Synopsis
A Tale of Brazen Politics that also Charts an Extraordinary Choice and a Journey of Personal Redemption
How a small-town Arkansas woman became a nationally known felon is one of the most fascinating and unexamined legacies of the Clinton presidency. Born to a U.S. Army sergeant and his Belgian bride, Susan Henley was one of seven children in a boisterous Arkansas family; in her teens, she regularly made patriotic speeches at her local American Legion hall. In 1976, she married Jim McDougal, a mercurial entrepreneur, who soon turned their life into a rolling sideshow of bank acquisitions and real estate deals, including one fatefully dubbed Whitewater.
In the mid-1990s, Susan McDougal unexpectedly found herself facing federal prosecutors who represented Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. They offered her a deal—relief from legal jeopardy that included Whitewater charges in exchange for damaging information on Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Initially willing to answer prosecutors’ questions, she soon realized that if she did testify truthfully, she’d be opening herself to a possible perjury trap by contradicting Starr’s chief witnesses: the felonious former judge, David Hale, who, it was later revealed, received financial support from the Clinton-hating right-wing millionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife; and Jim McDougal, by then her ex-husband, who had also cut a deal with Starr. Frightened, depressed, and facing financial ruin, in an extraordinary act of courage she simply refused to testify—and was immediately slapped with civil contempt and incarcerated. Though imprisonment was meant to coerce her cooperation, twenty-one months in seven jails—including a hellish seven-week stint in lockdown 23-hours per day in a Plexiglas-enclosed, soundproof cell—failed to extort from her the testimony Starr hoped for.
Now McDougal breaks her silence. In this long-awaited book, she examines the life choices she has made as she narrates her story in a candid and wry voice. She also offers fresh anecdotes about the Clintons’ early years in politics, a close-up view of Starr’s sinister investigation, and a moving portrait of what happens to women in American prisons. For millions of Americans who believe that Starr, appointed by Republicans dissatisfied with the first Whitewater prosecutor, pushed his investigation too far, Susan McDougal remains the very embodiment of the ordinary citizen whose liberty is usurped by a coercive government.
The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk stands boldly as a cautionary tale for all Americans eager to hear a voice speak truths about our government louder and more fully than the media ever does, because they’ve been learned firsthand and at great personal sacrifice.
Reviews
"There were four people who knew what went on in Whitewater," McDougal explains in her wry memoir (cowritten with a close friend and legal advisor). "Two of them were in the White House," and not about to talk, while McDougal's ex-husband, Jim, lacked credibility, leaving her as the sole credible witness. The problem was that nobody in the media or the office of independent counsel Ken Starr wanted to hear what she had to say: that Whitewater was just "a stupid land deal that went bad," and the McDougals weren't all that close to the Clintons anyway. McDougal offers up her full life story, including an Arkansas childhood and the raunchy antics of the Clinton-run statehouse, and details her turbulent marriage to Jim McDougal, exacerbated by his long-undiagnosed manic-depression. But she knows that readers want to learn about-her experiences being grilled, then jailed for contempt for refusing to give Starr his smoking gun-and she lays on the horrific details with righteous fury. She also recalls positive experiences with fellow inmates and supportive friends (and strangers) on her way to eventual vindication, and looks back on her travails with humor. Several personalities around "Clintongate" rushed their books out to take advantage of their fleeting notoriety and, in some cases, the rising anti-Clinton tide; McDougal's delay gives her account a historical and emotional perspective many of her predecessors lacked. Still, with Clinton out of the White House and the public's attention turned on Iraq, this book's sales may suffer from bad timing. Eight pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
In the 1996 Whitewater investigation, McDougal was indicted for fraud over a $300,000 loan, claiming that only her ex-husband, Jim McDougal, knew the money's intended purpose. Kenneth Starr, head of the Office of the Independent Counsel investigating Whitewater, offered her leniency if she would implicate President Clinton and Hillary Clinton. McDougal refused to testify, she writes, because she didn't want her statements about the Clintons' innocence twisted into perjury by the Starr Commission. She spent the next 21 months in prison on a charge of civil contempt. McDougal has written an engaging, sometimes gossipy, insightful biography, notable for its accounts of her different trials and more so for the depiction of life in women's prisons. She was never close to President Clinton but admires his tenacity in rising from his poor Arkansas roots to the presidency. McDougal herself comes across as a spirited and forthright person who does not hesitate to call Kenneth Starr a liar who would ruin lives in order to implicate the Clintons. Despite harsh treatment in prison and in court, McDougal refused to sacrifice her principles. This appealing memoir is recommended for public libraries.
Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Whitewater figure Susan McDougal was one of the most controversial, if peripheral, players during the Clinton-era scandals. When she refused to answer questions posed by Ken Starr's lawyers in front of a grand jury, she was held in civil contempt and sent to jail. This tactic, meant to force cooperation, backfired. McDougal spent 21 months in jail and became the poster girl for the excesses and overreaching of the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC). McDougal begins her story in small-town Arkansas, where she grew up; her troubles began when she married the charismatic, eccentric Jim McDougal at age 20 and became a partner in his successful real-estate business. McDougal doesn't come away looking totally clean in this tale; her recounting of her relationship with conductor Zubin Mehta's wife, in particular, seems self-serving. But if half of her dealings with Starr's lawyers are as she states, this book starkly shows what happens to people who stand up against government coercion. There are some fresh takes on Bill Clinton (she was never his lover, although the OIC wanted her to admit to that), and her views on how prison changed her for the better add texture to an interestingly told tale. Expect to see McDougal on the talk-show circuit. Ilene Cooper
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