HELL'S A-BURNIN'

" HELL'S A BURNING'." These were the last words Jim McDougal left on my answering machine on the morning of January 22, 1998. America was about to wake up to the Monica Lewinsky story, but somehow Jim McDougal knew about it first and wanted to spin. Or just wanted to talk. Even from a jail cell, McDougal was only a collect call away from a quote.

I first met McDougal, who died last week in prison at age 57, long before he became a familiar figure on national TV, tipping his trademark Panama hat to the cameras outside the courthouse in Little Rock. The onetime business partner of the Clintons was a lonely man then, who lived in a trailer, his arteries clogged, his mother dead, millions squandered, and his former friend sitting in the Oval Office. He was always ready with a quip and full of color and wit, but he was a beaten man, who felt betrayed by his friend Bill Clinton.

As I asked Jim questions about the arcane land deal known as Whitewater, he told me to take out my wallet. He pulled out my credit cards and asked me what charges I had made the month before. I was confused. He said, "You can't remember financial transactions you made a month ago, and now you're asking me about a transaction I did more than 10 years past." Not pausing for a breath he added, "You know this story is going to be bigger than Watergate."

That was Jim McDougal, combative and intriguing, always keeping reporters on their toes. He would tell just enough to keep you interested and to keep you coming back. Was it a game? Was he stonewalling? Or was he just a lonely man who liked the company of reporters?

I had hundreds of conversations with Jim McDougal over the last five years, before and after he went to jail for fraud and became a key prosecution witness in the Whitewater investigation. He was never boring.

Sure, he went in and out of manic rage. Sure, some days he defended the Clintons and other times he attacked them with venom. Yes, he did become a media darling in love with his own image. During his trial, he even bought a book of Bartlett's Quotations because he was concerned that his sound bites were getting stale.

But then there was the other side of Jim McDougal. Underneath all the bravado was a frightened man. On the eve of his trial, we sat in his hotel room, and he began to cry. He said, "I don't want to go to jail. All I did was help a friend, and now I'm going to the slammer and he's going to win reelection."

He cried once again after he made his deal with Kenneth Starr. He said, "I never thought of myself as a rat, but now I am; I don't want to die in jail." But after gathering himself, he said: "You tell Ted Koppel, I am Billy Clinton's Brutus."

I last saw Jim McDougal over Thanksgiving in jail. He seemed reborn. He was working on a memoir called "Arkansas Mischief." He couldn't wait for his book tour. He told me he was a cult figure among the inmates and that he had befriended the harder cons by volunteering for garbage duty. That was Jim McDougal -- always working an angle.

Whitewater was out of the headlines during this visit, but I asked him the same question I had asked him a thousand times: "Do you think this story is over?" He said, "Chris, what have I told you? This is going to be bigger than Watergate.

"Hell's a-burnin'."

Chris Vlasto is an investigative producer for ABC News.