Hell to Pay
Borders, Rebecca
TO PAY BY REBECCA BORDERS DAVID WATKINS, BILL CLINTON'S LONGTIME FRIEND AND AIDE, WAS THE WHITE HOUSE'S DESIGNATED FALL GUY IN THE TRAVEL OFFICE SCANDAL AND MUCH MORE. DISGRACED AND EMBITTERED,...
...One reason, Watkins suggests, might be that Clinton was involved in another of his extramarital affairs...
...As a boyhood pal of the newly elected president, and holding a choice political appointment, he was embarking on a lifelong dream come true...
...The White House originally had high hopes that the Management Review would silence the growing congressional criticisms and investigations, but their plan didn't work...
...It was a busy time for re-appearing documents: Hillary Clinton's long-lost and even longer-subpoenaed billing records were "discovered" the next day...
...We had pledged to have a 25 percent staff cut in the White House effected by September 3o...
...Watkins says that he and Vince Foster went to Secret Service head John Magaw with the Clintons' concerns...
...It was two days before the firings, on May 17, that Watkins concluded he would have to dismiss the Travel Office personnel...
...I'm wearing the same clothes as yesterday and I'm going to have to wear them the whole day again.'" White House logs obtained by The American Spectator confirm that Scott spent at least one other night there —the night of Foster's death...
...Neil Eggleston, the former White House associate counsel and designated point man for the Travel Office contretemps, sat in on the GAO interview, during which Watkins testified that Hillary had "urged that action be taken to get 'our people' into the Travel Office...
...Yeah...
...They wanted the agents in question transferred out of the White House at once...
...World Wide would then funnel the money to the campaign, which could use the valuable cash for advertising and other political expenditures...
...The American Spectator January 1997 We just couldn't believe it...
...The president called, and Watkins thought that he would have a chance to explain just what had happened...
...waved the photos around on the floor of the House, the controversy quickly reached a fever pitch...
...Watkins's still-defensive manner aside, there didn't seem to him to have been anything unusual about the trip before setting out that day...
...w ithin about a month, Watkins says, his office was moved from the West Wing to the Old Executive Office Building...
...After Watkins was canned, those duties reverted to Bruce Lindsey, who he says got the Democratic National Committee to approve a consulting arrangement putting him "on the tit for $3,000 a month...
...Not long after, Cornelius demanded a transfer, and Watkins sent her on a fateful tour of duty in the Travel Office...
...He was becoming a liability to the Clintons, and when Watkins went on an ill-fated golf trip that got noticed by a local photographer a few days later, the end came quickly and furiously...
...William Clinger, the chairman of the hearings, subpoenaed the documents and threatened to hold both Watkins and Matt Moore, to whom Watkins had dictated the memo, in contempt of Congress if all of the drafts were not turned over...
...we were incredulous...
...I couldn't wait to get into work every morning...
...Clinton's dissatisfaction with day-to-day operations spread quickly to the Secret Service...
...It occurred to us at the time that Magaw must have thought that we were wired...
...The very next evening, according to White House residence logs, Bill and Hillary held an unusual meeting in the family quarters...
...I believe that you all from Arkansas are too naive and too nice...
...We had to make this work...
...Ty, I don't think so,' I told him...
...Watkins claims that Cobb told him he could no longer represent him "because of a conflict with the Independent Counsel...
...Then, after besting former lieutenant governor Joe Purcell for the Democratic nomination, Clinton focused on the big race itself...
...They have to treat [Watkins] with kid gloves," Safire pronounced, "ushering him out because he knows too much...
...Within three months, Newsweek ran a small item claiming that Hillary had thrown a lamp at Bill during an argument in the White House's family quarters...
...Clinton follows him outside and tackles him in the parking lot...
...Watkins maintains that the loan "was purely a business deal...
...And that's when his troubles began...
...Draft me a letter explaining the whole thing...
...There was a morale problem by Clinton not being there...
...Once on board, though, Watkins admits that he relished the struggle and says he is still "very proud" of the work he did for the campaign...
...Highly recruited, Watkins accepted a full athletic scholarship to Louisiana State University...
...soon enough word was floating through Washington's many gossip circles...
...And I said, Ileene, we've got to go, you're not going to believe this, Vince Foster's committed suicide...
...Again, he says, he believed the effort would be short-lived...
...Foster had apparently told his wife not to talk on their home phone because he believed he was under surveillance...
...The thing was to protect her," Watkins says...
...As Thomasson later told a -louse committee under oath, she could not "recall" telling anyone else about the memo—which may be safely taken as a sign that word about her boss's literary labors was starting to get around...
...The GAO investigation had brought Watkins to the serious attention of journalists for the first time...
...Then I go out through the kitchen, and Dick's out there and Clinton is leaving...
...That clinched it for me that I didn't want to be a politician...
...By the mid-197o's he had his own firm, Watkins & Associates, and was a thriving success when he re-made the acquaintance of his boyhood chum...
...Addressed to Mack McLarty, the memo was dictated to Matthew Moore, a staff assistant who typed and edited the various versions...
...That's when Watkins believes his enemies joined forces against him...
...Hillary started calling herself Mrs...
...Indeed, he has been associated with a string of failed penny-stock companies from New York to Texas, hawking items from cruises to credit cards...
...He says it was the last time he ever spoke to Bill Clinton...
...I asked him if I could see him in person to talk about it...
...In her sworn testimony, Scott told House investigators about that meeting: "I talked to Vince—particularly at that time I was talking to Vince about how he felt and what was going on in his life personally, how he felt inside, and whether he resolved his issues about trying to rest, and spend more time with his family, and do a good job, and all the public scrutiny he was getting and how he was holding up under that...
...We were invited into the private reception room reserved for family and close friends," he says...
...I thought it would be much better to ease several members of the Travel Office out at that time, along with dozens of other White House employees that we would have to let go...
...Watkins was steamed, not least, he claims, because official Marine regulations—the chopper was Marine One, the helicopter equivalent of the Air Force One plane —stipulated that the craft would likely have been used that day, golf trip or not...
...It's a blur," she testified...
...Name, rank, and serial number, that's who I was...
...We're now paying back every single penny, and we're going to move on now...
...I worked hard," he says, "and discovered that I loved the advertising business...
...After the burial in Hope, we all got back on Air Force One and flew back to Washington...
...We agreed to drop the project—but our meetings with potential publishers made the story at least partially public...
...He was the best copywriter I had ever worked with...
...Then I hear all this stuff that I've been subpoenaed, and that the Barbaras [House Government Reform and Oversight Committee investigators Barbara Olson and Barbara Comstock] are looking for me, and I'm dodging them...
...As soon as I saw the photographer at the country club," he says, "I knew it was going to be a problem...
...The difficulty became more than potential after a Frederick, Maryland paper published photos showing Watkins climbing the stairs of the helicopter, carrying golf clubs while a Marine saluted him...
...Within weeks, Watkins would be answering questions about one of the most puzzling events ever to have occurred in the long history of the White House: the death of Vince Foster...
...I wanted to be a starter or not do it at all...
...The money came tied to a confidentiality agreement, which Watkins still adheres to in his refusal to discuss the episode...
...Ileene just wanted to talk to [Hillary...
...I did too,' he told me...
...It is a tale of power and greed and mistresses and money and a friendship shattered by the pressures of politics...
...Within two years I was made partner...
...He says watching the police inform Lisa Foster of her husband's death was "a terrible experience, a just heart wrenching experience...
...Dick wrote and I produced some great negative spots for our general election race against Governor Frank White...
...There are times he makes you feel like you're the single most important person in his life...
...Hillary wanted the Travel Office guys fired, so there was no question that I had to act upon her wishes...
...For his part, Bill certainly seemed grateful...
...I think she just knew things," says Ileene...
...Republicans on the committee, who were planning on a big day of anti-Hillary publicity, were horrified...
...It was a disaster...
...They act like they didn't know, [but] they knew there were big 37 problems...
...It tells also of a president for whom honor is but a word to be trumpeted loudly in political speeches —and friendship is only a question of what you've done for him lately...
...Until the late eighties, when the governor's term was extended to four years, Arkansas elections were held every two years...
...Obviously, I regret any and all press references and their innuendoes as it related to your involvement in the affair...
...After a stint in the Army, Watkins had worked at a few jobs, including one in Washington, before joining Faulkner & Associates, a Little Rock advertising agency that was flourishing in the late 1960's...
...To attract the president to Camp David, he needed to have a golf course nearby...
...All of it was disbelief and wanting to confirm that it was the right identity...
...Indeed, that notoriety would not seem to go away...
...But with a public relations disaster brewing over the Travel Office, Watkins felt himself slowly being edged away from the table...
...That was the whole thing...
...Any idiot would understand that, but the world doesn't seem to understand that...
...After Rep...
...Watkins had hired a young campaign aide, Catherine Cornelius, to work in his White House office on a temporary basis...
...Interviews with more than a dozen former associates and investors, backed by court documents and financial data, suggest that Watkins's life as a dealmaker has left a trail of disappointed investors...
...I was angry and I didn't talk a lot about it, but obviously I thought that the Management Review was ludicrous...
...The American Spectator • January I9 9 7 "So I take Dick back to his room at the Camelot Hotel, and that's where he tells me, 'The guy's crazy, he's just crazy...
...And he couldn't understand why the agents who worked on the presidential campaign detail, agents he liked personally, were not available to protect him in the White House...
...According to Watkins, Clinton said, "I'm sorry you had to go through all of this and I really appreciate it...
...Watkins says he knew he would have to suffer some kind of dressing down, so when McLarty called him into his office, and Leon Panetta was there, he knew what was coming...
...One of the questions raised by Rep...
...For Vince Foster, Watkins believes, the search added to his increasing fear that he was being monitored by the White House...
...I never really expected him to announce," he says...
...In Blood Sport, his account of the Clinton regime, James Stewart reported a conversation Hillary's friend Susan Thomases allegedly had with Foster a week before his death: "Predictably, he brought up the Travel Office affair, adding that he didn't trust David Watkins, who he feared might fabricate or embellish the facts to cover himself—possibly at the expense of the First Lady...
...It was during one of those late night meetings, Watkins claims, when he first witnessed the legendary Clinton temper...
...And every month, the pilots for Marine One have to have 2o-some-odd hours [airborne...
...But when he returned to the White House that afternoon, he says he immediately notified Mark Gearan of the potential problem...
...This is the David Watkins story...
...Two weeks later," Watkins huffs, "I leave Washington under this cloud, and Al Maldon gets an increase in salary...
...Watkins gave a copy of one version of the memo to Patsy Thomasson...
...It was the 24th of the month," he says...
...A few days after the firings, I told Mack McLarty that I fell on my sword in an effort to protect Hillary...
...Above all else, however, the story of David Watkins tells of a man who came to Washington four years ago full of understandable optimism...
...Watkins insists that he was told in advance by Mathias that Clinger's committee had The American Spectator • January 1997 agreed to honor their request to invoke an infrequently used House rule banning television cameras from the proceedings...
...But Ileene was told soon after we arrived in Washington that Vince and Hillary were involved in a love affair...
...The GAO was the f—ing Russians...
...It's an experience Watkins knows first-hand—and perhaps what's most remarkable about his story is that, even after the torment and humiliation he and his wife have endured at the hands of Bill and Hillary Clinton, at least a part of Watkins very clearly wants to remain loyal to his former friends...
...We had won a big victory—and the handful of advisers all became very close to Bill during that race...
...Additionally, as I know you have experienced many times, the statement was reported out of context without my complete response to their questions being reported...
...Bill and Hillary have a lot of things in common, but spending a quiet weekend together at Camp David is probably not one of them...
...I know our lawyers kept hying to turn us against [Comstock and Olson]," Ileene Watkins says...
...At this meeting Vince and I agreed to look into the mechanics of transferring agents on and off the presidential protection detail...
...He already suspected he might be being set up as a scapegoat for the debacle, even though until this time—indeed, for years and years—Watkins had been a trusted associate, the loyalest of the loyal...
...One even called him "the dumbest...
...At the White House the next month, Watkins became the first member of the transition team to be given an office by the Bush administration...
...He decided to start writing things down, and in September 1993, began a series of drafts of a memo that defended his actions in the Travel Office affair and outlined his account of the events...
...Sure...but I can't right now, I've got this press conference on the Most Favored Nations status for China in five minutes...
...One of the reasons I'm in trouble with the Independent Counsel," he remarks, "is that they were the enemy...
...Thank you for keeping quiet...
...I always worked very well with Dick," he says...
...The death of his old friend did not seem to have left Bill in a somber mood at all...
...But for some reason, Vince and I were both searched by the security guard with an electronic monitor...
...Was he unhappy about the Travel Office...
...With the brilliant Morris on his team, Clinton made quick work of then-congressman Jim Guy Tucker in the first round of the primaries...
...Perhaps we were naive, but it was the only time I was ever body searched at the White House...
...I think I'm going to sue him...
...In the aftermath of the Travel Office firings, Watkins first learned that Cornelius —who by then was traveling with the president personally—was claiming to be Clinton's cousin...
...While his parents had known Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley, when the boys were quite young, the families lost touch over the years...
...Roger Clinton and his girlfriend...
...On election night, after the governor proclaimed his victory on the steps of the Old State House, Watkins was one of the few allowed access to him...
...DISGRACED AND EMBITTERED, HE'S BEEN TALKING TO OUR REPORTER FOR MONTHS—THE FIRST FORMER CLINTONITE TO TELL HIS STORY...
...39 His formal ex-communication came that Sunday, when Clinton senior adviser George Stephanopoulos appeared on ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley...
...That admission appears to have set off alarm bells at the highest level of the Clinton administration...
...He began to concentrate on a variety of business ventures: some highly successful merchant banking and long-distance telephone ventures, and some credit-card franchise deals that went bust...
...Vince Foster, Mack McLarty, Maggie Williams, Mark Gearan and I were called in for a meeting about the agents...
...This was a great honor for me, because LSU had been ranked number one in the nation the previous year...
...Soon, however, Watkins's allegiance would prove futile enough...
...There were security people and advance people everywhere," he recalls...
...I didn't want to be second best...
...Watkins offered Bill his company's conference room...
...Ever brazen, even the Clintonites decried the move...
...And I did protect her, but I didn't lie...
...She was upset that [White House spokesman] Mark Fabiani was saying that 40 January 1997 • The American Spectator I was a braggart and a liar...
...Watkins maintains that his boss's problems with long-standing White House personnel began during the president's first week in office, when Bill "got in bad," as he puts it, with the White House operators...
...And the next morning," he adds, "I was in the shower before I went to work and I thought, 'You know I looked through the files but I think I have a Ty Cobb file which I didn't look through because it was in a different drawer.' And I go look in the Ty Cobb file and there are several copies—several drafts of the memo...
...And they said it was not idle speculation—everyone in Vince's family knew about it...
...The incident allegedly infuriated Cobb, who now felt that his and Watkins's deniability had been shattered...
...Ai Subscribe to I he:\incricaii Spectator...call I-Soo-7;24-346o 41...
...James Carville and some of the others tried to get their consulting checks paid early," he claims, "because they wanted to bail out on what they thought was a fast sinking ship...
...I called about noon to retain this lawyer, and he says, 'Yes, I will represent you in this matter.' So I go up there to meet him...
...There were no embraces or words of consolation, because the Foster family knew all about Hillary's involvement with Vince...
...In 1993," he says, "Bill Clinton had only visited Camp David twice...
...Those funds he had negotiated kept Clinton '92 afloat long enough to carry on into a successful turn at the Democratic National Convention...
...The agent tells me that, as I am the person to be notified about anything happening to someone on the White House staff, a member of the White House staff, Vince Foster, has killed himself in Fort Marcy Park...
...That deal, which Watkins says "kind of assuage[d] their conscience," went sour too, after a Federal Election Commission audit made those payments public...
...As David puts it, Ileene told him, "Marsha is pretty pumped up about the whole thing and she's bragging about it...
...We wouldn't start our campaign strategy meetings until 1o:3o or moo at night...
...It wasn't until 1981 that we became close and started working together...
...Watkins has heretofore refused all interview requests, and what The American Spectator offers below is a true journalistic exclusive...
...that the spokesmen for his old pals Bill and Hillary would tar him "a liar and a braggart...
...His frustrations began bubbling over, he says, when then–White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum offered him a piece of unsolicited advice: get your own private attorney...
...Such episodes evidently left quite an impression...
...On January 3 or 4, he recalls, he received a call from his then-attorney, Ty Cobb: "He says that this was coming out and did I have a copy of it...
...In late August Watkins accepted an offer from Hillary to be the "adult" in charge of the office to explore a potential Clinton presidential candidacy...
...I agreed with the thought that it would all be over in a few weeks, and then I would return to my merchant banking business...
...They were both really hot about the way the Secret Service had handled the news reports about the lamp throwing...
...As he tells it, that included Lisa once confiding in Ileene that she had joined Vince in Washington to save their marriage...
...I don't know how he fell on his sword, it may turn out that he did, but it didn't appear like that then...
...Then 35, Clinton had already served one term as governor and lost his first reelection bid...
...In August, David and Ileene packed up and moved back to Little Rock, disgraced and virtually disowned by Watkins's boyhood chum...
...He had scribbled it on his personal stationery: Hillary The GAO erred in stating that I said you urged me to replace members of the Travel Office with "our people...
...that the president would humiliate him as a scapegoat and fire him live on national television...
...And it was also her public way of telling all of the others present and observing that we were still in the fold...
...It was the summer of 1991, and Clinton had been in the Arkansas state house since Watkins had helped out in that 1982 campaign...
...Ever the waffler, Clinton still wouldn't accept that he had fired his old friend on national TV...
...Ileene says that, on that flight to the funeral, Scott arranged for her to move from her seat in the back of the plane into the conference room with the senior staffers and presidential advisers...
...The freeze-out had begun in earnest, though Watkins still remained loyal to his employers...
...was ranked number one in the state in our classification...
...I called the Park Police and if I asked them once, I asked them twenty times, 'Are you sure that it's Vince Foster?' I said, 'Before I inform or go or you all go to inform Lisa 36 January 1997 • The American Spectator Foster you need to have positive identification.' And I accepted it when [Craig] Livingstone and [Bill] Kennedy positively identified Vince Foster...
...Watkins says that he got a call "the next morning from my lawyer saying that [Clinton lawyer David] Kendall had called him, and said that Hillary had gotten the call, and that she wanted to talk to Ileene, but that she thought it was wise not to talk to her because of this...
...Deep down I felt that it was a mistake," Watkins says now, "and I felt very uneasy as I entered the room...
...and that he would find himself more than a half-million dollars in debt to the lawyers defending him against the investigative onslaught...
...Watkins never appeared because he fell ill: as he tells it, a fainting spell caused him to seek out a doctor who advised he leave Washington and, for his health, try to get on with his life away from the Clintons...
...along with Mickey Kantor, Mack McLarty, Vernon Jordan, David Gergen, and long-time Clinton aide Robyn Dickey...
...I've got things down pat...
...Bill had a feeling that these agents didn't like him because they weren't friendly to him," Watkins declares...
...I just know that Mr...
...In fact, at the cabinet retreat at 34 January 1997 • The American Spectator Camp David we had during one of the first weeks of the administration, I predicted that I would be fired if we didn't have a new phone system...
...Together we spent several months working on a proposal but, despite the fact that one publisher made a generous six-figure offer to buy the book, Watkins was disappointed with the overall lack of interest...
...Why would I tell them anything...
...In attendance were Eggleston, senior aide Bruce Lindsey, Nussbaum, the Clintons' private attorney David Kendall, and McLarty—all of whom were assigned to assist with the legal and political fallout from the Travel Office affair...
...And when Bill Clinton comes in, on the biggest night of his life, he hugs his mother...
...Clinton came in, and people would not even extend the courtesy of standing up to shake hands with him when he approached their table...
...As far as David Watkins, he has resigned, he's lost his job...
...Why she would have blurted out the news of their affair to Ileene remains a mystery, Watkins says, but apparently she was not exactly shy about her adultery...
...The now infamous book by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich was high on the bestseller lists...
...Watkins had proven himself an ingenious deal maker, and had also demonstrated unfailing loyalty...
...They told me about the reprimand...
...Although in the end he'd never sent the memo to McLarty (or anyone else), it seems likely that senior White House damage control operators, as well as the president and first lady, knew about the explosive document by December 9, 1993—when Watkins was called to testify under oath in the GAO investigation into the Travel Office affair...
...Whatever Clinton might have known about Foster's troubles, Watkins, for one, says he had no idea that Vince might be so grievously distressed...
...Bill didn't have any name identification...
...He spoke freely about many subjects with me, yet remained guarded about much else...
...Bill Clinton, he says, never stopped by his office again...
...And what if he starts spilling what really happened in the Travel Office stuff, and it reaches the Oval Office...
...He was always concerned someone could listen in on his calls...
...If we had run out of money during the late primaries," he allows, "the campaign would have fallen apart...
...The day before my Dad was to drive me down to LSU, I woke up in the morning and told him I didn't think I was good enough to really go and play," Watkins says...
...Ileene had flown down to Little Rock on the morning of the funeral along with the president...
...Watkins claims that the president called him around midnight the next day...
...In the fall of 1994, the Callaway Golf Company offered David a job as vice president for corporate communications after he received glowing recommendations from both Bill Clinton and Mack McLarty...
...You are not equipped to take the tough action necessary.'" Those words would come back to haunt Watkins and Foster when the Travel Office scandal exploded just a few weeks later...
...Not even Webb Hubbell, faced with a lengthy stint in the federal pen, would do it...
...We know you did it to protect Bill," he says a grateful Susan Thomases told him...
...It was at this meeting that Hillary made a very pointed remark, one which I will never forget...
...He says he assumed the president made similar visits to other offices, but claims that a Secret Service agent one day told him: "He must really like you, this is the only office he ever stops by...
...And he readily admits that the deal was crucial to salvage the entire operation...
...As chief operations officer, he signed every check and maintained tight control on the nascent campaign's purse strings...
...Watkins admits that he was angry about his treatment after the firings...
...There were only seven people back there when Bill Clinton was led in from the Governor's mansion— Virginia Kelley and her husband, Dick...
...Most of my records were turned over...
...1 Any think we could be helpful to this country...
...Watkins says Scott agreed, but then begged off on the morning of the trip, saying that she had a cold...
...Though Worthen was then essentially controlled by Arkansas' rich and powerful Stephens family, the bank had earlier also been controlled by the Riadys, the Indonesian clan now at the heart of a fundraising scandal connected to the Democratic National Committee...
...Instead he first had to go through the White House operators...
...Then he started to believe the agents liked Bush better than him...
...WHO'S NEXT...
...To think that I, David Watkins, a friend of Bill Clinton, would be able to even think about being more than a visitor to the White House was just overwhelming to me...
...We didn't have any money...
...I tear up now when I remember it...
...There were not a lot of people clamoring to help him with that race," he recalls...
...As noted above, the House report stated bluntly that Watkins was merely a fall guy in the affair...
...David Hillary Clinton never responded...
...At the last minute, Watkins decided on the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville instead, where he turned his sights from sports to politics...
...Beginning in the 1982 campaign," Watkins recalls, "we'd meet every night and we'd eat a lot of sandwiches and chocolate chip cook32 January r 9 9 7 The American Spectator ies and talk a lot about Arkansas politics...
...As you know, White House employees who have testified before the committee have done so under oath before the camera and provided the truth," White House press secretary Mike McCurry told reporters...
...The 1982 campaign would prove to be one of the pivotal races in Clinton's political career, and it would be a milestone for Watkins as well...
...I didn't think he was any more than me...
...I had lost my temper by this point so I said back to him, 'God damn it Bill, then why did you just emasculate me in front of the world...
...William Kennedy wouldn't do it...
...It tells of a man I found to be cautious and soft-spoken, a former Army officer who has paid the price for being a loyal soldier to Bill Clinton—surely not the same man Gary Aldrich likened to "a used car salesman, hot to make a sale...
...And he says 'David, I want you to know that I wouldn't be here without you.' When he told me that I cried...
...In an unprecedented arrangement, World Wide would bill journalists traveling with the campaign in advance...
...There were 255 military working there to support the president...
...Today he remembers the weeks following the firing of the Travel Office Seven as his toughest time in the White House...
...So I'm no virgin to helicopter travel...
...A mong his myriad duties, Watkins had been in charge of, as he puts it, "everything dealing with the FEC and the continuation of the Clinton-Gore campaign...
...During the first few months in the White House, all I did was put out fires...
...Our reward for our hard work came when Bill won the general election by a nice margin...
...I have always known who my "client" is...
...Though the anguish it has caused seems never ending, David and Ileene Watkins's political life is over...
...Another former Clinton White House senior staffer has also confirmed the relationship between Scott and Clinton...
...One reporter was informed of the details of Watkins's divorce from his first wife by none other than Gary Aldrich, who had recently retired from the Bureau...
...I hadn't been trying to dodge a subpoena...
...I remember having lunch one day in the club at the Worthen Bank Building...
...Anxious to keep the nosy local press away, Clinton had told Watkins he needed a place to hold a secret meeting with some Washington campaign consultants...
...S usan McDougal wouldn't do it...
...We're happy about that...
...Clinton for the first time, and, in addition to working at the now infamous Rose Law Firm, threw herself wholeheartedly into her husband's race for the state house...
...A half year after getting his pink slip, Watkins was faced with another public relations problem: the FEC announced that, in 1992, the Clinton campaign had used federal matching funds to pay off a former campaign staffer who had accused Watkins of sexual harassment...
...He was forced to reimburse the government $13,679, only to learn that Al Maldon, the White House Director of Military Affairs who initially arranged the trip (and played alongside Watkins), had retained his job...
...Urge is not a word I commonly use...
...He kept saying, 'I think we can work this out,'" Watkins recalls...
...If there were any troubles to working so closely with the Clinton team, Watkins doesn't let on...
...Pressure began to build immediately with so much work to be done," he remembers...
...Watkins went all the way back to Arkansas boyhood with Clinton, and had a much richer tale to tell...
...And I said 'I really don't blame them, it looks to me like y'all have made it hard to deal with because I didn't understand that we were all supposed to be in a big fight" (Cobb surely has ties to the Clinton inner circle: he now represents John Huang, the former Commerce Department official and DNC fundraiser now under investigation for illegal campaign activities...
...All but Scott and Dickey, whose daughter then lived in the White House assisting with Chelsea Clinton, exited around 1:3o a.m...
...So my objective was to find something to get the president to visit there more often...
...All the while, Hillary was kept down the hall in an alcove away from Lisa and the Foster family...
...About how hard they were to deal with...
...and though Aldrich detailed scandalous (if unverified) goings-on at i600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he had in fact only met the president once...
...We would do these escape drills in case there ever was an attack on the White House...
...he most fabulous politician ever” — that's how David Watkins describes Bill Clinton even today...
...That's how Watkins remembers Clinton breaking the news to him that the governor wanted to make a run for the White House...
...Watkins had no love lost for the investigators probing into his role in the affair, and fully admits that, at least initially, covering for Hillary wasn't an entirely onerous task...
...I flew on military helicopters frequently," he adds...
...What does this mean?' I asked them...
...The president had tears in his eyes, as he kept repeating that he knew I hadn't acted inappropriately...
...In Little Rock," Watkins claims, "we had not been aware of Vince and Hillary's so-called relationship, and I never saw anything personally that would confirm the gossip about them...
...I'm doing a good job...
...He also called on his merchant banking experience to pull off some inventive financing deals...
...Tight funds also led Watkins to perform another bit of financial wizardry—securing a deal with World Wide Travel, the Little Rock agency that would become a player in the White House Travel Office controversy...
...But I really don't know if I want to be president or stay in Little Rock and get my golf handicap into the single digits...
...And what Dick told me was that he and Bill were in the kitchen and they were arguing...
...In fact, the final report of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee would call Watkins "the designated fall guy for the firings in order to protect the higher-ups who had directed his actions...
...According to Watkins, Morris was visibly upset and continued his rant: "He's a crazy motherf—er...
...Word even reached the office of Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, whose investigators are now interested in the notes, drafts, and tape recordings of my interviews with 31 David and Ileene Watkins...
...Hillary did not leave her quarters during the flight...
...Then I would put them into an Arkansas framework...
...After Gennifer Flowers went public with her infidelity accusations, Watkinsmaintains, he was the only one who held the line at campaign headquarters...
...As we came through the receiving line," he recalls, "Hillary gave Ileene a huge hug...
...Harry Thomason and his wife Linda...
...He spent a year with Callaway in California, but the job did not pan out, partially because of his notoriety...
...Then Hillary went directly from the alcove to the sanctuary...
...By the time he reached high school, he says, he was "co-captain and quarterback of the undefeated football team, which 1 It was also in July that Watkins learned that "raw" and unvetted information from his FBI file was being given to reporters and others interested in the Clintons, in clear violation of the agency's secrecy oath...
...I don't know who he thought was listening and watching," Watkins says, "but he was really nervous...
...As Ileene is in the West Wing waiting for the shuttle bus to take her and the staff that had assembled to the airport," Watkins says, "Marsha Scott comes over to visit with her...
...And I go back into the movie theater and tell Ileene...
...Marsha Scott was also a part of the plan...
...David," Watkins remembers the governor saying during a break in the meeting, "I'm really enjoying being Governor now...
...See, there is a secret list of who gets on the first two helicopters if there is an attack and I can tell you that little a–holes like [White House political director] Rahm Emanuel would be out there with a shotgun hying to get on The American Spectator • January 1997 those first helicopters...
...The day after," he says, "I wrote Hillary a note in longhand explaining that I believed the GAO had misquoted me...
...He couldn't understand why the President of the United States could not pick up a phone and just dial someone...
...We think it's very important for the American people that we take this seriously," Stephanopoulos declared...
...in November, that chum was re-elected president of the United States...
...and me...
...Watkins claims that Scott "has the president's ear as well as anybody in the White House," and says that, because of her relationship with Bill, she was treated with "kid gloves" by the senior staff...
...That's when they started attacking me...
...She told me, 'I spent the night with Bill in his bed...
...Bill has a knack for writing and these were successful ads...
...I think that's why that I know that Bill Clinton knew there were problems with Vince...
...I've never regretted that decision...
...Watkins maintains that he simply no longer had an attorney to represent him...
...There was just a handful of us: Bill, Hillary, consultant Dick Morris, campaign manager Betsey Wright, press secretary Joan Roberts, and myself...
...He wrote a memo to chief of staff Mack McLarty about his plan...
...Because of the intense media reaction, Watkins knew he had to cover up the First Lady's involvement in the firings...
...That meant Clinton —and his new strategy team—were constantly campaigning...
...During the first few months of the administration, Watkins recalls, Clinton made a habit of visiting Watkins's office after his morning jog...
...With Foster dead, and a scandal heating up, Watkins thought he ought to try to prepare for the worst...
...And we were careful to follow all of the Federal Election Commission guidelines by the book, and Worthen was careful to adhere to all banking regulations...
...He accepts almost any rumor he hears as fact before he investigates it...
...And I went back in my records that night, and looked for it in the Travel Office file that I had...
...The First Couple, Watkins says, were convinced that the agents assigned to the residence had leaked the story...
...We take it very seriously...
...Perhaps Watkins was just being a loyal soldier, and merely succumbed to pressure from other senior aides...
...I was never paid for my work on the now dead project...
...The president signed an order the same day the review was released authorizing the GAO to investigate the firings...
...The story may well have been driven by a White House eager to begin painting Watkins out of the picture...
...Today he is the first Clinton associate to go public with the sordid details of what with every passing day looks like the most sordid presidency in our nation's history...
...The president had promised a 25 percent White House staff reduction, and the job fell to me and deputy chief of staff Mark Gearan, to find the cuts...
...35 Because of rumors fed to her by Harry Thomason, Hillary had apparently decided on another major change in White House operations, and it was Watkins who got tapped to do the deed: the firing of Billy Dale and the six other White House Travel Office employees...
...I gave him a very detailed explanation about the objective of the trip...
...The American Spectator • January 1997 Watkins and his wife Beene concerning writing a book about his tenure in the Clinton administration...
...during a meeting on the 17th, Watkins says McLarty informed him that the Travel Office was on the First Lady's radar screen...
...Watkins still maintains that both the trip and the use of the military helicopter were legitimate...
...Clinton would not forget that loyalty—and, for his part, Watkins could not dismiss the emotional pull of having been part of the team that won the White House...
...And then I made some comment like, 'I guess since this will go into my file I won't be able to workin the government again.'" He claims that his retort "really pissed off Panetta," but it is Watkins who was embittered by the episode...
...But Watkins's White House career was finished...
...George Bush is not doing a good job, and I've got some ideas I would like to see implemented if I could be elected...
...Mack was never mentioned in the Management Review," he says, "[and] he was the one who sponsored it...
...He does say, however, that he was prepared to fight the charge but settled to prevent negative publicity against his boss...
...Little did he suspect that he would fall into the circle of one of the consummate politicians of his generation...
...Watkins has resigned, and the taxpayers will be fully reimbursed...
...She had parlayed her friendship with Clinton The American Spectator • January 1997 into a post at the White House, where she was director of presidential correspondence at the time of Foster's death...
...The Watkinses returned to Washington for a venture capital business opportunity in January 1996, when Watkins once again found himself in the media spotlight: the copy of his Travel Office memo turned up in Patsy Thomasson's White House office...
...All I took away from our meetings were those tapes and notes, from which the article you are about to read has been drawn...
...Until now: It has taken David Watkins—a boyhood chum of Bill's, a trusted friend, a political crony fallen from grace—to give the American people their first look at the incessantly chaotic and backbiting world of Bill Clinton and his most loyal associates...
...It seemed that relations with the First Couple were growing sour, and that he would indeed be the unlucky one who'd become the Travel Office scapegoat...
...Their only involvement in the 1996 elections came when Ileene affixed a bumper sticker to their Jeep...
...It was a guard neither of us had ever seen before, nor had we ever been searched before...
...In particular he singles out Morris as being an effective strategist and political operative...
...During that press conference, however—which Watkins was watching live on television, sitting alone in his office —a reporter asked Clinton about the incident...
...Democrats joined in on the attack, accusing Watkins of trying to cloak his testimony in secrecy...
...That criticism was intense, as Watkins's very public disgrace became the butt of late-night humor and editorial outrage...
...Ileene Watkins believes there was more to it than that...
...Born in 1941, five years before the future president, Watkins grew up to be the consummate Southern small-town scholar-athlete...
...I don't think he did anything but," Watkins recalls...
...And that's the way the president would have it, that's the way the White House would have it—and if anyone asks our opinion we'd say those are the circumstances under which people should testify...
...I helped to arrange the $3 million line of credit from Worthen Bank, based on the pledges for future fundraising events and the federal matching funds...
...Ileene believes they were...
...Bill would often actually write a spot in the studio, and I'd produce it...
...According to Patsy Thomasson, Watkins's top assistant, she talked with Foster about Watkins's anger, which evidently had become a matter of some concern to other staffers...
...People in Arkansas are a different breed and a different sell than people in other parts of the country...
...w atkins maintains that he was spending the evening of Foster's death—July zo, 1993— at a screening of In the Line ofFire, a Clint Eastwood movie ironically enough about a Secret Service agent...
...Watkins recalls that fall, 1982, as "a fun time...
...Clinger's committee in its final report on the Travel Office was whether lawyers for witnesses such as Watkins may have been working in concert with the White House without the witnesses' knowledge...
...This f—ing helicopter was going to be flying that day somewhere anyway...
...I always knew exactly where we stood financially," he says, not modestly...
...And then the next person he hugs is me...
...So I said, 'No, I don't have it.'" As Watkins remembers it, Cobb told the White House that his client didn't have a copy of the memo...
...On january17,1996, David and Ileene walked into the Rayburn House Office Building to face the members of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee about his allegations, made in that now infamous memo, that Hillary Clinton had been the driving force behind the Travel Office firings...
...Given what's emerged about Clinton's financial deals since, his account of the loan sounds like less than the full story...
...And Dick says, 'I'm not going to argue with you'—and he leaves and walks out of the kitchen door...
...he says Clinton asked him...
...He gets this petulant look he has," Watkins remembers, "and his tone is angry when he says, `Mr...
...Watkins says he kept trying to get a positive identification of Foster's body because he could not believe the news...
...I hadn't even been told about it...
...I had my head in his lap and we reminisced all night long...
...The David Watkins story is sometimes harsh, and, like so much else connected with the Clinton presidency, its appearance in The American Spectator comes under the shadow of great legal interest...
...I met him again in 1976, when he was running for attorney general of Arkansas...
...That's when Marsha tells Ileene about her relationship with Bill Clinton...
...Hillary was the one who wanted it...
...I think we could be helpful to the country...
...I did the ads and served as the public relations adviser...
...Dick Morris wrote most of the radio and television spots, particularly the negative ones...
...L ike the boy who would be president, Watkins hails from the tiny town of Hope, Arkansas...
...I hadn't said anything—they were responding to the memo...
...Yet when Watkins made the request in person, Clinger and the members of his committee appeared shocked, and questioned his motives...
...I would have been on one of the helicopters...
...The failed re-election bid had left Clinton's political career hanging in the balance, and Watkins recalls it as a stressful time for the Clintons and their marriage...
...It was "a fantastic place to grow up," he recalls, "a town of about 8,000 people where the big events are the high school football games on Friday night, the livestock show and the Watermelon Festival...
...I get there, he says, 'Well, it's gone before my committee and I can't represent you because there's a conflict of interest.' But he got Ty on a conference call, and he said 'we'll get you somebody.' And so they were talking two or three names and they finally got this Bob Mathias...
...That's the most important thing to me —the Treasury will not be out one red cent for whatever happened there...
...He doesn't suffer fools well," says Watkins...
...I know you didn't do anything wrong,' he said...
...They were the f—ing Russians...
...I dreaded firing the Travel Office guys because it was not the proper time for such action...
...Ty was not taking a subpoena...
...Government investigators believed that for Watkins to have forgotten the very document he had crafted to save his own skin stretched the limits of credulity...
...I called Marsha Scott to invite her along to the golf course because of her influence with Bill," he claims...
...Yet he would have had cause soon enough to refresh his memory: Rep...
...But it was Hillary who was ultimately behind the dismissals...
...Not long after that night, the president elect invited his old friend to join him in the White House as Assistant to the President for Management and Administration...
...I'm in control of myself" They were the words of a man who endlessly questions friends and aides about the right path to follow...
...I mean, hell, we all were...
...Why would I volunteer anything to them...
...She also claims that she saw Scott seated at the head of the table—in Bill Clinton's chair...
...He says the Worthen execs were "hard-nosed" about not making a bad loan, and even claims that the campaign itself "initiated a daily reporting system" that "diligently worked with the bank officials to monitor our cash needs and their exposure...
...The president wanted a new phone system, and he wanted it immediately...
...Last summer I began discussions with REBECCA BORDERS is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...
...The pressure to take action had become intense—almost unbearable...
...I've said many times that Dick is the only person in the country who can debate Bill Clinton and win 5o percent of the time...
...A White House signal operator connects—this was all confusing and it's never been clear to me who they connected me with —I think someone with the Park Police or perhaps a Secret Service agent...
...He says Cobb recommended attorney William Hendricks from the firm of King and Spalding...
...That January, says Watkins, the Clinton campaign started running what he calls "the now famous mea culpa spots"—ads in which Bill Clinton abjectly apologized to the voters of Arkansas for the failures of his first term...
...I visited all of these locations and, in fact, I played the part of Bill Clinton in the evacuation rehearsals...
...They wanted to know what [Ileene] wanted, that's the first thing the lawyers asked me...
...But he wouldn't get on it, because he's not on the list...
...They kept saying disparaging things about them...
...The president was there, working the crowd in his sympathy mode...
...Watkins has resigned...
...Watkins recalls Harry Thomason, a "driving force" behind the firings, "telling me it would 'make great theater...
...Now returned to his merchant banking business, Watkins remains under investigation by the Independent Counsel for making false statements to government investigators...
...The president—David Watkins's old pal—went on: "Mr...
...We have always believed that was Hillary's way of saying thank you for taking the reprimand...
...Nobody with close connections to the Clinton clan has been willing to come forward and tell his story...
...I'm in the library talking to somebody," he recalls, "wrapping up and getting ready to go to the car...
...The president was joking with the guests and having a good time...
...Our objective at the time was to just make it through the March 17,1992 Michigan and Illinois primaries...
...The documents show her entering the second floor private residence at 12:5o a.m...
...w atkins describes Scott as "the hand-holder for whoever is having serious problems in the White House and whoever is getting ready to have problems...
...I told my Dad that, while I thought I could play and compete, I didn't think I was good enough to be a regular...
...This particular pilot only had 12 up to that day...
...I dropped out totally after being vice president of the Student Senate," he says...
...Panetta explained to me that it would be inserted into my government personnel file...
...he even got a promotion...
...In her sworn deposition before a House committee in June 1996, Scott recalls going to the White House that night but was unclear on what time she left or got home...
...That's a pretty severe punishment...
...She was told by someone who was very close to Vince...
...The whole situation was terrible," Watkins says...
...We didn't know how long this campaign would last...
...Watkins says it was the offer of a lifetime...
...Bill and I would cut positive television and radio ads on the spot in the studio...
...He never considered turning down the offer...
...Many of the agents protecting Clinton had protected Bush as well...
...I personally signed every check...
...That night [of the subpoena], Ileene was so upset about it that she called Hillary through the White House operator," he remembers...
...David, what happened?'" he claims the president asked him as he entered the Oval Office...
...Within three weeks of the report, on May 16, Business Week published an article detailing his failed business deals: "Watkins, a Little Rock 38 January 1997 • The American Spectator adman who teamed up with Hillary Rodham Clinton in several lucrative ventures, is a man with a past," wrote reporter Michael Schroeder...
...I thought if she went with us on the trip and played golf, she could tell the president what a great way it would be for him to relax...
...Despite what he'd told the GAO investigators, he'd kept his memo under wraps—and when the GAO report was finally published on May 2, 1994, he says he made yet another pledge of fealty to the Clintons...
...After the discovery of the Watkins memo, the GAO recommended that the Justice Department investigate whether Watkins had perjured himself...
...The interim years had been good to Watkins, too...
...No matter who you were they kept you away...
...He was then subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Whitewater Committee in its Travel Office investigation...
...I said, 'I just can't believe that, are you sure it's Vince Foster...
...Watkins arranged a controversial and unprecedented loan when the campaign was running low on cash during the New York primary...
...A lot of times he would get angry about something somebody told him about somebody else...
...almost certainly they were responsible for leaking an item that appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal several days later: "The White House quietly looks into employee complaints about Director of Administration David Watkins, another Arkansan...
...Let's do it right after that,' he told me...
...Lost in the media flurry, however, was a prediction on NBC's "Meet the Press" by New York Times columnist William Safire...
...President Bush, in contrast, had gone thirty-seven times his last year in office...
...World Wide would defer its requests for payment until the campaign signaled it could free-up the money...
...McLarty officially reprimanded Watkins for his role in the firings on July 2,1993, the same day the White House released its Travel Office Management Review...
...It is not widely known, but there are several locations around the country—left over from the cold-war, nuclear-fear mentality—where the president and senior members of his staff can be evacuated if the United States is under attack...
...It was in support of Bob Dole...
...I knew my job would be over if I didn't fix the phone and computer systems, and fix them soon...
...I was a little more vocal probably with him and others...
...So I go to King and Spalding's office on Friday afternoon...
...I go to a pay phone and call the White House...
...We never established rules concerning the possession of this material should no book be published, nor did we ever sign a collaboration agreement...
...It was a grueling schedule, and during the spring and fall months he would spend the day campaigning...
...The sub-objective was to make a good showing so we would be prepared for a race in 1996...
...Watkins describes the days following the release of the memo and the congressional subpoena as difficult ones...
...After walking the few blocks from Magaw's office back to the White House," he claims, "Vince and I were stopped by the guard at the Pennsylvania Avenue gate...
...The night of the reprimand, Watkins and his wife were invited to dinner and a movie in the White House...
...The taxpayers have been made whole...
...33 Watkins says that he privately doubted Clinton had the fire in the belly for a White House bid...
...I just thought it was a disaster...
...He's like the lover who never calls, but when he promises that he'll do better, you somehow trust him...
...I was on the phone for some time...
...We both had our White House passes and i.d.'s...
...Known in the local newspaper of her adopted hometown of Santa Cruz, California, as "Bill's hippie girlfriend," Scott had dated the president in the sixties, when they both worked for Senator Fulbright...
...It's over, you just told everyone that I have resigned...
...Watkins cites as evidence the scene at the Little Rock church for Foster's funeral several days later...
...Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md...
...But the Travel Office affair wasn't behind them at all—in fact, it was just the first of many scandals to come...
...Well, the Barbaras come up and issue the subpoena at their office...
...The most pressing matter for Watkins was explaining why the memo had never been turned over to the relevant Travel Office investigators in the first place...
...Maybe we can get this thing behind us now—and I will support you...
...Watkins never imagined that, within months, he'd find himself under investigation by various congressional committees and two independent counsels...
...these were just things I'd kept...
...Watkins says that two Park Police officers met him at his home to travel the few blocks to Foster's nearby residence...
...Even so, her unusual closed-door meeting with Foster the day before his death has long puzzled both David and Ileene...
...Cornelius was an attractive blonde who started maneuvering for a better position almost immediately...
...Hey, what's this deal about the helicopter...
...That memo declared that there would be "hell to pay" if he had not acted in accordance with the First Lady's wishes to fire the Travel Office staff...
...We're watching the movie and I get beeped...
...And he was under the same criticism I was during the initial reaction to the story...
...That may have been his plan, but Watkins stayed on as deputy campaign manager and chief operations officer after Clinton formally announced he would run on October 3,1991...
...After the press conference was over, Watkins remembers, Nancy Heinreich, Clinton's long-time scheduler, called to say that the president could see him now...
...Lisa is "a very strong person, not a shrinking violet type," he says, adding that she and Ileene had gotten to know one another "pretty well" since they had all been in Washington...
...Bob drives over from Baltimore, and they confer and they call the Barbaras...
...And further to think that my friend had enough trust in me that he wanted me to join him in the White House was simply amazing...
...I'm through with him...
...Watkins offered his resignation and I insisted that the taxpayers be reimbursed—some way or another they will be, and we'll tell you how, when we do it...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
