Whitewater Documents Found In Wrecked
Car
Including Check Written To Bill Clinton
The vicious tornadoes that ravaged Arkansas last March brought President Bill Clinton back to his home state to inspect the damage. They also may have churned up a strange new lead in the Whitewater investigation, one that is raising new questions about the president's sworn testimony.
In the trunk of one of the many cars wrecked by the tornado were documents -- thousands of pages from a bank owned at the time by Jim McDougal, Whitewater partner of the Clintons, now in prison for fraud and conspiracy.
Whitewater prosecutors have presented these documents, turned over by an auto repair shop owner who claims to have discoverd them, to the Little Rock grand jury, checking into a possible coverup or even perjury.
According to the shop owner, among the documents was a 1982 cashier's check from McDougal's bank. The check was for more than $20,000, and payable to then-Gov. Bill Clinton.
That may conflict with the president's sworn statements. Last year, he denied under oath during taped testimony for the first Whitewater trial that he ever received a loan from McDougal's bank.
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Clinton's lawyer David Kendall called the story far-fetched.
"Documents found in the trunk of an old and long abandoned used car, may have the authenticity and credibility of a newly discovered and freshly written Elvis autobiography," Kendall said in a statement. Some sources suggest the reason Clinton's name was on the |
check was that McDougal was trying to camouflage a questionable transaction of his own. McDougal would not comment to CNN.
Regarding the tornado-damaged old car, a long-ago employee of the bank says it broke down after McDougal told him to take the documents, and he never picked the vehicle up from the repair shop, forgetting all about the documents inside. He insists he was not under orders to get rid of them.