CARVILLE: So tonight, Susan McDougal is our guest
in the CROSSFIRE.
Hail, great lady. Hail, hail, hail to thee.
(Carville is giving Susan "I'm Not Worthy.")
CARLSON: Susan McDougal, there's going to be some nauseating sucking up in just a minute, as you can tell by...
SUSAN MCDOUGAL: I'll take all of it.
CARLSON: And that's your prerogative as a former
inmate. But explain to me, quickly -- just in a way that
our viewers can understand, your argument, as
I understand it is, you didn't want to answer the questions
that Starr's investigators posed to you?
MCDOUGAL: You're already wrong.
CARLSON: OK, well, you tell us why you spent 18 months in jail for not answering questions?
MCDOUGAL: I went to the very first meeting with
those people. I sat at a table, a little bit bigger than this one,
that had a lot of documents on it. We walked
in the first meeting and offered to answer any question they asked.
They then said that they had documents that were
incriminating. I said, let me see them, I'll tell you what they are.
Very first meeting. Every subsequent time I talked
to them, I asked to answer questions, and they wanted a proffer.
And when I told them that I couldn't give them
a proffer because I didn't know anything that the Clintons had done
that was illegal -- for those of you like me
that don't know what a proffer is, that's where you incriminate somebody
who is more powerful than you so you can get
your sorry self off.
But I didn't know anything that the Clintons had done.
CARLSON: But ultimately, ultimately, I mean, you
also did a period of time for conviction of felony charges
in 1996, but ...
MCDOUGAL: Of which I was totally innocent.
CARLSON: And then were pardoned by Bill Clinton. But...
MCDOUGAL: Exactly. Thank God.
CARLSON: But at some point you refused to speak to a grand jury, as I understand it.
MCDOUGAL: Yes, and then after ...
CARLSON: Is that fair? Now, mobsters go to prison for the same thing. Why were you different?
MCDOUGAL: After I met with them and offered to
answer the questions, then my ex-husband started to
cooperate with them. And he would come back from
his meetings with them, having made up all of these stories.
He would be laughing about it, and saying, listen
to this one. Listen to this, Susan, how does this sound?
And swirling these real events into lies to implicate
the Clintons, and laughing about it. Every time he'd go to
these meetings with the independent counsel,
he'll be coming back to the house and saying, oh, gosh, you
remember the time I was at the Capitol, well,
I'm going to say that this happened.
CARLSON: You still haven't answered the question why you couldn't tell the truth.
MCDOUGAL: But no. But seeing that they were making
up these lies and seeing that they wouldn't let me
answer questions, they just wanted a proffer,
and seeing that they had wrongly convicted me, what would you
have done? Would you have said, oh, well, gee,
whiz, I'm just going to go up there and work with these people?
CARVILLE: So they wanted you to lie?
MCDOUGAL: They absolutely had a story, from a
guy named David Hale, that was an absolute, total lie,
and they wanted me to back it up.
CARVILLE: So they said if you did that, if you just lied, then everything would be OK?
MCDOUGAL: Oh, it was a ticket to Paris. If I was willing to lie, I could have walked away, Tucker.
CARVILLE: Are you telling me that the government of the United States -- let me finish this, let me finish this, Tucker.
MCDOUGAL: Well, let me tell you...
CARVILLE: You are saying to me that the government
of the United States, in the person of Ken Starr and
the people that worked with him, wanted you to
lie under oath in a criminal matter?
MCDOUGAL: At the very first meeting that was what they asked me to do, and every subsequent meeting.
(CROSSTALK)
MCDOUGAL: I think I can back it up...
(CROSSTALK)
MCDOUGAL: I think I can tell you something that will make you believe me.
CARLSON: Why not just tell me -- you've been (UNINTELLIGIBLE), but let me get to the core issue here.
MCDOUGAL: OK.
CARLSON: Why not just tell the truth? I mean,
you're making the same argument that Mafia figures make,
look, they're trying to frame me, et cetera.
Why don't just tell the truth and let that stand?
MCDOUGAL: Look what happened to Julie Hiatt Steele
when she got before the grand jury and just told the truth.
They had their witness, just like they had David
Hale, they had Kathleen Willy, and they took that woman's house.
They almost took her children from her. They
persecuted her family. I mean, there was like, OK, I can go work
with these people that I believe are liars and
absolute -- absolutely trying to wreck the government, or I can stand
on my silence.
CARLSON: But you did 18 months in prison. So it's not like you somehow ...
MCDOUGAL: Hard time.
CARLSON: ... you somehow -- well, prison is hard, obviously.
MCDOUGAL: No. I mean not federal jail where --
federal prison where you, like, might have a place to go walk.
I'm talking about in a glass cell, in isolation,
not seeing the sunlight for months at a time. It's not something I would
choose to do if it wasn't for (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
CARVILLE: Give us an estimate of how many times
the government strip searched you? Just an estimate in that time.
How many times were you forced to take your clothes
off and be humiliated and be strip searched?
MCDOUGAL: I was strip searched before and after
every time I had a visitor. If my mother came, I was strip
searched before and after. I was the only one
prisoner at Civil Brandt (ph) that went to my visits in handcuffs
belted to my waist and foot chains.
CARVILLE: Were you stunned that your country would ask you to lie? Were you stunned in this?
MCDOUGAL: It's what began it. This book, "The
Woman Who Wouldn't Talk," starts at the beginning
and tells why I finally got to the point where
I would not talk to them.
CARLSON: But do you think that in the end it was worth it, protecting Bill Clinton?
MCDOUGAL: It was. I wouldn't do it to you, Tucker. I wouldn't do it if they asked me to do it to you. Would you?
CARLSON: Do what?
MCDOUGAL: Would you lie about me just to save yourself from prison?
CARLSON: No, I would say, just tell the truth, and that's what every American...
(CROSSTALK)
MCDOUGAL: No. They didn't want the truth! CARVILLE: It -- did you tell them that I didn't know anything?
MCDOUGAL: I absolutely told them that.
CARVILLE: Let me ask you a question, because everybody wants to know this...
MCDOUGAL: Let me tell you who profited from Whitewater.
David Hale, who absolutely lied for them,
my ex-husband, Jim McDougal, who made up stories
about the Clintons, he profited with a smaller sentence.
I did more time than any person in Whitewater,
and I was the only one who tried to tell them that I did not
know a thing that Clintons had done.
CARVILLE: You know who you remind me of? Joan
of Arc. When I see you, I think of Joan of Arc.
Here she is. I want to show you the person that
you remind me of. Right there. Susan McDougal, Joan of Arc.
Two of the most courageous women that ever inhabited
this planet.
CARLSON: Now, Susan McDougal, I promised you a nauseating suck- up; there it is. And we'll continue.
CARVILLE: But not as big as I'd like to give. I love you, darling.
CARLSON: First, we have to take a commercial break
on that note. Some members of our audience have
questions for Susan McDougal. We'll get to them
in just a moment, as well as more on what it's like to go to prison.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CARLSON: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. We're talking
to Susan McDougal. You may remember her
from the Whitewater matter some years ago. She's
now written a book, "The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk:
Why I Refused To Testify Against The Clintons
And What I learned In Jail". Susan McDougal, welcome.
MCDOUGAL: Thank you.
CARLSON: We have a question from our audience. Yes, for Susan McDougal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. My name is Christine
O'Conner and I live in Arlington, Virginia.
My question for Ms. McDougal is is Bill Clinton
worth spending over a year of your life in prison?
MCDOUGAL: I wouldn't have spent a year -- over
a year of my life in prison for anyone. I did it because I didn't
think was right to lie to someone order not to
go to jail. And that was the choice I was given. I was either going to
back up the story or they were going to go after
me like they did Julie Hiatt Steele and ruin the rest of my family.
CARVILLE: Let me ask you a question, Susan. Did
the hideous, putrid, misogynistic, hideous jerks in the
independent counsel ask you if you ever had sex
with Bill Clinton?
MCDOUGAL: Yes. The very first offer they gave
me was to say -- that if I would say I had an affair with him
-- this was during the first race, during the
first presidential campaign -- that they would go really easy on me
and I wouldn't have to say anything else. That
would be all I would have to lie about.
CARVILLE: What did you tell them?
MCDOUGAL: I told them it didn't happen and I was not going to say it.
CARVILLE: AND what is the truth? It didn't...
MCDOUGAL: The truth of it is I did not have an affair with Bill Clinton.
Not everybody in Arkansas did, you know?
CARLSON: Oh, there must about a club of people who didn't. A small club.
MCDOUGAL: But the independent counsel did question every woman in Arkansas about it. I can tell you that.
CARVILLE: Seven hundredand fifty FBI agents sent down there to interview women.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: I want to throw up a quote on your book. It was page 97. I thought this was -- actually, this was interesting.
"Bill, in particular," meaning Bill Clinton, "would
have been reluctant to confront Jim," that being your husband,
Jim McDougal, "about Whitewater. Not only did
he not want to alienate someone who was so well-connected
in the Arkansas political realm, but Bill, like
most of us, was at least a little bit intimidated by Jim."
You make then Governor Bill Clinton sound a little
like a bit of a coward. And sort of a calculating person who
wouldn't do the right thing because of political
concerns. Is that what you meant to say?
MCDOUGAL: It wasn't so much political concerns
as it was that Jim and Bill had a special relationship. And Jim
was older, and in the South we just generally
don't attack our elders. And I don't think he would have crossed Jim.
CARLSON: He's afraid of him?
MCDOUGAL: No. I think he respected him, and I
think he loved him. I mean, I never saw the two of them together... CARVILLE:
So you're saying that -- I'm a South, too. As opposed to, say Tucker, we
respect elderly people.
There's a certain amount of respect that we give
them.
CARLSON: I respect you, James, truly.
(CROSSTALK)
But, Susan McDougal, it's interesting that you
say that, because, of course your husband wound up, in his final days,
as a severe critic of the president's.
MCDOUGAL: Only after the independent counsel threatened to let him rot in jail for the rest of his life.
CARLSON: At some point don't you think adults
sort of say what they think they're responsible for what they do say?
You can't ascribe everything that came out of
his mouth to the independent counsel, can you?
MCDOUGAL: No. Before he cooperated he said the
Clintons were innocent at my trial. He got on the stand,
said they had not done anything wrong. That the
independent counsel was not correct in what they were doing,
and then the minute he started to cooperate,
then he said, he started making up these lies and stories.
CARVILLE: Ms. Joan of Arc, there's something that we didn't clear up yet...
MCDOUGAL: The reason Jim did that, he told me,
was that he did not want to die in jail. And I told him,
I understand that.
And so I tell people, be really careful of the
pact that you make and with whom, because Jim did die in jail and
he died calling the independent counsel and begging
for help, because he was supposed to have been put in a
prison hospital and he wasn't. He died in lockdown
without his medicine.
So be very careful of the lies you tell. Because you may not have a chance to ever take them back.
CARVILLE: How -- I want to come back to this,
because -- why do you think that the national press
was willing to believe anything that Starr and
his henchmen and liars and leakers and everything put out?
MCDOUGAL: I think for the same reason I did. The
same reason at the very first meeting I went to I thought,
what could these people possibly want but to
know the truth? And I thought if I would just tell them what happened,
look at the documents, everything would be on
the floor.
CARVILLE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you don't any idea
why like "The Washington Post" (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
I do. Because they we're bought off. I'll tell
you about it.
MCDOUGAL: I called Ben Bradley (ph) collect from
jail. CARLSON: Susan McDougal, on that low note and
I'm sorry James sullied an otherwise lovely conversation.
Right? We're going to have to go. Thank you very much
for joining us. We appreciate it.
MCDOUGAL: Thank you.