Whitewater Trials and Impeachment of a President: 1994-99

While the Paula Jones lawsuit was threading its way through the appeals courts in 1995 and 1996, a number of allegations and suspicions began to surface concerning Webster Hubbell, who President Clinton had once described as his closest friend. News reports asserted that the long-missing Rose Law Firm billing records had somehow made their way from Arkansas to the basement of the Hubbell home in Washington before they were found in the White House. Other stories claimed that Clinton friends—among them top administration officials Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty (then White House chief of staff), Erskine Bowles (former White House chief of staff and former SBA chairman), Mickey Kantor (former U.S. Trade Representative), and Washington attorney Vernon Jordan—had tried to get legal business for Hubbell and had helped his family with donations and jobs.

Some reports were more alarming. In 1994, in the nine months between his resignation as number 3 in the Justice Department and his guilty plea, Hubbell had received more than $400,000 in legal retainers and consulting fees. Included were $100,000 from a subsidiary of an Indonesian conglomerate, the Lippo Group, which was controlled by Clinton supporter James Riady; $18,000 from Clinton backer Bernard Rapoport's American Income Life Insurance Company; and an undisclosed amount from Texas oilman and devoted Clinton backer Truman Arnold. Neither Hubbell nor the people paying him could or would disclose what services Hubbell had provided in exchange for these payments. To some, it looked like "hush money" had been paid to keep Hubbell from implicating Clinton or his wife in illegal acts.