Among the phone calls to the office of presidential aide Vince Foster in the hours before his death last July was one from James Lyons, a Denver lawyer and an old friend. The two men had grown close over the course of two hectic years working for Bill Clinton. Lyons was coming to Washington for a visit and wanted to invite Foster out for dinner.
A few days after Foster took his life, in a quiet park above the Potomac River, investigators scouring White House phone logs discovered the call from Lyons and asked the Denver attorney what the two men had talked about. Lyons wanted to discuss business and personal matters, he told the police. Given Foster's suicide, and Lyons's particular knowledge of the Clintons' financial affairs, much has been made of that answer. Too much, Lyons says. "That report got leaked to the press," he says, "and it took on a life of its own." Still, the suspicions have lingered because both Lyons and Foster had tried to sort out the Clintons' tangled problems with the Whitewater Development Co. Inc.
Behind the scenes. Lyons has had a unique window into the Clintons' private lives. He played a part during the campaign in putting down rumors of womanizing and draft dodging. Lyons assumed, too, the task of explaining details of the Clintons' Whitewater investment.
A business litigator, James Lyons met Bill Clinton in the mid-1970s. Lyons had a case in Arkansas and looked up Clinton on a friend's suggestion; he was amazed to learn that the fresh-faced Clinton was the state's attorney general. The two hit it off and have kept in close touch.
Lyons frequently helped out with Clinton's governor's races, lending lawyerly advice and support behind the scenes. "Campaigns, no matter whose it is, are always [staffed with] mobs of 23-year- olds," says Buie Seawell, a Denver lawyer and former Colorado Democratic chairman. "Jim was the adult who gave them order."
He tried to impose the same kind of order when the Whitewater issue first attracted the attention of news reporters in February 1992, as Clinton's presidential campaign was beginning to accelerate. Lyons enlisted a Denver accounting firm he had used in his own law practice. Together they examined public records, the Clintons' accounts and Whitewater's ledgers, checks, bank notices and other documents. The latter category was a problem, he says,because not all ofthe Whitewater paperwork could belocated.
Still, Lyons says, the information he does have makes sense. His March 1992 verdict is well known: The Clintons lost at least $68,900, probably more. A good chunk of that, Lyons says, can be found in investment interest deductions on tax returns filed since 1978. The Clintons decided not to claim the rest $20,000 to $30,000 -- as a capital loss. But in the final report, the accountants hired by Lyons offered one important caveat: "In many instances, documentation as to various transactions was incomplete or unavailable."
When questions persist about the Clintons' gains and losses, Lyons responds with exasperation: How can a new scandal be fueled by such old numbers? Lyons is also angry at suggestions that Bill and Hillary Clinton did anything improper. "The punch line for me," Lyons says, "is: `There ain't no there there.' It's called politics."
