Hillary Clinton's Foster & McDougal Connections Revisited

Before 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s former corporate law partner, Vincent Foster, allegedly killed himself during the Clintons’ first term in the White House, he was apparently also a business partner of Hillary Clinton in the 1980s. As Blood Sport by James Stewart observed:

“[Roy] Drew had been working as a stockbroker at E.F.Hutton when Hillary called in the Spring of 1983, wanting to open a joint brokerage account with Vince [Foster] and [former Clinton Administration Associate Attorney General] Webb [Hubbell]. Each would contribute $15,000, she said, for a total of $45,000…The three Rose [Law firm] partners, opened an account with Drew called Midlife Investors…Hillary called nearly every trading day to check on the progress of Midlife’s stocks.”
The same book also recalled how (before he was convicted of 18 counts of bank fraud in the 1990s), the Clintons’ now-deceased former business partner, Jim McDougal, apparently helped raise money to pay off Bill’s campaign debts during the 1970s:

“He [Clinton] was $24,000 in debt from his unsuccessful 1974 campaign for congress…Clinton went in on the five-acre investment, paying $500 down…In 1978, just as Clinton was starting to mount his campaign for governor, McDougal was able to sell the tract for $5,000, a 75 percent return on their initial investment of $2,850…” (Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/16/96)

During the Clintons’ first term in the White House, Hillary Clinton’s husband was not eager to answer questions about the Clintons’ role in the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Scandal while Bill was Arkansas’s governor. As The Buying of The President by Charles Lewis revealed in 1996:

“…Governor Clinton…hired fellow investor McDougal onto the public payroll. To add conflict upon conflict, McDougal purchased a thrift, Madison Guaranty, represented by Hillary Clinton before state regulators.

“In what might be the clearest quid pro quo for McDougal, Governor Clinton apparently cleared the way for state agencies to move into a building owned by the S&L, for which they paid an estimated $200,000 in yearly rent…

“President Clinton declined…to respond to written questions submitted by the Center for Public Integrity.
The same book also observed:

“…The point of Whitewater and Bill Clinton’s…career in Arkansas is that long before the presidential election of 1992, his political identity as an accommodator of the largest, most powerful monied interests was well established. While he was governor, millions of dollars in private favors at public expense accrued to various companies and individuals…”
When asked by federal investigators whether she knew how Whitewater’s losses had been made up year after year, 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton replied in a May 1995 sworn written statement that “my husband and I did not receive annual reports or regular financial summaries” and “we were passive investors” who “relied upon the McDougals to manage and operate it” (NY Times 8/5/95).

Yet in a Boston Globe (3/24/96) review of Blood Sport by James Stewart in 1996, Steven Levingston noted that “Stewart presents evidence” that Hillary Clinton “became responsible for the day-to-day management of the investment’s finances, even signing for Whitewater on various tax returns using the title `president’ and “Stewart’s portrayal flies in the face of the White House claims that the Clintons were passive investors.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 4/3/96)

Next: Grit TV Host and Blue Grit Author Laura Flanders: A 1991 Downtown Interview—Part 5