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BLOOD SPORT: The President and His Adversaries | 
 enlarge | Author: James B. Stewart
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 957658
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0684831392
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.929092
EAN: 9780684831398
ASIN: 0684831392
Publication Date: February 20, 1997
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Remember Whitewater? Well, yes, that was about 11 Clinton scandals ago, and less serious than some of its successors. In this book, James B. Stewart, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about the Boesky-Milken days on Wall Street, Den of Thieves, provides a unified, novelistic account of the Clintons' Arkansas financial wheeling-dealing. It is useful reading in that it serves up the tell-tale psychology that, no doubt, is behind all the Clinton controversies: Bill and Hillary's desire to make big money (legally) without being seen as the kind of people who would try to.
Book Description
Blood Sport is the explosive national bestseller that became front-page news by exposing the truth about the Clinton White House. With new revelations in this edition, Blood Sport is the definitive account of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's potentially historic investigation of a president and first lady. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Den of Thieves turns his discerning eye an incomparable investigative and storytelling skills to the scandals that have plagued the Clintons. Informative and shocking, Blood Sport reveals the facts about Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster's suicide, the independent counsel investigation, and the rumors of conspiracy and cover-up at the White House. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Stewart provides an unprecedented close-up view of the Clintons as well as a telling portrait of how political combat is waged today.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 More timely now than it was in '97 March 11, 2008
I understand there is no intelligence requirement prior to voting, but at the very least this book should be mandatory reading before the upcoming election.
People should know that James Stewart was actually invited by Hillary Clinton to write this expose. When the truth became far less flattering than she would have scripted she attempted to control the author's work.
Mr. Stewart refused any intervention and went on to publish the book with out the blessing of the wicked witch of the east.
The attention to detail is flawless. The accuracy is frightening and the truth is impossible to ignore.
 Hard to know where the truth ends and fiction begins. May 23, 2006
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Although Stewart is a reputable author, and in fact a Pulitzer Prize winner, this book is a remarkable farrago of fact and fantasy. It is written as a "docudrama," featuring numerous "recreated" dialogues between characters, and indeed even internal narratives and the innermost thoughts of people whom Stewart never interviewed, and in some cases never even met. It's impossible to tell what is factual, what is embellished from others' memories, and what is merely invention by Stewart himself.
It's also notable that everyone who agreed to serve as a source for Stewart is treated far better than those who refused -- and that includes both Clintons and many of their closest friends and associates.
The book is filled with easily correctable inaccuracies, such as when the book gives us a scene showing Hillary Clinton receiving the news of Vince Foster's death while at "the Rodham home in Little Rock, where Hillary was visiting her mother and father, who was ill." Hillary's father Hugh Rodham had died three months earlier. Another scene shows a young Bill Clinton visiting "kingmaker" Jim McDougal in 1975, hoping for McDougal's help in running for Pryor's Senate seat. Not bad, except Pryor was Governor, not Senator, in 1975, and McDougal was hardly powerful enough to be any sort of "kingmaker." White supremacist Jim Johnson, a virulent Clinton-hater who accused Clinton of being, among other things, a "n*gger-lover," and served as one of Stewart's sources, is portrayed as a genial "Democrat-turned-Republican" whose racial hatreds are never mentioned. Other errors abound. Judge David Hale, a businessman and convicted embezzler, is said to have been appointed to the bench by Clinton, when in fact it was Frank White, Clinton's predecessor, who appointed Hale. Hale is also portrayed as breaking the law by loaning money to his "Democrat friends," when in fact Hale made far more loans to Republicans than Democrats, and he broke the law by embezzling over $2 million from the federal government.
Stewart's primary source is Jim McDougal. The real estate wheeler-dealer, who suffered from manic-depression and was convicted of multiple felonies and died in prison, is a notorious liar who lied under oath to more than one court and federal investigator. Stewart also seems completely unaware of the Pillsbury Report, the RTC investigation that completely exonerated the Clintons of any wrongdoing in 1995, and instead relied completely on the then-ongoing Kenneth Starr investigation, which was proven to be full of sensationalistic lies and never returned a single indictment against either of the Clintons for anything. He ignores completely the well-documented body of evidence proving that McDougal committed a raft of financial crimes, and tries to pin the criminal wrongdoings on the Clintons without citing any evidence.
Perhaps worst of all, he tries to link the Vince Foster suicide to Whitewater. This was disproven time and time again -- by the Park Police investigation, by the FBI, by Robert Fiske's independent counsel, and by Kenneth Starr himself.
Stewart made at least one more egregrious error. Shortly after the book's publication he went on "Nightline" to accuse Hillary Clinton of submitting a false loan report relating to Whitewater. He says she submitted the loan report without filling out key sections. Yet in his own appendix, Stewart reprints the loan document, which, if you bother to turn it over and read the back, shows that Hillary did indeed complete the loan document properly. Stewart never bothered to flip the document over and read the back.
The book is worthless, yet another in the seemingly endless parade of baseless, easily disprovable Clinton smears that filled the bookshelves at the time. I see that Amazon currently has used copies for sale for 1 cent. Save your money; this book isn't worth that bent piece of copper.
What is real? March 30, 2006
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Although I thought this book was an easy read into the whole Clinton-Hillary Whitewater debacle (was it really that simple?)....it seems there were some inconsistancies concerning what was presented on the Vince Foster items( as can be easily researched). This, in turn, makes me wonder about the accuracy about the rest of the story of Whitewater and the innocence of the Clintons.
Sometimes one just can't get over the feeling that certain publications are out there to "tidy things up".
 This is the story of the Clintons BEFORE 1993 July 2, 2005
3 out of 11 found this review helpful
The American people were forewarned long ago that this was no ordinary (if there could be such a description) political couple. James B. Stewart delineates the machinations that typified the Clinton story throughout Bill Clinton's Arkansas governorship. Now a lot of this is intertwined with the peculiarities of Arkansas society, where it seems everybody knows everybody else (no offense to many decent Arkansans; much of my family hails from there). And this may be why Kenneth Starr was not able to find solid evidence of wrongdoing, although he obtained several convictions of Clinton associates. Yet to many of us Whitewater was a real-estate deal a sitting state Attorney General and later Governor would not touch with a ten- or even a twenty-foot pole. And that goes double for Castle Grande, cattle futures and Madison Guaranty Trust. Under other circumstances an office holder would have put his or her assets into a blind trust. This intrigue has continued into Bill Clinton's Presidency and beyond (White House coffees, stayovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, selling of sensitive technological information for campaign contributions, selling of pardons, the sneaking of antiques out of the White House, the financing of the Chappaqua house purchase and Hillary Rodham Clinton's registry with several department stores in the manner of an expectant bride--note that for her actual wedding in 1975, she bought her wedding dress off the rack at Dillard's the day before). And those are just the FINANCIAL intrigues!
Convinced this Republican April 22, 2005
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
I read this book in 1997 when the paperback came out. I approached this book as a moderate GOP much in love with Reagan and Bush 41. I never voted for Clinton, but was intrigued by him for several reasons:
1) He was executing wonderfully in '97 (see Morris' "Behind the Oval Office" for this period), even though the GOP-dominated house had elevated partisan politics to the art form it is today.
2) The Press was crucifying him over Whitewater and I did not understand why, it all seemed so trivial.
My conclusions:
There is a case to be that Hillary Clinton may have evaded taxes and obstructed justice - while criminal and deserving of law enforcement investigation, no reason for an investigation against the President instigated by the DoJ.
Stewart confirms that the investigation of Whitewater was pure politics of personal destruction. Bill Clinton did nothing wrong, certainly nothing that demanded any sort of investigation and obstructed his ability to preside over our nation.
There were trivial matters that make President Clinton less than perfect, but you can find dirt on any ambituous person. The question is, did his actions have a negative impact on our country? This book presents no evidence of that, the only negativity emanating out of this was the ammunition it provided to the GOP and the media to divert our attention from matters of State.
One somewhat comic note was the number of idiots that were part of the Clinton circle. While Clinton was a master at bringing together extremely bright and powerful moderates and attempting to pull the Dems out of the socialistic FDR era, the people he associated with more regularly are a hoot!
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