In the early days of Whitewater, one of my friends was forced to resign his government post because of something he had done wrong before he came to Washington. The Rose Law Firm filed a complaint against Webb Hubbell with the Arkansas Bar Association for allegedly overcharging his clients and padding his expenses. Webb resigned from the Justice Department, but assured Hillary there was nothing to the charges, saying that the whole problem arose because his wealthy but irascible father-inlaw, Seth Ward, had refused to pay the Rose firm for the costs of a patent infringement case they had lost. It seemed plausible, but it wasn’t true.
It turned out that Webb had overcharged his clients, and in so doing, had injured the Rose firm and reduced the income of all his partners, including Hillary. If his case had played out normally, he probably would have reached an agreement with the law firm to repay it for the cost of reimbursing its clients and would have lost his license for a year or two. The bar association might or might not have referred him to the state prosecuting attorney; if it had, Hubbell probably would have been able to avoid going to prison by reimbursing the firm. Instead, Webb was caught up in the independent counsel’s net. When the facts first came out, I was stunned. Webb and I had been friends and golfing partners for years, and I thought I knew him well. I still think he’s a good man who made a bad mistake, one he had to pay too high a price for, because he refused to become a pawn in Starr’s game. While all this was going on, I stayed on the other track of my parallel lives, the one I came to Washington to pursue. In March, I devoted considerable time to pushing two bills that I thought would help workers without college degrees. Most people could no longer keep one job or even stay with one employer for their entire working lives, and the churning job market treated them in markedly different ways. Our 6.5 percent unemployment rate was misleading; it was 3.5 percent for college graduates, more than 5 percent for those with two years of college, over 7 percent for high school graduates, and more than 11 percent for high school dropouts. At events in Nashua and Keene, New Hampshire, I said I wanted to convert the program of unemployment benefits into a reemployment system with a broader range of better-designed training programs. And I wanted Congress to approve a school-to-work program, to provide one or two years of high-quality training for young people who didn’t want to get a four-year college degree. By the end of the month, I was able to sign the Goals 2000 bill. Finally, we had a congressional commitment to meet the national education goals I had worked on back in 1989, to measure students’ progress toward them, and to encourage local school districts to adopt the most promising reforms. It was a good day for Secretary Dick Riley.
On March 18, Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia were at the White House to sign an agreement negotiated with the help of my special envoy, Charles Redman, that established a federation in the areas of Bosnia in which their populations were in a majority, and set up a process to move toward a confederation with Croatia. The fighting between Muslims and Croatians had not been as severe as that in which both sides had engaged with the Bosnian Serbs, but the agreement was still an important step toward peace.
The last days of March marked the beginning of a serious crisis with North Korea. After agreeing in February to let inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) check their declared nuclear sites on March 15, North Korea blocked them from completing their work. The reactor they were studying operated on fuel rods. Once the rods had been exhausted for their original purpose, the spent fuel could be reprocessed into plutonium in sufficient quantities to make nuclear weapons. North Korea also was planning to build two larger reactors, which would have produced many more spent fuel rods. The rods were a dangerous asset in the hands of the most isolated country in the world, a poor one that could not even feed its own people and might feel the temptation to sell the plutonium to the wrong buyer. Within a week I had decided to send Patriot missiles to South Korea and to ask the UN to impose economic sanctions against North Korea. As Bill Perry told a group of editors and reporters on March 30, I was determined to stop North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal, even at the risk of war. In order to make absolutely certain that the North Koreans knew we were serious, Perry continued the tough talk over the next three days, even saying that we would not rule out a preemptive military strike. Meanwhile, Warren Christopher made sure our message had the right balance. The State Department said we preferred a peaceful solution, and our ambassador to South Korea, Jim Laney, described our position as one of “watchfulness, firmness, and patience.” I believed that if North Korea really understood our position, as well as the economic and political benefits it could realize by abandoning its nuclear program in favor of cooperation with its neighbors and the United States, we could work it out. If we didn’t, Whitewater would soon look like the sideshow it was.
On March 26, I was in Dallas for a happy weekend off, to serve as best man in my brother’s wedding to Molly Martin, a beautiful woman he’d met when, after spending a few years in Nashville, he’d moved to Los Angeles in the hope of reviving his singing career. I was really happy for Roger. On the day after the wedding, we all went to see the Arkansas Razorbacks defeat the University of Michigan in the NCAA Basketball Tournament quarterfinals. That week Sports Illustrated had me on the cover in a Razorback jogging suit; the article inside included a picture of me palming a basketball. After the kind of coverage I’d been getting, the piece was manna from heaven. A week later I was in the arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, when Arkansas won the national championship, defeating Duke 76–72. On April 6, Justice Harry Blackmun announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. Hillary and I had become friends of Justice Blackmun and his wife, Dotty, through Renaissance Weekend. He was a fine man, an excellent justice, and a sorely needed moderate voice on the Rehnquist Court. I knew I owed the country a worthy replacement. My first choice was Senator George Mitchell, who had announced his retirement from the Senate a month earlier. He was a good majority leader, he had been loyal and extremely helpful to me, and it was far from certain that we could hold on to his seat in the November election. I didn’t want him to leave the Senate but was excited by the prospect of appointing George to the Supreme Court. He had been a federal judge before coming to the Senate, and would be a big personality on the Court, someone who could move votes and whose voice would be heard, even in dissent. For the second time in five weeks, Mitchell turned me down. He said that if he were to leave the Senate at this time, whatever chance we had to pass health care would evaporate, hurting the American people, the Democrats up for reelection, and my presidency.
I quickly settled on two other prospects: Judge Stephen Breyer, who had already been vetted; and Judge Richard Arnold, chief judge of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in St. Louis and includes Arkansas within its jurisdiction. Arnold was a former aide to Dale Bumpers who came from a long line of distinguished Arkansas lawyers. He was probably the most brilliant man on the federal bench. He graduated at the top of his class at Yale and at Harvard Law School, and had learned Latin and Greek, in part so that he could read early biblical texts. I probably would have appointed him, except for the fact that he had been treated for cancer and his prognosis was not clear. My Republican predecessors had filled the federal courts with young conservatives who would be around a long time, and I didn’t want to risk giving them another position. In May, I made the decision to nominate Judge Breyer. He was equally qualified, and I had been impressed with him in our earlier interview after Justice White resigned. Breyer would be confirmed easily. Richard Arnold, I’m happy to say, is still serving on the Eighth Circuit and still plays an occasional round of golf with me.