[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 26, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        MORALITY BEGINS AT HOME

                                 ______


                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 26, 1994

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to be an ``I told you so,'' 
but, well, I told you so. The Los Angeles Times has done the American 
public a great service by reporting the truth about our President and 
his various unsatiable appetites. It merely confirms what I have been 
trying to tell the American people all along, that Bill Clinton may 
have had the votes to be President, but he doesn't have the moral 
authority to be. The bully pulpit should be off limits to this two-
timing, one-termer. Which is why when Bill Clinton talks about a moral 
renewal for Americans, I would reply that morality begins at home.
  Read the Los Angeles Times article and weep.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1993]

        Troopers Say Clinton Sought Silence on Personal Affairs

               (By William C. Rempel and Douglas Frantz)

       Little Rock.--Four Arkansas state troopers have revived 
     allegations and offered new details about extramarital 
     affairs that caused a crisis in Bill Clinton's campaign for 
     the presidency. Two of the troopers say that Clinton, as 
     President, sought to discourage them from speaking out by 
     offering them federal jobs.
       The troopers, who were on Clinton's security detail for 
     several years while he was governor, describe a pattern of 
     deception and indisecretions and say that he required them as 
     state employees to go beyond their duties as bodyguards to 
     help him conduct and hide these activities.
       Bruce R. Lindsey, a senior White House official and Clinton 
     confidant, said that ``these allegations are ridiculous. 
     Similar charges were made, investigated, and responded to 
     during the campaign. There is nothing that dignifies a 
     further response.''
       Responding late Sunday night to questions submitted by the 
     Times last Thursday, Lindsay said the President did call one 
     of the troopers. But ``any suggestion that the President 
     offered anyone a job in return for silence is a lie,'' he 
     said.
       Allegations about the personal lives of Presidents are not 
     new. While President, Thomas Jefferson was publicly accused 
     by a disgruntled former supporter of having an intimate 
     relationship with one of his slaves. The marriage of Franklin 
     and Eleanor Roosevelt was reportedly all but formally ended 
     by FDR's longtime involvement with Lucy Mercer. And accounts 
     of the sexual conquests of John F. Kennedy have multiplied 
     beyond counting.
       For most of this century, propriety generally required that 
     such matters be discussed only after the individual leaders 
     were no longer alive. In recent years, however, those 
     standards have been changing--propelling politicians, the 
     public and the news media into uncertain ground.
       Today, the question of what inference should be drawn from 
     a particular example of private conduct remains a matter of 
     intense debate, influenced in part by a widening belief that 
     personal character may be as important to a leader's 
     performance as political party or ideology.
       In Clinton's case, the new accusations by troopers who 
     guarded him as governor are of a type not uncommon in the 
     political millieu of his home state. Allegations of personal 
     infidelities and rumors of sexual transgressions are a 
     standard in Arkansas politics, and Clinton has been no 
     stranger to them.
       But the breadth and detail of the troopers' statements--
     including charges that Clinton misled voters in 1992 about 
     these matters--give their allegations special impact.
       The troopers are lawmen who knew the then-governor 
     intimately--even, by their own accounts, as confidants. They 
     drove him around the state, answered his phone, and did 
     errands as well as protect him. They shared many private 
     moments with him, joked with him, ate with him, and became 
     his shield from the public.
       The troopers also shielded his infidelities, they allege, 
     from his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as the public.
       It was that part, the troopers said, that they came to 
     resent, along with what they regarded as an increasingly 
     cavalier way Clinton began to treat them.
       The troopers said they were often called upon to act as 
     intermediaries to arrange and conceal his extramarital 
     encounters. They say they frequently picked up and delivered 
     gifts from Clinton to various women, and often drove Clinton 
     in his state limousine to meetings with women.
       ``We were more than bodyguards. We had to lie, cheat and 
     cover up for that man,'' said Larry G. Patterson, a 26-year 
     veteran state trooper who spent five years on Clinton's 
     security unit.
       Patterson, 49, is one of two troopers who have signed 
     affidavits for the Los Angeles Times to buttress his charges. 
     The other is Roger L. Perry, 44, is a 16-year veteran of the 
     state police and president of the Arkansas State Police 
     Assn., who also served on Clinton's security detail for about 
     four years.
       Two other troopers supported their accounts, but have 
     declined to be identified.
       In a separate set of interviews, the same troopers also 
     spoke to The American Spectator, a magazine specializing in 
     conservative opinion, which published its account of their 
     charges in its current, January issue. CNN aired taped 
     interviews with Patterson and Perry Sunday evening, and ABC 
     and NBC broadcast stories on the allegations Monday night.
       The troopers provided the names of other women they said 
     they believed had been involved in affairs with Clinton while 
     he was governor. Their names will not be published in this 
     story to protect their privacy with the exception of Gennifer 
     Flowers, who publicly claimed in January of 1992 that she had 
     a 12-year affair with Clinton.
       In a series of four interviews, one of those women 
     initially denied knowing Clinton. In a later conversation, 
     she denied that she and Clinton had ``an improper 
     relationship.''
       Another woman did not respond to inquiries. Yet another 
     woman flatly denied any romantic involvement with Clinton 
     saying, ``It is infuriating to me that someone is obviously 
     being paid a lot of money to tell you a lie.''
       By speaking out, the troopers will face hard questions 
     about their own motives and credibility.
       On Monday, the Associated Press quoted three troopers 
     saying they did not see anything untoward in their duty with 
     Clinton. ``I just don't believe it was true,'' and Bob 
     Walker, a security staffer from 1984-88. However, the 
     troopers who are making the accusations say Clinton 
     compartmentalized the duties of his personal detail, so that 
     some troopers were in the know and others were not.
       After Clinton left for Washington, the troopers said they 
     began to contemplate going public with their accounts.
       Perry said he had been personally disappointed by Clinton. 
     He said that after the election Clinton had encouraged him to 
     tell him which federal job he might like. Later, Perry said 
     he told Clinton about a law enforcement related position, but 
     he never got a response. On Monday, Lindsay issued a 
     statement saying the President did not remember Perry's 
     request.
       Earlier this year, the troopers began discussing the 
     possibility of collaborating on a book about their 
     experiences which might provide some financial security for 
     them if they lost their state jobs.
       The troopers sought advice from Little Rock attorneys Lynn 
     Davis, a former director of the Arkansas State Police and 
     former FBI agent, and Cliff Jackson, a former Oxford 
     classmate and noted critic of Clinton who was a key source 
     for stories last year about Clinton's disputed draft record. 
     The attorneys suggested the troopers make their story public 
     without a promise of financial reward, which they say they 
     have done.
       Weeks after the troopers began talking to The Times late in 
     the summer, Jackson said he tried to line up a man he 
     describes only as a politically conservative financier to 
     grantee jobs and legal defense for the troopers if they were 
     fired for speaking out. He says he has not been able to 
     secure a formal commitment from the unnamed financier.


                            key allegations

       The Troopers said that Clinton misled voters in 1992.
       With his bid for the presidency in jeopardy as a result of 
     allegations by Gennifer Flowers in a tabloid newspaper. 
     Clinton went on national television and categorically denied 
     her claims. While acknowledging causing ``pain'' in his 
     marriage, Clinton argued that ``if people have problems in 
     their marriage or things in their past which they don't want 
     to discuss,'' they should not be disqualified from public 
     service.
       Patterson, Perry and another trooper now say that the 
     President maintained a long relationship with Flowers. They 
     said they handled ``hundreds'' of telephone calls from 
     Flowers to Clinton when Mrs. Clinton was out of the mansion.
       None of the troopers said that they saw Clinton engaged in 
     sexual activity with Flowers. But Patterson and another 
     trooper both said they often drove Clinton to Flowers' 
     apartment in Little Rock and waited outside for him in 
     Clinton's state-owned Lincoln Town Car. Patterson said that 
     Clinton sometimes said he was visiting Maurice Smith, a one-
     time aide and Clinton political mentor, who also lived in the 
     building.
       ``But Bill would come back in a half hour or so smelling 
     like perfume,'' said Patterson.
       In addition, Patterson said ``I was in the governor's car'' 
     in the spring of 1991 when Clinton used a cellular phone to 
     contact William Gaddy, a state official and asked him to help 
     Flowers obtain a state job that had become vacant.
       In a latter interview, Clinton denied that he had done 
     anything personally to help Flowers obtain the job. Gaddy, 
     who was appointed director of the state Employment Security 
     Department by Clinton, denied receiving any such call from 
     Clinton about Flowers.
       ``Anyone who is saying that is a prevaricator,'' Gaddy said 
     in an interview last month, although he acknowledged giving 
     Flowers a favorable recommendation that helped her get the 
     job.
       In an action later criticized as improper by a state 
     grievance panel. Flowers was hired for the job over state 
     employees who should have received preferential treatment 
     according to state policy--and despite ranking ninth out of 
     the 11 outside candidates who took a merit test competing for 
     the job, according to a review of a list of scores.
       The troopers contended that Clinton continued to have an 
     affair with a woman other than his wife as late as January of 
     1993, the month he was inaugurated as President.
       The woman, now in her mid-40s, met frequently with Clinton 
     at her condominium and in the governor's mansion, according 
     to Patterson, Perry and a third trooper. In addition, all 
     three former bodyguards said that the woman sometimes picked 
     up Clinton while he was on his morning jog and then dropped 
     him off sometime later along his jogging route.
       Perry and the other trooper said that Clinton sometimes 
     returned from these interrupted jogs showing no signs of the 
     physical exertion typical of a runner.
       ``He'd say he just ran five miles and I'd say, `Governor, 
     you better see a doctor. There's something wrong with your 
     sweat glands,''' recalled Perry.
       He said that Clinton on such occasions used the troopers' 
     bathroom to splash water on his face and shirt to make it 
     look as though he had been sweating.
       Patterson said fears developed that Clinton's relationship 
     with the woman might be revealed through records of state 
     telephone calls, particularly those made on cellular phones, 
     which register every number called.
       In February of 1990, Little Rock reporters were examining 
     state phone records for evidence of personal calls by 
     troopers. Perry was identified as one who had made such calls 
     and he was required to reimburse the state for more than 
     $300.
       According to Patterson, during that period Raymond L. 
     ``Buddy'' Young--then a state police captain and chief of 
     Clinton's security detail--told Patterson that Clinton had 
     run up about $40 in personal phone charges himself and that 
     the governor was going to repay the state. Patterson said he 
     was told by a Clinton aide to be ready to take the blame for 
     Clinton's $40 in calls to the woman if reporters inquired.
       A review of thousands of pages of state telephone records 
     and other bills show numerous calls by Clinton to the woman. 
     The state records are incomplete and after the spring of 1990 
     few cellular phone bills were placed in the public file.
       The records--which cover only a portion of the telephone 
     calls made on Clinton's car phone and from his hotel rooms 
     between 1989 and 1991--show 59 calls to the woman's home and 
     to her office extension during that period.
       On one day alone, July 16, 1989, the records show 11 calls 
     to the woman's home from Clinton's cellular phone.
       Two months later, when Clinton was on a state-paid trip to 
     Charlottesville, VA, the bill for his hotel room showed a 
     call placed to the woman's home was made at 1:23 a.m. It 
     lasted 94 minutes, according to Clinton's hotel billing 
     statement. At 7:45 a.m. the same day, according to the hotel 
     record, the same number was called again and lasted 18 
     minutes.
       When asked on Sunday about the telephone calls to the 
     woman, White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum said ``this 
     President calls lots of people.''
       In March of 1990, the governor wrote a personal check to 
     the State of Arkansas for $40.65. At the bottom of the 
     cancelled check, the line describing the purpose of the 
     expenditure, Clinton had scrawled ``phone calls.''
       A tabulation of the phone calls showed that Clinton's calls 
     to the woman's home and office, both from the cellular phone 
     and from his hotel rooms, resulted in a similar amount of 
     charges--$44.38.
       Despite the apparent fears of public exposure, Clinton 
     continued to see the woman, according to Patterson, Perry and 
     the third trooper who said he delivered gifts to her home on 
     several occasions at Clinton's direction.
       It was the third trooper, who will not allow his name to be 
     used, who said that Clinton instructed him to bring the woman 
     to the governor's mansion at least three times in the weeks 
     after his election as President in November of 1992.
       The unidentified trooper is the only eyewitness source for 
     this allegation, although Perry confirmed that his fellow 
     trooper had reported one of the woman's mansion visits to him 
     at the time it occurred. Perry said he relieved the trooper 
     less than an hour after the woman left the mansion.
       According to the third trooper, he escorted the woman past 
     the Secret Service at the mansion by using her maiden name 
     and saying that she was a member of Clinton's staff. He said 
     the visits occurred in the predawn hours, usually about 5:15 
     a.m. He said that he stood guard inside the mansion at the 
     door to the basement while Clinton and the woman were 
     downstairs and the governor's wife was asleep upstairs.
       Contacted earlier this month, the woman said that she knew 
     the President and said he was ``a good man.''
       ``There was no improper relationship,'' the woman said. 
     ``I'm not going to talk to you about it. I don't know what 
     you are doing. If you are indicating that something was 
     improper, that's not the case.''
       Two of the troopers say Clinton and an aide took steps in 
     recent weeks to try to persuade them to keep their silence.
       In September, after hearing that the trooper might be 
     talking to the press. Young, the former chief of governor's 
     security, called Perry and two other troopers to find out 
     what they were doing. Two months earlier Young had been 
     appointed by Clinton to a $92,300-a-year job as a regional 
     director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Texas.
       In an interview this month. Young said he made the calls 
     after Clinton told him he had heard reports that his former 
     bodyguards were talking to the press and possibly negotiating 
     a deal for a tell-all book.
       Young said he believed that the book was going to 
     ``crucify'' the President, but he said he did not know the 
     details of what the troopers were supposedly revealing and he 
     did not say what Clinton suspected.
       ``He [Clinton] heard several rumors about this and that,'' 
     said Young. ``Like they were going to get $100,000 for a 
     book. So I primarily called Roger Perry to find out what was 
     going on.''
       On Monday, Clinton aide Lindsay said that ``several months 
     ago a long time member of President Clinton's security detail 
     when he was governor contacted the President with information 
     that the prospects of large sums of money were being dangled 
     before several members of his security detail for stories 
     regardless of whether they were true or not to discredit the 
     President and his family.
       ``President Clinton expressed disbelief and asked why 
     anyone would do something like this. The trooper with whom he 
     spoke said at least one trooper--Roger Perry--was unhappy 
     since he had written to the President asking for a federal 
     position and had received no response. The President said he 
     did not remember the request.''
       Perry said that he felt threatened when Young warned him 
     that he and the other troopers would see their reputations 
     ``totally destroyed'' if they spoke out.
       Young denied that he threatened Perry or the other two 
     troopers he contacted. He said the calls were friendly 
     attempts to discover what the troopers were doing and make 
     certain they were aware of the risks involved.
       ``Roger has a way of twisting things around,' said Young. 
     ``I told Roger to let his conscience be his guide and to do 
     whatever he thought he had to do. I never told him he was 
     ruining his own reputation. I said he might very possibly 
     come out the loser in a deal like this.''
       Young said ``I think whatever they [the troopers] are 
     telling you is bull ------ and hearsay.'' After serving on 
     Clinton's security detail for 10 years, Young said. ``I saw 
     nothing on Bill Clinton's behalf that the public is 
     interested in. I don't think anybody else did either.''
       Young said that he met personally with Clinton in 
     Washington and provided a report to the President on his 
     conversations with the three troopers.
       ``I told him that I'd talked to those boys about it and 
     that Roger was apparently writing, giving information out or 
     something, but I didn't know what,'' said Young.
       He also said he gave Clinton the name of one of the 
     troopers involved who had told Young he was backing away from 
     any deal to speak out.
       Clinton telephoned that trooper, according to the White 
     House.
       Perry said the trooper described to him several telephone 
     calls from the President. The trooper who received the calls 
     confirmed the accuracy of what Perry said about the substance 
     of the calls. However, he refused to allow his name to be 
     used in the story because he said he fears retaliation.
       Perry's following description is vehemently denied by the 
     White House.
       According to Perry, Clinton reportedly asked the trooper 
     what Perry and others were telling the press and how far 
     along their plans were. Perry said the trooper told him that 
     Clinton vowed to come in the back door and shut it down when 
     told that Perry and others were planning to go public.
       Perry said that Clinton, according to the trooper, said 
     that he could offer an unspecified federal job to Perry and 
     one of two jobs to the trooper, saying that a job like 
     Young's was open and so was a U.S. marshal's job.
       The trooper told Clinton he was not interested in leaving 
     Little Rock or the state police, according to Perry's 
     account.
       White House aide Lindsey said ``in the past few months, the 
     President has had conversations about the fact that false 
     stories were being spread about him as part of an 
     orchestrated campaign to discredit him. There was nothing 
     improper or inappropriate about any of these conversations,'' 
     Lindsey said, adding that ``any suggestion that the President 
     offered anyone a job in return for silence is a lie.''
       In an interview, Lindsey said the President specifically 
     recalled a telephone conversation with one of the troopers. 
     ``My understanding is that the President did not offer [him] 
     a job,'' Lindsey said.
       When asked if the President also had offered another job to 
     Perry, as alleged by Perry and another trooper, Lindsey said, 
     ``No, my understanding is not.''
       Before the telephone calls by Buddy Young and President 
     Clinton, four of the President's former bodyguards were 
     considering speaking out publicly. Following the calls, only 
     Perry and Patterson would permit the use of their names.
       Each trooper described incidents on the night shift at the 
     governor's mansion in which Clinton would come down after 
     midnight and say he was going for a drive, ordering the 
     trooper on duty to call him on the cellular phone if the 
     lights came on in his wife's bedroom.
       Perry recalled that one night he ``tried to cover for'' 
     Clinton once when Hillary Clinton asked about her husband's 
     whereabouts sometime around 2 a.m. At the time Clinton was 
     away, driving Perry's state car. The trooper immediately 
     called Clinton, who rushed home.
       ``I remember exactly what he said,'' Perry recalled. ``He 
     said, `God! God! God! God! God!'''
       About 10 minutes later Clinton drove through the mansion 
     gates at top speed, screeched to a stop outside the kitchen 
     door and hurried inside without closing the car door, 
     according to Perry. Perry said he went out to close his car 
     door and overheard a loud, angry exchange between the couple.
       Later that morning, Perry said, he went in and cleaned up 
     the kitchen where he found a cupboard door broken from its 
     hinges and debris scattered around the floors.
       Patterson described an incident which he said occurred in 
     the parking lot of the governor's mansion. He said that 
     Clinton and a clerk from a local department store were in the 
     woman's car, which was parked beneath a security camera. 
     Patterson said in his affidavit and in interviews that he 
     observed on the security monitor Clinton and the woman in a 
     sex act.
       On another occasion, Patterson said that he used his state 
     car to block the entrance to a school parking lot late at 
     night while Clinton and the woman met in her car. When a 
     Little Rock police car arrived to investigate possible 
     vandals at the school, Patterson said that he used his state 
     police identification to persuade them that there was nothing 
     amiss.
       Attempts to locate the woman for comment were unsuccessful.


                         troopers' motivations

       The Arkansas troopers first approached a Times reporter 
     last August through their attorney Cliff Jackson who said 
     that the group of former bodyguards was considering writing a 
     book and might be willing to discuss their experience with 
     the newspaper.
       During a subsequent series of private meetings with the 
     reporter in Hot Springs and Little Rock, the troopers 
     expressed anger over what they called ``the improper things'' 
     they had been required to do for the governor. Sometimes, 
     they said, their protection of Clinton put them in awkward 
     conflict with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
       The troopers said they had remained silent while Clinton 
     was governor out of concern for their jobs. They said they 
     still fear retribution by friends and political allies of the 
     President.
       Patterson, Perry and two other troopers said that after 
     Gennifer Flowers' allegations in early 1992, they were warned 
     by Young, then Clinton's security chief, not to talk to the 
     press ``if you know what's good for you.''
       The troopers said Young's admonishment was one reason they 
     kept quiet during the presidential campaign. All four said 
     another reason was the fear of immediate retaliation by 
     Clinton, who was still governor at the time.
       Attorney Jackson said that to date the troopers have not 
     attempted to negotiate a book deal with anyone.
       The troopers also have received no payments for telling 
     their stories, either from The Times--which does not pay for 
     interviews--or, they said, from any other publication or 
     individual.
       ``My clients were not and are not interested in selling 
     their story,'' Jackson said. ``They expressly forbade me to 
     even talk with the tabloids or to agents of Ross Perot or the 
     Republican Party who might have wanted this information for 
     purely political purposes.''
       Jackson, who formally represents Perry and Patterson, said 
     that in the weeks after the troopers began telling their 
     stories to The Times, he did initiate conversations with an 
     unnamed conservative financier in an attempt to get what 
     Jackson called ``a whistle-blower insurance policy.''
       He said he tried to get a contract that would guarantee the 
     troopers jobs and a legal defense fund if they were forced 
     from their jobs in reprisal for speaking out. Despite 
     obtaining what he called a verbal agreement of such support, 
     Jackson said efforts to enter into a formal contract 
     collapsed last month. He said no so-called whistle-blower 
     insurance has been guaranteed.
       ``They're completely vulnerable to reprisals,'' Jackson 
     said. ``They've gone forward at great personal risk and with 
     great courage to tell the truth.''
       This autumn Jackson also introduced his trooper clients to 
     a writer for the conservative magazine American Spectator--
     David Brock, the author of a recent controversial best-seller 
     ``The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story,'' which was funded 
     in part by two conservative foundations--the Bradley 
     Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation.
       Jackson said that Brock's book-writing background was one 
     reason he contacted the author. Jackson said that he also 
     turned to the conservative political press because he was not 
     certain that ``a liberal paper like The Times'' would publish 
     such a story critical of the President.
       Jackson said he had hoped that the Times would publish its 
     account of the troopers allegations first. As it turned out, 
     the American Spectator was on newsstands Monday.
       Each of the troopers said that the only reason they were 
     interested in a book deal was to compensate them for their 
     anticipated lost income if they lost their jobs.
       ``If we wanted to go out and sell our stories, we could've 
     gone to some big tabloids,'' Perry said.
       ``Look, I think we have an important story to tell and I 
     think it's out duty to tell it, but we've all got families to 
     support,'' Patterson said. ``We just need a parachute.''
       The other two troopers, acknowledging that they had been 
     warned by Young against making public statements declined to 
     sign affidavits. One of the still-unidentified trooper also 
     acknowledged that he had expected to make enough money from a 
     book sale to support his family. Without that kind of 
     financial assistance, he said, he could not risk his job by 
     allowing his name to be used.
       Last week, after being informed that Perry was talking 
     about his experiences with Clinton. Arkansas State Police 
     Director Col. Tommy Goodwin transferred Perry from the 
     governor's security detail to a narcotics post.
       Goodwin expressed regret that the troopers had spoken 
     publicly. He called it ``inappropriate.'' He also called 
     Perry an honest and reliable law enforcement officer.
       ``I can't say anything against his credibility,'' Goodwin 
     said in a recent interview.
       Goodwin characterized Patterson as a reconteur, adding: 
     ``He likes to be heard. But I have never known him to lie to 
     me or in his official duties.''

                          ____________________