The real Clinton story: 1997

Forgotten or ignored stories about the Clintons and the state that made them

Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor says he is "stunned" to learn that some of the companies joining him on trade missions were DNC campaign contributors. He apparently has missed material sent out by the DNC, complete with letter from Bill Clinton, that promised donors of at least $10,000 an invitation to "join Party leadership as they travel abroad to examine current and developing issues."

Hillary Clinton goes for her daily dose of photographic self-aggrandizement - at the pediatrics ward of the Georgetown University Medical Center. She is to be pictured reading to the kids. The problem: sick children don't look that cute, especially those who are bald from cancer treatments or fitted out with tubes and such. The solution: replace the sick children with well versions belonging to the hospital staff. It works beautifully.

Webster Hubbell is released after serving 15 months for mail fraud and tax evasion.

James McDougal gets a sharply reduced three year prison term for his role in the Madison Guaranty bank case upon the recommendation of special counsel Kenneth Starr.

Former White House intern Mary Caitrin Mahoney is shot five times during the murder of three Starbucks employees in an execution-style slaying. No money is taken. Informant assisting police in case is murdered when sent by DC police into a botched drug sting. The handling of the Starbucks murder case will continue to raise questions. Why, of all the 301 slayings that took place in DC that same year, did only these three killings attract the attention not only of the FBI but of Attorney General Reno herself? Reno overruled her own US Attorney and called for the death penalty in the case. Reno had intervened in only one other local case -- a gang leader accused of 14 deaths. Carl Derek Cooper will plead guilty to the crimes in April 2000 after being threatened with the death penalty by Reno.

Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko, a West African multi-millionaire, tries to get released from jail on bribery and smuggling charges by showing the judge a dinner invitation he received to dine with the president at a Washington hotel. The judge does not release Sissoko, however, and sets bail at $20 million. This is a South Florida record.

LD Brown, a former Arkansas state trooper who worked on Clinton's security details, claims he was approached on a bus in England and offered $100,000 and a job to change his Whitewater testimony. A second offer was allegedly made in Little Rock.

Gennifer Flowers reports that after her revelations she had received death threats and that her house was ransacked.

Two Armed Forces medical examiners confirm that Ron Brown had a perfectly circular hole in his head that looked like a gun wound. Army Lt. Col. David Hause was working two tables away from the one at Dover Air Force Base where Brown was being examined when a "commotion" erupted and someone said, "Gee, this looks like a gunshot wound." Hause remembers saying, "Sure enough, it looks like a gunshot wound to me, too." No autopsy or investigation followed.

A federal grand jury finds Arkansas state prosecutor Dan Harmon guilty of drug dealing and extortion. He is sentenced to eight years in prison.

Jim McDougal says, "Hubbell knows where the bodies are buried."

Over the strenuous opposition of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater supervising judges unanimously allow a 20-page exception by a key witness to the prosecutor's report on Vince Foster to be included as part of the official filing. Seven times Starr tries to get the statement of Patrick Knowlton rejected but the judges let it stand -- despite the fact that it directly contradicts Starr and his staff on key points. Starr declares that Foster committed suicide.

Independent prosecutor Dan Smaltz and FBI agents grill a former Tyson food pilot for three days. The pilot claims to have carried cash in envelopes from Tyson Food to the Arkansas governor's mansion. Says Smaltz later to Time magazine, "I nearly fell off my chair when I heard Joe make the allegation. I took over the questions." Janet Reno, however, blocks Smaltz from pursuing the issue.

Monica Lewinsky speaks to Linda Tripp about telling Clinton that she wants to break up with him: 

TRIPP: Well, let me put it to you this way. By hanging up and saying
you're telling your parents and then hanging up the phone, you're saying
a whole hell of a lot more than you could ever do in a 20 minute
conversation.

LEWINSKY: I know (tape skip) (inaudible) my mom will kill me if I don't
tell him - make it clear at some point that I'm not going to hurt him,
because - see, my mom's big fear is that he's going to send somebody
out to kill me.

TRIPP: Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

LEWINSKY: So --

TRIPP: Shut up.

LEWINSKY: Well, that's what she thinks.

TRIPP: Oh, my God. Don't even say such an asinine thing. He's not that
stupid. He's an arrogant....but he's not that stupid.

LEWINSKY: Well, you know, accidents happen.

A reporter finds Clinton buddy and Little Rock restaurant owner Charlie Trie in China where he says he's going to stay rather than returning to the US to face the music. Trie says, "I'm not hiding. I want to stay alive."

Fox's Carl Cameron reveals that FBI surveillance observed Charlie Trie's employees destroying evidence in the campaign fundraising investigation. On the eve of Senate hearings into campaign finance abuse, the Justice Department pulled back on the warrants and the search of Trie's office leaving frustrated FBI agents to watch as more documents were destroyed.

The Supreme Court unanimously rules that Paula Jones's sexual harassment suit against President Clinton may proceed even though he is in office.

Ag Secretary Mike Espy's chief of staff, Ronald Blackley, is convicted of lying to investigators about receiving funds from those who had dealing with the Agriculture Department.

Don Van Natta Jr. of the NY Times reports, "Jorge Cabrera, a drug smuggler who has emerged as one of the most notorious supporters of President Clinton's re-election campaign, was asked for a campaign contribution in the unlikely locale of a hotel in Havana by a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, congressional investigators have learned. . . On his return to the United States several days after that meeting, in November 1995, Cabrera wrote a check for $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee from an account that included the proceeds from smuggling cocaine from Colombia to the United States, said the investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Within two weeks of the contribution, Cabrera met Gore at the dinner in Miami. Ten days later, Cabrera attended a Christmas reception at the White House hosted by Hillary Rodham Clinton. At the events, Gore and Mrs. Clinton posed for photographs with Cabrera, who has two felony convictions dating from the 1980s and is now in a prison here on a drug-smuggling conviction. . . A Cuban-born American, Cabrera was arrested two times on serious drug charges in the 1980s. Both times he pleaded guilty to nondrug felony charges. In 1983, he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for conspiring to bribe a grand jury witness and served 42 months in prison. In 1988, he pleaded guilty to filing a false income-tax return and served one year in prison. After his brief brush with presidential politics, Cabrera was arrested in January 1996 inside a cigar warehouse near here in Dade County, where more than 500 pounds of cocaine had been hidden. He and several accomplices were charged with having smuggled 3,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States through the Keys. . . In January, Cabrera received an invitation to Clinton's inauguration.