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Clinton Associate Jim McDougal Goes To Jail

Independent counsel continues to work to corroborate McDougal's Whitewater testimony

By Bob Franken/CNN

ARKADELPHIA, Ark. (AllPolitics, June 16) -- Jim McDougal starts a three-year prison sentence today, now that the Whitewater independent counsels have squeezed all they could out of him about former business partners Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Arkansas businessman admits that his motive for cooperation was to lessen his own sentence. "I think that I started cooperating, as I said, to save my own skin," McDougal told CNN.

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's staff will continue to check out what McDougal told them as part of his agreement to work with the prosecution. McDougal is insisting the Clintons either lied or broke the law.

And using his typically brash tone, McDougal is taunting Mrs. Clinton. In an interview with a Little Rock, Ark. television station, he said, "Well, let's put it this way. The institution I'm going to at Lexington is co-educational and I think there's an excellent chance I might get to see Hillary there."

McDougal insists Mrs. Clinton has been dishonest about the legal work she performed for the his now-failed savings and loan bank while she was a partner at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm.

McDougal has also told investigators that President Clinton lied under oath when he denied the claims from David Hale. Hale, a former Small Business Administration investment banker who also cooperated with Starr in exchange for a light sentence, told investigators that he, Clinton and McDougal met in 1986 to discuss an illegal loan to McDougal's ex-wife.

At first, McDougal challenged Hale's story but now says it's the president who is not telling the truth. "We walked out front. And we are through, and suddenly governor arrives. And he says, 'Did you discuss Susan's loan?'" McDougal recalled in an interview with CNN.

McDougal's relationship with the Clintons goes back to the 1970s, when he and his then-wife Susan formed the Whitewater land development partnership with the Clintons.

Susan McDougal, who was also convicted last year along with her ex-husband, is in prison for refusing to testify about the Clintons.

Jim McDougal has a history of physical and mental health problems and acknowledges that he suffers from a lack of credibility. But, he has said, "My viability as a witness is the prosecution's worry, not mine."

Prosecutors realize that, but so far, according to Starr, McDougal's information checks out.

Starr had said that information provided by McDougal has "led us to both documents and it has led us to witnesses. That information has come to us that previously [was] unknown to us."

Starr places Jim McDougal at the "epicenter" of Whitewater. But now McDougal is out of the center and off to prison.