ON THE ROAD TO SCANDAL

IN JULY 1993, DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE counsel Vincent Foster wrote an anguished lament: "I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport." Nine days later, Foster was dead. Shock at the apparent suicide of one of President Clinton's top aides turned to mystery, then suspicion, as the White House became entangled in an ever widening net of questions. Among the confidential matters Foster was working on when he died was the Clintons' investment in Whitewater, an Arkansas land development launched in 1978 with the Clintons' partners, Jim and Susan McDougal.

Conspiracy theories circulated almost immediately, alleging that Foster was murdered because he knew too much. And the Whitewater affair, a minor footnote to the 1992 presidential campaign, was suddenly resurrected in the national media. To a degree that seemed to leave them stunned and at times depressed, the President and First Lady have been buffeted by allegations of scandal, conspiracy and cover-up.

Whitewater now seems destined to dog the Clintons throughout this election year. In Little Rock last week, Jim and Susan McDougal, along with Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, began to stand trial on felony charges brought by independent counsel Kenneth Starr; they are accused of fraud, conspiracy and making or causing to be made false statements to a financial institution. When Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury last January, she made history: never before had a First Lady been summoned to do that. A memo that had been subpoenaed two years ago by independent counsel Robert Fiske was discovered in the files of a White House aide suggesting that contrary to her lawyers' statements, it was the First Lady who had ordered the firing of White House travel-office employees. Subpoenaed billing records from the Rose Law Firm, long described as missing, were suddenly found in the family quarters of the White House. They revealed that the First Lady was far more involved in work for a failed Arkansas savings and loan than she had admitted.

The Senate committee investigating Whitewater has suspended hearings while Democrats and Republicans bicker over funding, but the testimony by witnesses has already led South Carolina Republican Lauch Faircloth to label the First Lady a liar. Not all the news is bad for the Clintons: two weeks ago, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (which took over for the now defunct Resolution Trust Corp.) concluded that neither Hillary Clinton nor the Rose Law Firm should be sued for any losses incurred by the failed S&L Madison Guaranty.

Blood Sport is as much about how political combat is waged in America today as it is about the Clintons and their misjudgments. The main excerpt, which is from Part 1 of the book, "The Road to Scandal," traces the deal that spawned the Clintons' current problems. The excerpt about Vincent Foster is from Part 2, "A Death in the White House." The third part of the book, "Shrouding the Truth," concentrates on subsequent events inside the White House, especially how the Clintons handled--and mishandled--mounting revelations about their lives in Arkansas.