The happy prisoner

Because of Whitewater and Kenneth Starr, she may not be seeing the outside world for the next several years, but Susan McDougal regrets almost nothing.

By Lori Leibovich

Apr 22, 1998 | Nineteen months and five prisons later, there is still no freedom in sight for Susan McDougal. Since November 1996, she has been shuffled between prisons in Arkansas, Texas and California. She currently resides with about 75 other women inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a low-security facility in downtown Los Angeles for women who are awaiting trial or bail for crimes ranging from bank robbery to credit card fraud.

McDougal's alleged crimes stemmed primarily from a business relationship with the person who is now the president of the United States. Two years ago, she was charged with civil contempt, and then imprisoned, for refusing to answer questions before the Whitewater grand jury about a $300,000 loan she received from key Whitewater witness David Hale. Hale and Susan McDougal's late ex-husband, James McDougal, told the independent counsel that Bill Clinton, in person, pressured Hale to make a fraudulent loan.

McDougal insists she was pressured by Kenneth Starr to invent information that could implicate the Clintons and maintains that she would rather be behind bars than lie. Her critics are skeptical, noting that she has been granted immunity against self-incrimination in exchange for her testimony. They also wonder why, if the charges by Hale and her ex-husband are false, why she simply does not come out and say so.

For her refusal to answer questions, McDougal spent 18 months in prison. As soon as that sentence was complete, she began doing time on fraud and conspiracy charges in a Whitewater case involving her former husband and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who were also convicted. And when that's over, she is due to face charges that she embezzled money from the wife of classical music conductor Zubin Mehta.

If all that weren't enough, Starr has summoned McDougal to appear before the Whitewater grand jury again on Thursday, presumably to ask her once again the questions she has refused to answer. Still, she appears surprisingly upbeat as she sits for an interview in a conference room in the Metropolitan Detention Center. Dressed in a loose mauve top and hot-pink pants, McDougal's face is expertly made up and she is slim from a diet of raw vegetables.

Seated alongside her attorney, Mark Geragos, McDougal is chatty and charming when discussing her childhood in Arkansas, her fourth-grade radicalism and the friends she has made in prison. When the conversation turns to her late ex-husband, though, her face clouds and her voice strains. Mention independent counsel Kenneth Starr, and she becomes instantly enraged and tears begin to fall.

Do you agree with Hillary Clinton that there is a "right-wing conspiracy" to topple the Clinton presidency?

Yes, I do think it is a concerted effort. I don't think it takes a great many individuals to make a conspiracy -- I mean, according to the women who have been charged with it upstairs, it only takes two people. In my meetings with the independent counsel and my telephone conversations with the independent counsel, and when my ex-husband was cooperating with the independent counsel, I heard it time and time again: "Just give us anything to get the Clintons and you walk."

But isn't it a prosecutor's job to play tough and get the facts he believes are out there?

It was my understanding that an independent counsel was to investigate a crime and try to find out who was involved. This independent counsel found a man, and then tried to find a crime. And that's why I wouldn't have anything to do with it. This is America -- we don't start with a person and then try to find a crime. That is just totally wrong. Very early in the investigation it was made very clear to me that if I would make allegations concerning a personal relationship with the president, then things would go well for me.

But you could have been free months ago. You have a fianci and a family waiting for you. You could have avoided a trial altogether. So why not answer the independent counsel's questions and take the immunity?

First, I was offended that they would offer me global immunity in the first place. If they thought I was guilty, they shouldn't have offered it. If I am innocent, they sure shouldn't have offered it. So, I took that off the table immediately. It repulses me. If I am guilty, charge me. If I am not guilty, leave me alone.

Second, when I decided to do this I was at a certain point in my life. If I was in my 20s I probably would have taken immunity. But I was 43 years old. A man I had admired all of my life had turned his back on everything he believed in order to save himself from a long jail term because he was afraid of the independent counsel.

And you wanted to prove that you could stand up for yourself?

Well, I had spent much of my life pleasing other people -- especially my husband. He was older than me, he was infinitely brighter than me and I always did what he asked. Then this came up and it was just so clear. He told me, "I am going to back the David Hale story," and he said, "The bigger the lie you tell, the more people will believe it." I mean, he was inventing his story, and I was so appalled by that. Appalled that I had believed in this person. It just came to the point where I had had it.

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