That's what the staff of Whitewater Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr has always believed. And the feeling was reinforced last week when the President testified on video tape in the much-followed and very dangerous trial here of his former business partners and his successor as governor of Arkansas.
Closing arguments in that trial began yesterday here in Little Rock and the case is expected to go to the jury by the end of the week. By Friday, prosecutors expect to know whether Bill Clinton - one of only two witnesses called by the cocky defense - was a smooth enough liar to counter a score of prosecution witnesses who swore they were part of a pattern of financial wrongdoing.
The betting before the closing arguments even started was that the government had a good chance of convicting Jim and Susan McDougal, the Clintons' Whitewater business partners but only a slim chance of getting Jim Guy Tucker, the current governor of Arkansas. The government was concerned from the start about the makeup of the jury and had hoped to exclude two women members with strong connections to the Democratic Party. The judge in the case wouldn't bump the woman off the jury and the government has been playing for a tie - a hung jury - in the Tucker portion of the case ever since.
The government's hopes against Tucker - who will probably be hit with additional and more serious charges even if acquitted on the current ones - perked up last week thanks to McDougal, the other defendant. On the witness stand in front of the jury, McDougal blurted out that Tucker `like most lawyers, he would steal anything that wasn't nailed down.`
Despite defense objections, the judge let the remarks stand. With that the government finally had some hope that Tucker too could be convicted.
But that hope rests largely on who the jurors believe of this pathetic crew of liars, thieves and ne'er-do-wells. The star of the show, of course, was Bill Clinton who denied knowing anything, signing anything or even thinking anything that might be afoul of the law.
But right from the start Starr's office knew it was up against a major hurdle in its quest to find out what was going on in Arkansas.
Starr's staff has believed for a long time that Clinton will lie whenever it suits his needs. And despite recent Democratic attacks on Starr's alleged partisanship, his staff - which consists of veteran FBI agents, professional prosecutors and an assortment of other law enforcement agents - has no personal grudge against the President or First Lady. But they do believe that the Clintons are unwilling - or maybe even incapable, as New York Times columnist Willaim Safire has suggested, of telling the truth.
In fact, sources familiar with Starr's investigation once told me that prosecutors believe that Hillary Clinton lied about 80 percent of the time in a sworn deposition more than a year ago and Bill Clinton was only slightly more honest. He lied 75 percent of the time, the prosecutors agreed.
Here is Little Rock this week, a jury will have the daunting task of deciding whether Bill Clinton lied last week in taped testimony when the President said that neither he nor any of his business partners and colleagues forced a lowlife named David Hale to give them $300,000 in loans. Hale testified under a deal with the government that Clinton business associates James and Susan McDougal, as well as Clinton's successor as Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker, defrauded the government out of $3 million in loans.
(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).