All such expectations were dashed when the first lady's soft-spoken, balding former partner Rick Massey appeared before the D'Amato committee on January 11. Not only did Massey fail to contradict Hillary's testimony; any tighter fit between their recollections would have been suspect. As a twenty-six-year-old associate at the Rose Law Firm, Massey said, he had taught a night course in securities law at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. Among those enrolled was a Madison Guaranty officer named John Latham, whom Massey had known in college. During the semester, Latham began staying after class to ask Massey's advice about raising new capital for the thrift.

"I should say for the record," Massey testified, "that I asked him to lunch one day and I pitched the business, asked for their work. They were a growing S&L. We liked working for companies like that, so I pitched the work ... I think the pitch was basically, 'Gee, you're asking me all these questions. Why don't you hire us and put us to work on these things?'"

The only problem had been Jim McDougal's tardiness in paying the bills for legal work that the Rose firm had done for him several years earlier. Certain partners objected to taking him on as a client again without a prepaid retainer. So the firm had sent Hillary Clinton to meet with McDougal on April 23, 1985, to see whether such an arrangement could be made. Madison Guaranty agreed to a $2,000 per month advance against billings, and the work arrived on Rick Massey's desk the next day. What Massey had been unable to remember, eleven years after the fact, was whether he had first approached Hillary about taking up the payment issue with McDougal, or whether she had approached him -- a question of no consequence. Such was the pretext upon which deputy independent counsel Ewing proposed to indict the first lady of the United States for perjury.

As to who had done all the work on the preferred stock matter, Massey was unequivocal. Based upon his review of the billing records, he told Senator Connie Mack of Florida that "these were primarily one-man jobs, and I did primarily all of the research, writing, drafting, and so forth. Mrs. Clinton had a role in these matters. I view it as a supervisory role. In terms of who was in the trenches and doing the work, Senator, it was me."

Concerning the preferred stock deal itself, the allegedly illicit transaction the New York Times had placed at the center of the "scandal," Massey's explanation was simple. As Arkansas state officials had tried to show reporter Jeff Gerth four years earlier, the idea of selling stock in thrift institutions was first proposed by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. "Sir, there is no better form of capital than cash," said Massey, "and we were trying to raise cash for the institution."

Not much of this was conveyed by the same journalists who had failed to notice L. Jean Lewis's fainting spell. "AT WHITEWATER SESSION, A STRUGGLE TO RECALL," read the headline in the New York Times. "In five hours of testimony before the Senate Whitewater committee," wrote Stephen Labaton, "a lawyer for Hillary Rodham Clinton's law firm said today that he could not remember events of 11 years ago clearly enough to support the First Lady's account of how the firm came to represent a troubled Arkansas savings and loan association." The Times account did mention Massey's luncheon pitch to his college friend, but concluded by pointing the finger of suspicion back at an implicitly corrupt bargain between Jim McDougal and Bill Clinton to funnel cash into Hillary's pocket.

A similar account appeared in the Washington Post under the byline of Susan Schmidt. Massey, she wrote, testified "that he does not believe that he was responsible for signing up Madison as a client, as [Mrs. Clinton] has asserted ... .She has said Massey came to her with a proposal for a stock plan to help Madison raise capital after meeting with Madison president John Latham. She said he asked her to work as the firm's billing partner and work with James B. McDougal, the S&L's owner, to resolve a past billing dispute Rose had with him. "I don't believe it happened that way," Massey said.

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