Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton

473 Pages·2016·4.98 MB·English

by  Joe Conason

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For Eleanor and Edward, who already have begun to
understand why our common humanity must bring us
together. And for their mother, who has taught them so
well.
C H A P T E R O N E
On the first morning he woke up as a private citizen there was nobody around
to serve breakfast to Bill Clinton. For eight years he and Hillary had lived in
the White House, where staffers and servants rushed to meet every need; and
for ten years before that, they had lived in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion,
where similar if not quite equal personal service had always been available at
any hour.
It was Sunday, January 21, 2001—and that was all over now.
Both Clintons rose to face their new life somewhat exhausted from the
long ordeal of Inauguration Day, which had begun in the White House
greeting the new occupants, then continued through the ceremonial
investiture of President George W. Bush amid snow and sleet, a protracted
farewell with hundreds of friends and staffers at Andrews Air Force Base, and
an unusually long journey from Washington to their new home.
Under the foreboding sky, a freezing downpour had grounded the Marine
helicopter that was supposed to transport them from the capital, and had later
slowed the usual hour’s drive from John F. Kennedy Airport to Chappaqua,
roughly forty miles north of the city. There they had ended the day dining late
at a local restaurant with daughter Chelsea, their close friends Terry
McAuliffe and his wife Dorothy, and Douglas Band, a former deputy assistant
to the president who had agreed to stay with Clinton into his post-presidency.
Nobody had known just how tired the former president was until he fell
fast asleep in the Chevy Suburban that brought them all from Kennedy
Airport to Westchester.
When the Clintons came downstairs on that first morning, the former
president and first lady realized that not only was there nobody available to
prepare breakfast for them, but that they had no idea how to make even a cup
of coffee in their sparsely furnished and rarely occupied new home. Neither
did any of the others standing around in the kitchen with them. But everyone
needed caffeine, badly.
“Let’s go get some coffee,” said Clinton.
The first executive decision of William Jefferson Clinton’s post-presidency
was to venture into the snowy little town to visit the local delicatessen and
bring back some coffee and sandwiches. Pulling on a bright yellow fleece
sweatshirt over his T-shirt and jeans, Clinton joined Band in an armored
Cadillac limousine, driven by a Secret Service agent, followed by another
vehicle with four more agents.
Clinton noticed the first hint of trouble a few minutes later, when they
arrived at Lange’s Little Shop and Delicatessen on King Street, the town’s
main drag. The deli’s Sunday morning crowd of customers was friendly
enough, with a few people shouting “Eight more years!” and “We love you,
Bill!” But reporters were milling on the sidewalk, too. When they spied
Clinton’s small entourage pulling up, a few began to bark questions. At first he
could barely hear what they were saying.
“Why did you pardon Marc Rich?”
Alarmed, Doug Band leapt out of the back passenger seat and walked
around to the other side of the car, where Clinton already had stepped out. He
put an arm around Band’s shoulder and whispered softly but firmly: “I’ll give
you five minutes to clear all this away.” He didn’t want the armored limousine
and all the agents swarming around the closed street. He wanted to arrive in
his new hometown more in the style of an ordinary citizen.
Minutes later, Clinton ventured into the crowded deli, where spontaneous
applause lit his face with a smile. While Band placed their order, including an
egg-salad sandwich for Clinton, he shook hands with his new neighbors,
posed for cell phone snapshots, and signed autographs on scraps of paper.
There was no means of escape from the gang of perhaps a dozen or so
reporters, which felt to Clinton and Band like a horde of hundreds who
suddenly had total access to the former president. Nor did Clinton feel he
could simply walk away without answering any of their questions—some
friendly, some not so friendly. New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney,
who had covered both Clintons for years, would later write that the president
appeared “in a chatty mood,” relaxed and rested as he mingled with neighbors
and reporters.
“So far it’s been wonderful,” Clinton said of life after the presidency. On his
first night in Chappaqua he had slept “like a rock,” he added—and no, he
hadn’t bothered to read the Sunday papers or turn on the television yet.
With pleasantries out of the way, what ensued was an impromptu press
conference. The journalists peppered a wholly unprepared ex-president with
inquiries about the scores of pardons and commutations—totaling 177—he
had signed during his last day in the White House. Mostly he responded to
the questions in generalities, offering a promise to prepare a memo on the
“pardon process” for his successor, and a short lecture on compassion toward
former sinners.
“The word ‘pardon’ is somehow almost a misnomer,” said Clinton. “You’re
not saying these people didn’t commit the offense. You’re saying they paid,
they paid in full.” In fairness, he suggested, “we ought to be more open-
minded” about individuals who have discharged their debt to society.
Perhaps those deserving of compassion included people like Susan
McDougal, the Whitewater figure who had refused to implicate the Clintons
in wrongdoing and spent miserable years in jail, or Henry Cisneros, the
former housing secretary convicted of paying off a mistress with public funds,
who had left office in disgrace. He had pardoned both of them. Arguably even
a repentant narcotics smuggler who had done serious time might deserve
consideration. That “paid in full” category, however, most assuredly did not
include Rich, the “fugitive financier” holed up in a luxurious Swiss chateau
while refusing to face multiple charges of tax fraud and violating the U.S.
embargo against Iran.
Why would you pardon him?
“I spent a lot of time on that case. I think there are very good reasons for
it,” Clinton replied, and referred further inquiries to Rich’s Washington
attorney, Jack Quinn, who had formerly worked for him in the White House
counsel’s office. Quinn could explain the legal theory behind the pardons of
Rich and his business partner, Pincus Green, who had faced similar charges,
fled to Switzerland with Rich, and received a pardon, too.
At last Clinton said he needed to go home, to continue the weekend’s work
of unpacking with Hillary, who was thrilled to have a private home again and
always loved to organize anything and everything. Sitting in the house were
well over a hundred boxes of books alone. He needed time to get himself
together, he chuckled, and get some more sleep.
But back on Old House Lane, reporters and TV crews would soon line up
on the street, outside the tall white security fence surrounding the Clintons’
rambling Dutch colonial residence. Notoriously unfriendly to the press and
sensing a media emergency, Band placed a call for help to Howard Wolfson—
a tough and loyal pro who had handled press and communications for
Hillary’s Senate campaign the year before. Wolfson dutifully drove up from
the city and, before sundown, Clinton stepped into the chilly air outside for a
photo opportunity and a few offhand remarks so that everyone else could
finally could go home, too.
The newly sworn junior senator from New York stayed inside all day,
wisely insulating herself from even the appearance of entanglement in her
husband’s latest burgeoning crisis. That afternoon, a familiar atmosphere of
tension loomed over the house, a feeling that things might be descending once
again from bad into much, much worse.
The former president could be excused, perhaps, for mistakenly expecting his
departure from Washington to be less dramatic and more cheerful. His
approval ratings on leaving office were exceptionally high, matching or
exceeding those of such titans as Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano
Roosevelt at the end of their presidencies. Although much of the valedictory
discussion had lamented a presidency disrupted by scandal, his
administration’s long list of accomplishments had not been ignored. Offering
an editorial verdict on his “mixed legacy” and his failure to fulfill an innate
potential for greatness, his frequent critics on the New York Times editorial
page nevertheless conceded that he had established an impressive record of
progress on the economy, the environment, social justice, equal rights—and
acknowledged that his bold engagement with a changing world had enhanced
American prestige as well as prosperity.
There had been lingering echoes of the Monica Lewinsky affair, in a last-
minute legal settlement that Clinton and his lawyers had signed with Robert
Ray, the successor to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. After his
impeachment acquittal in 1999, his most determined enemies in Congress
had consoled each other with the promise that he would surely be criminally
indicted upon leaving office.
But following weeks of negotiations with Clinton’s attorneys, Ray agreed
not to indict him for perjuring himself before the grand jury investigating the
Lewinsky matter, in exchange for his public acknowledgment of making false
statements under oath, and acceptance of a five-year suspension of his license
to practice law. And now even some of the right-wing Republicans who had
voted to remove him expressed relief that the Clinton wars would finally
reach an armistice as a new Republican president took office.
So Clinton had left town with the grumbling muted and the cheers of
hundreds of admiring friends and staff still ringing in his ears. Here at least
was an end to the constant partisan warfare and the opportunity to begin
something very different.
Yet that respite was to be measured not in weeks or even days but in mere
hours. Scarcely had his successor settled into the Oval Office for the new
administration’s first day of work, when Clinton’s old enemies in the media
and on Capitol Hill had returned to full uproar, over the Marc Rich pardon
and a thousand other supposed offenses. However much they might sniff and
snark about “Clinton fatigue,” they never really got tired of kicking him
around. And as they quickly discovered, he was an easier, more vulnerable
target now.
Unlike the battles of the past, Clinton could no longer turn to a devoted
phalanx of presidential assistants, press flacks, personal aides, Democratic
Party officials, and congressional allies to shield him. Now he was virtually
alone, without protection, as an unrelenting barrage of assaults, insults,
complaints, and threats suddenly poured in from every direction.
But a pair of loyal young aides would spend nearly every moment of the
next ten years with him: Doug Band, who had earned a law degree from
Georgetown while working in the White House and turned down an enticing
job offer at Goldman Sachs to continue working for Clinton at Hillary’s
fervent request, and Justin Cooper, a native of the Philadelphia suburbs who
had worked in Oval Office operations after graduating from American
University. Their role in shaping and protecting his post-presidential life on
many levels—from philanthropy and politics to press guidance—would too
often be underestimated.
On Monday morning, January 22, Hillary Clinton left Chappaqua early to
return to Washington with Dorothy McAuliffe. Chelsea and her boyfriend
had gone, too—leaving Band; Cooper; Clinton’s military valet Oscar Flores,
who had quit the White House to stay with him; the Clintons’ brown
Labrador retriever, Buddy; and Terry McAuliffe, who understood that this
would be a good day for a friend to stay by the former president’s side.
Plainly irritated by a crescendo of criticism focusing on the Rich pardon,
Clinton was grim and angry. His mood didn’t improve that evening, when the
network and cable news broadcasts all featured versions of the Rich story that