Bill Clinton: “Well, I can tell you that when I entered my relationship with him--let's go back to then and not now--I knew Mr.…”

“Well, I can tell you that when I entered my relationship with him--let's go back to then and not now--I knew Mr. McDougal and had known him for many years. I met him in the late sixties when he was running Senator Fulbright's office in Arkansas. I knew that sometime around that time, perhaps later, he got into the real estate business. When I entered into this investment, it was with a person I had known many years who was in the real estate business who had never been in the S&L business or the banking business. That all happened at a later time. He had done quite well. The reason we lost money on Whitewater is not surprising; a lot of people did at that time. Interest rates, as you'll remember, went through the roof in the early eighties. People stopped immigrating to my State to retire, at least in the numbers they had all during the seventies, and the market simply changed. So we didn't sell as many lots, and the venture was not successful. So we lost the money. Principally, the money I lost was on the interest payments I had to make on the loans, which were never reimbursed because the venture never turned a profit.”