James McDougal Book Alleges Cash Payoffs to Clinton

Alleged cash payoffs to Bill Clinton of $2,000 a month. A supposed presidential promise to pardon Susan McDougal. Convicted felon James B. McDougal, in a new book, fired off one last round of accusations before his death, all of them denied by the president’s Whitewater lawyer.

McDougal’s first-person account, written with Boston Globe reporter Curtis Wilkie, quotes President Clinton as saying in 1996 “you can depend on that” when McDougal requested a pardon for his former wife.

At the time, Susan McDougal was in the midst of a bank fraud trial that ended with her conviction on four felony counts. She is serving a two-year prison term and earlier served 18 months for refusing to answer grand jury questions. She was indicted last week on charges of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice.

Clinton lawyer David E. Kendall called McDougal’s accusations “scurrilous falsehoods” and said McDougal’s book, “Arkansas Mischief: The Birth of a Scandal,” is fiction. The book was completed shortly before McDougal died in a Texas prison two months ago.

In pre-publication excerpts of the book, McDougal offered no evidence to corroborate his allegations beyond his own word.

The flamboyant former savings and loan operator once was one of Clinton’s staunchest supporters, frequently insisting the president had done nothing wrong in the Whitewater financial dealings.

But after his conviction in 1996 on charges he defrauded his S&L;, McDougal became a cooperating prosecution witness, turned on Clinton and made several serious allegations against the first family.

The book alleges the conversation about a pardon took place in the White House Map Room after the president’s videotaped deposition in 1996 for the trial of the McDougals and then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. All three defendants were convicted.

“I know for a fact that Mr. McDougal’s statement about his conversation with the president on April 28, 1996, is absolutely false,” attorney Kendall said in a statement. “I was with the president every moment he was in the presence of Mr. McDougal.”

McDougal alleged that in the 1980s, he and a longtime businessman at McDougal’s S&L;, Henry Hamilton, “developed a system to pass money to Clinton,” then governor of Arkansas.

“A contractor agreed to pad my monthly construction bill by $2,000,” McDougal stated. “The contractor put the figure on his invoice as a cost for gravel or culvert work. After I paid the full amount . . . the contractor reimbursed me the $2,000. I turned the money over to Henry to give to Clinton.”

Hamilton is dead.

“Once, after I handed Henry his latest consignment of 20 hundred-dollar bills to relay to the governor’s office, he turned the bills over and over in one hand, like a magician,” McDougal said.

The alleged $2,000-a-month cash payment and other accusations “are simply made up out of whole cloth,” Kendall declared.