Sparks Fly in Cross-Examination of Defiant McDougal

Flashing streaks of her famed defiance, Whitewater defendant Susan McDougal sparred with one of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s deputies from the witness stand Wednesday and drew repeated rebukes from the judge for her reluctance to answer the prosecutor’s questions directly.

“I want you to understand you are expected to respond to these questions,” an increasingly frustrated U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. told McDougal as her cross-examination began at her trial. “I’m not about to let anybody manipulate this system.”

The series of testy exchanges marked an ironic deja vu in the case, because it was McDougal’s refusal to answer questions before a Whitewater grand jury that led to her trial here on contempt and obstruction charges.

McDougal also served 18 months in prison for refusing to talk about Whitewater. But the problem Wednesday was that she often delivered expansive broadsides against Starr and the judicial system from the witness stand, despite the efforts of prosecutors and the judge to get her to stop talking.

In her most tantalizing allegation, McDougal testified that her late former husband, James B. McDougal, told her in 1996 that Starr’s people wanted to “get Clinton on a sex charge” before that year’s presidential election.

Independent counsel prosecutors would help her solve her legal problems if she assisted them, she testified that her ex-husband told her. “All you have to say is that you had a sexual affair with Bill Clinton,” she quoted him as saying.

Prosecutors labeled the claim “outrageous,” saying that no such conversation ever took place.

McDougal said that prosecutors made clear in one conversation before her 1996 Whitewater sentencing that they were looking for damaging information on the Clintons. “You know who the investigation is about. You know who we want,” she quoted a prosecutor as saying.

But McDougal testified that she had no damaging information on the Clintons and that she was not willing to lie--even if it meant giving up the chance to “have my life back.”

After she was sentenced to prison for her Whitewater conviction, McDougal said she was content knowing that she had not lied about anyone and had not let her words be “twisted” to harm the Clintons.

“Even though I was going to jail, I felt I had a clearer perspective of what my life was supposed to be. . . . I felt I could live with myself,” she said.

McDougal’s testimony drew occasional sobs from family members in the audience but associate independent counsel Mark Barrett objected repeatedly to her long, tangential responses and Judge Howard lost patience as well.

“Do not give us a speech. Is that clear?” the judge admonished McDougal as her attorney finished up his questioning.

McDougal apologized for her emotional digressions, saying: “I’ve waited a long time for this day.”

But McDougal found it difficult to keep her answers short as associate independent counsel Mark Barrett spent several often-tense hours cross-examining her.

Questioning McDougal about her 1996 conviction on Whitewater-related charges growing out of a fraudulent $300,000 loan for which she had signed, Barrett sought to show that McDougal had gotten a fair trial.

But McDougal resisted that line of inquiry, saying that recent events have brought to light new information about Starr’s prosecutorial tactics.

“People now know that the Office of Independent Counsel is not fair. We didn’t know that then” during her 1996 trial, she said.

McDougal said that she could not have gotten a fair trial because “there’s no way to guard against a ruthless prosecutor. . . . I think Kenneth Starr had a plan and it was to convict me so that he could get testimony to use against the president.”

While McDougal previously has expressed these views, Wednesday was the first time she has made such statements under oath. Her Los Angeles attorney, Mark Geragos, made it clear at the outset of the trial that he intended to try the tactics used by Starr’s office.

Was she not convicted by a jury of 12 people, just as were now sitting in judgment of her? Barrett asked McDougal several times.

McDougal said that she could not answer yes or no. “I think there’s a bigger story here and that’s why I’m sitting here,” she said.

The judge reminded McDougal several times that Barrett was “in charge” of cross-examination. And after McDougal interrupted the judge at one point in explaining why she couldn’t answer yes or no, he told her he would not tolerate her obfuscation.

“Respond to that question,” Howard told her in a raised voice, in marked contrast from his usual stoic demeanor.

Was she convicted by a jury of 12 people? Barrett asked again.

“The simple answer to that,” McDougal said, “is yes.”

Geragos defended McDougal’s performance afterward.

“She has answered every question,” he said. “I think she’s doing a very good job. . . . You never want a situation where a judge admonishes [your client] but, at the same time, the questions were argumentative.”

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