If Fiske is even half as dogged as Walsh, it could be trouble for the Clintons. The White House reluctantly agreed to a special counsel hoping that the shroud of silence around a criminal investigation would take the story out of the news for a while. The administration also wants to use Fiske as a reason for opposing congressional hearings–on the ground that they might prejudice his inquiry. But Clinton could also find himself with another problem–an aggressive prosecutor eager to justify a long, expensive investigation of deeds most Americans will find insignificant or just too complex to easily grasp. That was the charge leveled by Walsh’s critics, most of them Republicans, who complained about the $36 million he spent on Iran-contra. It could be a year before Fiske is fully staffed and underway. And there is nothing to stop him from staying on until he finds something that at least looks illegal. Reno could theoretically fire him. Unlike Walsh, who served under the now expired independent-counsel law, Fiske operates under Justice Department rules. But even a whiff of pressure from Reno would create new suspicions that the Clintons really do have something to hide.
Whitewater, to be sure, is no Iran-contra. Walsh faced wrongdoing at the top of the executive branch. Although Fiske’s investigative targets include the First Couple, the stakes are far smaller. He will examine the Clintons’ relationships with Madison Guaranty and Whitewater Development Corp., a money-losing Ozark vacation-home venture they co-owned with their friend James McDougal. Fiske will look for evidence that Madison got favorable treatment from Arkansas regulators or that the Clintons received special consideration from McDougal in their Whitewater investment. He’ll also examine allegations that the Clintons or McDougal pressured a former Little Rock judge into making a $300,000 loan to McDougal’s wife. Finally, he’ll probe the suicide of White House lawyer Vincent Foster for links to Whitewater.
Fiske is unlikely to face a problem that hamstrung Walsh: congressional testimony under grants of immunity from prosecution. Walsh lost two major convictions–Lt. Col. Oliver North and national-security adviser John Poindexter–when an appeals court ruled that the immunized testimony tainted their trials. Democratic chairmen of both the House and Senate banking committees, Rep. Henry Gonzalez and Sen. Don Riegle, have steadfastly resisted calls for Whitewater hearings. Sources say Gonzalez is under pressure from aides to Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen to block an inquiry or risk the loss of his chairmanship (Bentsen’s office denies exerting leverage). Gonzalez, normally a gung-ho investigator of S&L mischief, has quietly allowed GOP committee staff to poke around in Arkansas. But House sources say he was so embarrassed by his capitulation on the hearings issue he ducked calls from staff while home in Texas last month.
For Walsh, 82, the Irancontra final report is a bitter coda to a distinguished career. He won 11 convictions or guilty pleas in the investigation of arms sales to Iran and diversion of the sales’ proceeds to the Nicaraguan contras. But he said last week that had evidence now available been within reach in 1987, higher-level Reagan-administration figures might have been indicted. According to Walsh, new documents depict Attorney General Edwin Meese as leader of an attempt to cover up Reagan’s alleged knowledge of the sales. Walsh reserves special venom for the then Vice President George Bush, who as president pardoned former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger in 1992, two weeks before his trial. The prosecutor described Bush as uncooperative and the investigation of his role as “regrettably incomplete.” All principals denied wrongdoing last week, savaging Walsh as a vindictive lawyer run amok.
Just as elusive for Walsh was public understanding–and indignation–about the enormity of the scandal. As the legal trail grew cold and the years advanced, he became an easy mark for partisan sniping. Fiske won’t make many friends either as he descends into Whitewater’s muck, but he’ll likely never face the abject thanklessness of his old friend’s task.
