American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power by Christopher P. Andersen

woman.
    —The Clintons’ cook at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion
    M oney means almost nothing to Bill Clinton,” Hillary would say. It was left up to Ms. Rodham—Hillary still had no intention of taking her husband’s name or softening her image—to “build up a nest egg. It was a pretty substantial burden on me personally….”
    But one, it seemed, she was eager to take on. Hillary intended to use her newfound status as Arkansas’s First Lady to make money, and lots of it. “She had a taste for the finer things,” Dick Morris observed. “She craved luxury.” Even before he took the oath of office, Hillary complained that his annual salary as governor was a meager $35,000. She left out the fact that she would now be living rent-free in the stately Governor’s Mansion, a two-story redbrick Georgian-style mansion set on six acres in Little Rock’s historic Quapaw quarter. There were other perks as well: a small army of gardeners, maids, housekeepers, cooks, and security guards to keep things running smoothly at the mansion, access to several chauffeur-driven limousines, even a $51,000 annual food allotment.In the end, the governor and his wife would cost Arkansas taxpayers more than $750,000 a year.
    This was not enough for Hillary, however. Now that her husband was governor and responsible for doling out lucrative state bond work to Arkansas’s law firms, she was more valuable to Rose than ever. Gradually, she would use her influence to be appointed to a number of corporate boards—and in the process collect a small fortune in director’s fees.
    At various times during her decade-long stint as Arkansas’s First Lady, Hillary served on the boards of Wal-Mart, the French chemical company Lafarge, the Little Rock–based national yogurt chain TCBY, and the Southern Development Bancorp. TCBY was a loyal client of Rose during Ms. Rodham’s tenure on the board, paying upward of $750,000 in fees to the firm. Southern Development paid the firm an estimated $200,000 in fees.
    Within a decade, Hillary would be earning a little over $180,000 annually in salary and director’s fees—none of which would have to be expended on rent, food, transportation, health care, or any of the other costs that must be borne by the average citizen. But Hillary wanted more.
    In the months leading up to the election, Jim and Susan McDougal approached their friends with a proposition. They asked Hillary and Bill to form a partnership with them for the purpose of buying 203 subdividable lots overlooking the White River. The property, which would cost only $202,000, was perfectly situated for anyone seeking to build a retirement or vacation home.
    “Nothing worked better at putting Bill to sleep than business talk,” McDougal said. “But Hillary was all ears. She asked a lot of questions, and by the time we finished explaining it all to her, boy, did she want in.” The two couples formed the Whitewater Development Corporation, borrowed $20,000 for the down payment, and financed the rest. Throughout the negotiations, the Clintons never bothered to visit the land—and they never would.
    The McDougals’ glowing sales pitch notwithstanding, the market for the lots never materialized and the deal quickly went south. In the end, Hillary and Bill lost over $60,000 on their investment—and unwittingly began a chain of events that would threaten to bring down a President.
    The ink on the Whitewater deal was scarcely dry when their old friend and Tyson corporate attorney Jim Blair approached Hillary with yet another moneymaking scheme. He claimed to have made a killing investing in cattle futures, and introduced Hillary to his longtime trader at the Refco brokerage house, Robert L. Bone.
    “Red” Bone was a high-stakes gambler, and for that reason alone he may have been perfectly suited to the risky commodities game. With wildly fluctuating markets and margin calls that could bankrupt an investor in seconds, commodities trading—the