Now, Money Clouds the Already Fogged Issues Dogging Clinton

From the very start, questions of sex and lies have enveloped Bill Clinton’s presidency like a low-lying fog. But there is something else lurking in the mist, making the truth still harder to discern.

Money.

From bit players to major accusers, from Arkansas state troopers to a longtime Whitewater witness, individuals whose stories have helped frame the controversies surrounding Clinton have profited, tried to profit, been accused of profiting--or stand to profit later--from their versions of what happened.

“Society has changed--permanently,” maintains Michael Josephson, founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey, Calif. “It is impossible to be involved in a major event today without the possibility of major economic gain.”

Clinton’s allies have seized on the fact that money calls motives into question to attack the credibility of potentially harmful witnesses. One target is David Hale, a former Little Rock, Ark., judge and Whitewater land deal witness who has denied the Clinton camp’s charge that he was bankrolled by right-wing interests. Another is Kathleen E. Willey, who sought a $300,000 book deal on her friendship with Clinton before telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” her story of an alleged aggressive sexual advance by the president.

Of course, it does not necessarily follow that a story is phony just because the teller is trying to make a buck. But questions of personal gain make it that much harder for the public to sift through a welter of charges and countercharges and ultimately reach the truth.

As for the numerous Clinton sex allegations, Josephson says, money can be held against almost all the players. “There’s always the possibility, in the present or the future, that they’ll be in a position to make a lot of money.”

Gilbert Davis, an attorney for Paula Corbin Jones who argued successfully in the U.S. Supreme Court that the president is not immune from civil suits, puts it more acidly: “As a general proposition, the White House smears anyone who says anything they don’t like.”

Whatever the truth, there is a growing catalog of figures who have seen a potential to profit from the controversies surrounding Clinton.

Gennifer Flowers, whose claims of a 12-year affair with Clinton almost destroyed his 1992 campaign, pocketed $150,000 from the Star tabloid for her story.

Linda Tripp, whose secret tape-recordings of former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky became evidence in the current investigation, once planned a book described as an insider’s look at a scandal-plagued White House. (Tripp abandoned the 1996 project amid a dispute with her ghostwriter. She remains friends with Lucianne Goldberg, the New York book agent who encouraged her to tape her conversations with Lewinsky.)

Willey, a former White House volunteer with large personal debts, was peddling a book proposal about her friendship with Clinton for weeks before she appeared on television. Michael Viner, president of New Millennium Entertainment in Los Angeles, said he lost interest when Willey’s televised account differed from the story her lawyer had been pitching his way. (Willey’s account, meanwhile, was contradicted by her friend, Julie Steele, who also netted $7,000 and a family trip to Florida when she sold a photo of Willey and Clinton to the National Enquirer.)

Even some bit players have discerned the rustle of dollars at the shadowy edges of controversy. Cristy Zercher, a flight attendant on Clinton’s 1992 campaign plane, retailed an account to the Star--for $50,000--of her allegedly being groped by the presidential contender. Mike McGrath, a former Navy steward in the White House, got a similar bounty for his tales of mischief in the presidential mansion.

As some see it, such commerce is no compliment to the industry that conducts it. In that category are not only the supermarket tabloids but also the book publishers, which have demonstrated a large appetite--the O.J. Simpson trial is a case in point--for tell-all sagas that reveal little of lasting value.

“I find it a bitter irony that I could probably in a minute go out and sell Monica Lewinsky’s book for a million dollars,” while the publishing world is increasingly aloof to serious nonfiction, says Ronald Goldfarb, a Washington literary agent and attorney.

In the Clinton controversies, issues of cash and credibility are not limited to book deals.

The White House has made much of unproved charges that Hale, who has run a one-man anti-Clinton crusade, once got $5,000 that originated with right-wing financier Richard Scaife. (Hale points out that he first leveled his accusations that then-Gov. Clinton pressured him to make an illicit loan to a Clinton associate before any of the alleged payments were made.)

Indeed, Clinton’s allies also have suggested that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr had his own conflict of interest by accepting a future deanship at Pepperdine University, which has benefited from $12.7 million in donations from Scaife. Last month, Starr felt compelled to back out of the deal, citing the demands of an expanding investigation. “I have had no arrangement--implicit, explicit, direct or indirect--with him,” Starr said of Scaife.

Some Clinton loyalists wax indignant when they describe how mercenary considerations could influence Starr’s probe. James Carville, the fiery Clinton defender who created the Education and Information Project to promote Clinton’s side of the story, says he is changing its name to the “Payola Information Corp.”

“The emphasis is going to be on exposing who got paid by whom to say what,” Carville says.

Josephson, the ethicist who is a former law professor, compares the public sparring about credibility and self-interest with the efforts that attorneys make to undermine witnesses during cross-examination.

Such efforts typically include casting doubts about what the witnesses actually remember and trying to establish that they have a bias or otherwise suffer from a personal flaw that would raise questions about their versions of events. Observing that someone stands to cash in from a story raises inevitable questions, even if the story is completely true.

Financial reward, Josephson maintains, “is always relevant to the issue of credibility--but it’s not always persuasive.” Consequently, he says, “we have to count more and more on you guys [reporters] to mediate, and you’re doing a worse and worse job.”

In 1993 two versions of what came to be called “Troopergate” were published by The Times and the conservative magazine American Spectator, both reporting sensational claims of womanizing by Clinton when he was governor. The sources were Arkansas state troopers who served as Clinton’s bodyguards.

The Times’ version disclosed that the troopers feared reprisals for speaking out and had negotiated with a then-unidentified “conservative financier” to underwrite a whistle-blower insurance fund if they lost their jobs. Two of the troopers did, almost immediately, lose part-time jobs and annual income they estimated of about $10,000 each.

A few months later, the troopers and their attorneys shared the proceeds of a whistle-blower fund financed primarily by Peter W. Smith, a conservative Chicago investment banker, who donated about $25,000 to the fund. The troopers, through a spokesman, said the fund covered only a portion of their financial losses.

Writer David Brock, author of the American Spectator version of Troopergate and a onetime darling of the right, recently disavowed his own story, in part, because the troopers accepted those funds. He accused them of being greedy.

For others, including influential critics of the president, the question of financial incentives is a marginal factor in a conflict concerning much more important issues.

“At the end of the day, people will decide Clinton didn’t do stuff that’s worth having a big showdown about--or he did,” observes William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. “And I don’t think the question of financial self-interest is going to make that much of a difference.”

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Where Troubles Go, Money Follows

Gennifer Flowers: The entertainer’s claims of a 12-year affair with President Clinton almost destroyed his 1992 campaign. She pocketed $150,000 from the Star tabloid for her story.

Linda Tripp: The former White House staffer’s secret tape-recordings became evidence in the investigation of Clinton’s ties to former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. Tripp once planned a book described as an insider’s look at a scandal-plagued White House.

Kathleen E. Willey: The former White House aide sought a $300,000 book deal on her friendshipwith Clinton before telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” her story of an alleged aggressive sexual advance by the president.