Posted on 08/08/2002 9:15:06 PM PDT by HAL9000
WASHINGTON — A number of their most notable friends and enemies have joined former President Clinton and New York’s U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in saying that the government owes them for Whitewater.In all, 38 individuals, including some of the Clintons ’ best friends, such as Bruce Lindsey and Susan McDougal, as well as some of their staunchest enemies, such as conservative billionaire Richard M. Scaife and former Pulaski County Municipal Judge David Hale, are asking a federal appeals court for reimbursement of legal expenses.
The requests, as well as the amounts being sought, are filed under seal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Upon request, however, the court made available to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this week the names of those seeking reimbursement. "I can’t imagine that many people seeking attorney’s fees," said former Democratic U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers, who spoke in Clinton’s defense during Clinton’s impeachment trial.
Others, such as Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who has written extensively about independent counsels, said she is not surprised. "I would have expected a lot, given the scope of the investigation," she said.
According to figures that Clark compiled, the 38 seeking reimbursement for Whitewater costs compares with 28 who sought reimbursement after the Iran-Contra scandal. Among those reimbursed after that investigation were former Presidents Reagan, $562,111, and George H. W. Bush, $272,353.
The current list amounts to a who’s who of the Whitewater investigation which grew into the Monica Lewinsky case.
The petitioners include former White House aide Lewinsky; Betsey Wright, Clinton’s chief of staff when he was governor; Perryville banker Robert Hill; Dan Lasater, lawyer and bond broker and close friend of Clinton; former state legislator Gloria Cabe; David Watkins, a former White House official who was a headliner in the Travel Office controversy; former Little Rock Traffic Judge William Watt; and Vernon Jordan, the attorney who helped Lewinsky find a job after she left the White House.
Attempts to reach many of the reimbursement seekers resulted only in unreturned phone calls.
The independent-counsel law that governs their requests says the court can, if it chooses, reimburse individuals who were targeted by an investigation for "reasonable attorney’s fees" as long as the person was not indicted.
Whitewater, which ended up costing the government more than $70 million, was an investigation that went through many phases and issues. It will be a matter of the courts sifting through those phases to decide if someone indicted or convicted in relation to one part can be compensated in relation to another, legal sources close to the matter said Wednesday.
The Clintons, for instance, have said they are not seeking reimbursement for anything related to the Lewinsky affair, which led to Clinton’s 1998 impeachment.
Political observers — friendly and hostile to the Clintons — expressed amazement at the range of characters seeking reimbursement. Scaife’s request, in particular, stood out. Scaife financed the "Arkansas Project," an effort by the American Spectator magazine to uncover Clinton scandals in Arkansas. "This is in the great American tradition of not spending your own money unless you have to," said Calvin Jillson, American government expert at Southern Methodist University. "Richard Scaife would not miss the difference."
That Scaife and his associates are seeking money right along with the Clintons and their friends "shows that money certainly has a way of bringing people together," added Marshall Wittmann, political analyst at the conservative Hudson Institute, a think tank that has an office in Washington, D. C.
But Clinton critics, such as Larry Klayman, head of the watchdog group Judicial Watch, defended Scaife’s request, saying he was dragged into the case. "People like the Clintons and Bruce Lindsey and others should reimburse the American taxpayer for forcing them to go through this," Klayman added.
Bumpers has a distinctly opposite view, saying the number of people seeking reimbursement is reflective "of a prosecutor gone wild."
Bumpers added, "I am sure there are some very legitimate claims."
Among them, he said, are the Clintons. "I certainly think the president and Mrs. Clinton and Bruce Lindsey [deserve compensation]. It would be a travesty for them not to be reimbursed."
Suzanne Garment, author of the book Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said, "I’ve seen cases where someone who was not a primary target could be bankrupted by these bills."
By early September, the independent counsel’s office and the Justice Department will submit their evaluations of the Whitewater-related claims. The appeals court will then take the matter into consideration. But it has no deadline; reimbursement can often take years. "The delay can be a real hardship," Garment said.
Former Watergate counsel Sam Dash, now a Georgetown University law professor, said compensation is often warranted. "In the interests of American justice, that’s a fair thing to do," he said.
But Clark, the Washington University law professor, said the Whitewater-related claims will present the appeals court with an assortment of novel issues. For instance, what if the legal fees presented by Lewinsky include charges by her attorney for defending her on television. The court should not reimburse for such charges, she said.
Further, Clark said, there is often a certain "fiction" surrounding legal bills stemming from such investigations. Clients and attorneys might present an exorbitant bill, knowing they have a chance for government compensation. If there were no chance for reimbursement, they might negotiate a lower bill. Scrutinizing such matters "is hard for a court to do well," she said.
It will also be interesting to compare how well the Whitewater figures do, compared with those involved in Iran-Contra, she said. Many of the latter "got much of what they asked for," she said. Oliver North got $4,755, Secretary of State George Shultz got $281,398. "This court will surprise you," Clark predicted.
Looking for payback
Federal law tipulates, once an independent counsel's investigation ends, at the request of "an individual who is the subject of an investigation ... the court may, if no indictment is brought against such individual ... award reimbursement for those reasonable attorneys' fees incurred by that individual." So far, 38 people have filed for reimbursement with the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that appointed the independent counsels:
Bill Clinton.
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Susan McDougal - With her husband, Jim McDougal, a partner with the Clintons in the 1978 purchase of 233 acres on the White River in the Arkansas Ozarks.
Bill Henley - McDougal's brother.
Harry Denton - Loan officer at Union National Bank who helped the Clintons and McDougals finance the purchase.
Ellen B. Kulka - General counsel of the Resolution Trust Corp. and a witness in the federal investigation of Jim McDougal's failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association.
Bennie Beard - An employee of land appraiser Robert W. Palmer of Little Rock questioned in the Madison Guaranty investigation.
Gloria Cabe - Former state legislator who managed Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election campaign.
Glenda Cooper - A Clinton high-school classmate and campaign worker questioned by the FBI about a last-minute infusion of cash into Clinton's 1990 campaign.
Robert Hill - A Perryville banker found innocent of funneling bank funds into Arkansas political campaigns, including $7,000 into Clinton's 1990 race.
Robert Hill Jr.
Dan Lasater - A Little Rock lawyer and financial supporter of Clinton.
Betsey Wright - Clinton's chief of staff when he was governor and a key aide during his first presidential campaign.
Bruce Lindsey - White House deputy counsel and Clinton's closest adviser.
Kevin Fornshill - The Park Police officer who found White House counsel Vince Foster's body at Fort Marcy Park in 1993.
Ellen Fornshill.
David Watkins - Head of White House administration who wrote a memo detailing Mrs. Clinton's role in the Travel Office firings.
Matthew Moore - A lawyer who worked in Watkins' office.
Anthony Marceca - A temporary White House employee who illegally collected hundreds of FBI background files in 1993-94 based on an outdated Secret Service list of White House pass holders.
Craig Livingstone - The White House security office chief and Marceca's boss.
Richard Mellon Scaife - Billionaire publisher of American Spectator whose Sarah Scaife Foundation funded its own investigation of Clinton.
Stephen Boynton - A Virginia lawyer who oversaw the investigation.
David Hale - Former Pulaski County municipal judge who was independent counsel Kenneth Starr's chief Whitewater witness from 1994-96.
William Watt - Little Rock traffic judge questioned in the investigation of Hale's business deals.
Parker Dozhier - A Hot Springs bait-shop owner accused of passing on cash payments from the Scaife Foundation to Hale between 1994 and 1996.
Nicholas Stonnington - A Merrill Lynch vice president and Democratic Party contributor who paid Webb Hubbell $18,000 in August 1994, five months after Hubbell resigned as associate attorney general.
Michael Schaufele - Hubbell's Little Rock accountant.
Monica Lewinsky - The White House aide whose affair with Clinton led to his impeachment.
Patsy Thomasson - Deputy director of the White House personnel office who was questioned about Lewinsky's White House activities.
Bayani Nelvis - White House steward who was questioned about Lewinsky's White House activities.
Vernon Jordan - Washington lawyer and friend of Clinton who helped Lewinsky find a job after she left the White House.
Kenneth Bacon - The Pentagon spokesman accused of leaking Linda Tripp's security clearance to The New Yorker.
Clifford Bernath - Bacon's deputy.
Nathan Landow - A Democratic fund-raiser who raised hundreds of thousand of dollars for Clinton-Gore campaigns and was questioned in connection with the Katherine Willey affair.
Virginia Terzano - A White House deputy press secretary.
Tracy Price.
Kayla Rives.
Of course, you have to know that any time any of us see your name on the thread, we KNOW we're more than likely going to have a stroke. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.