Linda & John & Webb & Suzy
York, Byron
LIN DA , 1_ B Network newswoman Linda Douglass and her husband John were good friends with Webb and Suzy Hubbell. They dined, socialized, even vacationed in Greece together. Then Kenneth...
...For example, did he read that all —a/1— of Hubbell's Rose Law Firm partners favored sending a complaint about Hubbell to the Arkansas Supreme Court...
...Finally, on December 7, 1995, Phillips informed the Fund that there was no hope Hubbell would ever do the work...
...Then, of course, there's the airport...
...On September he wrote to the Consumer Support and Education Fund that he had completed assembling his papers, finished his interviews, and written rough drafts of three of the four projected articles...
...But as it turned out, Hubbell did not fully cooperate with Starr...
...Phillips, Wolfe, and Hubbell began an exchange of letters about just what the new Distinguished Public Service Fellow would do...
...They didn't...
...Alone among her colleagues, Peggy Wilson doubted it...
...Or, if they did, then like Morial the Younger—who, as a state legislator, had opposed gambling—they'd been given reason to un-learn it...
...Mindful of her relationship with Webb Hubbell, a decision was made that she would not cover Whitewater," spokeswoman Eileen Murphy says...
...The committee asked Phillips whether his wife, "in her reporting, cover[ed] any Whitewater matters or anything that gave you any knowledge in particular about any growing legal problems that he had...
...Somehow, he lust thought this was free 111011e-v...
...Well, that's the Journal for you...
...But he accepted Hubbell's explanation that it was no big deal...
...She had, she said, come to Hubbell's assistance in a time of need...
...32 May 1998 • The American Spectator the most frightening moment of the book, Coyote claims that his success on the Mau-Mau front led to him being approached to take over the California Department of Education...
...those reports were soon followed by coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Phillips: You read all the Wall Street Journal pieces...
...Chung tossed to correspondent Rita Braver, who reported the story from Detroit, where President Clinton was attending a jobs conference...
...In all, Hubbell received about $5oo,000 for mostly unspecified work on behalf of several clients...
...Surely her colleagues knew that...
...Hubbell: Yeah...
...Didn't that make Phillips suspicious...
...Responding to an April 1992 advertisement in the Wall Street Journal for proposals on what to do with New Orleans' six-and-a-half-acre Rivergate convention site, Hemmeter, a Honolulu-based "gaming" promoter, hit the ground running...
...As it turns out, Hubbell's calls, like those of all other inmates, were recorded by federal prison authorities—with the prisoners' full knowledge...
...Phillips: Did it say a quarter-million dollars...
...I didn't have to, I didn't have a legal obligation, but I vouched for him...
...In a deliciously wry aside, Hubbell added that, "I do believe it will become more interesting...that the continued development of the story will make it...more likely to be published...
...But it remained for the coming of Dutch's heir Marc to seal the—as New South political hustlers put itpublic/private-sector partnership...
...finally in July 1994, Marc Morial beaming, that most-prized of collegial undertakings, a deal: Harrah's and Hem-meter would, in tandem, operate the casino, which would be known as Harrah's Jazz...
...According to sources with knowledge of Starr's investigation, Hubbell talked and talked, but was careful to say little of interest to the independent counsel...
...When Hubbell's wife moved to town, the couples became even closer: We became pretty good friends during their stay here in Washington...
...I pride myself on taking great care to try to avoid those situations...
...Did the friendship affect her reporting...
...the book is liberally sprinkled with references to actors and producers and directors—like the "luminaries" Geffen and Spielberg—that have about them a whiff of the brown-nose...
...Committee lawyers asked Phillips if, during their hours at sea, Hubbell ever admitted that he was in serious trouble...
...Even after Hubbell went to prison, Phillips and his wife kept in touch with their disgraced friend...
...You know, John, I'd love to have all the money I'm supposed to have," he said...
...then to Bob Schieffer, who covered reaction on Capitol Hill, and finally to Linda Douglass, who was traveling with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in Colorado...
...Phillips: Aaaahhh, God...
...After all, her close friend Mickey Kantor has re-emerged as a private lawyer for the president, helping fashion Clinton's response to Starr's Monica Lewin-sky investigation...
...Certainly it would have made for a much better book...
...A: He was very emotional...
...First, continued calls for further congressional inquiry, testimony, etc...
...We are hopeful that your experiences will only deepen the insight and perspective which you will give to the problems confronting highly talented individuals like yourself who enter public service," Wolfe wrote...
...And Safire's, too...
...His firm, Phillips & Cohen, originally based in Los Angeles but now headquartered in Washington, specializes in what are known as "whistleblower" lawsuits...
...He was also a friend of Linda Douglass...
...A look at Douglass's coverage of Justice Department and Whitewater-related stories shows that it conformed to the standards of network news reporting...
...The two men chatted about the possibility that Hubbell might do some probono work after his release...
...Recently the Burton committee released a transcript of one such conversation, a 20-minute talk between Hubbell and Phillips that took place on October 10, 1996...
...Tourists didn't come to New Orleans to spend time at roulette wheels and slot-machines...
...The most valuable was a signed 1937 lithograph by American artist Grant Wood, valued at $5,000...
...Believing his friend's story, Phillips came up with a way to help...
...The vote, as always, was six-to-one...
...And Matthew Cooper of Newsweek, who has written extensively on Clinton, last year married Mandy Grunwald, who played a critical role in the 1992 Clinton campaign and is now a frequent defender of the White House...
...That New Orleans, once the most robust commercial center in the South, should have fallen to that level belies the claim of mayors from Morrison to Morial the Elder that the city was on the economic rebound...
...0 n November 5, 1996—exactly four years to the day that Chris Hemmeter had sold his master plan to city hall — New Orleanians went to the polls to vote yes-orno on a "revised" casino deal...
...But it tells another story as well—of a dilemma that has become particularly acute since the Clinton administration came to power...
...No, responded Phillips...
...Phillips told the committee that he visited Hubbell three times in prison...
...Hemmeter-Caesar's knew the bon temps taste of New Orleans City Hall —both Barthelemy's and, as of 1994, Marc Mori-al's...
...IL It ,T1 Of course Hubbell was hinting at what later became perfectly clear: Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr had Hubbell cold...
...Asked what they discussed, he said, "Just life in prison...
...He's got me making a quarter of a million dollars from them, which was real interesting [laughter...
...she did not discuss it with him 30 May 1998 • The American Spectator Trouble entered the picture in early 1994...
...But I suppose it would have been very difficult to get the educrats to look past his filthy Levis, and Coyote made the logical and more rewarding decision to become a film actor instead...
...that is, it was pretty much like the coverage available on ABC or NBC...
...But there is nothing there: no building left standing, not even sodden boards or foundation stones...
...A few minutes later, Phillips brought up some recent news articles...
...That would have been, at least in Hollywood terms, respectable...
...Hubbell: Between that and the money that's been airlifted from the Mena Airport and everything else, next thing you know I'll be on the Grassy Knoll...
...Not in any visible way...
...I think it was more in the September, post-September time frame that I became very concerned that Webb's problems were quite serious and very different than what he had told me...
...In addition, the couples kept in touch by phone...
...In addition, Murphy says, "she's not covering the White House [and] she's not covering Ken Starr's investigation...
...I was trying to help him 80 May 1998 • The American Spectator with his personal redemption...
...I fully intend to complete the work I set out to do," Hubbell wrote Wolfe in September 1995...
...they seemed convinced that Hubbell had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from them...
...In a conversation with Wolfe, Hubbell said he had a particular interest in "encouraging citizen participation in government and in enhancing the image in which public service is held...
...They also have made a bundle for Phillips...
...Now they are an everyday occurrence...
...And at first, it appeared that Hubbell was making progress 31 on the article...
...Phillips is no longer in contact with Hubbell...
...Wolfe promptly offered use of his house in Manhattan Beach...
...I think he genuinely didn't realize I would have to pay the money back...
...Byron Yor n March 14, 1994, the CBS Evening News began with word of a big shake-up in the Clinton administration...
...Such intimate ties among the mainstream press, top executive branch officials, and White House operatives were far less common — almost unheard of— during the Reagan and Bush years...
...For example, in October 1993, she covered the release of an internal Justice Department report that absolved top department officials—including Hubbell—of responsibility for the deaths of eighty-five people at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas (by his own account Hubbell was deeply involved in Justice Department decision-making during the crisis...
...With terminal idealism he had been hoping to give his kids a glimpse of the beautiful promise the counterculture once held forth for him and his comrades...
...Tourists would flock, business would boom...
...we used to have a dinner for friends who were here without their spouses...
...The casino, Hemmeter told the mayor and city council, would not only put 25,000 good, honest Orleanians back to work but breathe new life into the city's tourist industry...
...Hubbell's former colleagues at the Rose Law Firm began to press questions about irregularities in his old bills...
...At least once, Douglass found herself connected to both investigations on the same day...
...Peggy Wilson thought otherwise...
...As Phillips tells the story in his deposition, Kantor invited Phillips and Douglass to visit and during that time introduced them to Webb and Suzy Hubbell...
...and that's problems [sic] with public service today, the difficulty of getting good people to come to Washington for government, generally because of the intense scrutiny they face through the public media, through the hearing process, the predatory press that can look for every angle of a person's life and past life...
...Instead Coyote winds up Sleeping Where I Fall by taking his youngest children to the site of one of his former communes...
...Pascagoula, Mississippi...
...From the earliest days of the Clinton administration, Douglass and her husband, an influential public interest lawyer named John Phillips, socialized often with Hubbell and his wife Suzy...
...What follows is a glimpse inside the world of close relationships that pervade Bill Clinton's Washington...
...But she wasn't having much luck...
...I went to church with Webb," Douglass remembered...
...His deposition—which was only recently made public—provides the most detailed account yet of one of Hubbell's lucrative deals...
...Nothing...
...Cases in point: Atlantic City, New Jersey...
...Not only was she not covering the story, Douglass says, but at the time much of the reporting on Whitewater was in the conservative Washington Times, which Douglass says she did not read as much as other papers...
...But the charade was almost over...
...But Hubbell "put a lot of his friends in the situation of great disruption, expense, embarrassment and the like —like me...
...For example, CBS's Rita Braver is married to Washington lawyer Bob Barnett, an important Clinton backer who was the president's first choice to defend him in the Whitewater matter (he declined in light of his wife's position as the network's White House correspondent...
...Now that's hip...
...Later, Phillips and Douglass picked up much of the tab when they and the Hubbells flew to Greece for a ten-day vacation cruising the Aegean Sea...
...the two have not spoken since early 1997...
...Beyond Las Vegas, the embrace of legalized gambling—or as its supporters prefer, "gaming"—is properly recognized as the Hail Mary pass of cities either dying or economically comatose...
...The project is incomplete for two reasons," he wrote...
...And the employee's lawyer gets a big chunk of that...
...And if Starr sends an impeachment report to Congress, ABC's senior congressional correspondent might have to stay away from that, too...
...Q: You had that discussion with him when he was in prison...
...Clinton as she watched another close friend, Webster Hubbell, forced from public life," Douglass said...
...The experience was clearly troubling for the first lady, Douglass reported, and Douglass herself seemed almost saddened by the turn of events in Washington...
...Linda Douglass, CBS News, Denver...
...His pitch: to construct a casino on the site, in partnership with Caesar's Palace of Las Vegas and a small but influential group of New Orleans investors...
...In August, with the CBS reporter and the public interest lawyer still apparently believing Hubbell's story, the two families flew to Greece for a vacation...
...Phillips told the committee that he believed Hubbell's resignation "was yet the latest example of somone who had served their country well" only to be forced out of office by the Beltway culture of scrutiny...
...She also occasionally covered Rep...
...STILL TOGETHE As difficult as it was, the failed article deal did not destroy the relationship between Phillips and Douglass and the Hubbellsat least not at first...
...Chen 1 was C;01 lig, to repay the more that I felt obligated to do so and I think he was surprised...
...After all, Phillips told the committee, he had already been thinking about a new direction for the foundation: I had previous discussions with the chairman, the then-chairman of the board, Robert Wolfe, about a topic that interested me, and I think interested him as well...
...Phillips and Douglass frequently had them over to dinner...
...Every couple of weeks or so," Phillips said in his deposition, "Mickey and Webb would come by for dinner together...
...if he wins, the government recovers those millions, and the employee gets to keep a big chunk—up to 30 percent...
...as well as the work of the special prosecutor continues to evolve the story...
...Q: Did you discuss with him repaying the money...
...I don't know where he got that....I'm sure this is coming from, you know, the Republicans, cause it was in Safire and then it hit the Wall Street Journal...
...Jeez...
...When Phillips made a passing reference to "this Riady stuff," Hubbell was quick to respond...
...But the "crazy lady" would give as good as she got and, as New Orleans reform movements go, fare longer and better than most...
...Outside those running hotels for tourists, the only entrepreneurs we have here now are political entrepreneurs," says Gordon (Tad) Wilson, the councilwoman's husband and a lifelong student of the city's history and culture...
...I continued to believe him...
...Shortly after Hubbell resigned, Phillips suggested that the Fund might be able to help...
...But Hubbell could not be saved...
...everywhere she turned, journalists seemed more interested in her role in the Arkansas land deal...
...Or just give me half of it...
...one need only remember the poll of Washington media figures that showed 89 percent of them voted for Clinton...
...Those cases, the paper reported, have helped the U.S...
...Douglass, in an interview with TAS, expressed some of the same disillusionment...
...Q: And what was his response...
...As part of the settlement, in which Toyota agreed to perform free repair work on thousands of its autos, the company also agreed to donate about $750,000 to create a foundation that would, as Phillips described it, "do good work to educate the public on various issues, consumer issues...
...Phillips told the Burton committee that he was "shocked" by Hubbell's resignation...
...She was not impressed, and said so repeatedly, much to the choler of her city hall colleagues traveling on Hemmeter-Caesar's dollar (for "research") to Honolulu and Las Vegas...
...Of the end of the friendship, Douglass said curtly, "Look, we were lied to...
...Douglass can't cover that, either...
...But someone should have tipped him off that it would have been a much better career move not to be so dreadfully earnest...
...The latest to resign: Webster Hubbell, a high-ranking official at the Justice Department with close ties to the president and Mrs...
...Douglass spent more than a decade as a reporter for KCBS before moving to rival KNBC in 1985...
...So he and Chairman Wolfe decided the Consumer Support and EduThe American Spectator • May 1998 cation Fund, which had previously focused its efforts on issues like Toyotas and insurance, would create its first-ever Distinguished Public Service Fellowship...
...Assume, for example, that Corporation X has a large government contract...
...JOHN LINDA SUZY MICKEY John Phillips, 55, is a man who by many accounts almost single-handedly created a new type of legal practice...
...yet despite her power, she's had BYRON YORK is an investigative writer with TAS...
...I think he was moved to tears...
...A: Well, I told him—I told him, when I was going to repay the money, that I felt obligated to do so and I think he was surprised...
...Douglass says she told network management about the friendship and recused herself from covering matters involving Hubbell (as she had done earlier with respect to her friend Mickey Kantor...
...But she still had to report stories that touched on Hubbell...
...In late 1992, Douglass left KNBC when her husband decided to move his practice to Washington...
...Committee lawyers wanted to know whether Phillips had read accounts of the "billing dispute...
...The foundation was christened the Consumer Support and Education Fund...
...So there are a lot of interesting things going on in Washington today that are off-limits to Linda Douglass...
...Starr's office wants to know whether that decision not to cooperate was made easier by generous financial help arranged by friends of the White House...
...The collection also included works by Alexander Calder, Joan Miro, and Thomas Hart Benton...
...Once she became close to Hubbell, Douglass says, "I certainly never covered anything having to do with Webb, never covered anything having to do with his problems...
...Our families were quite good friends, and over the years, I would say we spent a lot of time together....I am sure they considered us among their closer friends here in Washington...
...One Republican sound bite, one Democratic sound bite, and a stand-up close...
...The Fund agreed to pay Hubbell $45,000...
...They stayed in touch after Hubbell pleaded guilty —and and even after Hubbell went to prison...
...other payments came from Clinton supporters like Truman Arnold and Bernard Rappoport...
...A EPORTER'S LIFE During the length of her friendship with Hubbell— a time spanning the resignation, the Greek vacation, the guilty plea, and the prison visits—Douglass was reporting for CBS on issues that occasionally involved the Justice Department...
...I don't know...
...You say `growth business' in New Orleans, you must mean paving city streets, operating parking lots, or installing wires for [city-licensed] cable stations...
...The original proposals for riverboat gambling and a riverfront casino were floated during the Barthelemy years...
...What CBS viewers could not have known was that Webb Hubbell—who later pleaded guilty to stealing $400,000 from his old law firm and cheating on his taxes —was not just the first lady's friend...
...After a while, Hubbell stopped talking altogether...
...Of the many points of contention between Councilwoman Wilson and her colleagues in the past twelve years, none has been more publicized or acrimonious than her stubborn opposition to legalized, organized gambling in Orleans parish...
...On July 31, 1997—the very day her husband was giving his deposition to the Burton committee — she was on the other side of Capitol Hill giving a thumbs-down assessment of the Thompson hearings for ABC's "Nightline...
...Phillips also wrote that he had decided to personally pay back the $45,000 that Hubbell had taken...
...Peggy Wilson would serve a dozen years fighting the System at city hall, through two mayoralties—Barthelemy's and, after his turn at the table, Marc Morial's...
...A good-looking former heroin addict who wanted to overthrow the United States government...
...Phillips's financial help for Hubbell attracted the attention of investigators from Dan Burton's House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which is probing, among other things, payments made to Hubbell at the time when he was a potentially crucial witness for Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr (Phillips, who is not suspected of any wrongdoing, has also testified before Starr's grand jury...
...Erik Sorenson, who was executive producer of the CBS Evening News through October 1994, did not return several phone calls seeking comment...
...It would open that fall, in temporary quarters at a renovated Municipal Auditorium...
...I recused myself from that whole story...
...Hubbell had a fairly extensive collection...
...They came up with the idea that Hubbell would write an article or series of articles on the subject of public service, drawing lessons from his experience in Washington...
...In January 1997 Douglass moved to ABC News, where she was assigned to cover the Justice Department (she was recently named the network's senior congressional correspondent...
...I cannot conceive how such a flamboyant people," he pines, "people so visible in the moment, can be invisible to history, can have left no indelible mark...
...Well, what Safire says is that his sources believe that's what I got...
...Hubbell also mentioned that he might like to visit California...
...I didn't talk to him as a source, I don't believe, ever," she says...
...Hubbell: On Riady, yeah...
...The two discussed the upcoming presidential election...
...With plenty of money in the bank, Hubbell could afford to stiff-arm Starr...
...To which the correct response is: because you spent all your time screwing and getting high, you idiot...
...Hubbell said he was reading Ulysses...
...In the early 1980's, Phillips realized that a century-old law called the False Claims Act permitted private citizens to bring lawsuits on behalf of the government...
...In addition to his film work he appears in a weekly hit television program, and has been the exclusive model representing a major Italian fashion designer...
...Three days earlier, New York Times columnist William Safire had written a piece revealing a few details of Hubbell's payoff from the Lippo group...
...It was a clear signal that the so-called "billing dispute" was quite serious...
...Cairo, Illinois...
...There are many, many endearing qualities about Webb," he told Burton committee lawyers...
...Now enter, via the airport, Christopher Hemmeter, the Chevalier de la Table Ronde with a plan to rescue the city once called "the Paris of America...
...LIN DA , 1_ B Network newswoman Linda Douglass and her husband John were good friends with Webb and Suzy Hubbell...
...Besides, Douglass says, she simply didn't know much about Whitewater or Hubbell's involvement...
...Despite these developments, the Consumer Support and Education Fund still expected its imprisoned Distinguished Public Service Fellow to write the article...
...Of course, had Douglass been inclined to dig deeper, she might have run into areas on which she could not report—precisely one of the ways in which a network of friendships can impose constraints on reporting...
...Q: And what did he say...
...In a May 18, 1994 letter to Wolfe, Hubbell reported that he had organized his papers from the Justice Department and had begun interviewing Clinton administration officials on the idea of public service...
...On December 6,1994, Hubbell pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion charges...
...Dan Burton's ongoing investigation into similar issues...
...The Burton probe includes Hubbell, who has emerged as a nexus between the campaign finance scandal and Whitewater...
...They came, primarily as families, to take in its history, its culture, its crawfish etou ffee and joie de vivre...
...I am absolutely scrupulous on this issue," Douglass says...
...But they were novices to the Levantine ways of Louisiana politics: They had their charter to build the casino...
...Over time she would be called by her colleagues an obstructionist, a reactionary, a zealot, a royal pain-in-the-ass and, whenever the heat picked up on Morial the Younger, a racist...
...Douglass reported that Mrs...
...She understood her city, both its charms and its drawbacks...
...THE DISTINGUISHED PUKLIC SER FEL:LOCV In the late 1980's, Phillips won a lawsuit against Toyota Motor Company...
...The total value of the collection—as determined by Hubbell's appraiser—was $39,450...
...but in Baton Rouge a newly formed state casino board would vote to give the license to operate it to another Las Vegas bidder, Harrah's...
...For much of last year, she covered Senator Fred Thompson's campaign finance investigation...
...Former CBS Washington bureau chief Barbara Cochran said simply, "I really don't want to talk about this...
...Phillips is also friends with Michael Cardozo, the man who ran Bill Clinton's first legal defense fund, and John Emerson, a former White House official who stayed in close contact with Hubbell after Hubbell left the Justice Department...
...And...it deters a lot of good people from coming to Washington...
...I believed Webb," Phillips answered...
...Douglass says she did not discuss it with him...
...He was not very forthcoming with me as a reporter...
...Not long after that, Suzy Hubbell pledged to repay Phillips...
...Clinton was hying to keep the focus on her health care initiative —and away from Whitewater...
...According to an appraisal sheet given to the committee, it included twenty-one lithographs and paintings...
...I didn't cover Whitewater," she says, "but I did cover Janet Reno," and thus the prosecutor controversy...
...Coyote has obviously taken to Hollywood as well...
...By all accounts Hubbell was a major player in the entire business...
...She had urged him and other friends to join her to serve in Washington...
...When Whitewater became a hot issue in January 1994, CBS assigned Douglass to cover the story...
...A fount of political entrepreneurship grown gusher-sized since "Moon" Landrieu's day: Last year some $4.8 million was expended at New Orleans International for non-bid professional services from Marc Morial's cronies...
...More official trips, more turns-of-thewheel...
...She concluded her report on a faintly elegiac note: "This was a difficult day for Mrs...
...One of the great values of the Phillips deposition is that it adds texture and context to those poll numbers...
...A: Yes...
...28 to watch some of them fall and has been unable to protect them...
...A: Yes, I did...
...It's well known that there is a cozy relationship between some journalists and newsmakers in the capital...
...government recover $30o million...
...Her friendship created a dilemma that is not terribly rare in Washington: Ethical standards prevented her from reporting on her friend, but how far should she remove herself from matters involving him...
...Chuckles...
...In January 1996, she wrote him a $1o,000 check as a partial pay(Continued on page 8o) -Well, I told [Wchlq—I told him...
...He considered me a very good friend...
...Despite tax breaks, rollovers, and other dispensations 82 May 1998 • The American Spectator...
...An employee finds out that the corporation is overcharging the government by millions of dollars...
...Around the same time, Douglass covered the debate over the crime bill moving through Congress, a top priority of the Clinton Justice Department...
...Another high-ranking member of the Clinton team was pulled down tonight in the spreading undertow of Whitewater," anchorwoman Connie Chung announced...
...Wolfe responded by saying that Hubbell's time in prison might make his article even better...
...Imagine it—sure I bedded hundreds of women and took thousands of drugs and wanted to smash the state, but now I'm a top model and actor, and have been through rehab, and just made you shell out almost thirty bucks for my memoir, so you can read about how fabulous I am...
...Clinton...
...Douglass said she did not have a job in Washington at the time she and Phillips decided to move, but she quickly found work at CBS News, which she joined in January 1993...
...Clearly he is a savvy character who knows how to play the game...
...A 1995 Wall Street Journal profile called Phillips "the nation's premier whistleblower attorney," noting that he was involved in seven of the eight largest cases brought under the False Claims Act...
...You know, understand, Webb was a friend of mine...
...But he stayed in touch with Phillips and Douglass...
...There Los Angeles Times critic Howard Rosenberg called her "far and away, the best political reporter on Los Angeles television...
...And the first-ever Distinguished Public Service Fellow would be...Webb Hubbell...
...investigators are looking into the actions of the Lippo The American Spectator • May 1998 group and other Clinton campaign contributors who came to Hubbell's financial rescue when he faced the clutches of Kenneth Starr...
...Hubbell never produced anything—no article, no rough draft, no nothing...
...in his deposition, Phillips described the conversation: A: It was a difficult situation, especially after he pled guilty, where he received this money, I had recommended him, he had not performed, he couldn't perform, and I assumed he didn't have the capacity to repay the money...
...She had run research on Hemmeter's background as an economic rainmaker, as well as the success/failure rate of legalized gambling ventures in other cities...
...his biggest score came in a Medicare fraud case against National Health Laboratories, Inc., which the Journal says earned Phillips & Cohen between $6 million and $8 million...
...Much of it stayed in the Hubbells' possession, but Douglass and Phillips also visited the Hubbell home and picked out some of their favorites, which they took and hung in their own home...
...So Phillips, Hubbell, and the Fund went ahead with the plan...
...Certainly there would be concern about her covering Hubbell or Whitewater— not that she wouldn't do a good job, but that it would create an appearance of conflict...
...Phillips told the committee that Hubbell called about once a month (Douglass also talked with Hubbell from prison...
...From there the conversation meandered off...
...Gold/New Orleans (Continued rompage4r) dumps trash onto the spotless terrazzo floor of her neighborhood Katz & Besthoff, a shot not likely to be heeded...
...Todd Purdum, a reporter for the New York Times, dated press secretary Dee Dee Myers at the same time he covered the administration (they married in 1997...
...Phillips has been married for twenty-five years to Douglass, a veteran of local television news in Los Angeles...
...ABC says Douglass informed network executives about her Hubbell connection...
...H e doesn't go into how his career got started, but it's not hard to imagine Hollywood cottoning on to him...
...They also came to know other top Clintonites...
...At about the same time, Phillips told Hubbell about the decision...
...Wolfe, in turn, said he hoped that Hubbell's work would help "dispel unfounded cynicism about public life...
...In the late summer of 1992, Kantor was spending most of his time in Little Rock with the Clinton campaign...
...Hubbell tried to act as if nothing was wrong, but in March 1994 he quit his job at the Justice Department to deal with the growing mess...
...By the time the deal was made, more information had come out in the press about Hubbell's resignation...
...Both Kantor and Hubbell had also moved to the capital to join the new Clinton administration, temporarily leaving their wives back home...
...Phillips told the committee he knew, at least socially, Bruce Lindsey, Marsha Scott, William Kennedy III, and Harold Ickes...
...We would see them pretty regularly...
...Suzy Hubbell and Phillips reached an agreement under which Phillips would hold a lien on the art...
...He was, I think, humiliated, embarrassed...
...Phillips told the committee they made a deal: Phillips would use his frequent-flyer miles to purchase plane tickets for Webb and Suzy Hubbell, and the Hubbells would buy a full-fare ticket for Phillips's daughter...
...Somehow, he just thought this was free money...
...Although it has been involved with several causes over the years, the Fund has mostly focused on the issue of auto insurance reform in California...
...Under the False Claims Act, the employee can sue the corporation...
...I think probably, in retrospect, I was mistrustful of much of what is in the press and probably discounted [the reports], to my regret today...
...Phillips selected the Fund's first board of directors and has remained active with the organization ever since...
...Phillips's $45,000 was just a small part of it...
...Then Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation tested their relationship...
...both agreed that things looked good for the president...
...He tended to dismiss [the allegations] as just problems that developed among partners in a law firm," Phillips told the committee, "which I am familiar with as with any other law firms....That's how he described it to me...
...Last summer Phillips was interviewed at length by Burton's lawyers...
...she agreed to pay the rest by the end of March 1996...
...And there will likely be more...
...I think he genuinely felt that he had treated me very badly and everybody else associated with this...
...It appears that Hubbell had no more communications with the Fund during the next few months...
...In January 1993 Phillips and Douglass moved to Washington...
...For many years Douglass and Phillips have been friends with Mickey Kantor, who has served Bill Clinton as campaign manager, trade representative, commerce secretary and, now, private lawyer in the Monica Lewinsky scandal...
...As Phillips's suspicions grew, Hubbell continued to pretend that all was well...
...The end of Phillips' deposition is filled with a sense of disappointment...
...But according to Phillips's testimony, that agreement was thrown out when the Hubbells came up with a plan to repay the rest by turning over some works of art to Phillips...
...Within weeks of Hubbell's resignation, Phillips put together a deal by which a California non-profit group paid Hubbell $45,000 to write a series of articles on the idea of public service...
...L York/Douglass (Continued from page 32) ment...
...Phillips also paid to rent a boat on which the couples spent ten days visiting the Greek islands...
...It just shows that sometimes, even in connection-crazy Washington, you can be too connected...
...This is not an issue that Douglass' former bosses care to discuss...
...Levity aside, the friendship did not last much longer...
...The largest payment was from the Indonesian Lippo Group...
...During that time Attorney General Janet Reno came under increasing pressure from both Republicans and Democrats to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate...
...But on November 18, Hubbell wrote to report a delay in the work...
...Our children are friends, too...
...Douglass filed several stories on the issue for the Evening News but says there was no conflictinvolved...
...I told him I was going to repay the money...
...Not that he could recall, Phillips answered...
...Facing prison and apparent financial ruin, Hubbell agreed to cooperate with Starr's investigation...
Vol. 31 • May 1998 • No. 5
