McDougal is writing a wrong

Theories abounded. Susan McDougal's favorite: She was in love with Bill Clinton.

It makes her laugh that special prosecutor Kenneth Starr believed she would serve 18 months for civil contempt to protect a man she hardly knew. And how he even dispatched an attractive male attorney to try to break her silence.

"Only a man would think that would work," she said.

It helps that three years have passed since McDougal, 46, left prison. She spoke to me from San Francisco, one of the stops in a book tour that will bring her to Seattle this week.

"The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk" (Carroll & Graf, $25) will hit the New York Times Bestseller List's top 10 this week.

It is, she said, "a personal reflection of what can happen to someone when the power of the government comes to bear on them."

The book traces McDougal's childhood in Arkansas, her marriage to college professor-turned-politician-turned-developer Jim McDougal, and their brief-yet-fateful friendship with a couple named Bill and Hillary.

It takes McDougal only a minute to explain Whitewater, a development deal that became a national swampland of names, canceled checks and allegations. Her version:

She signed for a $300,000 federal loan earmarked for women- or minority-owned businesses. She gave the money to her husband.

But Starr insisted the money went to the Clintons, who had invested in the McDougals' Whitewater development.

Susan McDougal watched as friends and colleagues — seeking to protect their families or avoid jail — testified for Starr.

"I didn't want to turn into one of those people," she said.

The result: a tour of various lock-ups, where she cried a little, laughed a lot, received 50,000 letters, heard hundreds of life stories, learned to dance and almost went crazy.

And she learned a big lesson: "Take the high road. ... It was time to stand up for something for once in my life."

McDougal is back in the small town of Camden, Ark. Now and then she gets to Little Rock, where she inevitably runs into someone who gave something up to Starr.

"They are so eaten up and angry," she said. "I'm not obsessed with it. I did what I needed to do."

She hasn't spoken to the Clintons since 1990.

"I admire their politics a great deal," she wrote in her book. "If my refusal to cooperate ... prevented Starr from hurting the Clinton presidency, then I'm happy about it.

"But that is not the reason why I chose to remain silent. I did it for myself."

She turned down several book and movie offers after her release, saying it felt "unholy." It took her a while to discover what she had to say.

But mostly when she speaks these days, it is not about Whitewater. Instead, she talks about the conditions and treatment of women prisoners. In the course of keeping her silence, she found a voice.

"When I am up at night and I am having trouble breathing, I think, 'Somebody is still in there,' " she said of women in prison. "That is really important not to lose sight of."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or at nbrodeur@seattletimes.com

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists

She hankers for turnip greens.