White House Travel Office Controversy - Legacy

Legacy

In the legal aftermath, Swidler & Berlin v. United States became an important Supreme Court decision. The length, expense, and results of the Travelgate and the other investigations grouped under the Whitewater umbrella turned much of the public against the Independent Counsel mechanism. As such, the Independent Counsel law expired in 1999, with critics saying it cost too much with too few results; even Kenneth Starr favored the law's demise.

Opinions would differ over the legacy of the affair. Some agreed with Safire, who had said that Hillary Clinton was "a vindictive power player who used the FBI to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage." Commentator Barbara Olson would entitle her highly unflattering 1999 book Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton, in reference to Clinton's Travelgate phrase. However, the various investigations and conclusions had little effect on Hillary Clinton's career, as she won the 2000 election to the Senate, won re-election in 2006, and became a strong contender for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election.

Bill Clinton later described the allegations and investigation as "a fraud", while in her 2003 autobiography Hillary Clinton gave short shrift to the matter, never mentioning Billy Dale by name and saying that "'Travelgate'... was perhaps worthy of a two- or three-week life span; instead, in a partisan political climate, it became the first manifestation of an obsession for investigation that persisted into the next millennium." Many in the Clinton inner circle would always believe that political motivations had been behind the investigation, including an attempt to derail Hillary Clinton's role in the 1993 health care reform plan. But associate White House counsel William Kennedy would also later reflect that some of it was just "pure palpable hatred of the Clintons. It started and it never quit."