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This page was posted in October 1998 and is therefore dated.

Whenever I approached an intelligence problem that was INFORMATION-STARVED (see Mainstream Media Concepts), I found that the construction of a Timeline was the best way to acquire information on the problem and to organize it. Today, I am working on what might be called domestic intelligence problems. Most Americans are still confused by what actually happened in Arkansas over the past twenty years. They have been told again and again that Clinton did something wrong in Arkansas while he was governor there. After a three year effort involving the expenditure of $35 million dollars, no proof of this has been discovered. Perhaps the following account may help explain why. During the next few months I hope to add to my information on this in an organized way, and perhaps all of us will eventually begin to understand the full dimensions of a judicial system which was apparently twisted and distorted for partisan political ends.

Arkansas:

A Republican Mainstream Media, a "Pick and Choose" Criminal Prosecution System and a Corrupted Judiciary

With a Republican-owned media, it is possible to intimidate Federal judges appointed by Democratic presidents. With intimidated Democratic judges and a Federal judiciary loaded with right-wing Republican judges, it is then possible to select what criminal defendants you wish to indict and those which you intend to protect. In short, with a Republican-owned and controlled media, and therefore without public accountability, it is possible to get away with anything.

There is no doubt in my mind that James McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker, and possibly Susan McDougal, had committed criminal acts and were justly convicted. But David Hale's crimes were of a much greater magnitude, as were a number of his Republican associates in crime who received a pass from the Starr Chamber.

In July, 1996 the Senate Whitewater Committee under Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Republican of New York concluded that James McDougal's Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and David Hale's Capital Management Services (CMS), a lending company disbursing Small Business Administration loans to needy Arkansas businesses, were operated as "piggy bank for the Arkansas political elite."

This was a true statement. And if Robert Fiske, a moderate Republican, had been allowed to continue as the Whitewater OIC, or had been replaced by a totally non-partisan lawyer, instead of a radical right-wing Republican, then the investigation would have shown that most of the "Arkansas political elite" were . . .

 

Republicans!

 

Robert Boyce - Republican candidate for the Arkansas legislature in 1992. During the late 1980s, Boyce was the "front" man for David Hale in a Little Rock business that Hale was using to illegally obtain loans from his own SBA lending company. According to the Arkansas Times, "In November 1988 Hale wired $300,000 into an account that Boyce controlled and he wrote checks totaling $250,000 from it to two men who were convicted of conspiring with Hale to defraud the SBA. So the Republican conduit in a criminal fraud was never charged with a fraud by a right-wing Republican prosecutor. That is quite some Rule of Law! Moreover, in a deposition in a civil suit in 1991 Boyce said he didn't know the source of the $300,000. He told General Accounting Office investigators in 1994 that while he was the purported owner and president of Retail Liquidators, in reality Hale secretly owned it and used it as a front to obtain loans from his SBA lending company."

Kenneth Coon -- Ex-GOP state chairman and a Republican candidate for Congress in June 1996. Hale made him a director of the Hale burial insurance company called the National Savings Life Insurance Company. Hale was supposed to be tried in a state court for fraud in connection with this company in 1998 but claimed he was having heart problems and needed medical care instead of a trial. In late 1995, Sam Dash, Starr's ethics counsel, "called Pulaski [county] Prosecutor Mark Stodola's office to suggest that he might be prosecuted for obstruction of justice if he tried to file charges against Hale, who was cooperating in a federal investigation. Starr said the local prosecutor should let him deal with the insurance fraud at Hale's federal sentencing." (Arkansas Times, July 5,1996) Stodola went ahead and filed state charges anyway.

P.A. Grasby -- Pulaski Country GOP Chairman and later the Republican candidate for a local judgeship. Hale provided a law firm run by Bill Watt and P.A. Grasby with $10,000 from his SBA lending company to get the law firm up and running. Hale's financial statement to the SBA that year showed a commitment of $60,000 dollars. At the McDougal-Tucker trial, Bill Watt testified that Hale had instructed him to take $2,000 dollars from the SBA-subsidized loan and put it into Frank D. White's 1986 GOP campaign against Clinton. This is a violation of Federal law, but it does not violate the Republican Rule of Law. This means it is not reported in the Media, is not investigated by any law enforcement body, and does not result in any kind of an endictment.

Bob Leslie - Republican candidate for Congress in 1982, ex-GOP state chairman and later Republican committeeman from the state of Arkansas. Leslie was involved in a one-day movement of $275,000 to and from a bank in 1986 so that Hale could clean up some bad loans on his book. The money wound up in the hands of a Louisiana man the SBA later claimed was involved in another deal with Hale to defraud the SBA. Again we see a Republican conduit in the middle of a conspiracy against the Small Business Administration. These charges, however, were evidently plea-bargained away in the Starr-Hale agreement per the Republican Rule of Law. Hale also claimed a $20,000 check to Leslie on the same day was a payoff, although Leslie claims it was a loan. Leslie also wrote legal opinions to the Reagan Small Business Administration in an effort to get more money from the SBA for Hale. (See 1986 in the Timeline.)

Sheffield Nelson - Ex-GOP state chairman and the Republican candidate for governor in 1990 and 1994, Republican national committeeman since 1990. One of the few people to make money out of the defunct Madison Savings and Loan and the Campobello speculation that was the largest single contributor to the collapse of Madison Savings and Loan. Instrumental in brokering the initial Whitewater story to the New York Times in 1992.

Frank D. White- Ex-GOP governor and the man who appointed Hale to a municipal judgeship in 1981. Identified during the McDougal-Tucker trial as having received laundered money from Hale's lending company during his 1986 gubernatorial campaign against Clinton. Wright denies the charge and it was never investigated. See the Republican Rule of Law. (Also see the 1986 Timeline.)

Not one of these Republicans was investigated by Starr; not one was brought before a grand jury; not one was indicted, and they did not even have to testify at the McDougal-Tucker trial. It is nice to be a Republican and to be above the law.

The Small Fry

Of all of the small fry people involved with Madison or CMS who were coerced into pleading guilty or were forced to testify during the Starr Chamber proceedings in Arkansas, only one Republican was indicted. This was the Democrat-turned-Republican Charles D. Matthews. For some reason, the Republican-controlled newspapers in Arkansas had a short-term memory loss on Matthews, and kept referring to him as the state chairman of the Democratic Party, which he had been in the late 1960s, rather than the Republican he had later become. (Well, who needs to know that?)

The White Supremacists

One of the most curious things about Whitewater and the state of Arkansas in 1980s and 1990s is the role that white supremacists of prior years have played in this whole affair. When Hale found out he was to be indicted for defrauding the American people of $3.4 million dollars, he turned to an old white supremacist friend Judge Jim Johnson for help.

Johnson, a right-wing segregationist Democrat and the Reverend Wesley Pruden, Jr., head of the white supremacist Capital Citizens Council in Arkansas, had been leaders in the battle against racial integration in the 1950s. Johnson became a member of the Republican party in the early 1980s.

From March 19, 1994, when Hale and the Starr prosecutors began to work together until the McDougal-Tucker trial began in March 1996, David Hale spent a lot of time at the fishing resort of another old white supremacist friend and associate of Jim Johnson, Parker Dozhier. One of the questions surrounding Hale's activities from the summer of 1993 until his indictment in September has to do with how Hale came into contact for the first time with the radical right-wing Republican publicists David Bossie and Floyd Brown. Hale claims it was his lawyer, Randy Coleman (and Sheffield Nelson) who introduced him.

Other sources say it was the Richard Mellon Scaife-American Spectator operatives controlling the Arkansas Project from Washington, Stephen S. Boynton and Dave Henderson, who made the introduction. Boynton and Henderson, who were running the day-to-day operations of the then-secret $2.4 million dollar anti-Clinton Arkansas Project, beginning in late 1993, traced their friendship with Hale back to the early 1980s. We now know that Parker Dozhier received $48,000 dollars from the Scaife-funded American Spectator magazine during this period, and it is alleged some of this money was paid out to Hale.

In any case, Bossie and Brown were highly successful in getting Hale numerous print and TV interviews in late 1993, early 1994, but their role in doing this has never been acknowledged by the Mainstream Media.

The Smearing of Judge Woods

The media played an even more important role in the McDougal-Tucker trial that was to be held in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Arkansas in early 1996. In 1966, the Eastern District had eight judges. To date, I have been able to identify the political affiliation of just four judges. Two of these were appointed by Republican presidents and another two were appointed by Democratic presidents. The Republican appointees are the Chief Judge Samuel M. Reasoner and Judge Susan Weber Wright. The Democratic appointees are Judge Henry Woods and Judge George Howard, Jr. Information provided Salon Magazine in early 1998 has shown that when it seemed that Woods had been selected as a matter of rotation to be the judge in the McDougal-Tucker trial, the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project mounted a successful campaign to get Woods thrown off the case.

On June 23, 1995, a long op-ed piece appeared in the Washington Times attacking Judge Wood. It was written by a Judge Jim Johnson. The managing editor of the Washington Times is Wesley Pruden, who has known Johnson since the days when Johnson and his father, the Reverend Pruden, had led the fight against integration in Arkansas during the 1950s.

Articles quoting the Johnson attacks appeared in the Arkansas press, but more significantly, these accusations also appeared in the national press, questioning Woods' fitness to serve as a judge in the case. This has been presented in the Republican-controlled media as a completely fortuitous circumstance which had nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Starr and his team of prosecutors. But Starr used the press clippings from the Johnson attacks to convince the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that Woods was biased in favor of Tucker. Woods was not permitted to respond.

In Arkansas, Parker Dozhier authored a derogatory memo on Judge Woods. Dozhier, as noted above, is presently under investigation for possibly conveying money from tax-exempt foundations run by Richard Mellon Scaife and the Scaife-funded American Spectator Foundation to David Hale, before and during the McDougal-Tucker trial. On August 28, 1995, Dozhier sent this fax to the office of Senator Lauch Faircloth, Republican of North Carolina. Markings on the fax show it was routed to Faircloth's office through the office of Stephen Boynton, the American Spectator Foundation controller of the money for the Arkansas Project.

During the McDougal-Tucker trial in Arkansas during the spring of 1996, Federal Judge George Howard Jr barred defense attorneys from "arguing selective prosecution as a defense and from introducing evidence that Republicans were involved in the transactions." (Ernest Dumas in the Arkansas Times, July 5, 1996)

Howard did the best he could during the trial to keep it focused on the matters before the court. He could do nothing about a prosecution that had been rigged from the beginning to exclude Republicans from being investigated or indicted, or for that matter, being brought in as witnesses at the trial. (Who knows what questions they might have been asked?) Besides, his fellow Democratic appointee, Woods, had been successfully smeared and removed from the case. Who can you turn to when the fair and objective watch dog function of the Mainstream Media is no longer in play?

The smearing of Judge Woods before the trial and the selective prosecution during the trial are the kinds of things that occur when the Mainstream Media abrogates its responsibilities to the American people. The corruption of the media probably began in the right-wing controlled press of the South. During the McDougal-Tucker trial, critical issues on the future of justice in this democracy arose. Blinded by self-interest and their political beliefs, the Republican-controlled newspapers in Arkansas failed to address these issues because they believed these issues were of no interest to the citizens of that state. In fact, the Republican papers of Arkansas were among the first in this country to admit they were following the new policy of American Mainstream journalism now being practiced throughout the country:

WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW WILL NOT HURT YOU

(OR US EITHER . . . .)

The Timeline

1981-David Hale, who had been an active Democrat in the segregationist and right-wing Democratic Party of Orval Faubus was appointed a Municipal Judge by Republican Governor Frank White.

1982-Jim Guy Tucker defeated by Clinton in a hard-fought and nasty 1982 primary race for governor's office.

1984 - James McDougal, Sheffield Nelson, and Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, join together in the Campobello speculation. Nelson and Jones each invest $225,000 for a 1/8 share in the speculation. The Campobello speculation was the single biggest contributor to the eventual collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. Nelson, another Democrat turned Republican was the Republican State Chairman in the late 1980's and became the Republican National Committeeman from Arkansas on December 8, 1990. Campobello, as the major single cause for Madison's collapse with bailout costs to the American taxpayer of $73 million dollars, plus the windfall profits Nelson and Jones were able to extract from the defunct Madison Savings and Loan were never investigated by the Starr Chamber, or reported by the Media.

1985 - Hale bought a burial insurance company called National Savings Life Insurance Company. Most of its customers were older African-Americans. He asked an old friend, Ken Coon, to be a director of this company.

1986

Early in 1986 - A Hale provided a $300,000 SBA loan to Susan McDougal. After his indictment in 1993, Hale claimed that Clinton had pressured him to make the deal.

A financial statement by Hale to the SBA in 1986 listed a $150,000 SBA loan commitment to Ken Coon. It was not determined if Coon ever received the money or the purpose of the SBA loan, and Coon denies either applying for or receiving any loan from Hale.

SBA loans by Hale to James McDougal and to Jim Guy Tucker. The loan to McDougal was to purchase Campobello land, and a McDougal associate, Larry Kuca, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor during the "Whitewater" investigation for being a conduit for this loan. Somehow, the Starr investigation passed over the names of the other two principals in the Campobello speculation, Nelson and Jones.

Two loans to Bob Leslie, GOP state chairman before Nelson in the mid-1980s and Republican National Committeeman in the late 1980's, again before Nelson. Both loans, one for $275,000 and the other for $20,000 were paid back to Hale the same day so that Hale could, as he later testified, clean up some bad loans on Hale's books. Hale also claimed the $20,000 was a payoff to Leslie. Leslie claimed the $20,000 was a loan which he was still paying off in 1996. In any case, Leslie was not investigated by Starr, and was not even called as a witness during the Whitewater trial.

Hale illegally funneled $2,000 from his SBA lending company via Bill Watt into the 1986 gubernatorial campaign of the former Republican governor Frank White, who had appointed Hale to his judgeship in 1981. (See the testimony of Bill Watt in the McDougal-Tucker trial - March 1996)

1988

Robert Boyce, a failed Republican candidate for the Arkansas legislature in 1992, had dealings with Hale going back to 1988. In 1994, Boyce told GAO investigators that while he, Boyce was the purported owner and president of a business that Hale actually owned it and was using it as a front to obtain loans from Hale's SBA lending company, thus circumventing federal laws prohibiting this. In 1988, Hale wired $300,000 into an account controlled by Boyce who then wrote checks totaling $250,000 to two men who were convicted with Hale of defrauding the SBA. Although Starr's people negotiated guilty pleas with other individuals playing similar roles in the Madison Guaranty and Hale lending company operations, Kenneth Starr did not charge Mr. Boyce during the Whitewater investigation and he did not call Boyce as a witness at the trial.

Nelson and Jones shares in the Campobello speculation are "bought out" by the Republican-controlled S&L regulatory agencies. Both received a 64 per cent return on a four-year investment.

1989

FBI begins to investigate David Hale and his SBA lending company. (Arkansas Times, March 15, 1996)

January-February 1992 - Sheffield Nelson "brokers" a story on Whitewater with New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth, who had known Nelson for over ten years. Published in March 1992 in an effort to derail the Clinton campaign for the Democratic nomination for President, the story claimed Clinton's state Securities Commissioner, Beverly Bassett Schaffer had favored James McDougal and the Federally-insured Madison Savings and Loan. Shaffer, who had no authority over a Federally-insured S&L, and who had been trying to get the Reagan S&L regulatory agencies to take action on Madison since 1986, denied the charges in the article. In the article, there was no reference to Schaffer's letter to the Federal S&L regulatory agencies in December 1987 to close down Madison and two other Arkansas S&Ls. Madison and the other two S&L were not closed down by the Federal S&L agencies until 1989, by which time their ultimate costs to the American taxpayer had grown to over a billion dollars.

1992 - Hale applied to the Bush SBA for a $45 million dollar loan. The loan was not approved by the Bush SBA before Bush left the White House in January 1993.

1993

February 1993 - Clinton's SBA began investigating Hale's SBA loans

1993 - Clinton's SBA put Hale's SBA lending company into receivership. At the time 86 per cent of the loans were overdue and losses exceeded private capital by 171 per cent. Jim Guy Tucker was convicted in the 1996 "Whitewater" trial for his actions in helping Hale inflate his assets in 1986 so he could qualify for more money from the Reagan SBA.

March- July 1993 - Hale found out he was under investigation and hired an attorney, Randy Coleman, to defend him. Coleman was the law partner of Sheffield Nelson, the former Republican state chairman and since 1990, the Republican National Committeeman from Arkansas.

July 20, 1993 - The offices of David Hale were raided by the FBI who found evidence of major fraud involving some of the 57 SBA loans made by Hale, including thirteen to dummy companies controlled by Hale. One of these companies had been run by a Republican, who was later a candidate for the Arkansas state legislature in 1992. (See 1988).

July-September 1993

Coleman calls White House and tells an aide, William Kennedy that Hale will allege that Clinton pressured him to make illegal loans unless the Clinton administration dropped the investigation and the impending indictment against him. The White House refused.

During this period, Hale contacted an old political friend, segregationist Democrat-turned-Republican Jim Johnson, who connected Hale to Floyd Brown and David Bossie, ultra-right wing Republican activists running a smear Clinton disinformation factory in Virginia.

Dozens of long-distance phone calls from Hale to Brown and Bossie in the late summer and early fall of 1993 were revealed in April 1996 during the Whitewater trial. This was another matter the Republican-owned newspapers in the state and the supposedly objective Mainstream Media covering the trial failed to report. (Perhaps some careless reporter would have asked the source of the 1993-1994 disinformation on Whitewater published in the Mainstream Media.)

Hale conferred twice during this period with Theodore B. "Ted" Olson, a former law partner of Kenneth Starr, because he thought he was going to be subpoenaed to testify before congressional committees. Hale claimed during the McDougal-Tucker trial that he had been put into contact with Olson by Randy Coleman. In 1998, two sources told Salon Magazine that Hale had been introduced to Olson by Stephen Boynton and Dave Henderson, long-time friends of Hale, the two people chosen to run the day-to-day operations of the Arkansas Project being set up at this time by Richard Mellon Scaife through Olson.

September 23, 1993 - Hale indicted for defrauding the SBA (the American taxpayer) of $4.3 million dollars. Hale calls a news conference to say that Clinton had been pressuring him to loan $300,000 to Susan McDougal in 1988. This allegation was cited by Attorney General Reno in the January 1994 appointment of Robert Fiske as the Whitewater OIC.

Late 1993-early 1994 - Initial meetings to set up the Arkansas Project funded by Richard Mellon Scaife. One of the meetings was held in the law offices of Theodore Olson, former Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan administration, who was regarded as Richard Mellon Scaife's eyes and ears in Washington. Barbara Olson, his wife, is a founder and on the national advisry board of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative activist group that Scaife has funed to the tune of at least $350,000 over the past several years.

Money to finance the Arkansas Project was to be funneled through the American Spectator magazine via a tax-exempt foundation that operates the American Spectator magazine. Also at that meeting was John A. Mintz, former general counsel to the FBI, Ronald Burr, publisher of American Spectator magazine, Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank funded by Scaife, plus the two men who were to direct the day-to-day operations of the Arkansas Project. These were Stephen S. Boynton and Dave Henderson, both of whom had been friends with David Hale since the early 1980s.

August 1994 -- Fiske removed as the Whitewater OIC. He was replaced by Kenneth Starr.

March (?) 1994 - David Hale pleaded guilty to fraud charges, and is placed under the care and protection of Robert Fiske and then Kenneth Starr until the March 1996 McDougal-Tucker trial. (Arkansas Times, March 15, 1996)

1995 - Starr reported as having attempted to interfere in a state investigation and prosecution of Hale. The investigation into Hale and his burial insurance company started in March 1993 when the Arkansas state insurance department asked the Little Rock police to investigate Hale's management of the company.

1995-1996 - Prior to, and during the McDougal-Tucker trial, Parker Dozhier, an employee of the Arkansas Project, provided the free use of a fishing cabin and a car to Hale. Two sources claim Dozhier also provided Hale with cash payments during this time. Dozhier denies this.

June 8, 1995 - News Item: Jim Guy Tucker indicted in connection with a multimillion-dollar cable television deal. (San Jose Mercury News, June 8, 1995) COMMENT: Starr indicted Tucker for alleged bankruptcy fraud involving a Texas cable television firms. Neither the Clinton or Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan were even remotely associated with these business transactions.

June 9, 1995 - News Item - Stephen Smith pleaded guilty of misapplying loan funds as "Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr on Thursday stepped up his prosecution of Arkansas Democratic Party figures who dipped into the local kitty of federally backed loans intended for disadvantaged people." (San Jose Mercury News, June 9, 1995) COMMENT: Smith pled guilty to a late 1980's misdemeanor "for being the conduit for a $65,000 loan from Capital Management to allow McDougal and his real-estate partners (not the Clintons) to pay off a bank loan. Smith was characterized by the prosecution and the national press as a former close Clinton aide." He had been an executive assistant to Clinton in 1979-80. (Arkansas Times, July 5, 1996)

June 17, 1995 - Headline WHITEWATER FIGURE SENTENCED IN ARKANSAS. Robert Palmer sentenced to one year of home detention for filing false appraisals to clean up the books of Madison Guaranty. (San Jose Mercury News, June 17, 1995) COMMENT: There is nothing to connect Palmer with Whitewater.

June 23, 1995 - Lengthy op-ed article in the Washington Times by white supremacist Democrat-turned-Republican Jim Johnson. Johnson described Judge Woods as a corrupt Clinton crony because Woods, who supported racial integration, had appointed Hillary Rodham Clinton to a panel overseeing the integration of the Little Rock school system. Johnson also accused Woods of ties to the Little Rock investment firm of Stephen, Inc. In fact, as Johnson well knew, Stephens had closely supported Orval Faubus, another right wing segregationist and white supremacist Democrat, and a close associate of Johnson in fighting integration. The Johnson charges were later extensively quoted in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the op-ed pages of the Wall Street without correction. These news articles were used by Kenneth Starr and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in March 1996 to force Judge Woods from presiding over the McDougal-Tucker trial that began that same month.

August 17, 1995 - News Item: Saying "Kenneth Starr made a compelling argument," U.S. District Judge Stephen Reasoner a Republican-appointee to the Federal Judiciary, granted Starr's request for a six-month extension of the Grand Jury investigating Whitewater. (San Jose Mercury News, August 17,1995)

August 18, 1995 - News Item: Headline: 3 CLINTON ASSOCIATES INDICTED IN ARKANSAS. Gist: James and Susan McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker named in a 21-count indictment by Starr. (San Jose Mercury News, August 18, 1995)

August 29, 1995 - News Item: James and Susan McDougal and Governor Jim Guy Tucker plead not guilty to their indictments. (San Jose Mercury News, August 29, 1995)

August 30, 1995 - News Item: James McDougal, "former business partner of President Clinton and his wife and central figure in the Whitewater scandal," denies a 19-count indictment charging him with bank, wire, and mail fraud. (San Jose Mercury News, August 30, 1995) - Lest we Forget (LWF) item.

September 1, 1995 - News Item: Susan McDougal, "a partner with President and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Whitewater real estate development" pleaded not guilty. (San Jose Mercury News, September 1, 1995) LWF #2

September 6, 1995 - News Item:U.S. District Judge Henry Woods dismissed one of two indictments against Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker, saying OIC Starr had "exceeded his authority" in bringing the case. (San Jose Mercury News, September 6, 1995) COMMENT: Woods said that the alleged fraud involving a Texas cable firm had absolutely no connection with the Clintons or Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and was therefore outside Starr's jurisdiction. It would have been nice if the Mercury News had explained rather than obfuscated.

October 5, 1995 - News Item: Fraud and conspiracy trial of Jim Guy Tucker and the McDougals postponed until January 16, 1996. (San Jose Mercury News, October 5, 1995) COMMENT: Starr had appealed the September 6 dismissal of the Texas cable television case to the Republican-dominated 8Th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and had asked that Woods be removed from the McDougal-Tucker trial.

November 16, 1995 - News Item: Judge upholds indictments of McDougals. (San Jose Mercury News, November 16, 1995)

March 15, 1996 - Judge Woods formally thrown off the McDougal-Tucker trial

March 4, 1996 - The McDougal-Tucker trial begins under U.S. District Court Judge Howard, the other Democratic-appointed judge in the Eastern District of Arkansas. Although the Small Business Administration (representing the American people) was the Federal agency defrauded by Hale, SBA investigators had not talked to Hale although he had been in Federal custody for almost two years. (Arkansas Times, April 5, 1996)

March 15, 1996 - Judge Woods formally thrown off the McDougal-Tucker trial

April 5, 1996 - David Hale's direct testimony was "so well rehearsed there was little point in raising objections." "The prosecution was particularly upset that [a later witness, Bill] Watt had admitted once saying that prosecutors wanted him to lie about Tucker in court." This statement was late retracted in court. Practically every witness in the trial up until this time had testified that Hale was a congenital liar. (Arkansas Times, April 5, 1996)

April 12, 1996 -

"Collins and Jahn broke into yelling after Collins asked whether Hale knew that Theodore Olsen, a Washington lawyer once employed by Hale, was a former law partner of Starr. Judge Howard told both men to behave and directed the jury to leave the courtroom while he considered the propriety of this question. Hale eventually said he hadn't known of the Olsen-Starr connection at the time he hired Olsen, and Collins let the matter drop. The jury didn't hear that little anti-climax.

Still, Hale held up fairly well under a week's worth of grilling. It has nothing to do with whether was he was telling the truth, but the prosecutors should be satisfied with their star's performance. He earned his keep. "

(Arkansas Times, April 12, 1996)

April 16, 1996 - "The Republican slant of the proceedings, after all, is pretty transparent--three former Republican state chairmen had dealings with the two lending outfits accused of fraudulent loans, but none was indicted or even called as a witness. " (Arkansas Times, April 16, 1996)

The primary sources for this page are:

Arkansas Times, "Family Skeletons - The Republicans want you to believe Whitewater is a Democratic affair. No wonder. " By Ernest Dumas, July 5, 1996

Senate Whitewater Committee Minority Report

Murray Waas series on David Hale in Salon magazine.

"The Smearing of Judge Woods", by Gene Lyons, Joe Conason, and Murray Waas, Salon Magazine, April 22, 1998.

 

 

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