Part One By Murray Waas Key Kenneth Starr witness David Hale's strategy for getting out of legal trouble: Blame President Clinton (08/12/98) Part Two By Murray Waas David Hale lied under oath during his testimony in the Whitewater case to conceal his secret ties to conservative activists (08/13/98) Part Three By Murray Waas How David Hale falsely invoked Bill Clinton's name to win a $50,000 payoff (08/14/98) Part Five By Michael Haddigan and Murray Waas Why there will never be a Whitewater Report from Ken Starr (08/21/98) T A B L E+T A L K Today's headlines: Semen, oral sex and the presidency! How do you think the media are handling the Clinton Crisis? Sound off in the Politics area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E I may be crazy, but I'm no cannibal! R E C E N T L Y Democrats running scared By Jonathan Broder Capitol Hill Democrats fear the future (08/10/98) Click here for Viagra (or other drugs) By Greg Critser Your Viagra is only a click away (08/07/98) Just do it, Bill By Fred Branfman The president should tell the truth (08/06/98) Clinton's sexual scorched-earth plan By Jonathan Broder and Harry Jaffe The White House may be ready to declare a "total war" on Congress over the Lewinsky case (08/05/98) New JFK death film By Scott McLemee New Zapruder film doesn't solve JFK case (08/04/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		FALSE WITNESS | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - - - - - - - - - - The jury for the Tucker-McDougal trial never heard about Watt's doubts and reservations about Hale, according to Watt and his attorney, because the Whitewater investigators never recorded that information in their FBI reports. Such FBI reports of interviews with witnesses in criminal cases are routinely turned over to defendants so that they will have access to relevant information. But Watt freely shared these doubts with Salon. During the same period Hale was pressing him to get the property appraisals done and was invoking Clinton's name, Watt himself had two encounters with Clinton. But on these occasions, Clinton gave no indication that he knew anything about Hale's intention to make the $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal. "Clinton used to jog up and down Broadway [in Little Rock]," Watt recalls. "A couple of times, right after night court, I picked him up at the north end of Broadway and drove him back to the mansion." Neither time, Watt says, did Clinton "intimate in any way" that he had dealings with Hale. "He asked about my legal work," recalls Watt. "He asked about my real estate business. He asked, 'Are you still rehabbing houses? Are you still buying and selling houses?' He mentioned friends we had in common. That was the conversation." David Hale's name did come up during one of the conversations, Watt says, but only in a very vague way. "Clinton asked if I was still doing legal work for David. And I said that we were. But that was the full extent of any discussion we had about David." Watt says he told FBI agent David Reign and other Whitewater investigators about these two conversations with Clinton. But the FBI reports of the interviews with Watt, copies of which were obtained by Salon, make no reference to Watt's two encounters with Clinton. A federal law enforcement official with firsthand knowledge of Watt's interviews confirmed his account, but contended that the information Watt provided about his meetings with Clinton was arguably not important enough to be included in an FBI report. "The conversations did not prove or disprove anything," said the official. "They didn't indicate that Clinton had in fact pressured Hale, and didn't show that wasn't the case." Watt also says the investigators were never satisfied with his claims that he did not know of any additional evidence against Clinton, apart from what Hale had told him. Watt says he perceived there was an anti-Clinton bias among some of the investigators, an eagerness to believe the worst about Clinton and to put too much trust in Hale. When Watt insisted that Clinton had only mentioned Hale in passing, some of the investigators said they disbelieved him. "You're not telling us all of it, there has to be more to this," the investigators told Watt. But he insists, "There wasn't more to it." Watt says that while the investigators never told him to lie, he felt pressured to tell a story about Clinton that went beyond the facts as he knew them. "I was told that they didn't like the truth the way that I told it," he says. "I had my truth and they had their truth and I was told that they liked their truth better." Despite the pressure, Watt says, he stuck by his story. "My answer consistently to the OIC [Office of Independent Counsel] and to anyone else has been I didn't know [about Clinton's alleged participation in the loan scheme]. David would drop names. He would lie and manipulate people. He was a pathological liar. He was trying to convince me to do something. He was trying to push a spark plug. And in my mind I knew that I've been with Clinton on at least those two occasions where nothing was said specifically about Hale. Nothing was said about the deal. Nothing was said about the people involved. And in fact, [Clinton] did ask about my own property deals and how I was doing and if I was doing good, and nothing was brought up at all about something he was supposed to be involved with. And in my own mind David Hale didn't have any real credibility with me at all." A federal law enforcement official told Salon that Watt's allegations of anti-Clinton bias among Whitewater investigators are unfounded. "Our office was pressing him for more information," said the official. "That's what we do. That's what goes on during the course of an investigation. Were we skeptical that Watt was telling the truth? Of course we were, and we pressed him." Is Watt a credible witness? Several factors must be considered in weighing his account. In June 1996, Watt resigned as a Little Rock municipal judge in the wake of the Whitewater charges against him and another complaint by an Arkansas state representative who alleged that Watt gave him a $1,500 check during a legislative session, which he perceived to be a bribe. Watt has denied any impropriety, saying that the check was to compensate the legislator for legal services for the Arkansas Municipal Judges Association. And Watt was hardly an innocent when it came to his dealings with Hale, according to testimony and evidence presented during the Tucker-McDougal trial, federal law enforcement documents and several individuals who have known both Watt and Hale. A longtime acquaintance of Watt recalled in an interview that Watt, Hale and James McDougal were among a circle of people in Arkansas "who made and lost fortunes and then made them and lost them again, who cut corners along the way and were at one time or another drawn to each other." In interviews with Whitewater investigators, Hale painted a picture of Watt as a willing participant in many of his various schemes. A confidential FBI report detailing a debriefing of Hale stated, "Hale described Watt as someone who wanted to be part of their group. Watt frequently was at Hale's office and it was not unusual for Watt to go through Hale's files." Whitewater prosecutors named Watt as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Tucker-McDougal case. During the trial, prosecutors presented testimony and evidence that not only implicated Watt in the inflated real estate appraisal but also indicated that he had forged a document he submitted to the SBA and misled FBI agents during an interview. But prosecutors granted Watt immunity in exchange for his testimony in the case. In assessing Watt's allegations, it is also important to point out that Watt bears some animosity to some of the Whitewater investigators he is now accusing of misdeeds. "By classifying me as an unindicted co-conspirator, they damaged me politically and also as a sitting judge," Watt says. Sources close to Starr's investigation pointed out that Watt has reasons to hold grudges particularly against former Whitewater prosecutor Ray Jahn and two FBI agents assigned to the Whitewater probe, David Reign and Steven Irons. The three men vigorously recommended that Watt be criminally charged in the case, but their recommendation was overruled. Finally, it should be noted that Watt once before made charges regarding improper conduct by Whitewater prosecutors, only to later withdraw them. In a July 1995 chance encounter at the Little Rock airport with another cooperating Whitewater witness, H. Don Denton, a former Madison Guaranty vice president, Watt alleged that prosecutors told him to lie. But later, on the witness stand at the Tucker-McDougal trial, he changed his story, testifying under questioning from the prosecution, "No one asked me to tell a lie." Watt's allegations about the Whitewater investigators might easily be dismissed because of his obvious credibility problems and his admitted animus toward Starr's office. But Hampton, the highly respected Little Rock criminal defense attorney who represented Watt, was present for virtually all of Watt's meetings with FBI agents and prosecutors from Starr's office. In a series of interviews, Hampton corroborated Watt's account that Whitewater investigators left out of FBI reports the information about Watt's two meetings with Clinton. "I have a very distinct memory of Watt recounting the two discussions with Clinton when Watt drove him back to the governor's mansion after night court," Hampton recalled. "He told them about it in some detail. There is no doubt about that." Hampton said he was allowed to share his recollections of the meetings with Salon because his client, Watt, had given him permission to talk to do so. Ordinarily, he pointed out, he could not have spoken about the matter because of attorney-client privilege: "It's important for my other clients to know that I am not telling tales out of school," he said. Among those who have vouched for Hampton's credibility is a federal Whitewater investigator. "I don't know that I would credit Bill Watt's story on its own. But Mark Hampton is a conscientious guy, and what he has to say should be looked at," said the investigator. And, more important than Hampton's account is the fact that Watt's story is verified by a federal law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the official interviews. N E X T+P A G E+| Why Starr's agents ignored information favorable to Clinton