Paper Trail: The Origins of Whitewater

The timber companies are not the most familiar pillars of the Arkansas power structure--that status falls to Tyson, Wal-Mart, and the Stephens family--but they are probably the most potent of the lot. All told, International Paper, Weyerhaeuser, Georgia-Pacific, and Potlatch control more than 2.5 million acres of land in Arkansas and operate more than 30 mills. It is scarcely surprising that it crossed the corporate mind of International Paper that a pleasant offering of real estate to the Clintons, via McDougal, would not be such a bad idea.