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McDougal, Susan ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T TALK
McDougal, Susan
2002 400457 From Publishers Weekly "There were four people who knew what went on in Whitewater," McDougal explains in her wry memoir (cowritten with a close friend and legal advisor). "Two of them were in the White House," and not about to talk, while McDougal's ex-husband, Jim, lacked credibility, leaving her as the sole credible witness. The problem was that nobody in the media or the office of independent counsel Ken Starr wanted to hear what she had to say: that Whitewater was just "a stupid land deal that went bad," and the McDougals weren't all that close to the Clintons anyway. McDougal offers up her full life story, including an Arkansas childhood and the raunchy antics of the Clinton-run statehouse, and details her turbulent marriage to Jim McDougal, exacerbated by his long-undiagnosed manic-depression. But she knows that readers want to learn about-her experiences being grilled, then jailed for contempt for refusing to give Starr his smoking gun-and she lays on the horrific details with righteous fury. She also recalls positive experiences with fellow inmates and supportive friends (and strangers) on her way to eventual vindication, and looks back on her travails with humor. Several personalities around "Clintongate" rushed their books out to take advantage of their fleeting notoriety and, in some cases, the rising anti-Clinton tide; McDougal's delay gives her account a historical and emotional perspective many of her predecessors lacked. Still, with Clinton out of the White House and the public's attention turned on Iraq, this book's sales may suffer from bad timing. Eight pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description: A Tale of Brazen Politics that also Charts an Extraordinary Choice and a Journey of Personal Redemption How a small-town Arkansas woman became a nationally known felon is one of the most fascinating and unexamined legacies of the Clinton presidency. Born to a U.S. Army sergeant and his Belgian bride, Susan Henley was one of seven children in a boisterous Arkansas family; in her teens, she regularly made patriotic speeches at her local American Legion hall. In 1976, she married Jim McDougal, a mercurial entrepreneur, who soon turned their life into a rolling sideshow of bank acquisitions and real estate deals, including one fatefully dubbed Whitewater. In the mid-1990s, Susan McDougal unexpectedly found herself facing federal prosecutors who represented Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. They offered her a deal-relief from legal jeopardy that included Whitewater charges in exchange for damaging information on Bill and Hillary Clinton. Initially willing to answer prosecutors' questions, she soon realized that if she did testify truthfully, she'd be opening herself to a possible perjury trap by contradicting Starr's chief witnesses: the felonious former judge, David Hale, who, it was later revealed, received financial support from the Clinton-hating right-wing millionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife; and Jim McDougal, by then her ex-husband, who had also cut a deal with Starr. Frightened, depressed, and facing financial ruin, in an extraordinary act of courage she simply refused to testify-and was immediately slapped with civil contempt and incarcerated. Though imprisonment was meant to coerce her cooperation, twenty-one months in seven jails-including a hellish seven-week stint in lockdown 23-hours per day in a Plexiglas-enclosed, soundproof cell-failed to extort from her the testimony Starr hoped for. Now McDougal breaks her silence. In this long-awaited book, she examines the life choices she has made as she narrates her story in a candid and wry voice. She also offers fresh anecdotes about the Clintons' early years in politics, a close-up view of Starr's sinister investigation, and a moving portrait of what happens to women in American prisons. For millions of Americans who believe that Starr, appointed by Republicans dissatisfied with the first Whitewater prosecutor, pushed his investigation too far, Susan McDougal remains the very embodiment of self-sacrafice for a higher cause. Carroll & Graf Publishers 0-7867-1128-0 / 9780786711284
Hardcover As New New York
Price:
15.75 USD
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