McDougal Shows He Knows How to Dish the Dirt

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Pssst. Want the real dirt on Whitewater?

James B. McDougal, a former business partner of President and Hillary Rodham Clinton in a failed Arkansas real estate venture, is selling the right to dig up dirt from a three-acre plot of Whitewater land.

“It seems that everybody is trying to dig up their own dirt on Whitewater, so we are offering the public the opportunity to acquire their very own souvenir cubic foot of Whitewater for a minimum donation of $19.95,” McDougal said in a press release Tuesday.

Donation?

“Jim’s going to use part of the funds, I guess, to defend himself,” said Chris Wade, president of Whitewater Marketing. Wade was the real estate agent for the Clintons and the McDougals on the Whitewater land sale.

Wade is leasing the three-acre Lot 24 in Whitewater Estates to McDougal for $1 a year for 99 years.

Anyone who buys the dirt will get a “nonpartisan dirt deed” from the Whitewater Development Corp. According to the deed, “the only right that this conveys is to come upon Lot 24 of the above described property and dig up dirt.”

McDougal owned the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan in Little Rock. Special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. is trying to determine whether funds from Madison were illegally diverted in the mid-1980s to prominent Arkansans, including the Clintons and their real estate venture.