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The saga continued into MarchMy deposition in the Jones case was leaked, obviously by someone on the Jones sideAlthough the judge had repeatedly warned the Rutherford Institute lawyers not to leak it, no one was ever sanctionedOn the eighth, Jim McDougal died in a federal prison in Texas, a sad and ironic end to his long downward slideAccording to Susan McDougal, Jim had changed his story to suit Starr and Hick Ewing because he desperately wanted to avoid dying in jail
In mid-month, 60 Minutes ran an interview with a woman named Kathleen Willey, who claimed I had made an unwanted advance toward her while she was working in the White HouseWe had evidence that cast doubt on her story, including the affidavit of her friend Julie Hiatt Steele, who said Willey had asked her to lie by saying she had told Steele about the alleged episode shortly after it happened, when in fact she hadnt
Willeys husband had killed himself, leaving her responsible for more than $200,000 of outstanding debtWithin a week, news stories reported that after I called her to offer my condolences on her husbands death, she had told people I was coming to his funeral; this was after the alleged incidentEventually we released about a dozen letters Willey had written to me, again after the alleged encounter, replica rolex submariner saying things like she was my number one fan and that she wanted to help me in any way that I canAfter a report that she had sought $300,000 to tell her story to a tabloid or in a book, the story faded away
I mention Willeys sad tale here because of what Starr did with itFirst, in a highly unusual move, he gave her transactional immunitycomplete protection against any kind of criminal prosecutionprovided she told him the truthWhen she was caught being untruthful about some embarrassing details involving another man, Starr just gave her immunity againBy contrast, when Julie Hiatt Steele, a registered Republican, refused to change her story and lie for Starr, he indicted herEven though she wasnt convicted, it ruined her financiallyStarrs office even sought to challenge the legality of her adoption of a baby from RomaniaPatricks Day, I met with the leaders of all of the political parties in Northern Ireland that were participating in the political process, and had extended visits with Gerry Adams and David TrimbleTony Blair and Bertie Ahern wanted to reach an agreementMy role was basically to keep reassuring and pushing all the parties into the framework George Mitchell was constructingThere were hard compromises still ahead, but I thought we were getting there
A few days later, balenciaga blue Hillary and I flew to Africa, far away from the clamor at homeAfrica was a continent that America had too often ignored, and one that I believed would play a large role for good or ill in the twenty-first centuryI was really glad Hillary was going with me; she had loved the trip she and Chelsea had made to Africa the previous year, and we needed the time away together
The visit began in Ghana, where President Jerry Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyemang, got us off to a rousing start with a ceremony in Independence Square; it was filled with more than half a million peopleWe were flanked on the stage by tribal kings draped in bright-colored native kente cloth and entertained by African rhythms played by several Ghanaians on by far the largest drum I had ever seen
I liked Rawlings and respected the fact that after seizing power in a military coup, he was elected and reelected president, and was committed to relinquishing his office in 2000Besides, we had an indirect family connection: when Chelsea was born, the doctor was assisted by a wonderful Ghanaian midwife who had come to Arkansas to continue her educationHillary and I came to like Hagar Sam very much and were pleased to learn she had also helped to deliver the four Rawlings children
On the twenty-fourth, we were in louis vuitton pochette Uganda to meet with President Yoweri Museveni and his wife, JanetUganda had come a long way since the stifling dictatorship of Idi AminJust a few years earlier, it had had the highest AIDS rate in AfricaWith a campaign called the big noise, the death rate had been cut in half through a focus on abstinence, education, marriage, and condoms
The four of us went to two small villages, Mukono and Wanyange, to highlight the importance of education and of American-financed micro-credit loansUganda had tripled education funding in the previous five years and had made a real effort to educate girls as well as boysThe schoolchildren we visited in Mukono wore nice pink uniformsThey were obviously bright and interested, but their learning materials were inadequate; the map on the classroom wall was so old it still included the Soviet UnionIn Wanyange, the village cook had expanded her operation and another woman had diversified her chicken-raising business to include rabbits with micro-credit loans funded by UWe met a woman with a two-day-old babyShe let me hold the infant boy as the White House photographer took a picture of two guys named Bill Clinton
The Secret Service didnt want me to go to Rwanda because of ongoing security problems, but I felt that I had toAs a concession to the purple fendi bags security issue, I met at the Kigali airport with the leaders of the country and with survivors of the genocidePresident Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, and Vice President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, were trying to put the country back togetherKagame was the nations most powerful political leader; he had decided that it would advance the reconciliation process to begin with a president from the majority Hutu tribeI acknowledged that the United States and the international community had not acted quickly enough to stop the genocide or to prevent the refugee camps from becoming havens for the killers, and I offered to help the nation rebuild and to support the war crimes tribunal that would hold accountable the perpetrators of the genocide
The survivors told me their storiesThe last speaker was a dignified woman who said her family had been identified to the rampaging killers as Tutsis by Hutu neighbors whose children had played with hers for yearsShe was badly wounded by a machete and left for deadShe awoke in a pool of her own blood to find her husband and six children lying dead beside herShe told Hillary and me that she had cried out to God in despair that she had survived, then came to understand that my life must have been spared for a reason, and it could not be something as mean as latest fendi bags vengeance |