To understand why the Clintons have a reputation on the right as secretive schemers, and on the left as victims of vindictive witch hunts, you have to know a thing or two about the Whitewater scandal.
Whitewater, explained for people who don’t remember the Clinton presidency
Dylan Matthews was a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.
“In the minds of Clinton accusers, Whitewater became shorthand for cronyism, cover-up, and excess of the financial, political, and even sexual varieties,” John Harris writes in The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House. “To Clinton defenders, Whitewater became a synonym for false accusations, partisan vendettas, and prosecutorial abuse.”
The story started in 1978, when Bill served as Arkansas’s attorney general (and would be elected governor, at age 32, that November). Bill and Hillary began scouting opportunities for investment income to supplement his government salary and her earnings as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm. “I worried that because politics is an inherently unstable profession, we needed to build up a nest egg,” Hillary wrote in her 2003 memoir, Living History. “I had never given much thought to savings or investments until I realized that if our growing family were going to have any financial cushion, it would be mostly my responsibility.”
Some of these efforts were successful. Guided by her friend Jim Blair, an experienced commodities trader, Hillary began investing in cattle futures, and saw her initial $1,000 investment grow to nearly $100,000 in less than a year. That gain came in for considerable scrutiny during Bill’s presidency; one analysis estimated that even under the most generous of assumptions, the odds of a return that large during the period in question are about one in 31 trillion. Hillary was also allowed to buy 10 cattle contracts (normally worth $12,000) with only $1,000 in her trading account, increasing suspicions that she had received favorable treatment because Bill held political office. A later White House investigation into the trades found no evidence Hillary committed any trading violations.
But some investments didn’t go well — and that’s what the Whitewater scandal is about. Also in 1978, Bill and Hillary formed the Whitewater Development Corporation with James and Susan McDougal, intending to buy up 230 acres of riverfront land and sell it as lots for vacation homes. Jim McDougal, a real estate entrepreneur, was an old friend of Bill’s and cut the Clintons into a deal where they wouldn’t pay any upfront investment — but could still stand to profit from the home sales. The land was purchased for $203,000, and paid for by a $180,000 loan on which the Clintons and McDougals were jointly liable, plus a second loan McDougal took out for the down payment.
The Whitewater project was a failure. The location was bad; the land wasn’t even accessible after the frequent heavy storms that caused the river to flood. And amidst the stagflation of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, interest rates were surging, rendering vacation homes unaffordable for many families.
Investing in a bad land deal isn’t a crime. What Jim McDougal did after the initial deal, however, was.
He bought a small savings and loan association, renamed it Madison Guaranty, and defrauded both it and the small-business investment firm Capital Management Services to the tune of $3 million; the bank’s failure wound up costing the federal government around $73 million. How this relates to the Whitewater investment — if at all — is disputed to this day, and the details are hazy and complicated. But the Clintons’ critics alleged they were involved in Madison’s wrongdoing.
In 1986, Webster Hubbell — who would later plead guilty to fraud charges for overbilling clients at the Rose Law Firm, where he and Hillary Clinton worked at the time — and then–Gov. Bill Clinton (D-AR) attend a social function in Little Rock, Arkansas. (John Sykes/Liaison)
David Hale, Capital Management Services’ former president, claimed that the Clintons were in on the conspiracy. Hale alleged that Clinton pressured him to issue a fraudulent $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, money that Hale claimed had been used in part to shore up Whitewater. Other allegations swirled about the Clintons and Madison, including claims that McDougal used Madison funds to pay off Bill’s gubernatorial campaign debts in 1985, and that Bill appointed a friendly state bank regulator to protect McDougal. McDougal himself, after the fraud conviction, turned against the Clintons, alleging that they were in on his schemes.
Investigations into Whitewater uncovered real wrongdoing. Fifteen people, in total, were convicted of various charges. The McDougals were convicted of fraud, as was Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton’s successor as governor of Arkansas. Webster Hubbell, a law partner of Hillary’s who served in the Clinton Justice Department, pleaded guilty to fraud charges. But ultimately, none of the many investigations into Whitewater — including, most famously, one by independent counsel Kenneth Starr — found that the Clintons did anything criminal. The conclusion was that it’s likelier they were victims of Jim McDougal’s malfeasance than that they were co-conspirators.
To the Clintons’ defenders, Whitewater is shorthand for the many scandals ginned up by the president’s political opponents — others include Filegate, Travelgate, and the suicide of White House deputy counsel and peripheral Whitewater figure Vince Foster (which conspiracy theorists pegged as a murder) — in a desperate attempt to bring him down. This culminated in Starr, who was originally appointed to investigate Whitewater, seeking the impeachment of Clinton on completely unrelated charges. To the couple’s detractors, by contrast, Whitewater is proof that the Clintons are products of a corrupt Arkansas political culture, and are willing to do anything — including break the law — to help themselves and their friends.
