Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 25, 1993 TAG: 9312250018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: From The New York Times and the Boston Globe
DATELINE: LITTLE ROCK, ARK. LENGTH: Long
The troopers, Larry G. Patterson and Roger L. Perry, were mostly spared the sort of questioning directed at President Clinton's personal life. Now, under closer scrutiny, it is apparent they have had credibility problems.
By far the most serious is sworn testimony in two lawsuits in Pulaski County Circuit Court in Little Rock that the two friends, along with a third trooper, admitted collaborating last year to falsify an account of a serious automobile accident in 1990. Perry was seeking $100,000 in insurance payments in the two suits.
The troopers could have have faced serious punishment if police superiors learned details about the accident: that Patterson, drunk, had demolished a state police car while bar-hopping with the other two troopers.
Perry and Patterson admit misstatements about the accident, although they deny that they conspired to defraud the insurance company.
Recently, the two, who earn $40,000 a year as state troopers, have suggested their accusations against Clinton could be made into a book.
Meanwhile, Danny Ferguson, another trooper previously identified as an anonymous source for the stories on Clinton, issued a statement through his Little Rock lawyer denying Clinton offered "any trooper a job in exchange for silence or help in shaping their stories."
That statement would appear to seriously weaken allegations of wrongdoing against Clinton by undercutting the contention that he offered Ferguson a job in exchange for his cooperation, which would violate federal law.
Ferguson's statement was challenged by the Los Angeles Times, however, which reported it had a tape-recorded statement from him last week in which he said Clinton asked if he was interested in a job as a regional head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or as a U.S. marshal. Ferguson said Clinton did not specifically connect the jobs to a request for silence.
In a long interview Thursday, Patterson and Perry insisted their assault on Clinton was motivated not by money or a desire for celebrity, but by pent-up fury over years of mistreatment while serving with Clinton's personal security detail.
"You block roads for him," Patterson said. "You run all the personal errands, and then he forgets about you." Complaining that he even had to clean up after the Clintons' dog, Patterson added: "It eat at me. It eat at me. That man is leader of the free world, and he's a user."
The pair's accounts of what they said were Clinton's sexual dalliances were widely publicized. They also accused Clinton of misusing state cars, portable phones and the troopers themselves to set up the liaisons and later to conceal them.
The Los Angeles Times bolstered its account with state telephone records and interviews with other unidentified witnesses to some events. Otherwise, news reports have relied almost totally on the veracity of Patterson, who served on Clinton's security detail from May 1987 until this year, and Perry, who was on the Clinton detail for eight months in 1979 and from October 1989 to January 1990.
They said they did not tell their stories during Clinton's campaign for president because superiors had warned them to remain quiet.
The men said a grab-bag of grievances had led to a change of heart after Clinton won the White House. Patterson professed offense at Clinton's neglect after the election to pay any tribute to troopers for the unpleasant chores they had performed during his tenure.
In particular, he said, the president-elect ignored a request to pose for a photograph with the security detail, and he shunted aside Patterson's request for a desk job after the trooper suffered a heart attack in 1991.
In an odd twist, Perry conceded in a court deposition on file in Little Rock that he had been made to repay the state $386 for personal long-distance calls made in 1990 on state telephones - much the same charge he and Patterson aim at Clinton.
"I'm glad you brought that up," Perry said. He said that, during the same investigation, Clinton had to reimburse the state about $40 for his own calls to a woman. The Los Angeles Times found records of Clinton's calls and his check during a four-month effort to verify the charges by Perry, Patterson and two troopers unwilling to be identified. Until the affidavit, Ferguson had been unidentified.
No public mistake exceeds their handling of the December 1990 automobile crash, in which Patterson's unmarked 1990 Chevrolet Corsica police car slammed into a tree well past midnight.
The auto was wrecked and Perry went to the hospital with a cracked vertebra and cuts that required 280 stitches. Patterson and a third trooper he was dating, Melanie Tudor, were not seriously hurt.
In unsworn statements after the accident to insurance investigators and by Patterson to his police superiors, the troopers all told of an unavoidable crash after an evening of businesslike dining.
According to court documents, Patterson said he had had one beer over dinner with Perry and Tudor at a restaurant and the three had then dropped by an office to pick up papers for a seminar on insurance policies. On the way back to the restaurant, he said, he swerved off the icy road to avoid another car.
That tale unraveled when Perry sued his insurer and Patterson to collect medical expenses and the troopers were put under oath.
In fact, Patterson conceded in his sworn deposition, he had not eaten dinner, but had drunk three or four double Crown Royal whiskeys at the restaurant and headed to a second bar and had "a few more." He said the three had never stopped at the office or attended the insurance seminar.
Perry testified that he and Patterson were clearly intoxicated. The ultimate cause of the wreck remains unknown.
In her sworn testimony, Tudor said Patterson had asked her to lie about the circumstances because "this will put Roger's and my jobs in jeopardy."
Thursday, Patterson expressed remorse. "I done the memo. I did not tell all the truth," he said. "I was in fear of my job."
That is all water under the bridge, Patterson now says, and it is Clinton's behavior that is at issue.
"That happened in 1990," he said Thursday. "I have not lied about anything in this. I have told the truth. Bill Clinton knows it."
by CNB