House, he regularly came home on weekends to go into neighborhoods and knock on his constituents doors to talk with themOften, Dick would give me a list of things he wanted me to do for his
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