Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
The Hubbell Tapes
Candid Conversations Broadcast for the First Time
Thursday, April 30, 1998
(This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.)
ANNOUNCER April 30, 1998.
TED KOPPEL, ABC NEWS (VO) Webster Hubbell and his wife
talked often while he was in prison and the phone
conversations were
taped by prison authorities.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I won�t raise those allegations that might
open
it up to Hillary.
TED KOPPEL (VO) They knew they were being taped, but at times
the conversation drifted into tantalizing areas.
SUZANNA HUBBELL That�s an area that Hillary would be
vulnerable.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Not if I did ...
SUZANNA HUBBELL Not unless she over billed by time, right?
WEBSTER HUBBELL No, that�s not what I want to say, Suzy.
You�re talking and you�re not listening. We�re on a recorded
phone.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Today, the Hubbells were indicted for tax
fraud,
but Webb Hubbell seems no closer to compromising his good
friends in
the White House.
WEBSTER HUBBELL And I�m not going to lie at all no matter what
they do or try to do to my family, my friends.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Tonight, the Hubbell tapes, candid
conversations
broadcast for the first time.
ANNOUNCER From ABC News, this is Nightline. Reporting from
Washington, Ted Koppel.
TED KOPPEL There is no reason to believe that Webster Hubbell
and
Monica Lewinsky have ever met, but each of them represents an
important thread in the net that independent counsel Kenneth
Starr is
trying to draw around the President and the First Lady. Each
of them, Mr
Starr clearly believes, was granted favors by friends and
associates of Mr
Clinton to keep them from testifying against the President.
In the case of one presidential friend, Vernon Jordan, the
allegation is that
he helped Ms Lewinsky find a job so that she would sign an
affidavit
denying any sexual relationship with Mr Clinton. That�s been
denied by
everyone involved, but a court ruling has just cleared the way
for a
possible indictment of Ms Lewinsky. Vernon Jordan was also
active in
helping Webster Hubbell get some high�paying work at a time
when
Hubbell first came under pressure to testify against the
President and the
First Lady in matters relating to the Whitewater land deal.
Hubbell went
to jail and a halfway house for more than 18 months rather
than give Mr
Starr the information he wanted, but today, Hubbell was
indicted again,
as was his wife, Suzy, on charges of tax evasion.
Ken Starr is cranking up the pressure on all fronts, as is the
House
Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which acquired
tapes of
telephone conversations that Webster Hubbell made while he was
in
prison. Committee Chairman Dan Burton, who made some of those
tapes available to Nightline, will be joining us a little
later on this
program, but first, this report from Nightline correspondent
Chris Bury.
WEBSTER HUBBELL My wife and I are innocent of the charges that
have been brought today.
CHRIS BURY, ABC NEWS (VO) Tonight, his wife, Suzy, at his
side,
a defiant Webster Hubbell, once among the Clintons� closest
friends,
insisted the indictments would not pressure him into giving
Kenneth Starr
what he really wants.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I want you to know that the Office of
Independent Counsel can indict my dog, they can indict my cat,
but I�m
not going to lie about the President, I�m not going to lie
about the First
Lady or anyone else.
CHRIS BURY (VO) Hubbell, his wife, accountant and tax lawyer
were
indicted on 10 counts for avoiding taxes since 1989. The
Hubbells
allegedly owe the IRS nearly $1 million.
CHARLES BAKALY, SPOKESMAN FOR INDEPENDENT
COUNSEL The indictment alleges that in or about April of 1994
Webster Hubbell began a consulting business and received
hundreds of
thousands of dollars in fees. The indictment further alleges
that he
performed little or no work for some of these payments.
JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON
UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL Is this indictment excessive? Yeah, it
probably is. Is it designed to coerce testimony? You bet it
is. Will it stand
up in court? I�m afraid it will. Webb Hubbell is at the very
center of a
hurricane and he has no protection.
CHRIS BURY (on camera) In March, 1994, Webb Hubbell resigned
from the Justice Department in disgrace. The indictments
focus, in part,
on the huge amounts of money he collected the next year, even
after he
had plead guilty to cheating the Rose law firm. According to
documents
obtained by ABC News, payments exceeded $700,000�more money
than Hubbell had ever made in his life. The largest payment,
nearly
$100,000, came from the Riady family�s Lippo Group. Other
payments
came from companies controlled by other Democratic
contributors. The
paying clients included Sprint, Revlon, Pacific Telesis and
the Los
Angeles Airport Commission.
RICK TUTTLE, LOS ANGELES CONTROLLER This Mr
Hubbell did not provide anywhere near the level of service he
represented to us that he had done. In short, Mr Hubbell
defrauded the
City of Los Angeles.
JONATHAN TURLEY Webb Hubbell is the most central witness
sought by Starr and at his most precarious moment, these
contracts
suddenly appeared. And the contracts were extremely generous
and little
work was shown at the end of all these contracts. Ken Starr
does not
appear to be on a fishing expedition when he raises questions
about these
contracts.
CHRIS BURY (VO) The independent counsel has always suspected
that high level friends of the Clintons paid Hubbell to buy
his silence on
Whitewater.
KENNETH STARR, INDEPENDENT COUNSEL Judge Hubbell
had not provided substantial assistance to the investigation.
CHRIS BURY (VO) The Clintons have repeatedly insisted their
friends
simply wanted to help Hubbell during a difficult time in his
life.
PRES BILL CLINTON There were people that were genuinely
concerned that there was a man who was out of work who had
four
children and as I understand it, they were trying to help him
for no other
reason than just out of human compassion.
CHRIS BURY (on camera) The independent counsel�s suspicions
were
sharpened by recordings of phone calls Webb Hubbell made
during his
15 months in prison. There, he had access to two phones�one
for
privileged conversations with his lawyers, another for calls
that prisoners
know are routinely recorded.
Nightline has obtained tapes of Hubbell�s phone calls from
prison on this
monitored phone line. The tapes show Hubbell and his wife
concerned
that his cooperation with the independent counsel could expose
Hillary
Clinton to prosecution. The calls also suggest Hubbell was
determined to
keep investigators from learning about the legal work steered
to him by
friends of the Clintons.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I�m making a telephone call. The name�s
Hubbell, Webster.
CHRIS BURY (VO) Hubbell made hundreds of calls from this
minimum security federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland. In a
March,
1996 call, Hubbell�s wife, Suzanna, is concerned about
information on
Hillary Clinton that may leak out if Webb initiates a lawsuit
against the
Rose law firm.
SUZANNA HUBBELL The point everyone is concerned about is if
you sue them back, it�s going to look really bad for you. It�s
going to
look worse. It�s going to look like you have no remorse, no
repentance
and then by suing it only makes it look like you really don�t
give a
(bleep). And that you are opening Hillary up to all this.
CHRIS BURY (VO) Hubbell�s wife is in touch with Marcia Scott,
a
family friend who at the time was a political deputy to
President Clinton.
SUZANNA HUBBELL I�m the one that has to try and explain to
Marcia. She said you�re not going to get any public support if
you open
up Hillary. Well, by public support I know exactly what she
means. I�m
not stupid.
WEBSTER HUBBELL And I sat there and spent Saturday with you
saying I would not do that. I won�t raise those allegations
that might open
it up to Hillary, and you know that. We talked about that.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Yes, but then I get all this back from Marcia,
whose ratcheting it up and making it sound like, you know, if
Webb goes
ahead and sues the firm back then any support I have at the
White House
is gone. I�m hearing the squeeze play.
WEBSTER HUBBELL So I need to roll over one more time.
CHRIS BURY (VO) The Hubbells appear worried Hillary Clinton
could be vulnerable on the same accusation of over billing
clients that
landed Webb in prison.
SUZANNA HUBBELL You didn�t actually do that, did you, mark up
time for the client, did you?
WEBSTER HUBBELL Yes, I did. So does every lawyer in the
country.
SUZANNA HUBBELL That would be one thing you would look into
the firm for.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Right.
SUZANNA HUBBELL And that�s probably an area ...
WEBSTER HUBBELL Suzy, you�re getting ahead.
SUZANNA HUBBELL No, I�m just thinking out loud. That�s an area
that Hillary would be vulnerable.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Not if I did ...
SUZANNA HUBBELL Not unless she over billed by time, right?
WEBSTER HUBBELL No, that�s not what I want to say, Suzy.
You�re talking and you�re not listening. And I don�t mean to
sound ... but
we�re on a recorded phone, OK?
CHRIS BURY (VO) In an August, 1996 conversation with his
accountant, Mike Schaufele, who was also indicted today,
Hubbell is
asked about his grand jury testimony concerning Hillary
Clinton�s billing
records. Hubbell seems confused about why Mrs Clinton billed
for work
he did on a Whitewater real estate project that regulators
consider a
fraud. Seth Ward, Hubbell�s father�in�law, is a major investor
in the
project.
WEBSTER HUBBELL So I was billing it. But since for some
reason, I
haven�t figured out why, Hillary billed it, you know, my time
as hers.
That�s kind of the theory. It�s highly possible that he walked
into Hillary�s
office when I was out of town and said I need an option, you
know, and
got her secretary pull up the form.
CHRIS BURY (VO) Mrs Clinton has always denied she had anything
to do with that land deal.
CONGRESSMAN Are you familiar with a group called the Lippo
Group?
WEBSTER HUBBELL Yes.
CHRIS BURY (VO) In February, 1996, Congressional investigators
first discovered Hubbell had been hired by the Lippo Group,
owned by
the Riady family, long time supporters of Bill Clinton.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I have a wife and four children and I needed
to work and I did. But there wasn�t anything improper with it
and
nobody�s promised me a damn thing.
CHRIS BURY (VO) But by October, Hubbell tells his wife he is
worried about a William Safire column in �The New York Times,�
suggesting Lippo paid him as much as a quarter of a million
dollars.
WEBSTER HUBBELL And you forget, I�m not telling anybody what I
did or who, what they paid me.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Right.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Anybody.
CHRIS BURY (VO) And in this conversation with his wife, it�s
clear
Hubbell won�t cooperate with the independent counsel.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Well, it�s your friend, Mr Starr.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Yeah.
SUZANNA HUBBELL He wants to talk about Lippo.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Honey, I�m still not going to tell them.
CHRIS BURY (VO) In conversation after conversation, Hubbell
makes
cryptic remarks about his loyalty, presumably to his clients
and to the
Clintons.
WEBSTER HUBBELL There are issues that I have to stay away
from,
to protect others, and I will. I always have.
SUZANNA HUBBELL I know. I know that.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I mean, that�s the other thing. Have I ever
been disloyal?
SUZANNA HUBBELL Never. Oh, God, no.
WEBSTER HUBBELL And I�m not going to be here.
JONATHAN TURLEY The prison phone calls could be critical in
pursuing not Webb Hubbell, but other individuals, most likely
the First
Lady. Those calls seem to support the theory that Webb
Hubbell�s
participating in obstruction when he wants to assure people
that he�s not
going to say anything.
WEBSTER HUBBELL We will fight these charges and we will fight
any attempt, and I personally will fight any injustice or any
attempt to get
me to lie about the President and the First Lady. Thank you.
CHRIS BURY (on camera) Tonight in a statement, the White House
counsel�s office said, �The President and First Lady are very
saddened
by the developments in this matter and feel bad for the four
defendants
and their families.� Once again, their old friend faces the
possibility of
prison and even more pressure from an independent counsel who
seems
more convinced than ever Webb Hubbell took big money to keep
big
secrets. Ted?
TED KOPPEL Chris, thanks very much. The House Government
Reform and Oversight Committee has been investigating campaign
finance abuses for about a year and a half. It is this
committee and its
chairman, Congressman Dan Burton, which discovered the Hubbell
tapes
and, as I mentioned earlier in the broadcast, made them
available to
Nightline. Congressman Dan Burton will join us when we come
back.
(Commercial Break)
TED KOPPEL Congressman Dan Burton, the chairman of the House
Government Reform and Oversight Committee, is one of the
President�s
most strident critics. He joins us here in Washington.
The other day, Congressman, you used some rather intemperate
language about the President which I rather suspect may have
grown out
of your frustration. You obviously feel that you know that he
has done
something wrong. You haven�t been able to prove it. Do you
think these
tapes do prove that something inappropriate has happened?
REP DAN BURTON, (R), GOVERNMENT REFORM AND
OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (Washington) Well, Ted, I think they�re
part of the very big mosaic or puzzle and it�s something
that�s going to
take a lot of time and hard work to get to the bottom of. But
I do believe
that the President was involved in a lot of this.
TED KOPPEL In a lot of what?
REP DAN BURTON Well, like Webb Hubbell and the money from
the Riadys. The President and some of his friends met with the
Riadys,
James and Mokatar Riady (ph) and John Huang at the White House
between June 21 and June 27, 1994. I think they met off and on
all of
them about 10 times. The President was in two or three of
those
meetings. And on the 27th, then the Riadys gave $100,000 to
Webb
Hubbell for virtually no work. And the total of $700,000
involved a lot of
other friends of the President who gave money to Webb Hubbell
for
virtually no work and we believe there�s a strong possibility
that was hush
money to protect the President.
TED KOPPEL Now, all of that is no more than circumstantial
evidence.
Now, circumstantial evidence is worth something in court, but
you don�t
indict people on circumstantial evidence, usually. Well, you
certainly
don�t convict them on it. You may indict them on it.
REP DAN BURTON That�s absolutely correct.
TED KOPPEL So what are you going to do with this? Where do you
think it goes from here?
REP DAN BURTON Well, what we do is we have our investigators
continue to talk to people to try to get as much information
so we can get
to the bottom of it. But here�s the problem, Ted. The
President, all the
President�s men and women seem to be running for the hills. We
have
had 92�92 men and women who are friends of the President who
have
either fled the country or taken the Fifth Amendment. Now,
that is an
amazing number of people. They are taking the Fifth Amendment
against
self�incrimination either to protect themselves or to protect
the
President.
TED KOPPEL Let me get you back to these tapes for a moment.
How
did you acquire them? How did you learn about the Webb Hubbell
tapes
to begin with and how did they end up in your hands?
REP DAN BURTON Our investigators were constantly on the move
trying to find out as much as we could about the possible
payoff to Webb
Hubbell to keep him quiet and we found out about the prison
tapes and
we subpoenaed them and listened to them.
TED KOPPEL What else is in those tapes that you think might be
of
any value, either to your committee or to Ken Starr?
REP DAN BURTON The tapes we have released are a condensation
of a lot of tapes. We put out a very small percentage of them
because I
didn�t want to get any more into the personal life of Webb
Hubbell than
we had to and the tapes we�ve released thus far are only
relevant to the
investigation as far as we�re concerned.
TED KOPPEL I want to be careful about understanding your
language.
When you say condensation, do you mean that you edited them or
your
staff edited them?
REP DAN BURTON Yes. We went through the tapes to make sure
that we edited out as much personal information as possible,
personal
conversations between Webb and his wife and his family and so
forth.
TED KOPPEL But has anything that we had, for example, and that
we
had on this program tonight, was that taken out of context?
Might it have
been interpreted in a different way if we�d heard the entire
conversation?
REP DAN BURTON No, and if Mr Hubbell�s attorney or anybody
complains about the content that you put on the air, we�ll be
happy to
divulge the whole tapes and let him and you look at them and
listen to
them.
TED KOPPEL There are stories now, Mr Burton, I know you just
heard about this before the program, but the AP is suggesting
that Mrs
Clinton was played at least portions of one of these tapes.
What do you
think the point of that was?
REP DAN BURTON I think probably Mr Starr was trying to get her
reaction to that, to find out if she was willing to admit that
she was
involved in some of the billing that Mr Hubbell talked about.
TED KOPPEL And what is it about those tapes that you think is
most
compelling in that direction?
REP DAN BURTON Well, I�m not sure about that, Ted. I think
that
Mr Starr has a great deal more information on that than we
have and I�m
not privy to the grand jury information.
TED KOPPEL We�ve only got a few seconds left, Congressman.
What
are you going to do with what you finally conclude?
REP DAN BURTON Well, if we find that we believe there�s
criminal
activity, then we�ll send criminal referrals either to Mr
Starr or to the
Justice Department. Beyond that, if we find information that
we think the
American people have a right to know and we believe the
American
people have a right to know if there was hush money paid to Mr
Hubbell
to cover�up things the President did, we�ll try to illuminate
this issue for
the entire nation.
TED KOPPEL Congressman Burton, thanks very much.
REP DAN BURTON Thank you, Ted.
TED KOPPEL When we come back, we�ll hear a little more from
Webb Hubbell on the subject of Attorney General Janet Reno.
(Commercial Break)
TED KOPPEL And joining us again now live, Nightline�s Chris
Bury.
Some of these tapes, Chris, without really conveying a great
deal of
information, nevertheless give some interesting flavor of the
interaction
among some of the key players here. For example, Webb
Hubbell�s
former boss, Janet Reno.
CHRIS BURY There�s a little bit here that gives us a
suggestion of how
Webb Hubbell really feels about Janet Reno. It�s a
conversation in June,
1996 after Reno expands the independent counsel�s
investigation to
include the FBI files fiasco and here you can actually hear
the sarcasm in
Webb Hubbell�s voice.
SUZANNA HUBBELL And I guess you�ve heard that your friend,
Janet Reno, without consulting the White House at all, turned
over the
FBI stuff to Starr.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I heard that. It didn�t surprise me. I�m
surprised it took her that long.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Oh well, a whole day?
WEBSTER HUBBELL Yeah.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Oh, Bruce was really livid.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Oh, I bet he was.
TED KOPPEL Now, Bruce, Bruce in that instance?
CHRIS BURY That�s Bruce Lindsey, the President�s close
confidante
and if Bruce Lindsey was livid, you know the President was
pretty livid.
TED KOPPEL It sort of gives a suggestion also of how people in
the
White House, at least at that time, felt about the attorney
general despite
what they may have been saying in public.
CHRIS BURY And you can tell even more in this next bit we have
from
the day after the election in 1996. Hubbells are talking about
Reno�s
apparently refusing to resign. The Mickey they�re talking
about in this clip
is Mickey Kantor, who at that time is the commerce secretary.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Have you heard from Mickey?
SUZANNA HUBBELL No, and I have been hesitant to call him.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Yeah.
SUZANNA HUBBELL You know, I can see what�s happened,
though.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Well, Janet won�t leave.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Well, they don�t think, she doesn�t want to
leave, number one. And number two, they think to have that,
that it
would look bad, and they think that ...
WEBSTER HUBBELL Oh, that�s bull____.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Yeah.
WEBSTER HUBBELL I mean, you always leave at the end of the
term. I mean if you�re cooperative, every cabinet secretary
should submit
their resignation.
SUZANNA HUBBELL Well, but he decided they didn�t want to do it
that way. And then what�s been really awkward is apparently
people
who did say they want to resign, now they�ve asked the people
that they
want to resign to hold off so it doesn�t look like a wholesale
mass
exodus.
WEBSTER HUBBELL Yeah. So they don�t have their act together
one more time.
TED KOPPEL What do you make of all of these tapes, Chris?
You�ve
been covering the Whitewater story since the beginning. What
do these
tapes add to the body of information?
CHRIS BURY Well, I think two things. We hear in these tapes
really in
a very firsthand way that the Hubbells are clearly concerned
about
exposure, Hillary Clinton�s exposure to the special counsel.
You hear this
in a very vivid way on the tapes. And the second thing, you
hear that
Webb Hubbell obviously does not want to tell the independent
counsel
anything about this money that he has earned from friends of
the Clintons
and as these indictments show today the reason for that or a
big reason
may be that taxes possibly weren�t being paid on this income.
TED KOPPEL And is that, does that in any way move the
Whitewater
investigation any further along, do you think?
CHRIS BURY Well, we found out tonight that Hillary Clinton
herself
listened to some of these tapes in her videotaped deposition
at the White
House Saturday. That deposition is being played to the Little
Rock grand
jury, which winds up its business next week. So these tapes
could have
an impact on that.
--
Two rules in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know.
2.
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