House Of Cards

"I mean, I knew he was doing shady [expletive], like saying to Cher, 'Cher, the president just called me and he needs you to perform "If You Could Turn Back Time" in between Diana Ross and before the . . . .' Then he'd call Diana Ross: 'The president just called me, and we need you to go before Cher's "If You Could Turn Back Time."' And he'd mention, like, specific songs that the president was requesting. That's how he got a lot of them . . . It turned out to be some shady [expletive]. But who knew?"

"Who knew?" turned out to be a $1.176 million question. Federal law enforcement officials eventually confirmed that the gala, night of a thousand egos -- when Cher sang "If I Could Turn Back Time," the president cried for the cameras and con artists hobnobbed with the most powerful couple in the world -- cost somebody at least $1.176 million to produce. Yet Hillary Clinton's joint fundraising committee eventually reported that the gala cost just $401,419 in donated goods and services.

Who knew? Did the Clintons know that all that love Hollywood-style had come with such a big price tag? In the end, the only person prosecutors charged with causing false federal election reports to be filed was down the organizational chart: Rosen. An L.A. jury recently found him not guilty.

Maybe the FBI targeted and taped the wrong guy. Or maybe the real culprit was a political fundraising system with one essential truth: In the scramble to fund a major campaign, politicians don't want to scrutinize each check-writing hand for dirty fingernails. The strange saga of the gala brings new meaning to one of the more memorable slogans from the Clinton administration: Don't ask, don't tell.

"It ought to give chills to the average American," Paul says.

Aaron Tonken, a doctor's son from Alpena, Mich., rode into Hollywood in 1992 in a battered Buick wagon. He was 26 and had been hawking Indian jewelry in Arizona. He was, by his own account, a high school dropout with $750 in his pocket, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and those tics, which made his eyes scrunch and his head jerk unpredictably. "I wanted to be famous," he recalled in an interview.

Tonken wasn't a looker, but he sure could talk. At 15, his fame obsession prompted him to lift Jackie O's private phone number from a friend and cold-call her just to chat with a celebrity. "She was surprised, but very gracious," Tonken recalled in his 2004 memoir, The King of Cons. "I did most of the talking."

Once in Hollywood, Tonken claims, he talked his way into a job picking up after Zsa Zsa Gabor and her two dogs. Tonken hated those messy pooches. He didn't like Zsa Zsa much more. Tonken says he sold unflattering stories about the aging star to a tabloid. When she went on vacation, his story goes, he cut a deal with a local tour company. For a total of $3,300, he let busloads of tourists into Gabor's Bel Air estate. "It was a sight: star-struck tourists wandering through the dilapidated mansion, expressions of awe mixed with pity, stepping over dog turds and swatting fleas," Tonken wrote. "They got their money's worth."

Fleeing the wrath of Zsa Zsa, Tonken needed a new home and job fast. He moved into a homeless shelter, where he received one meal a day and free therapy. He spent much of his time schmoozing poolside at the Four Seasons hotel, where networking prospects were much better than at the shelter, he said.

In 1993, a tabloid reporter introduced Tonken to Peter Paul, a former Miami lawyer who was managing celebrities and org-anizing fundraisers. Paul had what Tonken craved: a head full of celebrities' phone numbers. And Tonken had a relentless manipulativeness Paul found promising. "I gave him a telephone and a Rolodex, and the rest is history," Paul recalled in an interview.

Paul said he watched in amazement as his new protege curried favor with a family of New Mexican billionaires by lining up celebrities to appear at the daughter's wedding. Charlton Heston -- who didn't know the bride or her parents -- agreed to read Bible verses during the ceremony; the band Kiss played for the reception, Paul said. "When I saw that, I said, this kid has talent."

Soon, Tonken recalled, he was calling up celebrities and inviting them to be his guest at expensive restaurants he couldn't afford. Restaurant owners let him run a tab in exchange for his bringing in celebrities, which was good for business. Once one freeloading celebrity agreed to be his guest for dinner, Tonken simply dropped that name to rope in the next prospect, and his guest list grew.