LITTLE ROCK -- James McDougal, the Clintons' partner in the Whitewater real estate development, dismisses charges he funneled funds from his now-failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan into the project.
In an interview earlier this week, McDougal said of charges by Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, that $ 70,000 from Madison Guaranty was siphoned into Whitewater: "I don't know what he's talking about."
McDougal repeated his threat to file a criminal libel suit against Leach.
And he says recent developments have borne out his contention that the primary concern at the White House has been to hide potential embarrassment to Hillary Rodham Clinton, such as her recently disclosed profits on the commodities market in 1978-79.
"I've said from the start that this whole thing is about Hillary getting embarrassed," McDougal said, noting that the commodities profits were perfectly legal but go against the first lady's image.
The Clintons' recently released taxes showed $ 99,537 in additional income from speculation in cattle futures.
"If I could send Hillary to reform school, I'd do it. . . . She's made the (president) suffer and she's made the people of Arkansas suffer."
McDougal, acquitted of fraud charges in 1990 but still under investigation for the 1989 failure of Madison at a cost of $ 47 million to taxpayers, also said:
-- He believes President Clinton's contention last week that his Whitewater losses were overstated because he'd forgotten about a $ 20,000 loan he made to his mother, which had been counted in Whitewater interest payments.
"I think that's the truth. It didn't mean anything to him. Everything he said squared with what I've been saying."
He's postponed until next week a promised news conference to lay out his side of Whitewater, saying he wants time to review records maintained by the Clintons.
McDougal said his lawyer, Sam Heuer, was told by deputy White House counsel William Kennedy that copies of those records are in the mail.
The records include copies of delinquent Whitewater tax returns and records, including the general ledger.
Vincent Foster, a deputy White House counsel, had those records in his office at the time of his suicide July 20, 1993. He was working to complete overdue tax returns for Whitewater, which were due 90 days after the Clintons sold their share in the development to McDougal for $ 1,000 in December 1992.
-- He believes any case being prepared against him by Whitewater special prosecutor Robert Fiske "is nothing. They don't have a case against me, and if they try, I will take the judicial system to the absolute outer limits."
Formerly a high roller, McDougal says he is bankrupt and living on a monthly Social Security.
"The worst thing they could do to me is, if they found me guilty of a crime, they could move me 40 miles down the road from where I've got a house trailer."
-- He will "flush out" former Little Rock municipal court judge David Hale, who has worked out a plea agreement with Fiske in exchange for his testimony about Whitewater-related matters.
"They're going to let that filthy scumbag sit there and tell his story against the president of the United States? That is one thing in life that I'll do for Bill (Clinton). I will flush (Hale) out."
Hale says Clinton and McDougal pressured him to make a $ 300,000 loan to Susan McDougal in 1986.
