Hale has already charged that then Gov. Clinton pressured him into making a covert $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal's design firm, Master Marketing. And the government during this trial has also alleged that $115,000 of the Hale loan was eventually used to repay indebtedness on a real estate development called Flowerwood Farms.
Hale owned Flowerwood Farms and a number of other - mostly failing -real estate developments throughout Arkansas. The Clintons were his partner only in the real estate development called Whitewater.
So why would Bill Clinton go to bat for the McDougals when the money was being used for Flowerwood, a real estate development in which the Clintons had no stake? Was Bill Clinton just being a nice guy, or was there another reason that the government hasn't yet shared with the court?
As the Post has said before, Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's office believes there was some extraordinary financial maneuvers being done with Flowerwood by McDougal. As I said in this column more than 18 months ago, a $135,000 loan to Flowerwood Farms suddenly became a problem for McDougal in early 1986. In early December of 1995, McDougal started being pestered by banker Richard Smith of Stephens Security Bank about his bank's loan to Flowerwood.
Smith had loaned the money inappropriately and wanted the $135,000 repaid. McDougal got another call from Smith, according to documents I've seen, on January 3 of 1986 about the loan. And, sources say, there were other contacts between McDougal and Smith.
So, it was clear that the McDougals were desperately in need of money around the time the government says that Susan McDougal ``prepared a false and fraudulent loan application for $300,000'' on March 19, 1986.
But it isn't until the government looked at how Flowerwood loan was used in 1985 that there appears to be a link to the White House.
According to the information I've seen, the government believes that very little of the $135,000 loan actually went into the Flowerwood project.
But the most important recipient of the Flowerwood money was the Clinton/McDougal Whitewater project, which is said to have received a $24,455 check on April 9, 1985 - just six days after the Flowerwood money was deposited in McDougal's personal account.
When Stephens Bank started demanding its money back later in 1985, prosecutors think the McDougals and Clintons had to figure out a way to repay the $24,455. It was around that time that David Hale says Bill Clinton suddenly started pressuring him to make the loan to Susan McDougal, which the prosecutors say was used to pay off the Flowerwood loan.
In other words, Hale's loan - the centerpiece of the trial now going on down here - may have gotten Bill and Hillary Clinton out of a very political and legal bind. Making matters worse, the Hale loan turned out not to be a loan after all. The money was never repaid. So, if prosecutors are correct, the Whitewater crew forced Hale to rescue them from a fraudulent situation by committing fraud himself - and then stiffed him on the loan.
The Special Prosecutor doesn't believe Bill Clinton was the only one actively-lobbying for the Hale loan. The Dec. 9,1995 phone call to McDougal's office by Richard Smith complaining about repayment of the $135,000 loan to his Stephens Security bank is believed to have been followed 68 minutes later by a call from Hillary Clinton.
The government doesn't know what Hillary Clinton's call was about. Perhaps she called to say hello to the McDougals, but they suspect it had something about getting the $135,000 loan off theirs and the McDougals' backs
I'm told Starr's investigators have also questioned an Arkansas State Trooper about allegations that he was present when Hillary Clinton made good on the $135,000 loan to Stephens Security Bank. The trooper has been laying low and has refused to talk with The Post and, I suspect but don't know, that he is being uncooperative with Starr as well.
McDougal has denied to me that Hillary Clinton intervened in any way with the loan to Flowerwood Farms. But Starr is believed to have another employee from McDougal's Madison Guaranty Trust who has confirmed some of the details mentioned above.
The bottom line: The trial now going on here in Arkansas, the one that is boring the media silly, could end up proving criminal wrongdoing on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. Bill Clinton had better be careful when he testifies soon via videotape - there is more danger here than he thinks.
(John Crudele is a financial columnist with the New York Post. His mailing address is P.O. Box 610, Lincroft, N.J. 07738. Click here to send him e-mail).