PART ONE How key Starr witness plotted with Clinton enemies
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FALSE WITNESS | PAGE 1, 2,, 3, 4, 5
Viewed in retrospect, Hale's municipal court operation offers a study of the man, the method and monkey business at the heart of the Whitewater story. Despite his claimed connections with Clinton's "political family," it was Hale's own family ties -- and his brother's connections with Pulaski County Democrats -- that launched his political career in Little Rock. His older brother Milas H. Hale has been for decades an influential lawyer and municipal judge in Sherwood, just outside Little Rock. The elder Hale is a political ally of a former state senator, Max Howell, who was also the powerful longtime chair of the Senate's judiciary committee. Howell, who is now retired, supported some of then-Gov. Clinton's legislative initiatives and bitterly fought others. After graduation from law school in 1966, David Hale worked in his brother's law firm and later became a Pulaski County deputy prosecutor. In 1975 Hale was briefly mentioned as a possible candidate for secretary of state, lieutenant governor and attorney general. But that was pretty much the beginning and the end of any major role for him in statewide Democratic politics. David Hale found another path to power. In 1979, the Legislature passed a bill, sponsored by Howell, establishing a new Pulaski County Municipal Court in Little Rock. Howell said he proposed the bill with Hale in mind. "The bill didn't have David's name on it, but we all knew David would probably be the judge," Howell said in a 1994 interview. Hale later got another helping hand from Howell after a constitutional challenge indirectly limited Hale to one term. Howell sponsored a bill that allowed Hale to run for reelection. Pulaski County's new court was supposed to handle small claims cases. But within months of its establishment, the small claims court morphed into an all service court. Without public notice, Hale began hearing child support, traffic, bad check and other misdemeanor cases, thereby sapping revenues that would have otherwise gone to other Little Rock-area municipalities. In the first year, revenues to the county from Hale's court jumped from a little over $1,000 a month to approximately $60,000 a month, according to an account that appeared at the time in the Arkansas Gazette. By 1990, Hale had begun to think of new ways to collect even more revenue. He asked the county board of supervisors, known in Arkansas as the Quorum Court, to let him go after millions in uncollected fines. Hale told the officials that he wanted to use a private collection firm to gather the fines. Members of the Quorum Court unanimously approved the plan. But after only a few months of operation in early 1991, Hale fired the original collection company. A confidential informant would tell FBI Special Agent David F. Reign in January 1994 that Hale fired the company "because they would not 'kick-back' any money to the judge." Without informing county officials, Hale then allowed a new company, Special Court Services, to open up shop inside his court. Ron Oliver, who now heads the Pulaski County Democratic Committee, and another local businessman, Roger Richmond, were listed as the company's officers. But Simpson and others suspected that Hale himself had an interest in SCS. Oliver, the former SCS president, told Salon that he was primarily involved in marketing and promoting the firm's various services and knew little about it's day-to-day operations. Oliver said he was never entirely certain who owned SCS. Richmond, who several individuals say has moved away from Arkansas, could not be located for comment. The FBI informant, a former municipal court clerk who also spoke with Salon on the condition that she not be identified, said she told the FBI in February 1994 that she thought Hale had a piece of the action: "Everyone knew at the time that Hale was actually running the company," she recalled. A confidential FBI report, obtained by Salon, confirms the former clerk's account and recounts what she then told the FBI: "Judge Hale became very upset when court employees talked about SCS inside the courtroom," said the FBI report. "SCS collected a fee for each 'hot check' collection they made. Source advised that sometimes the fee they collected would be more than the actual amount of the 'hot check' recovered by their company." N E X T+P A G E+| Very Special Court Services |
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