Evading Judge’s Order, McDougal Drops Clinton’s Name

Faster than you could say Whitewater grand jury, Susan McDougal managed to sidestep a judge’s instruction by dropping Bill Clinton’s name twice Monday as she testified for a fourth day at her embezzlement trial in Santa Monica.

Later, against the judge’s wishes, she also let slip the fact that she had been held at the county’s Sybil Brand women’s jail for contempt of court. Although she never said the word Whitewater, it was that investigation that landed her in jail for refusing to testify against Clinton.

McDougal, 43, has been on trial since September on charges of embezzling about $150,000 from famed symphony conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife, Nancy, during the three years she worked for them. The case is unrelated to McDougal’s role in the independent counsel’s investigation of Whitewater, a 20-year-old land deal she was involved in with friends Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. As a result, Superior Court Judge Leslie W. Light has forbidden any mention of Whitewater or of McDougal’s Clinton connection.

The garrulous defendant’s first foray into previously forbidden territory came under questioning by her attorney, Mark Geragos.

Recounting a residential history that ran from palatial estates to country shacks without running water, McDougal twice let slip Clinton’s name. With the second “slip,” the judge cleared jurors from the courtroom, and told the defense, “I think we have reached a point where any juror who didn’t know there was a connection between Ms. McDougal and Bill Clinton is now aware.”

He asked Geragos to instruct the voluble McDougal to avoid “a ‘Ulysses’ stream of consciousness” when answering questions.

But, under cross-examination later in the day, McDougal experienced another slip of the tongue when questioned about an interview she gave to a magazine writer last year.

“He came to jail once at Sybil Brand while I was being held in contempt,” McDougal said.

McDougal was called upon to recite her residential history to counter prosecution claims that she swindled the Mehtas to sustain her lust for the high life. According to her testimony, McDougal led a spartan lifestyle for much of the time--unless one considers a double-wide trailer with running water to be living large.

She seemed near tears as she recalled the collapse of her ill-fated marriage to the late James B. McDougal, a Clinton political ally in Arkansas. Despite their inauspicious beginnings, the McDougals bought a nice house in Little Rock, but sold it in 1980 when he went to work for Gov. Clinton, she testified. The pay was lousy, she said, but Jim McDougal “loved politics.”

The McDougals, who also ran the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, separated in the mid-1980s as their banking and real estate fortunes collapsed. For a time, Susan rented a one-room apartment in Little Rock.

She moved to California in 1988, and began working for the Mehtas the next year. She is charged with a dozen theft, forgery credit card fraud and tax counts, but has denied stealing from the Mehtas by forging checks and running up charges on a fraudulently obtained credit card.

She didn’t have to steal, McDougal has testified, because Nancy Mehta would have given her anything she wanted. She has portrayed Mehta as wealthy, controlling and desperately lonely.

She lived at the Mehtas’ house much of the time she worked for them.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Semow also probed McDougal’s relationship with Mehta, pointing to one of their first shopping outings together. McDougal said Mehta purchased “bags and bags” of coordinated outfits for her, and insisted she take them even though it made her “uncomfortable.”

“Wasn’t it kind of creepy?” Semow asked.

“It made me think she was pretty lonely,” McDougal replied.