'Blood Sport' Author Says Misleading Statements Demean Clintons

Aired March 18, 1996 4:13 pm

BERNARD SHAW, Anchor: A majority of Americans say `enough already' when it comes to extending the Senate's investigation into Whitewater. According to the same USA Today/Gallup poll, more than half those surveyed also dismiss any link between the Whitewater allegations and President Clinton's ability to serve in the office. Fifty-six percent say the allegations are not relevant; 40 percent say they are important indicators of Mr. Clinton's fitness for office. Joining us now, a reporter who has investigated the Clintons and the Whitewater affair in depth. He believes Whitewater will be a factor in the '96 election. He's James Stewart, author of the new book 'Blood Sport.' In this book you say whether specific laws were broken should not obscure the broader issues that make Whitewater an important story. What are some of those broader issues?

JAMES STEWART, Author, 'Blood Sport': I think probably the most important is the character and integrity of the president and first lady. How they've handled these issues, how they've responded to questions of legitimate concern, and whether they've been honest, not just in answering questions to the American public, but whether they've been honest in answering questions under oath. I think these are serious questions.

SHAW: Why do you think you were invited by a high intermediary for the White House, Manhattan attorney Susan Thomases, to write the full story, invited to meet with the first lady, Mrs. Clinton, and then come to find that your sources of information- indeed, interviews you wanted to do, were shut down?

STEWART: Well, that's a mystery I'd love to know the answer to myself. I assume in the beginning and I think it was admirable of them, it's what they said. They wanted to clear the air by showing they had nothing to hide, by being completely open to an objective journalist who would go in and do the whole story. What I find puzzling is why they would have changed their minds. I said let's don't go down this road if you're not going to go through it to the end, and yet, there really was no cooperation. I can only conclude that advisers or they themselves decided that the heat was off and that there was no reason to have a reporter going through what was, let's face it, an unsavory chapter in their lives.

SHAW: Former New York Times reporter Jeff Girth [sp] was trying to get to the bottom of how Mrs. Clinton was so successful in the highly volatile commodities market- successful to the point of making virtually $100,000 in profit. He was told by a White House person that she read the Wall Street Journal, had done her research. He later found out this was not so, went back to this person and said- to that person- why did you tell me this story. And then in your book, you quote him as saying, `The first instinct from everybody from Arkansas is to lie.' Now, is that a fair assessment, or an exaggeration?

STEWART: Well, I'm simply quoting a White House official saying that. First of all, I think he meant the people from Arkansas in the White House. And it's an exaggeration, of course, but nevertheless, there is a pattern, both on the part of the Clintons and peoples around them, of having a knee-jerk reaction to questions, to say something that they think will make them seem better and what the public would want to hear.

First asked about the Whitewater investment, they immediately say, oh, we were just passive investors. Well, that simply is not supported by the facts. Hillary Clinton herself managed the investment from 1987 to 1992. So, I think it's a pattern that was established that worked in the state house in Arkansas, that worked during the campaign, and so, in a sort of ends-justify-the-means mentality of the Clinton administration and others in Washington, it kept working, so, why stop?

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SHAW: Is that what you meant when you also wrote, `As time passed, their drip-by-drip concessions gave credence to their critics and undermined their integrity?'

STEWART: Well, there's a problem with small falsehoods, as I would have thought the first lady herself would have known from the Watergate affair, to which she was a direct observer - you have to support it with new shadings of the truth. Documents show up that don't support the story, and then those documents have to be hidden. So, these things kept coming out that didn't fit the story, and that required new, in my view, misleading or false statements.

SHAW: Advice- basic advice given by David Gergen and White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum - telling the president and the first lady to get it all out. You talk about a sequence in the book where they're meeting in the Oval Office, the president is over in Europe, he's speaking on a speaker phone- they're talking about Whitewater. Bernard Nussbaum warns about the Office of the Independent Counsel- if you agree to have an independent counsel, it's going to be what he called a roving searchlight. At one point George Stephanopoulos says Bernie's getting hysterical. President Clinton on the speaker phone says I'm in Russia, and they ask me about Whitewater. I cannot take this. One point, Nussbaum says I don't know what happened in Arkansas in the last 20 years; I can't believe none of your friends did nothing wrong. Somebody did something wrong. Was that advice from Nussbaum- from Gergen ever heeded?

STEWART: It was not heeded. I think it was excellent advice, as Bernie Nussbaum said, what's important is the judgment of history- do the right thing. Tomorrow's headlines don't matter. And yet, both Bernie Nussbaum and David Gergen were drummed out of the White House with a cloud over them. I think it was good advice, and I don't think the Clintons would be shadowed by this today if they had followed it.

SHAW: President Clinton- you quote as saying- I think there's a level of suspicion here, meaning in Washington, that is greater than that I have been used to in the past. Has this been a Washington education for this 42nd president?

STEWART: Well, certainly it has in some cases, and Blood Sport is not just about the Clintons. It's also about the media, it's about the opponents, it's about the partisan activities on the part of Republicans - all of whom took advantage of every misstatement that came out of the White House and turned it against them. I hope the message will be that it's- yes, it's a nasty environment. It is a blood sport, but the weapons in that war is falsehoods. And when somebody doesn't tell the truth, they get pilloried for it.

SHAW: Yesterday, in reliable sources, White House counselor stewart, or rather George Stephanopoulos, quotes you and Time magazine as saying there's no smoking gun. This is Stephanopoulos, reading your piece in Time. There's no smoking gun here; there's no allegation.

STEWART: Well, I disagree. I know the White House has been trying to say there's nothing new in this book, but there's, I think, something new on every page. But I agree, there's no smoking gun, there's no one thing that's going to lead everyone to say, they've got to be impeached. I agree with that, but there's a wealth, I think, of interesting new information.

SHAW: Author James B. Stewart; the book, 'Blood Sport.' Thank you. Wish we had more time.

STEWART: Thank you.

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