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The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk: Why I Refused to Testify Against the Clintons & What I Learned in Jail

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Susan McDougal, a truly remarkable woman, has written a remarkable book. One is not often treated to examples of moral heroism in this day of "what's in it for me", but McDougal's story deserves to be read by every person in America who has ever wondered why they should do the right and painful thing in the face of powerful enemies and overwhelming temptation to save one's self at the expense of another. This is a tale of heroines and heroes, of good friends and false friends, of villians and the lowest scum to ever stride a court room. Ken Starr and his cronies, and those in various jails and federal prisons who tried to assist him in breaking the spirit of this courageous and honest woman, have much for which to answer. If there is a god who metes out punishment and reward at the end of our days, I would not want to occupy Ken Starr's, or any number of other OIC prosecutors' and FBI agents' coffins. Buy this book and read it. Read it to your children and your grandchildren. It will make you all better people, and it is a hell of a good read and a lot of fun!

The writing in this book is lucid and devoid of exaggeration or self-pity. It is honest and sane, while covering a truly dishonest and insane period of American history. Through the painful experiences of author, Susan McDougal, Whitewater is revealed to have been a shameful witch-hunt, a ruthless attempt to bring down a popular American president. Susan describes her life with Jim McDougal, her early friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, the uncomplicated facts of the Whitewater land deal, and her ensuing persecution by the Independent Council, Kenneth Starr. Her descriptions of life in prison are disturbing, yet there is light and hope on every page in this book. Susan is a woman who has been "stoned in the square" for refusing to bear false witness against another human being, yet she has retained her decency, softness, intelligence, and even her sense of humor. Read this book!!!

Susan went to jail for 21 months rather than play ball with a crooked monster named Ken Starr. She knew doing the right thing
would put her in prison, but she stuck to her guns. This book reads like she's sitting there talking to you.

Get this book!

Read about a real hero who doesn't throw or catch a ball.

Read about the meaning or courage, and standing up against the biggest bully on the planet - the out-of-control US federal government.

Susan - great book! You rock!

bart

bartcop.com

Very bad things can happen to good people when the power of the U.S. government is arrayed against them in court. Ms. Susan McDougal (of "Whitewater" fame) tells a cautionary tale about what happened to her and others who found themselves at odds with overzealous prosecutors. Reading her story reminded me of the show trials in the U.S.S.R. during Stalin's reign in which prisoners were broken and used to implicate others who were in turn broken and used to implicate still others. If you want to get past the right and left wing propaganda concerning the Whitewater investigation, The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk is a great source.

Briefly, Ms. McDougal was brought up in a large family with strict rules . . . which she followed. At a strict college, she met an out-of-control professor who successfully persuaded him to become his wife . . . and found that he was soon off prowling for other young women. Jim McDougal was a manic-depressive who was usually in his manic phase. He was also obsessed with being in control, and made all decisions in their marriage and business activities. You'll be sure to believe that after you read the story about the "home" he bought and decorated for them. Along the way, he dreamed of making an area where political movers and shakers would fly into for weekends in Arkansas. He found a beautiful stretch of land, and recruited as his co-investors Bill and Hillary Clinton. The project failed. Later, McDougal founded and rapidly expanded a savings-and-loan to help pursue his land development deals. With little experience in the business and driven by his psychological problems, the business failed after a spectacular temporary rise. Shortly before the marriage collapsed, McDougal arrange for a loan to his wife to be used for a new investment project. She picked up the check, and he used the money for other purposes. She left for California, they divorced, and she started up a new life with former co-worker, Pat Harris (who assisted in the writing of this book).

In the new life, she eventually found herself living a claustrophobic existence as the 24/7 assistant and bookkeeper to Ms. Nancy Mehta, wife of conductor Zubin Mehta. The stories she tells make Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous seem modest by comparison. At the end of this experience, she is falsely accused of embezzling $150,000.

At the same time, Kenneth Starr took over the investigation into possible wrongdoing by President and Mrs. Clinton. The "investigation" turned into a witch hunt in which potential witnesses were offered blanket immunity if they could provide the "goods" on the Clintons. The prosecutors knew what story they wanted, and would settle for nothing else. After David Hale and Jim McDougal decided to play ball, their testimony veered into misstatements about Ms. McDougal. Soon, she found herself facing a two-year prison term. Immediately thereafter, she was subpoenaed to testify before the Grand Jury. She realized that if she told the truth, she would be contradicting Hale and McDougal, and would probably be prosecuted for perjury. So she refused to testify. Normally, such a witness would be kept in jail for a few weeks or months on such a refusal. Ms. McDougal served the full maximum of 18 months. Then, she began serving her two-year term. She was released early due to extreme problems with her spine that could not be properly treated while in jail. Kenneth Starr's minions then attempted to get a criminal contempt of court conviction by asking her again to testify to the same Grand Jury. She again refused. At the same time, she won her case in California. President Clinton then pardoned her for the original Federal conviction.

I was particularly impressed by her story of her experiences in jail. She took a lot with good humor and grace. I particularly enjoyed the ways she used to get her story out and to help the other women prisoners. Based on my knowledge of the criminal justice system, it looks like she was being persecuted for political reasons while in jail. She bore up well under it all, except that her health suffered. Anyone who wants this to be a free country owes her a debt of gratitude for what she did in standing up for the truth and herself.

I also enjoyed the many places in the book where she exposed false statements by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. If anyone should suffer for perjury, he is a good candidate.

Fans of Diane Sawyer will probably be dismayed to read about the tawdry role that she played in rigging a misleading television interview involving Ms. McDougal.

She also does a good job of debunking the popular theories about why she didn't testify at the time. The logic of her arguments made sense to me. See what you think.

As I finished the book, I realized that our concern for good government can turn into a vice. Let's keep things in balance.

This book is one of the most important books I've read in years and I urge everyone to read it. What Susan McDougal tells us about the right wing zealots who threw her in jail because she refused to lie about Bill Clinton is truly a story that needs to be heard loud and clear throughout our land. Surely there is a special section of hell reserved for Ken Starr and his henchmen and women.

McDougal's voice rings true and clear, and she is laugh-out-loud funny. Clearly, her sense of strong humor was one of the many great character traits that helped her survive in the various prisons that the Office of the Independent Council dragged her through in their quest to make her tell lies to suit their own self interests. And the stories she shares of the women she met while encarcerated are truly heart-rending and equally deserving of your attention.

Most of all, this is the story of a woman who finds her own strength in the most harrowing of circumstances. Even if you're not interested in politics one way or the other, you should read this book

You thought Whitewater, and Madison Guaranty were complicated? So complicated that it took Kenneth Starr five years and $70M to get to the bottom of it? This book will straighten your thinking out quickly and easily. Whitewater, as Bill and Hillary Clinton said at the beginning the the press's feeding frenzy, was a real estate investment that failed. They lost money. Madison Guaranty was an S&L being run by a manic depressive with no experience in banking, and it failed because, in Susan McDougal's words, she and her husband "were idiots." So, the facts of Whitewater and Madison Guaranty being so simple, what in heaven's name sustained Kenneth Starr's gargantuan investigation to its ignominious end? What in heaven's name did the newspapers find to write about until the bitter and failed impeachment and the final, mean spirited "report" from the OIC? This book will tell you what Kenneth Starr's staff spent their time doing while the newspapers told you they were doing something important. This book will also introduce you to a sort of one-woman national conscience, a warm, funny, fallible human being who decided that no matter how many mistakes she had made, lying about the Clintons to save her own freedom was not going to be one of them. It will tell you in detail just what that decision cost her, and her family, and her friends.

All of you sports fans out there, all of you people who think there are no heroes left in this world, this is what a real hero looks like.

So, you get this extraordinary history lesson, this colorful and often loveable cast of characters, and you get a narrator with enough spirit, and tenacity, and compassion, and clear thinking for any ten average people. And you get someone who's funnier than all the cynics at the New York Times glued together. If you have any hope left for this country at all, you will not want to be without this book.

While it's scary to read a first hand account of incredibly unjust actions by people supposedly working for an independent and unbiased government organization (i.e. Ken Starr and the OIC), this is nevertheless a fascinating and uplifing story. Susan McDougal's story is simply amazing. And I can't help but feel so happy for her that she persevered through one nightmare after another and came out a stronger, wiser and better person for it. A terrific book!

Susan McDougal is an unlikely hero. Afflicted with her own poor decisions she tells how she was swept up in events that landed her in jail and the unwanted media spotlight.

There is very little in this book about the Clintons, which is noteworthy in itself. Even the OIC was forced to conclude that there was no crime partnership between the Clintons and the McDougals, in spite of everything they could do to force Susan McDougal to testify that was the case.

The big question has been, which this book is about and answers very well, why did Susan not simply testify the truth as she now tells it to the grand jury, and thereby save herself the better part of two years in jail? To find out get and read the book. I was fully convinced.

This will be unwelcome reading for the hordes of Clinton-haters who will always be convinced that the Clintons were never exonerated, that they simply "got away" with it. The pattern has been so far, as with Conason & Lyons book, as with David Brock's book, as with most other recent books dealing with ultra-conservative perfidy, to simply ignore it as much as possible. Or perhaps pick nits and find one or two small errors and claim complete fraud thereby. Don't be fooled, read it for yourself and decide.

Politics aside, the story itself is quite compelling. About half of it has to do with background and events that have nothing to do with Whitewater. With very little work this could be morphed into a Lifetime-TV-for-women script since it matches the pattern so well. (Which is, a noble-but-naive woman is afflicted by all sorts of hellish events but comes through in the end older-and-wiser and gets her life together. Unfortuantely most of the bad guys get away in this one.)

As I said, a good true-life story.

I was disposed to like Whitewater figure and Kenneth Starr nemesis Susan McDougal before I ever read her book and have long felt that a justice system which rewards those who tell prosecutors what they want to hear (immunity, plea bargaining) and penalizes those who insist on their innocence or their right to a jury trial, is flawed. So I'm not exactly unbiased. But who is?

The first part of McDougal's emotionally engaging narrative covers childhood, then marriage to real estate developer and founder of the ill-fated Madison Guaranty S&L, Jim McDougal. The Marriage and various businesses failed and she embarked on a romance with Madison Guaranty employee then lawyer, Pat Harris, and a claustrophobic employee/friend relationship with Nancy Mehta.

Outgoing and shy, loud and retiring, depending on the company, McDougal does not come across as the sort of person to go to jail rather than answer questions. One minute her life is going along willy nilly, from one controlling, needy, demanding personality to another, when wham! Suddenly neurotic, vesuvial Mehta is charging her with grand larceny and the Office of the Independent Counsel is offering dire threats and deliverance from all - including the Mehta charges, which hardly seems within their purview. Friendly and likable, McDougal seems primarily characterized by her optimistic naivety. She even looks forward to her first session with the OIC: "I felt that there were a lot of false statements and ridiculous rumors, particularly about Madison, that I could help clear up."

But her get-out-of-jail-free card comes with a catch - testimony against the Clintons. McDougal does a fine job of describing her flabbergasted outrage and her dawning awareness of the trap closing around her. Aghast after the first Whitewater trial when she was convicted of things "I was not even aware had happened until ten years later," McDougal begins to fear the OIC will stop at nothing to get Clinton. It was not bravery, she says again, that made her clam up, but the certainty that Starr would indict her for perjury if she insisted on the truth - she didn't know anything bad about the Clintons. She knew she might go to jail for contempt, but she never dreamed it would be for the full 18 months allowable by law.

The second half - prison - is riveting, horrifying and inspiring. Her first jail was easy, comparatively. The food was lousy, but she made friends. The worst hardship was lack of reading material - the only book inmates were allowed was the Bible. But no sooner does she say on the phone, " `I could do the whole eighteen months here,' " than she's whisked off to a mental ward in a federal facility and from there to lockdown (23 hours a day solitary confinement) on "Murderer's Row". There were seven prisons in all, but however bad things got (sadistic guards, overflowing toilets, body cavity searches, sensory deprivation) McDougal always found some interest to sustain her - usually one or more of the inmates who, needless to say, all had lives immeasurably worse than hers.

On her release, the OIC filed criminal contempt and obstruction of justice charges against her and she still had the Mehta charges to face. Triumphing against both, McDougal spares an ounce of sympathy for Nancy Mehta, but her flush of victory against Starr and the OIC is unadulterated glee and great fun to read. In the end, McDougal says jail was good for her. She still hates the people who put her there and believes they were behind many of the special humiliations and privations she endured, but "there's no doubt in my mind that I'm a far better person than I was before."

Spiked with emotional peaks and valleys, McDougal's memoir is compulsively readable - and believable.

If you're skeptical about the justice system now, you'll be totally appalled after you read this book. Susan McDougal lost two years of her life to false accusations and bogus charges. As she pointed out, she couldn't testify without risking charges of perjury, because her husband was willing to sell out. And she really didn't have anything to say.

What's truly scary is that Susan McDougal served almost her entire sentence for refusing to testify, although little was to be gained after a few months. The conditions of her incarceration were horrendous. Often she was more afraid of the guards than her fellow prisoners. The Mehta accusations were so bizarre that the jury complained -- yet McDougal had trouble finding a lawyer to represent her. She was incredibly lucky when a top-notch lawyer volunteered. Yes, justice depends entirely on accidents like this one.

What's amazing is that McDougal emerged from her nightmare not only sane but also determined to speak out on behalf of women prisoners. She doesn't preach or proclaim: she just tells her story. In the end, that's more chilling than any drama she could have created.