Witness Backs McDougal Claim About Pressure to Help Starr

A witness Wednesday corroborated Susan McDougal’s story that she was pressured to cooperate in independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation of President Clinton and his wife.

Testifying in McDougal’s criminal contempt trial, Claudia Riley said that ex-husband James B. McDougal, now deceased, “grabbed Susan by the arm” and told her that, if she didn’t provide assistance to Starr’s office, “I’ll never speak to you again.”

Riley, a longtime friend of the McDougals, said that on another occasion she overheard a prosecutor telling Susan McDougal that Starr’s office could “get you out of” a California embezzlement case and a federal income tax investigation. The prosecutor said in a conference phone call that he would recommend that McDougal be placed on probation for her Whitewater-related fraud conviction, Riley testified.

Riley testified that she was frightened for McDougal and urged her to help Starr, but that McDougal refused as a matter of conscience. Riley told jurors that McDougal was “the epitome of all that’s good and noble” and “the strongest young woman in the world.”

McDougal never cooperated with Starr’s office. She served time in prison for the fraud conviction, but was acquitted in California on charges of embezzling money from the wife of conductor Zubin Mehta.

McDougal’s refusal to answer grand jury questions about the Clintons resulted in her current contempt and obstruction trial, now in its fourth week.

She has said she did not cooperate because she feared that Starr would indict her for perjury if she did not falsely implicate Clinton in the scandal surrounding the 1970s failed real estate venture called Whitewater in which the McDougals and Clintons were investors.