By March 1994, the media was wringing its hands about some documents shredded by the Rose firm; one of the boxes that held the papers had Vince Foster’s initials on it. The firm explained that the shredding involved material unrelated to Whitewater and was a normal procedure involving papers that were no longer needed. No one in our White House knew about the routine destruction of unneeded records unrelated to Whitewater at the Rose firm. Moreover, we had nothing to cover up, and there still wasn’t a bit of evidence to indicate that we did.
It got so bad that even the highly respected journalist David Broder referred to Bernie Nussbaum as
“unfortunate” for allegedly tolerating arrogance and abuse of power that led to “the all-too-familiar words—investigation, subpoena, grand jury, resignation” that had “echoed through Washington again this past week.” Broder even compared the “war rooms” that managed our campaigns for the economic plan and NAFTA to Nixon’s enemies list.
Nussbaum was unfortunate, all right; there would have been no investigation, subpoenas, or grand jury if I had listened to him and refused to give in to the demands for an independent counsel to “clear the air.”
Bernie’s real offense was that he thought I should abide by the rule of law and accepted standards of propriety, rather than the constantly shifting standards of the Whitewater media, which were designed to produce the very results they professed to deplore. Nussbaum’s successor, longtime Washington attorney Lloyd Cutler, had a justifiably good reputation in the Washington establishment. In the coming months, his presence and advice would help a great deal, but he couldn’t turn the Whitewater tide. Rush Limbaugh was having a field day on his show, wallowing in the Whitewater mud. He claimed that Vince had been murdered in an apartment Hillary owned, and that his body had been moved to Fort Marcy Park. I could not imagine how that made Vince’s wife and kids feel. Later, Limbaugh falsely charged that “journalists and others working on or involved in Whitewatergate have been beaten and harassed in Little Rock. Some have died.”
Not to be outdone by Limbaugh, former Republican congressman Bill Dannemeyer called for congressional hearings on the “frightening” number of people connected to me who had died “under other than natural circumstances.” Dannemeyer’s grisly list included my campaign finance co-chairman, Vic Raiser, and his son, who had died tragically in a plane crash on a trip to Alaska in 1992, and Paul Tully, the political director of the Democratic Party who had died of a heart attack while working on the campaign in Little Rock. I had delivered eulogies at both funerals, and later appointed Vic’s widow, Molly, as chief of protocol.
Jerry Falwell outdid Dannemeyer by releasing
As Whitewater unfolded, I tried to keep some perspective, and to remember that not everyone was caught up in the hysteria. For example,
