The Life and Times of Judge Henry Woods
Washington Times
June 23, 1995
By Judge Jim Johnson
To understand how the federal courts work in Arkansas, you have to understand Stephens Inc.
To understand Stephens, you have to understand Henry Woods, 77, the senior U.S. judge in Arkansas, and the judge to whom the fortunes of Jim Guy Tucker, our governor now under federal indictment, have been assigned. You might say, "it's an Arkansas thing."
U.S. district judges and other major officials of the federal judiciary are selected by political appointment, and politicians are moved by political influence. The most powerful political influence in Arkansas for the past 40 years has been Stephens Inc., owned and operated for many years by Witt Stephens and his younger brother, Jack.
Stephens Inc., is the largest bond house off Wall Street, bigger than any in Chicago or Los Angeles or Dallas, and one of the top commodities traders in the nation. Stephens took Tyson Foods and a number of other business giants public, for example, and continues to influence their operations.
In 1992, when the Clinton campaign was knocked to its knees by the first allegations of the candidate's draft-dodging and womanizing, a Stephens subsidiary advanced him over $3 million to save his campaign. This advance was identical to the sum the Stephens organization got in a sweetheart deal it had manipulated with the Clinton-controlled Arkansas Student Loan Fund just a few months earlier.
These people play hardball, and play it well. When Sen. John L. McClellan died in 1977, the Stephens brothers determined to replace him with their nephew, Rep. Ray Thornton, who then represented a district in southern Arkansas. Our governor, Jim Guy Tucker, represented the Little Rock district, and David Pryor, now our junior U.S. senator, was the governor.
All three entered the race for Mr. McClellan's seat. The nephew ran a close third, leaving the Stephens brothers in a position to pick the winner in the runoff primary, by throwing the nephew's support to one of the two top candidates.
They selected David Pryor, on condition that he arrange the appointment of their friend, Henry Woods, a Little Rock lawyer, to a U.S. district judgeship. As soon as Mr. Pryor was elected, he kept his promise.
I first knew Henry Woods when I arrived in Little Rock in 1951 to represent Ashley County, where I was born, in the Arkansas state senate. Henry was the executive secretary to Sidney S. McMath, the governor. In that era, our governors exerted complete control over the state Highway Department, the agency that expended millions of dollars annually, by far the agency with the most rewards to dispense.
Henry was promising roads to everybody who could offer something in return. He became such a promising fellow that I, along with a number of other members of the state senate, introduced legislation to require an audit of the state's highway-construction operations.
Our bill became law, over the strenuous objections of the governor, and the audit commenced. It wasn't long until it appeared that Henry had his hands in the highway funds up to his elbows, and a Pulaski County grand jury was empaneled to determine whether crimes had been committed.
The hearings waxed hot and heavy, and three weeks before the governor's term expired, and with it Henry's job as the governor's executive secretary, the judge presiding over the grand jury abruptly and unexpectedly resigned, thereby enabling the governor to appoint his replacement. The governor appointed a Little Rock lawyer distinguished mostly for his enthusiastic appreciation of distilled spirits, and his first judicial act was to dismiss the grand jury -which, according to speculation the grand jurors never discouraged, was about to indict Henry.
Henry Woods is an empire-builder. He concerns himself not only with the appointment of federal judges, but clerks, magistrates, U.S. district attorneys, U.S. marshals, the office secretaries, clerks and even the janitors. Henry spent World War II on the home front, working as an FBI agent. He keeps himself informed as to every sparrow that falls by being the most active alumnus in the FBI association. Henry does not miss much.
Henry was the closest friend Witt Stephens ever had. He took lunch with Witt every day for years in the private dining room at Stephens Inc., in downtown Little Rock, and when Witt passed away two years ago Henry gave the eulogy. Henry knew of every federal vacancy before it occurred, just in time to make the wishes of the Stephens brothers known to the official assigned to fill the vacancies.
For example, Henry engineered the appointment of his former classmate and co-campaign manager, Elsijane Trimble Roy, to the federal bench in Arkansas. His public admiration of the president and the first lady has been remarked on for years, and when they went to Washington he saw to it that they leased a presidential office in the Stephens Building, even though ample space was available in Little Rock's spacious new federal office building.
When Mr. Clinton became the president, another of Henry's friends, his former law partner, William R. Wilson, was appointed to a federal judgeship, too. Mr. Wilson had been Henry's leg man and gofer for years; it was well known in Little Rock that when Mr. Wilson walked into your office you were actually dealing with Henry.
When Webster Hubbell, the U.S. associate attorney general and the No. 3 man in the Justice Department, pleaded guilty to having committed 2 of 47 felonies charged against him, the case was assigned to Judge Wilson for sentencing -even though Webb Hubbell worked on Judge Wilson's appointment, and as a lawyer Judge Wilson had represented Roger Clinton, the president's brother, when he was charged in a drug case. He had represented Mrs. Virginia Kelley, the president's late mother, in another matter. It did not occur to Judge Wilson to recuse himself until the pressure created by national news coverage became so intense that he finally stepped aside.
This brings us to Whitewater. Six judges sit in Little Rock for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Three are there through the maneuvering of Henry Woods, affording those persons indicted as a result of the investigation that began with the president and Mrs. Clinton a 50-50 chance of drawing a judge with a connection to Henry and Stephens Inc. Jim Guy Tucker had just such luck.
Further, anyone indicted as a result of an investigation into whether someone at Tyson Foods, Inc., bribed Mike Espy, the former U.S. secretary of agriculture, would be tried in the Western District of Arkansas, headquartered in Fort Smith, before Judge Harry Barnes, the former law partner of Sen. David Pryor; Judge Franklin Waters, the former law partner of James Blair, who is the chief counsel for Tyson and the guru of Hillary Clinton in the making of her miraculous fortune in the commodities-trading market; or Judge Jim Larry Hendren, the former personal attorney for Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart. Stephens Inc., took Wal-Mart public. Jack Stephens and Hillary Clinton have been members of the board of Wal-Mart.
Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, appears to us in Arkansas to be conducting his investigation in a vigorous and professional manner, but members of Congress should bear in mind that even if these judges recuse themselves, the judicial machinery for the selection of U.S. grand and petit juries will remain in place and exercise a marked influence on the outcome. All clerks, marshals, secretaries and even the janitors know they will be spending the remainder of their careers under the supervision of the judges who would be stepping aside only until the great spotlight dims, silence falls and the special prosecuting lawyers leave Little Rock.
If justice should be done with convictions secured, the convictions will be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis. The chief judge there is Richard Arnold, a protege of Henry Woods, who lunches with him nearly every day he is in Little Rock, at Stephens Inc. Witt is gone but the private dining room lives on.
His brother, Morris Arnold, also serves on the appeals court. Morris (or Buzz, as we call him at home) was the only Republican confirmed by the old Democratic Senate after Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States.
On his last visit home, Mr. Clinton spent the first several hours with Richard Arnold, the chief judge of the St. Louis court, which hears all federal appeals in Arkansas. The Paula Jones case is before that court now.
Judge Richard Arnold was an administrative assistant to Sen. Dale Bumpers, whose wife Betty is the chief Washington lobbyist for the largest utility company in our state. Arkansas can be an accommodating place.
[End of Transcript]
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