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Dan Lasater: a friend of Bill's
Insight on the News, Nov 6, 1995 by Jamie Dettmer
Lasater's firm handled $664 million Arkansas bond sales and earned $1.6 million in fees as a result. Clinton exercised the right to approve every bond issue and also determined which brokerage firms were employed. According to state lawmakers, Clinton personally lobbied the Arkansas Legislature very hard in 1986 to get Lasater a $30 minion bond issue for a new police-radio system, despite knowing that Lasater was the target of a major federal and state drug probe. This has intrigued some members of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's investigation. The independent counsel's prosecutors have probed the relationship between Clinton and Lasater - state troopers have been questioned about the friendship - but so far the Whitewater inquiry has not "actively" pursued any Lasater deals, according to sources close to the Starr investigation.
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In his 1986 interview with the FBI and state police, Locke denied there was anything inappropriate going on between the governor and Lasater with the police radio contract. But he acknowledged Clinton was important in the police-radio deal going to Lasater. His affidavit reads: "There was considerable lobbying done for the contract, but Mr Locke said he felt because Lasater and Company backed the right individual in Governor Clinton, Lasater and Company received the contract."
Clinton has insisted he showed no favoritism to Lasater. "He [Lasater] did state business, but so did a lot of other bond firms [that] never did it before I got elected .... I just thought there weren't enough people who had a chance to do the business, and so we broadened the opportunities," the president said at the same March 1994 press conference at which he admitted Lasater had been a major campaign contributor.
COPYRIGHT 1995 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
