Hell's a-Burnin'
Vlasto, Chris
Hell's a-Burnin' by Chris Vlasto -w~ ~w"ELl'sa-burnin'." These were the last I-1 words Jim McDougal left on my answer-L. -I-ing machine on the morning of January 22, 1998. America was about to...
...As I asked Jim questions about the arcane land deal known as Whitewater, he told me to take out my wallet...
...Hell's a-burnin...
...I don't want to die in jail...
...He was never boring...
...Even from a jail cell, McDougal was only a collect call away from a quote...
...But then there was the other side of Jim McDougal...
...He seemed reborn...
...But after gathering himself, he said: "You tell Ted Koppel, I am Billy Clinton's Brutus...
...Was it a game...
...He couldn't wait for his book tour...
...He would tell just enough to keep you interested and to keep you coming back...
...The onetime business partner of the Clintons was a lonely man then, who lived in a trailer, his arteries clogged, his mother dead, millions squandered, and his former friend sitting in the Oval Office...
...He cried once again after he made his deal with Kenneth Starr...
...Whitewater was out of the headlines during this visit, but I asked him the same question I had asked him a thousand times: "Do you think this story is over...
...He was working on a memoir called "Arkansas Mischief...
...I had hundreds of conversations with Jim McDougal over the last five years, before and after he went to jail for fraud and became a key prosecution witness in the Whitewater investigation...
...He said, "Chris, what have I told you...
...On the eve of his trial, we sat in his hotel room, and he began to cry...
...I last saw Jim McDougal over Thanksgiving in jail...
...Was he stonewalling...
...Yes, he did become a media darling in love with his own image...
...Or was he just a lonely man who liked the company of reporters...
...Or just wanted to talk...
...Sure, he went in and out of manic rage...
...That was Jim McDougal—always working an angle...
...Not pausing for a breath he added, "You know this story is going to be bigger than Watergate...
...Chris Vlasto is an investigative producer for ABC News...
...He said, "You can't remember financial transactions you made a month ago, and now you're asking me about a transaction I did more than 10 years past...
...He pulled out my credit cards and asked me what charges I had made the month before...
...This is going to be bigger than Watergate...
...I first met McDougal, who died last week in prison at age 57, long before he became a familiar figure on national TV, tipping his trademark Panama hat to the cameras outside the courthouse in Little Rock...
...Underneath all the bravado was a frightened man...
...He said, "I don't want to go to jail...
...Sure, some days he defended the Clintons and other times he attacked them with venom...
...He was always ready with a quip and full of color and wit, but he was a beaten man, who felt betrayed by his friend Bill Clinton...
...That was Jim McDougal, combative and intriguing, always keeping reporters on their toes...
...He said, "I never thought of myself as a rat, but now I am...
...He told me he was a cult figure among the inmates and that he had befriended the harder cons by volunteering for garbage duty...
...America was about to wake up to the Monica Lewinsky story, but somehow Jim McDougal knew about it first and wanted to spin...
...I was confused...
...All I did was help a friend, and now I'm going to the slammer and he's going to win reelection...
...During his trial, he even bought a book of Bartlett's Quotations because he was concerned that his sound bites were getting stale...
Vol. 3 • March 1998 • No. 27
