MIKE FLUGENNOCK

March 2000 -

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JUNE 2007

BOOK ACCUSES HILLARY CLINTON OF INVOLVEMENT IN PHONE TAPPING

MICKEY KAUS - On page 93 of the new Gerth-Van Natta Hillary Clinton book, a sentence describes how, during the '92 campaign, Hillary herself "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill's supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions."

http://www.slate.com/id/2167180/&#clintoncell

LAW COVERING THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR

SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER - Rep. Jim McDermott has had the luxury of winning big and cheaply in recent elections, facing only token opposition. But that fortunate history could pose a problem for McDermott if the Seattle Democrat is forced to pay more than $1 million in legal fees and penalties to settle his long-running legal battle with House Minority Leader John Boehner. Unlike colleagues who have been able to tap into campaign funds for legal costs, McDermott doesn't have enough cash in his coffers to cover his bills.

The prospect that McDermott soon will be liable for a huge payout became a real possibility earlier this month after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 5-4 against him. The defeat leaves him with one remaining legal recourse -- an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. McDermott and his lawyers have until July to decide, but legal observers say it's highly unlikely an appeal would be successful.

That would mean by midsummer, McDermott would have to ramp up a fundraising effort that has been gathering dust for nearly a decade. He must pay a court-ordered $60,000 fine and Boehner's legal fees, which attorneys estimate are $880,000 and counting. . .

Boehner sued McDermott in 1998, accusing him of violating his right to privacy for making public a telephone conversation involving Boehner, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other senior Republicans who were discussing ethics allegations against Gingrich. The cell phone conference call was recorded by a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, who stumbled onto the conversation while listening to a police scanner. The Martins gave the tape to McDermott, who at the time was a member of the House Ethics Committee. McDermott provided the tape to reporters for The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

HILLARY CLINTON NAMES IMPEACHED FEDERAL JUDGE AS CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR

SUN SENTINEL, FL - U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Weston, and Alcee Hastings, of Miramar, were appointed national campaign co-chairs on Thursday for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic presidential effort. "We need a leader with a clear vision and sound judgment, who can work with a Democratic Congress to renew the promise of America. Hillary is that leader," Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

WIKIPEDIA - In 1981 Judge Hastings was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence and a return of seized assets for 21 counts of racketeering by Frank and Thomas Romano, and of perjury in his testimony about the case. He was acquitted by a jury after his alleged co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify in court (resulting in a jail sentence for Borders).

In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. Voters to impeach included Democratic Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, John Conyers and Charles Rangel. He was then convicted in 1989 by the United States Senate, becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate. The vote on the first article was 69 for and 26 opposed, providing five votes more than the two-thirds of those present that were needed to convict. The first article accused the judge of conspiracy. . .

Alleged co-conspirator William Borders went to jail again for refusing to testify in the impeachment proceedings, but was later given a full pardon by Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

Hastings filed suit in federal court claiming that his impeachment trial was invalid because he was tried by a Senate committee, not in front of the full Senate, and that he had been acquitted in a criminal trial. Judge Stanley Sporkin ruled in favor of Hastings, remanding the case back to the Senate. . . The Supreme Court, however, ruled in Nixon v. United States that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over Senate impeachment matters, so Sporkin's ruling was vacated and Hastings' conviction and removal were upheld.

WIKIPEDIA - After the 2006 United States House of Representatives elections, Hastings attracted controversy after it was reported that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might appoint him as head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Pelosi reportedly favored Hastings instead of the ranking Democrat Jane Harman due to political differences and support for Hastings by the Congressional Black Caucus. However, Hastings' impeachment led to accusations that Democrats, who had campaigned against a Republican "culture of corruption," were themselves elevating a corrupt official to a committee chair. On November 28, 2006, Pelosi announced that Hastings would not be the next chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcee_Hastings

HEAD OF CONTROVERSIAL FIRM SAYS CLINTON NAME AND CONTACTS WORTH OVER $40 MILLION

SARAH BAXTER, TIMES, UK - The frontrunner for the Democrats in the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, has been hit by a legal dispute in which one of her fundraisers is accused of trying to "ingratiate" himself with powerful friends at the expense of his company. The row has revived accusations of the influence peddling and favors for donors that marred Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s.

For years the Clintons flew on Vinod Gupta's corporate plane, introduced him to world leaders - including Tony Blair - and received donations for their political campaigns and charitable foundations. They relaxed at his holiday home in Hawaii - next door to Pierce Brosnan, the former James Bond star - and jetted to Acapulco, the Mexican resort, while Gupta once spent the night as a favored guest in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House.

"If we're negotiating with a company, it helps if Bill Clinton says, 'Oh Vin, he's a good guy'," said Gupta in a frank interview with The Sunday Times. Hillary's other man

The lawsuit, by company shareholders, accuses Gupta of squandering millions of dollars on his high-profile friends, including $900,000 worth of travel on the Clintons.

Bill Clinton has a $3.3m consulting deal with the company, which the shareholders allege is a "waste of corporate assets". He has already received $2.1m, with another $1.2m to come.

Interviewed at his office, not far from the White House, Gupta said Bill Clinton's name and contacts were worth "over $40m" for the company. "We've met chief executives, billionaires, government people - it helps us to make connections and do deals. It's a very competitive world and who you know and which circles you belong to is a big thing.". . .

Hillary Clinton used to use Gupta's private plane - leased through NetJets, which sells shares in private business aircraft - to fly to campaign stops as a senator. Her office would frequently ring to borrow it, he said.

"If we got five requests, maybe we'd say yes once, and the other four times we'd say no," Gupta said. The company would be reimbursed with the cost of a first-class ticket, far less than the cost of chartering the plane

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1910124.ece

VIDEO TAPE SUGGESTS HILLARY CLINTON'S DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN FUNDRAISING SCANDAL

CNS - A videotape shows New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. . . should be admitted as new evidence in a California civil case, a forthcoming legal brief to be filed by argues. The tape shows Clinton speaking in 2000 with Peter Paul, a Hollywood mogul, and comic book icon Stan Lee about a massive fundraising event for her 2000 Senate race. Paul spent about $2 million of his own money to produce the event. The legal contribution limit to a candidate then was $2,000. . .

A portion of the videotape captures the closing words of a lengthy conversation in which Paul was present. The voice of Hillary Clinton is heard telling Lee that Paul and her chief campaign aide "talk all the time, so she'll be the person to convey whatever I need." She is then heard adding, "I wanted to call and personally thank all of you ... [and] tell you how much this means to me. It's going to mean a lot to the president, too."

Clinton and her supporters have maintained that she had no direct knowledge that the event violated campaign finance rules. In a written declaration for the California court filed on April 7, 2006, the senator said only that she didn't remember discussions with Paul about the fundraiser.

"I have no recollection whatsoever of discussing any arrangement with him whereby he would support my campaign for the United States Senate in exchange for anything from me or then-President Clinton," Clinton said in the declaration. "I do not believe I would make such a statement because I believe I would remember such a discussion if it had occurred," she added.

The Federal Elections Commission already ruled that Clinton's 2000 campaign committee underreported cash it received at the fundraising event Paul sponsored. The FEC slapped the campaign committee with a $35,000 fine.

The fallout from Paul's Hollywood fundraising event also led to the federal indictment of David Rosen, the senator's campaign finance director, who was acquitted on charges of lying to the FEC.

Paul alleges this tape proves Clinton and her campaign were not truthful to either the FEC or the grand jury investigation that led to Rosen's indictment.

Neither Clinton's presidential campaign nor her Senate office returned phone calls regarding this story Tuesday. Likewise, Clinton's attorney David Kendall did not respond.

In recent briefs in the case, Clinton's attorneys point out that Paul pleaded guilty to manipulating the company's stock price. He has a previous felony conviction, pleading guilty to fraud in the 1970s and to a drug charge in the 1980s.

The U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York gave copies of 90 tapes to Paul on April 11. The office had taken possession of the tapes six years ago during an investigation of a securities case against Paul in 2001. . .

Paul contends that President Clinton had agreed to work as a rainmaker for the company after he left the White House in exchange for the massive star-studded fundraising event in Hollywood which Paul produced that included Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, John Travolta, Brad Pitt, Sugar Ray, and Queen Latifah.

VIDEO EXCERPT
http://www.hillcap.org/default.php?page_id=2

MORE ON THE FIRM THAT HAS BEEN KEEPING THE CLINTONS GOING

DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN, NEWSMAX - Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton has been paid by $3.3 million by Info USA, an Omaha, Nebraska company that has been identified as a key provider of specially designed databases that have been sold to criminals who use the detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly. . . According to the New York Times, Info USA compiled and sold lists that disclosed the names of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams.

The lists left no doubt about the vulnerability of the elderly targets. The Times reported, for example, that Info USA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

Info USA sold lists to companies that were under investigation or closed down by courts because of their criminal activity. The company's internal emails show that employees were aware that the investigation for elderly fraud involved their customers, but sold the lists anyway.

The Times profiled one unfortunate 92-year-old man who entered a sweepstakes sponsored by Info USA. The information that he innocently provided was then sold to the predator marketers. After responding to their telemarketing calls seeking financial information, his entire life savings was stolen from his bank account at Wachovia Bank. These practices, using lists supplied by Info USA, were repeated all over the country.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/5/28/203543.shtml

BERNSTEIN MISLEADS ON TRAVEL OFFICE SCANDAL

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - Today's award goes to Carl Bernstein given in memory the late New York columnist who, as AJ Liebling put it, never permitted "facts to interfere with the exercise of his imagination."

We had been waiting for the excerpts from Bernstein's new book on Hillary Clinton to get through the mushy parts and move on to the facts; instead the mush turned into spin.

Two cases in point: Vince Foster's weight before he committed suicide and the White House Travel Office scandal .

The former is only significant because it was used by the Clintonistas to defect inquiries concerning the death of Vincent Foster, about which (and about the investigation that followed) there remain numerous unresolved questions. The idea was that Foster had been depressed and had lost a lot of weight before his death.

Bernstein contributes to this myth by writing: "There is a photograph taken by one of the White House photographers in mid-May 1993 and never publicly released that speaks volumes. Hillary, Foster and Bill Clinton could look no glummer. . . The most distressed-looking person in the picture is Hillary. Foster is gaunt, sad, empty."

Clintonista Sidney Blumenthal wrote in the New Yorker shortly after Foster's death that he had lost 15 pounds. That same month David Von Drehle in the Washington Post reported that Foster had lost 15 pounds since coming to Washington. His doctor claimed that his weight loss was "obvious to many."

Now 15 pounds isn't that much for someone weighing over 200 pounds - especially since by BMI standards he'd have to go down to 155 to be underweight - but independent investigator Hugh Sprunt looked into the matter and found something else: the stories weren't true.

In August 1990, according to his medical records, Foster weighed 207 pounds. These record also show him down to 194 pounds in December 1992 thanks to diet and exercising according to his doctor's notes. On his security form of January 27, 1993 - right after the inauguration of Clinton - he listed his weight as 195 pounds.

His lunch on the day of this death consisted of cheeseburger, fries, Coke and M&Ms. He ate everything but his M&Ms.

The autopsy weighed him in at 197 pounds. In other words, even with loss of blood, the dead Foster weighed more than the live one just before Inauguration Day.

A minor fiction to be sure, but typical of the work of the Clinton White House.

Bernstein causes more serious mischief with his handling of the White House travel office matter, a scandal which led to the malicious prosecution of the office's head, a prosecution rejected in less than two hours by the jury. It seems likely that the purpose of the travel office purge was to reward the private travel agency that had subsidized the cash-hungry Clinton campaign by non-billing around a million dollars until after the election. Beyond simple issues of patronage, the case raises questions about unreported campaign contributions (of a variety that still plague Hillary Clinton) and a cruel mind that was willing to send someone to prison to pay off a campaign obligation. Nothing so illustrates the mean soul of Hillary Clinton than the travel office incident.

Bernstein, of course, is far from alone. We have yet to see a serious journalistic look this campaign of the scandals with which HRC was involved. In fact, in a review of the Bernstein book for Reuters, Ellen Wulfhorst reveals a stunning media perspective:

"The book also describes her deep fears that she would be indicted in the scandals involving her Whitewater land deal in Arkansas or the missing billing records from the law firm where she worked. Juicy tidbits aside, the book outlines a journey that took the former first lady from being a passionate advocate of deeply held causes to an insincere, soulless politician."

We have never had a First Lady before who came close to being indicted and the Democrats have never run for president a candidate who came close to being indicted. But to Wulfhorst and many other media types, this is just a "juicy tidbit."

CARL BERNSTEIN, TIMES, UK - The question of what exactly transpired in regard to the firings of seven employees of the White House Travel Office preoccupied the special prosecutor for more than seven years, despite its relative insignificance. The "Travel Office problem" came to acquire huge symbolic importance, not least because of what George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director, came to describe to some of his colleagues as Hillary's "Jesuitical lying".

The Travel Office difficulties for the Clintons could be traced to Bill's authorization of their friend Harry Thomason to be given a White House pass, an office in the East Wing and a vague charter to continue shaping the public images of the president and first lady.

Thomason and other Arkansans in the White House claimed that the Travel Office, which handled the multi-million-dollar business of arranging flights and hotels for members of the White House press corps, was haphazardly managed and more than likely a semi-legitimate operation in which fraud or embezzlement might be occurring.

Because the Travel Office served the press corps directly, Hillary - inspired by Thomason's assurance, according to her aides - became convinced that a spate of favorable stories would result from the disclosure that it was operated dishonestly, its employees fired, and new procedures and people put in place.

In urging these changes, Hillary had failed to take into account the close relationship between Travel Office employees and members of the press who traveled with the president. The Travel Office performed numerous favors for reporters, including making it easy for them to clear customs and ship gifts back home.

Without any opportunity for Travel Office employees to defend themselves, all seven were fired. There had been moments when some officials - including, perhaps, Foster - had wondered whether Hillary wasn't moving too fast. But they had felt her ire before and were disinclined to be reprimanded by her again.

Neither Hillary nor Bill was prepared for the firestorm of press fury that struck the White House. Many reporters concluded that the firings were a cover-up for the Clintons' cronyism, especially after the White House confirmed that the beneficiaries of the firings might include Thomason.

THOMAS DEFRANK, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 2001: Washington resident Bush makes his first trip abroad as America's leader next month, but Gary Wright couldn't care less - thanks, he says bitterly, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. For 32 years, circling the globe with Presidents was Wright's livelihood. Assigned to the White House Travel Office, he logged millions of miles on press charters, accompanying seven Presidents to every continent and scores of world capitals. These days, Wright, now 58, pulls 12-hour shifts as a $22,000-a-year correction officer at a North Carolina state prison. "It helps pay the mortgage," says Wright, one of the seven civil servants summarily sacked eight years ago in the first scandal of the Clinton era. To this day, he's convinced that now-Sen. Clinton masterminded the Travelgate firings to turn the lucrative White House travel business over to Arkansas cronies. [Billy] Dale, his deputy Wright and their entire staff were sacked in May 1993 after charged of financial mismanagement - charges that proved bogus. The firings triggered a firestorm of media and congressional scrutiny implicating Clinton and her pal Harry Thomason in the coup . . . In June, independent counsel Robert Ray declined to file charges, but cited "substantial evidence she had a 'role'" in the ousters and that her concerns "ultimately influenced" the decision.

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - Former White House travel director Billy Dale says that he was never contacted by Independent Counsel Robert Ray regarding his knowledge of the Travelgate scandal. Ray, similar to his actions in Filegate, has closed the investigation without interviewing key players. Also learned from Dale: former bar bouncer and Chief of White House Personnel Security, Craig Livingstone, personally escorted him out his office after he was fired. The incident occurred one week before Dale's planned retirement. . .

In 1993 Hillary Clinton and David Watkins moved to oust the White House travel office in favor of World Wide Travel, Clinton's source of $1 million in fly-now-pay-later campaign trips that essentially financed the last stages of the campaign without the bother of reporting a de facto contribution. The White House fired seven long-term employees for alleged mismanagement and kickbacks. The director, Billy Dale, charged with embezzlement, was acquitted in less than two hours by the jury. An FBI agent involved in the case, IC Smith, wrote later, "The White House Travel Office matter sent a clear message to the Congress . . . Lying, withholding evidence, and considering - even expecting - underlings to be expendable so the Clintons could avoid accountability for their actins would become the norm."

LARRY KLAYMAN, JUDICIAL WATCH IN WASHINGTON WEEKLY - One of the things Linda Tripp revealed under oath is that Ken Starr has not asked her one question about either Filegate or Travelgate, informally or before a grand jury. She mentioned it in passing once when she was talking about why she felt threatened. She said, "Here's what I saw, that is why I think I'm in jeopardy." But Ken Starr never followed up on it. He said, "We'll get back to it later." But later never came. Why are the Republicans focusing only on Lewinsky? Is it because at the time they made that decision they felt this was a scandal that would not touch them? . . . They made a tactical error. They have a tendency, because they are part of the establishment, to accept the establishment. And Ken Starr is part of the establishment. And if Ken Starr is not completely candid before their committee, because he has not done a thorough investigation, they are the kind of people who will accept that. They are part of the giant club here in Washington. The facts are clear. The FBI files controversy and the Travelgate controversy have not been thoroughly investigated. And Congress is shirking its responsibility by only looking at the Lewinsky affair.

HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE REPORT - Travelgate is a story about the failure of the Clinton White House to live up to the ethical standards expected of the highest office in the land. The wrongdoing of this administration lies not in the firings of the seven Travel Office employees. They served at the pleasure of the President. If the President chose to fire them to reward political cronies, that was his prerogative.

Rather, the wrongdoing occurred after the firings. It resulted from a desire to hide the truth about who actually fired them and why. The committee spent 3 1/2 years investigating not just who fired them and why, but the wrongdoing that followed. The resulting mosaic pieced together from the facts uncovered reveals the answers the White House refused to disclose. . .

The committee has found that the motive for the firings was political cronyism: the President sought to reward his friend, Harry Thomason, with the spoils of the White House travel business. A pretext for the firings was created, and the trigger was pulled.

When the public reacted to the firing with outrage, the roles of the President, First Lady and Thomason were minimized as the White House staff engaged in a colossal damage-control effort. First, it had to portray the victims of the firings as the wrongdoers. This was achieved by White House officials unleashing the full powers of the Federal Government against the seven former workers. The extraordinary might of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice- not to mention the prestige of the White House itself -all were brought to bear. These actions constitute a gross abuse of the rights of seven American citizens and their families. Second, an enormous and elaborate cover-up operation, housed in the White House Counsel's Office, sought to prevent numerous investigations from discovering not only the roles of who fired the workers and why, but also their efforts to persecute the victims. In the process. . . it obstructed and frustrated all investigations. . .

PAUL GREENBERG, JEWISH WORLD REVIEW - As for what she became, well, there is a simple test of honesty in any memoir by a Clinton: Look in the index for Dale, Billy. Remember that name? He was the victim-in-chief of the Travelgate caper.

Not only does Miss Hillary minimize her role in that affair, she minimizes the affair itself. It was no small thing in the life of Billy Dale, who had worked in the White House travel office since the Kennedy administration. Travelgate cost him his job, his life savings, his good name, two years of legal Hell and, until a jury acquitted him within two hours of hearing the hoked-up charges against him, his peace.

After all that, Hillary Clinton is still smearing the guy, and implying his guilt. After his acquittal. How's that for fair? And this she calls history.

Our author doesn't try to square her version of Travelgate with the soul-cleansing account of it from David Watkins. He was one of the White House aides who had to take the blame for it, and afterward he wrote his boss, Mack McLarty:

"Once this made it onto the First Lady's agenda, Vince Foster became involved, and he and Harry Thomason regularly informed me of her attention to the Travel Office situation -- as well as her insistence that the situation be resolved immediately by replacing the Travel Office staff. . At that meeting you (Mr. McLarty) explained that this was on the First Lady's 'radar screen.' . We both knew that there would be hell to pay if, after our failure in the Secret Service situation earlier, we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady's wishes."

All of this Hillary Clinton just blows off. She can't even bring herself to mention Billy Dale by name even as she assassinates his character once again. She does note that he tried to reach a plea bargain with the prosecution -- as if that proved his guilt.

That poodle won't hunt. As an experienced attorney herself, Hillary Clinton knows very well why an innocent man would be tempted to reach a plea bargain -- to avoid the harassment of prosecution, the ordeal of a trial and the immense legal costs involved in both.

In the end, Billy Dale went through it all and emerged vindicated. But Hillary Clinton is still out to get him. So when you hear her refer to the politics of personal destruction, you can believe she knows whereof she speaks. And so, alas, does Billy Dale.

RICHARD L. BERKE, NY TIME, MAY 22 1993 - After a third day of embarrassing disclosures about the ouster of its travel office, the White House tonight abruptly announced the withdrawal of the Arkansas travel agency with close ties to President Clinton that it had selected to take over the operation.

The White House also confirmed that a partner of Mr. Clinton's Hollywood friend Harry Thomason had inquired about doing business with the travel office. The White House press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, said today that she initially gave the partner some encouragement at the time but that he was later rebuffed by the travel office. . .

In another disclosure today, the White House said a 25-year-old cousin of Mr. Clinton, Catherine Cornelius, proposed three months ago that the travel office be restructured and that she run the service. In her memo, released by the White House, Ms. Cornelius also called for the White House to select World Wide Travel of Little Rock, Ark., for the accounts.

George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director, released a statement tonight saying that World Wide had voluntarily withdrawn from providing service to the White House. He said the operation would be temporarily taken over by the American Express Travel Office, a vendor that has been approved by the General Services Administration.

"World Wide's decision to withdraw should end any possible perception that their selection to provide interim White House services was based on a prior personal or business relationship with members of the campaign staff who now work at the White House," Mr. Stephanopoulos said.

The decision to sever ties with World Wide, which handled Mr. Clinton's travel arrangements last year and had contributed to his campaigns, capped a harried day at the White House as officials struggled to counter growing criticism of the dismissals on Wednesday. White House officials spent much of the day closeted from the press.

Late today, they took the unusual step of releasing a statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation asserting that a criminal investigation of the seven-member travel office was warranted.

Employees from World Wide, which was to have handled travel until bidding for a new agency was completed, had already begun setting up shop in the White House. . .

The White House took the unusual step of making public the F.B.I.'s statement, which said that a review by an outside accounting firm brought in by the White House had shown that there was "sufficient information for the F.B.I. to determine that additional criminal investigation is warranted."

When the dismissals were announced, Clinton officials said they had asked the F.B.I. to review the findings of Peat Marwick, the outside auditor. The White House said the review had found many lax accounting practices in the travel office, no competitive bids for charter flights and a failure to account for $18,200 in checks written to petty cash in the last 16 months. Mr. Dale and other members of the travel office have denied any wrongdoing and said they had not been told of such charges, let alone been given a chance to respond. . .

Some F.B.I. officials privately complained that the White House had pulled the agency into a high visibility inquiry before officials could make a quiet preliminary assessment. . .

The eight-page memo released today about the White House travel office was dated Feb. 15 and written by Ms. Cornelius and Clarissa Cerda, who works in the White House counsel's office. Their proposal include a flow chart in which they would be co-directors of travel, reporting to David Watkins, who is in charge of administration and management at the White House.

Their memo was written to Mr. Watkins, who was the person who dismissed the seven-member travel office on the authority of Mr. Clinton. Mr. Watkins's involvement has raised questions because of his ties to Betta Carney, the owner of World Wide Travel. He was a longtime client of World Wide and in the mid-1970's worked at the same Arkansas bank holding company as Ms. Carney.

MAY 2007

HILLARY CLINTON'S MEMORY

HRC - When I was growing up, the neighborhoods I lived in [Park Ridge] were surrounded by farm fields, and every harvest season we had a lot of the migrants who come up from Mexico, through Texas, following the harvest, all the way up through Illinois and Michigan.

HRC 1996 - Those of you who did not grow up around Chicago in the 1950s and can only imagine flying into O'Hare where everything looks developed, might find it hard to believe how many farm workers we would have. . .

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHICAGO - Many of the farms on Chicago's Far Northwest and Southwest Sides disappeared in the face of the speculative building boom of the 1920s. Industrial and residential developers began to work on suburban farmland convenient to bus, truck, and automobile traffic.

PARK RIDGE HISTORY - The agrarian society was changed by the Industrial Revolution, and by the time of our incorporation in 1873, Park Ridge had been transformed from an agricultural community to an affluent business town.

THE CLINTON FRIENDS OF THE WEEK

MIKE McINTIRE, NY TIMES - When former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton took a family vacation in January 2002 to Acapulco, Mexico, one of their longtime supporters, Vinod Gupta, provided his company's private jet to fly them there. The company, Info USA, one of the nation's largest brokers of information on consumers, paid $146,866 to ferry the Clintons, Mr. Gupta and others to Acapulco and back, court records show. During the next four years, Info USA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign events.

Those expenses are cited in a lawsuit filed late last year in a Delaware court by angry shareholders of Info USA, who assert that Mr. Gupta wasted the company's money trying "to ingratiate himself" with his high-profile guests"t

In addition to the shareholder accusations, The New York Times reported last Sunday that an investigation by the authorities in Iowa found that Info USA sold consumer data several years ago to telemarketing criminals who used it to steal money from elderly Americans. It advertised call lists with titles like "Elderly Opportunity Seekers" or "Suffering Seniors," a compilation of people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. The company called the episodes an aberration and pledged that it would not happen again. . .

Mr. Gupta is clearly proud of his friendship with the Clintons. He once had a personal Web site - it was taken down last year - where he posted photographs of himself socializing with them. One showed him with Mr. Clinton on a golf course, arms draped around each other and smiling; another showed Mrs. Clinton posing with the Gupta family in Aspen. . .

Mrs. Clinton's use of Info USA planes appears to be mostly campaign related. In one instance cited in the lawsuit, Mrs. Clinton "traveled at the company's expense aboard a private jet from White Plains, N.Y., to Detroit, Mich., and then to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and home to White Plains, N.Y., after calling the company the previous day in desperate need of a plane."

DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN, NY POST - May 24, 2007 -- Every year since he left the White House, former President Bill Clinton has been paid by Info USA - an Omaha, Neb., company now identified as a key provider of databases that enable criminals to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.

Senate rules don't require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much - or for what - the company has paid her husband over the past five years. But former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don't come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, Info USA paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech in Omaha. Since then, it has paid him an undisclosed amount each year - listed only as "more than $1,000" for "non-employee compensation" on Sen. Clinton's financial-disclosure forms. . .

As best we can determine, this is one of only two companies with whom the ex-president has an ongoing, formal relationship.

As The New York Times reported on Sunday, Info USA compiled and sold lists of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The company advertised lists such as: "Elderly Opportunity Seekers" - 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money "Suffering Seniors" - 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease; "Oldies but Goodies" - 500,000 gamblers over age 55. It described one list: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

Internal e-mails show that Info USA employees were aware that they were selling this data to firms under investigation for fraud - but kept on selling the information, even as the scammers used the lists to bilk millions from the elderly. . .

CLINTON PAL WHO WAS ON MOST WANTED LIST GETS HONORARY DEGREE FROM ISRAELI UNIVERSITY

BEN WINOGRAD, ASSOCIATED PRESS - An Israeli university awarded an honorary doctorate to billionaire Marc Rich, who was pardoned of tax evasion charges by President Clinton in 2001 and founded of an oil trading firm under investigation for dealings with Saddam Hussein. Bar-Ilan University, located outside Tel Aviv, conferred the degree in recognition of the financier's contributions to Israel and the university's research programs, it said in a statement.

Officials declined to say how much Rich has given the university, but said his donations have supported research for treatments of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The university also cited Rich's financial aid in helping Israel resettle immigrants from Yemen, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. . .

In 1983, Rich left the U.S. for Switzerland after he was charged with tax evasion and illegal oil trading with Iran. Clinton pardoned Rich of all criminal charges on his last day in office in 2001, drawing accusations he granted clemency as a favor to Rich's ex-wife, Denise, a prominent Democratic party donor.

WIKIPEDIA - In 1983, Rich and partner Pincus Green were indicted by U.S. Attorney and future mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani, on charges of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran. Both of them fled to Switzerland before a court appearance, and they remained on the FBI's Most Wanted List for many years.

On January 20, 2001, hours before leaving office, President Bill Clinton granted Rich a presidential pardon. Since Rich's former wife and mother of his three children, socialite Denise Rich, had made large donations to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Library during Clinton's time in office, Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought. . . During hearings after Rich's pardon, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who had represented Rich from 1985 until the spring of 2000, denied that Rich had violated the tax laws, but criticized him for trading with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich

IT'S TIME FOR A MULTILINGUAL PRESIDENT

JOHN KASS, CHICAGO TRIBUNE - "I think America is ready for a multilingual president," said Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Bill) last week, responding to pesky critics who don't like the fact she uses various Southern accents, including Daisy Duke. . .

I happen to think she's correct. America is ready for a president of multiple accents. President Bush talks cowboy when he wants. So why can't Hillary channel multiple Southern women if she so desires?

And if she wants to slip in and out of Southern and Northern accents like a Long Island mom playing Blanche DuBois at the community theater while her thumb is on the nuclear trigger, well, that's her business.

America might finally be ready for a white Yale Law School graduate from Park Ridge who is fluent in Southern Woman and various dialects, including Granny Clampett and Black Female Preacher. She commands many different voices -- and uses them without blushing -- as you may see for yourself on You Tube.

Years ago, she spoke excellent Tammy Wynette, in defending her Bill from the clutches of Yankee females who tried to take advantage of her man.

Recently, she's been using Black Female Preacher to appeal to black voters, first in Selma, and the other day in Manhattan, speaking to supporters of Rev. Al Sharpton. . . At that rally, she criticized fired New York radio host Don Imus for using racist language about black women. Then she compared herself to a White House cleaning lady. . .

Imagine if Imus used a Southern accent in front of Rev. Al. The Rev would be so angry, he'd help Imus get his job back just to get him fired again.

And if Republicans -- black or white or Latino -- ever dared compare themselves to a cleaning lady, while using a Southern fried accent before a black audience, well, as Hillary might soon say, that fool would be hopping like a drunk duck on a hot griddle.

What if Republican John McCain tried talking like Forrest Gump while stumping for votes in Alabama? How would the Washington media establishment react? Would pundits fear him and edge away, the way you'd edge away from the man on the bus who tells you that the aliens just took his liver?. . .

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WHY SOME WOMEN DON'T LIKE HILLARY CLINTON

SUSAN J. DOUGLAS, IN THESE TIMES - We sat around the dinner table, a group of 50-something progressive feminists, talking to a friend from England about presidential politics. We were all for Hillary, weren't we, he asked. Hillary? We hated Hillary. He was taken aback. Weren't we her base? Wasn't she one of us? Why did we hate Hillary?. . .

For people like my friends and me, her hawkish position on Iraq and her insistence that the U.S. maintain a military presence there even after the troops are withdrawn have been very disappointing. But it's more than any specific position. Women don't trust Hillary. They see her as an opportunist; many feel betrayed by her. Why?

Baby boomer women grew up with the feminine mystique and then came of age with the women's liberation movement. As a result, millions of us have spent our lives crafting a compromise-or a fusion-between femininity on the one hand and feminism on the other. And for many of us feminism did not mean trying to be more like men. It meant challenging patriarchy: trying to bring equity to family life, humanizing the workplace, prioritizing women's issues in politics, and confronting the dangers of militarism and imperialism. And millions of us fought (and continue to fight) these battles wearing lipstick, skirts and a smile: the masquerade of femininity we are compelled to don.

Hillary, by contrast, seems to want to be more like a man in her demeanor and politics, makes few concessions to the social demands of femininity, and yet seems to be only a partial feminist. She seems above us, exempting herself from compromises women have to make every day, while, at the same time, leaving some of the basic tenets of feminism in the dust. We are sold out on both counts. In other words, she seems like patriarchy in sheep's clothing. . .

Clearly, Hillary and her advisors have calculated that for a woman to be elected in this country, she's got to come across as just as tough as the guys. And maybe they're right. But so far, Hillary is not getting men with this strategy, and women feel written off. After the dark ages of this pugnacious administration, many of us want to let the light in. We want a break with the past, optimism, and a recommitment to the government caring about and serving the needs of everyday people. We want what feminism began to fight for 40 years ago-humanizing deeply patriarchal institutions. And, ironically, we see candidates like John Edwards or Barack Obama -men- offering just that. If Hillary Clinton wants to be the first female president, then maybe, just maybe, she should actually run as a woman.

PANTS ON FIRE: CLINTON & OBAMA MISLEAD VOTERS DURING DEBATE

HILLARY CLINTON definitely and Barack Obama most likely were the two candidates during the South Carolina who deliberately misled viewers on a major issue.

First Obama. He stated the following in answer to a question about his statement in Iowa that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestine people":

"Well, keep in mind what the remark actually, if you had the whole thing, said. And what I said is nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region."

Which sounds good until you read an actual account of the incident by Thomas Beaumont of the Des Moines Register. Either Obama is lying or Beaumont did a lousy job of reporting. Based on the past record of Obama and the Des Moines Register, we're going to trust the paper until a contrary video shows up. Obama appears to have brazenly rewritten the story in a major way.

THOMAS BEAUMONT, REGISTER - Obama told the Muscatine-area party activists that he supports relaxing restrictions on aid to the Palestinian people. He said they have suffered the most as a result of stalled peace efforts with Israel. "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," Obama said while on the final leg of his weekend trip to eastern Iowa. "If we could get some movement among Palestinian leadership, what I'd like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people," he added.

But Obama is a minor league fabulist compared to Clinton who had this to say about healthcare:

"Well, let me start by saying that all of the ideas that you're going to hear about in this campaign are very important to get out to the public so that people can actually think about them, examine how they would affect their lives because I do have the experience of having put forth a plan, with many of the features that John and Barack just mentioned. And people were enthusiastic about it initially, but then after the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies got finished working on it, everybody got nervous and so politically we were not successful."

First of all, there was only one candidate standing on the podium who supported true universal healthcare and that was Dennis Kucinich. The others have cynically redefined "universal" as meaning simply mandatory. You don't find politicians bragging of their support of universal car insurance because nobody would be fooled. Telling people they have to buy something is not in any way the same as the government providing it to them out of taxes. It is plain deception.

Second, Clinton's description of her disastrous health care plan is typical of her chronic disregard for the truth. In fact the insurance companies were initially very much in on the deal and met in secret with the Clintonistas. It was supporters of true universal healthcare who were excluded. Clinton made such a mess of the plan, however, that even some of her initial supporters became leery as did a lot of sensible people on the left. Clinton is clearly counting on the media not checking on anything that happened more than six months ago and so feels free to lie.

One of the best descriptions of what Clinton's plan was really about appeared in Reason magazine:

"The centerpiece of the plan is the system of 'regional health alliances.' An alliance may be a state agency or a nonprofit corporation overseen by your state. The government-appointed alliance board determines which companies can offer health plans in your area. Employers and self-employed people pay premiums to the local alliance, and 'it is the obligation of every eligible individual to enroll in a health plan.'"

"The regional alliance resembles the local cable franchise--a government-created monopoly through which consumer services flow. . . Consumers have "choice" among health plans offered through the alliance, just as they can choose whether to buy Showtime or HBO from the local cable monopoly."

The irony of the Clinton disaster is that some of its worst aspects wiggled their way into the system anyway including the notorious system of managed care. It is stunning to hear her brag about it and blame the defeat on the very with whom she initially insurance companies.

Here's how I described it at the time in a book on Clinton's first year:

SAM SMITH, 'SHADOWS OF HOPE,' 1994 - During the first months of the Clinton administration, one of the biggest national policy changes of the past fifty years was being forged by a secret committee led by Mrs. Clinton under procedures that periodically defied the courts and the Government Accounting Office and whose public manifestations consisted of highly contrived media opportunities, carefully staged "town meetings," and similar artifices.

Despite the contrary evidence of public opinion polls, the concept of Canadian-style single-payer insurance was dismissed early. Tom Hamburger and Ted Marmor in the Washington Monthly tell of a single-payer proponent being invited to the White House in February 1993. It was, he said, a "pseudo-consultation;" the doctor was quickly informed that "single payer is not politically feasible." When Dr. David Himmelstein of the Harvard Medical School pressed Mrs. Clinton on single payer, she replied, "Tell me something interesting, David."

In other words, write Hamburger and Marmor: "Fewer than six weeks into the Clinton presidency, the White House had made its key policy decision: Before the Health Care Task Force wrote a single page of its 22-volume report to the President, the single payer idea was written off, and "managed competition" was in."

If there was any popular, grassroots demand for "managed competition" it never appeared. Managed competition had not been tested anywhere. Nonetheless, reported Thomas Bodenehimer in Nation:

"Around Hillary Rodham Clinton's health reform table sit the managed-competition winners: big business, hospitals, large (but not small) commercial insurers, the Blues, budget-worried government leaders and the 'Jackson Hole Group,' the chief intellectual honchos of the managed competition movement. . . Adherence to the mantra of managed competition appears to be the price of a ticket of admission to this gathering. "

What was finally proposed involved a massive transfer of the American health industry - by some accounts now larger than the military-industrial complex - to a small number of the largest insurance companies and other major corporations. These were companies that had the assets to play the game being offered - a medical oligopoly that would dispense health-care under the rules of the Fortune 500 rather than according to those of Hipprocrates.

APRIL 2007

VIDEOTAPE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT CLINTON'S CLAIMS

FRED LUCUS, CNS NEWS - A Hollywood mogul and former associate of former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton has obtained what he calls a "smoking gun tape" which he said proves that the New York senator and leading Democratic presidential candidate violated campaign finance laws. Clinton friend-turned-nemesis Peter Paul plans to use the video both as evidence in a lawsuit against the former first couple and in a forthcoming documentary concerning his dealings with the Clintons during the former first lady's first Senate campaign in 2000.

The U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York gave copies of 90 tapes to Paul on April 11. The office had taken possession of the tapes six years ago during an investigation of a securities case against Paul in 2001. One of those tapes appears to show comic book icon Stan Lee, Paul's business partner, talking to Hillary Clinton in a teleconference in 2000. Paul said the conversation was about a big fundraising gala Paul sponsored for the Clintons.

Paul put up $1.9 million for the function. At the time, the maximum individual contribution to a political candidate was $2,000. A portion of the videotape seen by Cybercast News Service captures the closing words of a lengthy conversation in which Paul was present. The voice of Hillary Clinton is heard telling Lee that Paul and her chief campaign aide "talk all the time, so she'll be the person to convey whatever I need."

She is then heard adding, "I wanted to call and personally thank all of you ... [and] tell you how much this means to me. It's going to mean a lot to the president too."

Paul was the majority partner with Lee in a multi-million dollar Internet venture in 2000 before the company collapsed. Paul contends in a lawsuit that President Clinton had agreed to work as a rainmaker for the company after he left the White House in exchange for the massive star-studded fundraising event in Hollywood which Paul produced.

The newly released tape could be significant, because the Federal Elections Commission already ruled that Sen. Clinton's 2000 campaign committee underreported cash it received at the fundraising event Paul sponsored. The FEC slapped the campaign committee with a $35,000 fine.

KENTUCKY FRIED HILLARY, PART TWO

THE CLINTON'S FRIEND, NG LAPSENG

HRC TRIES A LITTLE PRO-UNION TALK

DAVID SIROTA, RADAR - As Hillary Clinton bashed corporate America for union-busting this week at a Washington convention of labor-schmoozing Democratic politicians, her chief campaign strategist and pollster, Mark Penn, must've been grinning at the rich irony. He's the Worldwide President and CEO for Burson-Marsteller, an international PR conglomerate known for, well, busting unions, The American Prospect's Mark Schmitt notes.

Beware the Evil Labor Bosses, Burson-Marsteller's website warns. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns."

There's more where Penn came from, and they're not just limited to the Hillary campaign. Russ Baker exposes the little-talked about dark side of the Democratic Party with a long list of paid Democratic campaign consultants who simultaneously shill for union-busters, tobacco-peddlers, and other assorted underworld characters.

Then there's the law firm Jackson Lewis, full of some of the nation's best known union-busting mercenaries. Way back in 1972, the firm's partner William Krupman published an entire union avoidance handbook, a tome experts call "the best-known guide to defeating organizing campaigns." And wouldn't you know it - the same William Krupman is an official Friend of Hillary Clinton, forking over a fat $1,000 check for her campaign. At least Hillary waited 14 years after leaving her seat on the board of Wal-Mart-one of labor's biggest foes-before cracking on corporate America.

http://radaronline.com

A GUIDE TO POLITICAL CONSULTANTS
http://realnews.org/rn/content/25demconsultants.html

IMUS BASHERS CLINTON & OBAMA USED FOUL-MOUTHED RAPPERS TO RAISE FUNDS

OPINION JOUNAL, WSJ - - Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is running for president, called on MSNBC and CBS Radio to disassociate themselves from Mr. Imus, and said that he would never go on the show again. He said he had appeared once, more than two years ago. "He didn't just cross the line," Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America.". . .

In what segment of American culture would one be most likely to encounter such stereotypes? We'd venture to say the answer is rap music, also known as hip hop. There's one rap band that actually calls itself Nappy Roots. And of course references to women as "hos" are commonplace in rap lyrics, such as this one by Christopher Bridges, who uses the stage name "Ludacris":

Ho (Ho)
You'z a Ho, (Ho)
You'z a Ho, I said that you'z a Ho (Ho)
You'z a Ho, (Ho)

You'z a Ho, (Ho)
You'z a Ho, I said that you'z a Ho (Ho)

You doing Ho activities
With Ho tendencies
Hos are your friends,
Hos are your enemies

At this point it gets too vulgar for this columnist to feel comfortable quoting. . .

Blogger Joshua Claybourn notes a Sept. 15, 2006, Associated Press dispatch from Louisville, Ky.:

|||| Obama made a pitch for Democrats running for local government and for Congress at a rally that drew a few thousand party faithful to a minor league baseball stadium in downtown Louisville. . . . Before Obama's speech, the crowd was warmed up by a performance by Nappy Roots, a popular hip-hop group. ||||

All right, maybe this is nothing. It's not as if Obama himself invited Nappy Roots to play at the rally, and anyway "hos" is a lot more obnoxious than "nappy." But here's another Associated Press dispatch, from Nov. 30, 2006:

|||| The stars were aligned in Chicago Wednesday, and they were there to talk about lighting the way for the nation's youth. U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, contemplating a run for president, met privately with rapper Ludacris to talk about young people. "We talked about empowering the youth," said the artist, whose real name is Chris Bridges. . . . The gathering at Obama's downtown Chicago office was a meeting of two star powers: Obama, who enjoys rock star-like status on the political scene, and Ludacris, who has garnered acclaim for his music and acting. . . . Bridges said meeting Obama, known for his warm personal style, was like meeting with a relative ||||

http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009939

HENRY ADASO, ABOUT RAP & HIP-HOP, MARCH 2 - Ubiquitous sound architect Timbaland is set to host a lavish fundraiser for Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton in Miami, FL this month. Timbaland (born Timothy Mosley) will host the fundraiser on Mar. 31, which is the last day of the first-quarter fund-raising period for Presidential candidates, according to the Miami Herald. The fundraiser is reportedly billed at $1,000 per attendee. Former President Bill Clinton is also slated to appear at the event. Now that Clinton has aligned herself with a hip-hop bigwig, I wonder which rap star is going to host Obama's fundraiser. May I suggest Kanye West.

http://rap.about.com/b/a/258077.htm

MIAMI HERALD, MAR 31 - Hillary Clinton's fundraiser tonight in Miami-Dade -- billed as the biggest ever by a Democratic candidate in Florida -- at the adjacent homes of uber-donor Chris Korge and mega-rapper Timbaland. The money race has gotten so crazy this year that an individual candidate during these first three months may raise as much money - $30 million - as the entire field of presidential candidates did during the same time period in 2003.

The 2008 campaign is also expected to be the first since Watergate in which none of the presidential candidates accept public campaign financing because it would force them to curtail their spending.

The contenders pretend to be above the crass scramble for cash. ''96 hours to show substance works,'' said the e-mail from Edwards' campaign manager, accompanied by a last-minute financial appeal. Obama is posting the number of his donors to show that he is getting small checks from real people, including a ``special education teacher in Florida, a bartender in Colorado and a minister in New York.''

That's all well and good, but the modern-day campaign simply cannot stay afloat without the trial lawyer in Massachusetts, the oil executive in Texas and the investment banker in California.

http://www.miamiherald.com/418/story/58910.html

SAMPLE TIMBALAND LYRICS

[Timbaland]
Yeah
Oh Oh

[Redman]
Yeah

[Timbaland]
Yeah, get nigga

[Verse 1]
Redman got fire nigga
Shots are in your hood when I'm high nigga
Shots of Cuervo are fuckin up my liver
Shots from the cameras on my niggas
Girlfriend drunk, so I'll jump around wit her
I step inside, you're quiet like a mime nigga
My watch do more things than James Bond nigga
I'm gonna do it now, I ain't gonna try nigga
(Put it down, put it down, put it down girl)
You better grind, cause you ain't spending mine girl
When Timbaland plan and I'll do the ground work
Whether you in Tims, Air Force, or Converse
Let me see the high niggas on the left side
And whole muthafuckas smokin on the right side
You sayin "fuck Gillahouse" nigga likewise
This is how I walk up on your ho ? hey
Put it down. . .

And so forth

http://www.lyricsandsongs.com/song/821723.html

MARCH 2007

LIKE OBAMA, HRC LIKED PALESTINIANS FOR AWHILE

MUZZLE WATCH - Although down the memory hole, Prez candidate H. Clinton has her own little about-face regarding Israel. In 1998 she came out in a speech to Arab and Israeli school children calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state, heretofore, unmentionable by any self-respecting US pol. A mighty backlash was heard in the land, ……..lots of speculation on just how long she had been a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite.

Bill Clinton's Administration attempted to put the kybosh on this or ignored it completely. Who knows if B. Clinton's administration was consciously involved in the effort as a trial balloon prior to the Camp David talks or Hillary was just stating the obvious as was her wont in her pre-robo politician days. In 1999 she kissed Arafat's wife at a reception in which Mrs. Arafat accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian women and children. . .

Although there are still those on the extremist pro-Israel right who doubt her sincerity on supporting Israel, she has clearly calculated that there is no down side for an American politician to be as lock step supportive of everything and anything (perhaps save suing for a just peace) Israel and American Jewish groups like AIPAC demand. . .

http://www.muzzlewatch.org/

MORE FUNNY MONEY FOUND GOING INTO CLINTON CAMPAIGN

LA TIMES - A Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being sought by the FBI on allegations that he funneled illegal contributions to Clinton's political action committee and to Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2004 re-election campaign. Authorities say Northridge, Calif., businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah, 56, fled the country shortly after being indicted on charges of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic committees. A business associate charged as Jinnah's co-conspirator has entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles next week. A federal law enforcement source said prosecutors had not dealt with the political committees in conducting their investigation and had no evidence that the committees knew the contributions were illegal.

Jinnah's profile peaked in 2004 and 2005 as he wooed members of Congress to join a caucus advancing Pakistani concerns and brought Clinton to speak to prominent Pakistani-Americans, lauding their homeland's contributions to the war on terrorism and calling relations with Pakistan beneficial to U.S. interests.

Jinnah and his family donated more than $135,000 to the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates. Now friends say they believe Jinnah has returned to Pakistan. Attempts to reach him and his relatives were unsuccessful. A "For Sale" sign stood in his yard Thursday, and a neighbor said the family had not been living there for months.

Jinnah appears to have attempted to circumvent election laws by reimbursing friends, business contacts and their family members for contributions made in their names, according to court records. . .

Jinnah's case has been handled with discretion by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, which recently lost a case against former Clinton campaign official David Rosen. He was acquitted of charges of filing false reports about a Hollywood fundraiser given for Clinton in 2000. . .

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said her campaign was not aware of contact between her staff and federal investigators looking into the donations. He said HILL PAC would give back the contributions cited in the indictment, as well as others from Jinnah and his family.

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, In August 2000 Hillary Clinton held a huge Hollywood fundraiser for her Senate campaign. It was very successful. The only problem was that, by a long shot, she didn't report all the money contributed: $800K by the US government's ultimate count in a settlement and $2 million according to the key contributor and convicted con Peter Paul. This is, in election law, the moral equivalent of not reporting a similar amount on your income tax. It is a form of fraud. Hillary Clinton's defense is that she didn't know about it. That has so far worked in court but whether it will meet similar approbation in 2008 among the media, opponents and the general public remains to be seen. To some it is what some lawyers call the ostrich defense: I had my head in the sand while everything was going on or, yes, I signed the letter but I never actually read it.

It's not working too well in the Enron case. Reports Carrie Johnson of the Washington Post, "Former Enron Corp. executives Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay say they held their heads high when they led the energy company. But jurors will be allowed to consider whether they intentionally buried their heads in the sand to avoid blame for fraud.

U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III this week granted the government's bid for a controversial jury instruction known as 'deliberate indifference' or 'willful blindness.' The language allows jurors to consider whether Skilling and Lay averted their eyes from fraud within Enron's ranks to deny responsibility for it later. . .Defense lawyers argue that the jury charge, also known as an ostrich instruction, will prejudice their clients and improperly lower the government's burden of proof to a 'should have known' standard common in civil cases where financial damages -- not prison time -- is at stake."

Whether Hillary Clinton engaged in 'deliberate indifference' or 'willful blindness' remains to be determined by the voters but you can almost guarantee it will become a matter of interest to them.

The initial reaction was reported by Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post on August 15 2000: "Is Hillary Clinton soft on crime? We certainly hope not, even though convicted felon Peter Paul--who served three years in prison two decades ago after pleading guilty to cocaine possession and trying to swindle $8.7 million out of the Cuban government-- helped organize Saturday's star-glutted $1 million fundraising gala for Clinton's Senate race at businessman Ken Roberts's Brentwood estate. . . [Paul] added that he only produced the gala and hasn't given or raised money for the first lady's New York campaign. "And we will not be accepting any contributions from him," Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson vowed. . .

A Clinton fundraiser, David Rosen, was acquitted of three counts of election fraud but last December his superior, Andrew Grossman, admitted responsibility for three false FEC reports for which the campaign paid a fine of only $35,000.

NY POST, 2000 - Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign returned $22,000 in "soft money" to a businesswoman linked to a Democratic campaign contribution from a drug smuggler in Havana. The donation by Vivian Mannerud Verble, first reported by The Post, was the largest single contribution received by Clinton's soft-money committee. Verble, whose company runs charter flights between Cuba and Miami, also served as the fund-raising intermediary between Jorge Cabrera and the Democratic National Committee in 1995, according to congressional investigators. The probers reportedly learned that Cabrera cut a $20,000 check to the DNC from a bank account in which he also kept profits from his lucrative cocaine trade. The DNC eventually returned the money, while Cabrera pleaded guilty to importing 6,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States. He is serving a 19-year federal prison sentence in Florida . . . Although Verble was never charged with any criminal wrongdoing, she was at the center of one of the most embarrassing fund-raising scandals in the Clinton administration..

CNN, MARCH 1998 - Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung has agreed to plead guilty to election law violations and cooperate in the ongoing Justice Department investigation into illegal campaign fund-raising in the 1996 elections. . . Chung became a major figure in the Democratic fund-raising scandal when it was learned he made almost 50 visits to the White House. During one visit, Chung gave first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's then-chief of staff, Maggie Williams, a $50,000 check for the Democratic National Committee. The check was delivered inside the White House. Two days later Chung was able to bring a group of Chinese businessmen to watch President Bill Clinton deliver a radio address in the Oval Office. They then had their picture taken with the president. The DNC returned more than $300,000 that Chung raised because of questions about the source of the money.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/03/05/chung.pleads/

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 FEBRUARY 2007

HILLARY CLINTON FABLRS

This fable concocted by Susannah Meadows of Newsweek is just a taste of what we have to look forward to as sycophantic scribes start sucking up to Clinton.

BUT IT'S NOT NEW. Here are some of our favorite media spins from the first Clinton campaign:

There is no evidence here, as there was in the Nixon era, of a premeditated attempt to subject the democratic process and the operation of government agencies for narrow partisan gain. No one suggests that Mr. Clinton has committed anything approaching an impeachable offense here. - R. W. Apple of the New York Times on the White House use of FBI files of political enemies believed to have been instigated by HRC

If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners . . . Thank you very much and tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for her. -- Dan Rather, talking with the Clintons via satellite at a CBS affiliates meeting

Roger Clinton's life is in some ways the story of any younger sibling clobbered by the spectacular success of the one who came before . . . If your brother is Christ, you have a choice: become a disciple, or become an anti-Christ, or find yourself caught somewhere between the two -- Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post

In the midst of redesigning America's health care system and replacing Madonna as our leading cult figure, the new First Lady has already begun working on her next project, far more metaphysical and uplifting.... She is both impersonal and poignant -- with much more depth, intellect and spirituality than we are used to in a politician . . . She has goals, but they appear to be so huge and far off -- grand and noble things twinkling in the distance -- that it's hard to see what she sees. -- Martha Sherrill, Washington Post

JANUARY 2007

THE REAL DIVIDE ON HILLARY CLINTON

Sam Smith

The major media likes to talk about Hillary Clinton being divisive. In fact she isn't anywhere near as divisive, say, as George Bush doggedly pursing a war even some of his advisors and many of his former allies would like to get out of. Besides, since you never know where what she's going to say on any given issue on any given day it, it's hard to have a fierce argument about her positions. Even in her kickoff for the Democratic nomination the best she could come up with was:

"Let's talk about how to bring the right end to the war in Iraq and to restore respect for America around the world. How to make us energy independent and free of foreign oil. How to end the deficits that threaten Social Security and Medicare. And let's definitely talk about how every American can have quality affordable health care."

Well, we actually have been talking about these things for some time; it's just hard to get Clinton into the conversation. This is a classic piece of Clinton rhetoric. To the casual listener she is supporting an end to the war, energy independence and universal healthcare. Far from it. She just wants us to talk about it. A neat semiotic slide, sort of like Barack Obama wanting us to come together. . . so he doesn't have to choose between us.

And it's not new. In the early 90s Clinton offered these views on the death penalty: "We go back and forth on the issues of due process and the disproportionate minorities facing the death penalty, and we have serious concerns in those areas. We also abhor the craze for the death penalty. But we believe it does have a role."

There is, however, a real divide on Hillary Clinton. It is between reality and myth and it is a divide that has existed ever since her husband ran for the presidency. But, as with her husband, the media has done a superb job of protecting its audience from reality.

This mythology will flourish until after the Democratic convention. If HRC wins the nomination, the game will dramatically change. The Republicans would be delighted to have Clinton as the candidate and don't want to spoil their chances by beating up on her now.

It is hard to get Democrats to focus on this problem, but consider this: The Justice Department's and other investigatory files on the Clinton years are currently fully under the control the Bush administration and will be until Inauguration Day.

Bluntly put, the Democrats are walking into a huge trap.

Sadly, it is not that hard to see. In the months before her husband's nomination I reported on more than a score of institutions and individuals whose relationship with Bill Clinton raised serious questions. The major media nearly totally ignored this publicly available information. Yet, in the end, almost all these individuals and institutions became a major part of what became known as the Clinton scandals.

A similar fate awaits Hillary Clinton. Here are a few of the topics that can fairly be expected to be involved in what will become known as the Hillary Clinton scandals:

- The disappearance of the Rose law firm billing records, their later discovery in the White House and Hillary Clinton's inability to explain how they got there.

- Her huge and inexplicable winnings in a cattle futures operation

- Her role in the Whitewater development which was - although the media refuses to admit it - simply a land resort scam and one that was particularly aimed at seniors.

- Her role in the despicable White House travel office firings apparently aimed at favoring the travel firm that bankrolled Bill Clinton's campaign by delayed billing.

- Her role in the use of FBI files on political opponents and the open question of what information from these files she still possesses.

- A case, still in court, involving the alleged failure to report over a million dollars in campaign contributions. Clinton's Senate campaign has already been fined by the FEC for failing to accurately report $700,000 in contributions.

- Her relationship with such indisputably dubious persons such as Johnny Chung, John Huang, Ng Lap Seng, Mochtar Riady, the McDougalds, Craig Livingstone, Webster Hubbell and Jorge Cabrera.

- This report from CNN in 1999: "Deputy independent counsel Hickman Ewing testified at the Susan McDougal trial Thursday that he had written a 'rough draft indictment' of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after he doubted her truthfulness in a deposition. Ewing, who questioned Mrs. Clinton in a deposition at the White House on April 22, 1995, said, 'I had questions about whether what she was saying were accurate. We had no records. She was in conflict with a number of interviews.'" . . . Ewing also testified that in a later deposition with both the president and first lady on July 22, 1995, he had questions about the truthfulness of both Clintons. McDougal's attorney Mark Geragos asked Ewing: 'Did you say the Clintons were liars?' 'I don't know if I used the 'L-word' but I expressed internally that I was concerned,' Ewing said."

There was a time when any sane campaign consultant and party leadership outside of Chicago would have told such a candidate to forget about running. But the assumption today is that all sins can be spun away.

It may seem that way, but it isn't true. The Democratic Party suffered in an unprecedented way at the national and state level because of Bill Clinton's misdoings. These scandals helped defeat two Democratic candidates for president and only in the last election were there signs of recovery.

The best favor the Democrats could do for themselves is to flush the Clinton name and its sorry memories down the toilet.

HILLARY SILLARIES

JACK HITT, MOTHER JONES - Hillary has come to embody a dark fear in the hearts of modern men: the wife who neglects the joys of the bedroom for her career. The middle years of marriage are hard enough (or so I have read), trying to keep the flame flickering amid the anxieties of bills, the call of career, the squall of little children. That's the age-old stuff. Add to that a novel stress on the guy: a new destructive Oedipal force right at his side, his wife. She wants a career equal to, if not better than, her husband's.

THERE ARE A number of problems with this absurd analysis:

- The term 'hater' was early developed as a spin phrase for critics of the Clintons. It is seldom used for others, such as liberal critics of George Bush. It is a clever term, albeit highly inaccurate, as it puts the critics of the Clintons in the same category as an anti-Semite, racist or member of the Montana Militia.

- Hillary Clinton was not the first professional woman to be married to a president. Lady Bird Johnson was a far more competent business woman than HRC, and a far more intelligent and decent politician, but is steadfastly ignored by the Clintonistas.

- Hillary Clinton was almost indicted, was involved in a resort land scam and a cattle futures maneuver that, if legal, defied all probabilities, and has been repeatedly called to account for her lack of honesty on a variety of matters. This has nothing to do with her being a women but is a good reflection of her as Hillary Clinton.

- The refusal of people like Hitt to deal with Hillary Clinton's problems is, in the end, masochistic as they will inevitably become major issues during a presidential campaign.

OCTOBER 2006

CLINTONS CLOSE TO DUBIOUS DUBAIAN

DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN, JEWISH WORLD REVIEW - With each new disclosure, Bill and Hillary Clinton's connection between the emir of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, seems ever more intimate.

Last February, Sen. Clinton was out front in condemning DP World, a Dubai government-owned company seeking to take over key operations at American ports. But, at the same time, Bill was advising the emir to hire his former press secretary, Joe Lockhart, to get the deal approved. Back then, Lockhart denied working for the emir. And when Bill's role became public, Hillary claimed that she had no idea that he had any involvement in the DP World issue.

Now, it turns out that the emir's Dubai International Capital Corp. hired Lockhart's company, Glover Park Group, by last April to help with another U.S. deal - a takeover of two defense firms. (Besides Lockhart, Glover Park's partners also include Hillary's chief political gurus, Howard Wolfson and Gigi Georges. Dubai paid the firm $100,000 for its services.)

Oddly, the lobbying contract came through a California law firm - Morrison, Foerster. One of that firm's partners is Raj Tanden - whose sister is Neera Tanden, Sen. Clinton's former legislative director and still a top Hillary adviser. No six degrees of separation here. . .

The relationship between the Clintons and the emir has long been too close to avoid scrutiny. Something is driving up Bill and Hillary's net worth pretty dramatically. In 2003, Sen. Clinton disclosed assets of at least $352,000 but less than $3.8 million. By 2005, she was declaring assets in the $10 million to $50 million range. . .

The emir gave an undisclosed donation to the Clinton Presidential Library - but it must have been hefty: The library set up a Clinton Scholars program for young people from the Arab nation, the only such program it runs. Bill Clinton has twice given speeches in Dubai for close to $500,000.

The close ties to the emir may cause problems for the Clintons. The sheik turns out to be not such a nice guy. Just last week, a group of parents filed a class-action lawsuit against him and his brother in federal court in Miami, claiming that they conspired in a scheme that "abducted and trafficked thousands of small boys from South Asia and Africa to the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states and enslaved them to work as camel jockeys, camel trainers and camel tenders."

The suit says that "boys as young as two years old were stolen from their parents, trafficked to foreign lands, and put under the watch of brutal overseers in camel camps throughout the region."

http://jewishworldreview.com/0906/morris092206.php3

GREAT MOMENTS IN CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING

DAILY MAIL, UK - When America's liberal elite were offered the chance to pay up to $500,000 each to attend Bill Clinton's 60th birthday extravaganza tonight - with the added promise of a private Rolling Stones concert - a packed house was expected. Wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea sent out about 10,000 invitations to Hollywood tycoons, movie stars, captains of industry and Wall Street - with all proceeds to go to the former President's charitable foundation.

Those who pledged the top price were promised the 'Birthday Chair Package', with the best seating for the concert as well as a chance to have photographs taken with Mr Clinton during a round of golf and a three-day series of cocktail, brunch and dinner parties.

The minimum price, with inferior concert seats and no brunch, was set at $60,000. But with many rich Democrats sending their regrets, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that last Wednesday the Clintons drastically slashed prices to $12,500 for one reception and the concert, or $5,000 for just the Stones. . . Tickets then went on sale to the public for as little as $1,710. . .

HRC CAUGHT FIBBING AGAIN

DICK MORRIS, NEW YORK POST - AS she prepares for her presidential race, confident that New Yorkers will re-elect her, Hillary Clinton is working to position herself properly to win the Democratic nomination by adjusting, tweaking and, where necessary, reversing her issue positions. But last week's flip-flop on gay marriage, in which she said she would approve of state action to legalize it, came with some reconstructed history that tried to paper over her switch by obfuscating the historical record.

Her statement dismissed her support of her husband's Defense of Marriage Act as "a strategic decision to help derail a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage."

Nonsense. I was in the room at the White House strategy meeting and was sitting next to the president when he decided to promote and sign the bill. Nobody was even talking about a constitutional amendment back then - 1995-96 - and no one in the meeting so much as mentioned the possibility. His decision to sign the bill closely followed my announcement of polling data that suggested overwhelming support for the legislation. . . Hillary supported her husband's decision to sign the bill and has often reiterated her position. Her recent announcement that she would now approve of state action to allow gay marriage is a flip-flop, pure and simple.

During the discussion at the White House strategy meeting at which the president told us he would sign the bill, adviser George Stephanopoulos cautioned President Clinton to "give us several days" to break the decision to White House staffers who might object. "Tell them we've created 4 million new jobs," the president said sharply, "and that they ought to go out and take a few of them."

 JULY 2006

STRONG HRC NEGATIVES AMONG NH DEMOCRATS

BRETT ARENDS BOSTON HERALD - Dick Bennett has been polling New Hampshire voters for 30 years. And he's never seen anything like it. "Lying b**** . . . shrew . . . Machiavellian . . . evil, power-mad witch . . . the ultimate self-serving politician.". . .

These weren't Republicans talking about Hillary Clinton. They weren't even independents. These were ordinary, grass-roots Democrats. People who identified themselves as "likely" voters in the pivotal state's Democratic primary. And, behind closed doors, this is what nearly half of them are saying. . .

Bennett runs American Research Group Inc., a highly regarded, independent polling company based in Manchester, N.H. He's been conducting voter surveys there since 1976. The polls are financed by subscribers and corporate sponsors. . .

"Forty-five percent of the Democrats are just as negative about her as Republicans are. More Republicans dislike her, but the Democrats dislike her in the same way.". . .

We're not talking about "soft" negatives like, say, "out of touch" or "arrogant." We're talking: "Criminal . . . megalomaniac . . . fraud . . . dangerous . . . devil incarnate . . . satanic . . . power freak."

http://news.bostonherald.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=151737

HRC'S SECRET PLAN: RUN AS AN EX-REPUBLICAN AND A METHODIST

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, HUFFINGTON POST - Hillary Clinton has a strict rule prohibiting her friends and advisors from talking publicly about her running in 2008. Turns out, it might a good rule. In today's on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other front page WaPo story on Hillary, a "close advisor" to Clinton breaks the keep-it-zipped-on-08 decree -- with jaw-dropping results. Elaborating on how Hillary can overcome voter uncertainty by, as the story puts it, reintroducing her values and biography to a national electorate," the anonymous advisor says: "She will define herself, and we have the money to do it. People have to get to know her, know that she was once a Republican, that she's a big Methodist... That will happen."

So that's the winning strategy for 2008? Run Hillary as a Goldwater girl and -- wait for it -- "a big Methodist"? Holy blatant red state pandering, Batman! Let's hope this "close advisor" is not too high up on the campaign food chain. Because if he or she is actually in the loop, the road to 2008 is going to be long, pathetic slog.

SENATOR CLINTON FIBS ABOUT U.S. SUPPORT OF ISRAEL

HAARETZ, ISRAEL - Speaking at a large demonstration in support of Israel in Manhattan on Monday, United States Senator Hillary Clinton expressed unreserved support for Israel and commended President George Bush for his stance in the present crisis. Clinton said on Monday that all Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, stood behind Israel at this time. . .

CAROLE MIKITA, KSL, UTAH - The majority of Americans side with Israel in this conflict, but clearly do not want our government to get involved; that's according to the results of a Survey USA News Poll. . . Survey USA questioned 1200 adults about the Middle East. . . 54% said Israel does have the right to attack Lebanon, 34% said it does not. . . 44% of those questioned say U.S. diplomats should attempt to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and its neighbors. 52% say the United States should stay out of it. . . Only 12% of Americans believe the U.S. military should get involved. 84% say we should stay out of it.

And when asked which statement best decribed their feelings, 38% said the world is no more dangerous than usual. 42% believe we are headed for World War III. And 17% say World War III has already begun.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=364692

THERE IS, HOWEVER, PRECEDENT FOR HRC'S HYPERBOLE. In 2002 the Daily Times of Pakistan reported that "Former US President Bill Clinton who many Arab thoughts was more even-handed on the Palestine question than his predecessors shocked many when he asserted in Toronto last week that had Israel been attacked by Iraq or Iran during his presidency, he would have been ready to 'grab a rifle, get in a ditch and fight and die. . . The Israelis know that if the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die," Clinton told the crowd at a fund-raising event for a Toronto Jewish charity Monday.

HRC NEXT TO SANTORUM IN CAMPAIGN LOOT FROM HEALTH INDUSTRY

RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and ROBERT PEAR, NY TIMES - As she runs for re-election to the Senate from New York this year and lays the groundwork for a possible presidential bid in 2008, Mrs. Clinton is receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers and insurers. Nationwide, she is the No. 2 recipient of donations from the industry, trailing only Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership.

MAY 2006

HRC FLIP FLOPS ON ETHANOL

DES MOINES REGISTER - Sen. Hillary Clinton, who once opposed requiring motorists to use corn-based ethanol in their cars, proposed Tuesday to dramatically boost use of the alcohol fuel. Clinton called for $1 billion in grants for research on methods of making ethanol from plant cellulose, the fibrous stuff found in everything from corn stalks to wheat straw, grass and wood. Ethanol is now made almost exclusively from grain.. . . Clinton, who is considered a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, was one of 26 senators who opposed the energy bill passed by Congress last year mandating the use of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. Clinton opposed both the ethanol mandate and lawsuit protections for ethanol.

Clinton once explained her opposition to an ethanol mandate at a meeting with the Greater Des Moines Partnership by saying, "I have to look to first protecting and supporting the needs of the people I represent right now.". . .

APRIL 2006

HRC DISMISSED FROM PETER PAUL LAW SUIT; HUSBAND STILL DEFENDANT

WORLDNET DAILY - A judge in Los Angeles yesterday dismissed Sen. Hillary Clinton from a lawsuit by business mogul Peter Franklin Paul that alleges her husband, former President Bill Clinton, reneged on a $17 million business deal. President Clinton however, remains a defendant and will be subpoenaed early next week to testify in a deposition. A trial date has been set, and Paul plans to depose Sen. Clinton as well.

Represented by the public-interest law firm U.S. Justice Foundation, Paul claims Bill Clinton agreed to promote Paul's Internet businesses after leaving office in exchange for his financial backing of a Hollywood gala and fund-raiser for Sen. Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000. Paul charges President Clinton caused one of his public companies to collapse by diverting his Japanese partner's investments. . .

As Worldnet Daily reported, Paul. . . separately is preparing to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging the Democratic senator with submitting a false report - for a fourth time - that hides his personal dl donation of a multi-million dollar Hollywood gala and fund-raiser that helped put her in office.

Paul insists Clinton's new amended report finally acknowledged his contributions but falsely classified them as being from his companies and from his business partner, Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee, instead of from him as personal gifts. Clinton should have refunded the money according to federal law, he contends, because it was intended for her national senatorial campaign, and the limit for such donations is $25,000.

EARLIER STORIES

ISRAEL

HAARETZ - U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she supports the separation fence Israel is building along the edges of the West Bank, and that the onus is on the Palestinian Authority to fight terrorism. "This is not against the Palestinian people," Clinton, a New York Democrat, said during a tour of a section of the barrier being built around Jerusalem. "This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism." Clinton's comments echoed Israel's position that the Palestinians must crack down on militants or Israel will find ways to prevent attacks on its citizens. . . Clinton is not slated to visit the Palestinian areas during her visit. . . . UPI - U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Israel on a visit intended to put to rest any lingering doubts about her support for Israel. . . In 1999, Clinton traveled to the West Bank as first lady and was acclaimed there as a champion of Palestinian nationhood because of comments she had made in 1998 that seemed to express support for a Palestinian state. The comments, criticized by some American Jewish groups, were disavowed by the White House, the newspaper said. In her 2000 Senate race, Clinton staked out a number of positions that appealed to Jewish voters, declaring, for example, that Jerusalem should be the "eternal and indivisible capital of Israel." . . . MICHAEL COOPER, NY TIMES - With New York's large Jewish population, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often plays some role in local elections, and Israel is almost as common a stop for political aspirants as Flatbush Avenue or the Grand Concourse. But in 2000 the Senate candidates seemed to discuss Israel nearly as much as they discussed local issues.

HRC'S PRIVATE EYE

JOSEPH FARRAH, WORLDNET DAILY, JULY 2005 - A significant portion of the [Clinton's] Shadow Team's operations were carried out by private investigators, among them: Terry Lenzner, founder and chairman of the powerful Washington, D.C., detective firm Investigative Group International; high-ticket San Francisco private eye Jack Palladino and his wife Sandra Sutherland; and Hollywood sleuth Anthony J. Pellicano. . .

Hillary's detectives engaged in "a systematic campaign to intimidate, frighten, threaten, discredit and punish innocent Americans whose only misdeed is their desire to tell the truth in public," former Clinton adviser Dick Morris charged in the New York Post of Oct. 1, 1998.

Hillary's secret police tend to be a tight-lipped bunch, professionally skilled at keeping a low profile. However, we know more about Anthony "The Pelican" Pellicano than about most Hillary operatives, thanks to his boastfulness and taste for the limelight. Pellicano's violent career as a private investigator reveals much about the sorts of qualifications Hillary sought in her Shadow Team.

In the January 1992 issue of GQ magazine, Pellicano boasted of the dirty work he had performed for his clients, including blackmail and physical assault. He claimed to have beaten one of his client's enemies with a baseball bat. "I'm an expert with a knife," said Pellicano. "I can shred your face with a knife."

FBI agents raided Pellicano's West Hollywood office on Nov. 22, 2002, and arrested him on federal weapons charges. In his office, they found gold, jewelry, and about $200,000 in cash - most of it bundled in $10,000 wrappers - thousands of pages of transcripts of illegal wiretaps; two handguns; and various explosive devices stored in safes, including two live hand grenades and a pile of C4 plastic explosive, complete with blasting cap and detonation cord.

C4 is a military explosive that cannot be sold legally to civilians. Pellicano had a surprisingly large quantity in his safe. "The explosive could easily be used to blow up a car, and was in fact strong enough to bring down an airplane," noted Special Agent Stanley Ornellas in a sworn affidavit.

The FBI raided Pellicano's office after an accomplice ratted him out. Ex-convict Alexander Proctor told the FBI that Pellicano had hired him to threaten and intimidate Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch, who had been poking her nose a little too deeply into a feud between Mafia kingpins and actor Steven Seagal. It seems that Seagal's former friend and production partner, Julius R. Nasso, was tied to the Gambino crime family. When Seagal and Nasso quarreled, the dispute got ugly.

On the morning of June 20, 2002, reporter Anita Busch approached her car, which was parked near her home. To her horror, she saw a bullet-hole in her windshield. A cardboard sign taped to the glass bore one word: "Stop." A dead fish with a long-stemmed rose in its mouth lay on the hood.

Busch took the hint. She immediately went into hiding, staying in a series of hotels at her paper's expense, while the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Deprtment's organized-crime division investigated.

A break in the case seemed to come when ex-convict Alexander Proctor spilled the beans to an undercover FBI informant. Proctor reportedly told the informant, on tape, that it was not the Mafia who were harassing Anita Busch - it was Steven Seagal! Proctor said that Seagal hired detective Anthony Pellicano to intimidate the woman into silence. Pellicano, in turn, had subcontracted Proctor to do the dirty work.

"He wanted to make it look like the Italians were putting the hit on her, so it wouldn't reflect on Seagal," Proctor told the informant. Proctor accused Pellicano of ordering him to "blow up" or set fire to Busch's car to frighten her. However, Proctor said he got cold feet and merely damaged the car, leaving the dead fish and "Stop" sign as calling cards.

A federal judge sentenced Pellicano to 30 months in prison for possession of the hand grenades and C4. Later, on June 17, 2005, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley charged him with conspiracy and making threats against former Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch. He will likely face prosecution for illegal wiretapping.

Pellicano's 2002 arrest was big news in Hollywood. Article after article touted Pellicano as a "celebrity sleuth" and a "private detective to the stars," whose client list had included the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Roseanne Barr, O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson (whose chronic problem with child molestation charges provided Pellicano with plenty of damage-control work).

Despite the sensational coverage, few mainstream news organizations uttered the name of Pellicano's most famous client: Hillary Rodham Clinton. "Of the more than two dozen media reports on Pellicano's Thursday arrest so far, none have mentioned his ties to the Clinton attack machine," reported NewsMax on Nov. 23, 2002."

A detailed, 1,680-word round-up of the Pellicano case published in the New York Times on Nov. 11, 2003 - a full year after his arrest - made no mention of Hillary's name, nor even hinted at Pellicano's White House connection. Only Internet media such as NewsMax.com focused relentlessly on his Clinton ties.

The omission was deliberate. Pellicano's involvement in Clinton damage-control operations - including his well-known efforts to discredit former Clinton lovers Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky - has been public knowledge for years, the details available to any journalist with a Nexis account.

CARL LIMBACHER NEWSMAX - New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's Washington scandal attorney David Kendall is denying that recently jailed tough guy-investigator Anthony Pellicano ever worked for the Clintons, a claim directly contradicted by senior Bush White House advisor Mary Matalin - and not even denied by Pellicano himself. Kendall told the New York Daily News on Friday that reports linking the former first lady with the controversial gumshoe, who was jailed last Monday on weapons and explosives charges, are "politically motivated and utterly false.". . . When Newsweek asked Pellicano directly whether he was working for the Clinton White House, his denial was significantly less forceful than Mr. Kendall's. "I have no comment," he told the newsmagazine.

CARL LIMBACHER, NEWSMAX - [Mary] Matalin, now a senior White House advisor, discussed the episode in 1997 during a stint as a talk radio host on CBS's Washington, D.C. affiliate. "I got the letters from Pellicano to these women intimidating them," Matalin told her audience. "I had tapes of conversations from Pellicano to the women. I got handwritten letters from the women.". . .

"I controlled the money in the [1992 Bush] campaign," Matalin explained. "And [Clinton damage controller] Betsy Wright announced that she was putting $28,000 on the 'bimbo' patrol and on Jack Palladino and Pellicano, the other guy. "And $28,000 to me, the political director, was four states in the Rocky Mountains. You had a limited budget. I said, how could they spend this much money? How could they basically give up four states to track down 'bimbos'? "That's why it was kind of shocking to me that it must have been a bigger priority than putting money into states for the purpose of winning and that's why I flagged it at the time."

NY POST - Court TV anchor Diane Dimond, who reported on the first days of the Michael Jackson sex case a decade ago, is the latest to be caught up in a Hollywood phone-bugging scandal. Dimond said yesterday that authorities have informed her that wiretaps on her phone from 1994 are part of evidence seized by the FBI last year from the computer of Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano. Dimond was a reporter for "Hard Copy" in 1993 in the first days after the story broke of a youngster accusing Jackson of sexually molesting him. Pellicano worked for Jackson's attorney, Harold Weitzman. "I [was] positive my phones were tapped - I heard lots of clicking and crackling noises on the line and then my words started coming back to me through others," Dimond told The Post. "I would call new sources and they would tell me, 'We understand you've heard X, Y and Z' so I knew my phone had to be tapped. . . "My house was vandalized. My car was broken into on the Paramount lot [where 'Hard Copy' was taped]. "I had documents underneath an expensive leather coat - the coat wasn't taken, but the documents were stolen from my car," Dimond said. "My mailbox was mowed over. They gave me armed guards to go to and from work - nothing was safe," she says.

CARL LIMBACHER, NEWSMAX - Though the American press insists on not reporting this inconvenient detail, Anthony Pellicano was first hired by Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1992 in a bid to discredit Gennifer Flowers' steamy tape recordings of conversations with Mr. Clinton.. . . In 1999 Flowers filed a defamation suit against Clinton campaign officials James Carville and George Stephanopoulos - along with then-first lady Hillary Clinton - based on their attempts to use Pellicano's analysis to discredit her. Arguing before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Flowers' Judicial Watch attorneys tied Pellicano directly to the first lady-turned-New York senator, telling the court: "Anthony Pellicano was a private investigator hired by Mrs. Clinton herself. And he's the one who did the analysis of the tapes." The court ruled in Flowers' favor, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

But that isn't the only time Pellicano has been linked to the Clintons. Four days after the Monica Lewinsky story broke in January 1998, ex-Lewinsky boyfriend Andy Bleiler came forward with the claim that she had stalked him. The Washington state school teacher also contended that Lewinsky wanted to become a White House intern so she could perform oral sex on then-President Clinton. "I'm going to Washington to get my presidential knee pads," Bleiler's lawyer, Terry Giles, quoted Lewinsky as saying.

"Anthony Pellicano, the L.A.-based private investigator and O.J. defense team veteran [was] responsible for digging up Andy Bleiler," the New York Post's Andrea Peyser reported at the time. Sexgate provocateur Lucianne Goldberg told Peyser that Pellicano's services were bought and paid for by the Clinton White House. When Peyser confronted the "investigator to the stars" with Goldberg's claim, he didn't deny it. "You're a smart girl. No comment," Pellicano told the Post reporter.

Interestingly enough, some of Pellicano's targets, like former Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch and one-time "Hard Copy" correspondent Dina Dimond, report break-ins and property vandalism, the kind of problems encountered by Clinton accusers like Flowers, Sally Perdue, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick.

VINCE FOSTER AND JERRY PARKS

The wife of Arkansas security operative Jerry Parks told Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph that in the 1980s her husband had delivered large sums of money from the Mena airport to Vince Foster at a K-Mart parking lot. Mrs. Parks discovered this when she opens her car trunk one day and found so much cash that she had to sit on the trunk to close it again. She asked her husband whether he was dealing drugs, and he allegedly explained that Foster paid him $1,000 for each trip he took to Mena. Parks said he didn't "know what they were doing, and he didn't care to know. He told me to forget what I'd seen.". . . .

Later Evans-Pritchard wrote, "Foster was using him as a kind of operative to collect sensitive information on things and do sensitive jobs. Some of this appears to have been done on behalf of Hillary Clinton. . . Foster told him that Hillary wanted it done. Now, my understanding . . . is that she wanted to know how vulnerable he would be in a presidential race on the question of -- how shall I put it? -- his appetites."

In 1993, on the night before Vince Foster's death, Jerry Parks' wife claimed she heard a heated conversation between her husband and Foster in which Parks said, "You can't give Hillary those files, they've got my name all over them." Parks was gunned down mob-style two months after Foster's death in his car outside of Little Rock. He was shot through the rear window of his car and three more times thru the side window with a 9mm pistol.

Parks was running American Contract Services, the business which supplied bodyguards for Clinton during his presidential campaign and transition. Bill Clinton still owed him $81,000. Parks had collected detailed data on Clinton's sexual escapades, including pictures and dates. Mrs. Parks claims federal agents subsequently raided their house and removed files and the computer.

Less than three hours after Foster's body was found, his office was secretly searched by Clinton operatives, including Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff. Another search occurred two days later. Meanwhile, US Park Police and FBI agents are not allowed to search the office on grounds of "executive privilege."

HER SECRET THESIS

AFTER BECOMING involved in politics, Wellesley graduate Hillary Rodham orders her senior thesis sealed from public view.

QUICK WRITING

1996 - HILLARY CLINTON produces a book-like substance that she claimed to have written in long-hand in six months. It would turn out that she had a ghost writer hired for $120,000

HOW TO MAKIE MONEY IN CATTLE FUTURES

TWO MONTHS after commencing the Whitewater scam, Hillary Clinton invests $1,000 in cattle futures. Within a few days she has a $5,000 profit. Before bailing out she earns nearly $100,000 on her investment. Many years later, several economists will calculate that the chances of earning such returns legally were one in 250 million.

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - An example of Washington's culture of impunity can be found in a column by the Washington Post's Richard Cohen in which he justifies Hillary Clinton's cattle futures scam by equating it to some of the sweetheart deals into which George the Lesser has so easily fallen. Cohen suggests that the futures deal was nothing more than a businessman doing HRC a favor and writes, "I have to wonder why Hilary Clinton's preferential treatment is such a scandal and George W's is not." He then proceeds to ask a series of questions suggesting that Mrs. Clinton is a victim because of extraneous factors ending, naturally, with imputations of class and gender bias. Let us ignore the Harold Ickesian spin to the piece so suggestive of its provenance and assume more kindly that Cohen once again just doesn't know what he's talking about. That still leaves a lot of Washington Post readers terribly ill-served.

-- Hillary Clinton's cattle deal was not just a political favor from Tyson Food, the same firm that would later pay a $6 million penalty for bribing an official of the Department of Agriculture. The sheer mathematical probabilities against it happening legally present us with a smoking gun. There is no statistically logical way in which HRC could have done what she did without someone committing a felony. This case screamed for investigation and never got it. Dubya's sweetheart deal in which he gained an highly profitable interest in the Texas Rangers was, in fact, much closer to the Clinton's original Whitewater scam in which Jim McDougal put up the cash and the Clintons got the percentage. There is, however, one major difference which makes even Whitewater far more sinister: Clinton was a public official at the time. But then Cohen doesn't worry about things like that, dismissing Whitewater as "a mess about something no one can keep straight."

-- Here are some excerpts from a Agbiz Tiller article on the cattle dealing:

||| Mrs. Clinton's ability to turn $1000 into a near $100,000 in ten months of futures trading, a Congressional study would learn, coincided with a period of time that a select group of executives from packing houses, grain companies, feedlot operators and commodity brokers reaped tens of millions of dollars in an "insider" trading scheme in the cattle futures market. . . Between February, 1978 and April, 1979 some 32 cattle industry insiders made profits of $110 million by selling cattle futures after they received some 15 "secret signals," which was followed within an average two and one half day period, by a marked drop in cattle future prices. Then Rep. Neal Smith (Dem.-Iowa), chairman of the House Small Business Committee, which released the report in February, 1981 noted that in all a total of some 1027 individuals made total net profits of approximately $156 million. Thus, three percent of the large traders --- those with 50 contracts or more --- with correlated trading activity and/or common business affiliations accounted for 70% of the total net profits of this group of traders. Mrs. Clinton traded 50 or more contracts three times . . . A previous USDA study in 1979, for example, pointed out that during 20 of the 21 months preceding October, 1979 there was not a single day in which a farmer-feeder could have used the futures market to hedge in a profit and only five days in the remaining month that the farmer-feeder could have broken even . . . Meanwhile, the eight largest packers, who at the time were slaughtering 44% of the nation's beef, held over one-half of the futures contracts and made twice as much money in the futures market as they did in trading cattle . . . In all, between February, 1978 and December, 1980, some 29 "secret signals" were given although Smith's Committee staff made no estimates on the profits earned after April, 1979 . . . There are estimates that 75% to 95% of individual investors lose money in commodity futures markets. ||||

-- If Cohen had looked into Bush a little more closely he would have found something far more interesting to report. In 1984, after his firm, Arbusto Energy, had fallen on hard times, he managed to get a job as the 30-something president of Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, the firm that had purchased Arbusto. He also got 14% of Spectrum's stock. Meanwhile, his 50 investors got paid off at about 20 cents on the dollar. In 1986, after Spectrum 7 had lost $400,000 in six months, Bush sold it to Harken Energy. He became a major Harken stockholder and also received a good salary as a director and consultant. When Bush and his Harken partners ran short of cash they hooked up with investment banker and Clinton crony Jackson Stephens who got them a $25 million stock purchase by Union Bank of Switzerland. The government of Bahrain chose Harken (over Amoco) to drill its offshore wells even though it had never dug overseas or in water before. On June 22, 1990, Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for a 200% profit just 40 days before the start of the Gulf War and one week before the company announced a $23 million quarterly loss, setting off a 60% drop in share price over the next six months. Bush waited almost a year past the legal deadline to file the necessary SEC report on his Harken stock deal. In short, in six years Bush made a bundle on three money-losing energy companies. Most other stockholders did not do anywhere near as well. Cohen, in the classic fin-de-siecle Washington manner, excuses HRC because what she did was no worse than what George the Lesser did. To the extent there are similarities, it is only because they should both be answering the questions of a prosecutor rather than running for election.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR HRC

1978 - HILLARY CLINTON makes a $44,000 profit on a $2,000 investment in a cellular phone franchise deal that involves taking advantage of the FCC's preference for locals, minorities and women. The franchise is almost immediately flipped to the cellular giant, McCaw.

THE TRAVEL OFFICE SCANDAL

1993 -HILLARY CLINTON and David Watkins move to oust the White House travel office in favor of World Wide Travel, Clinton's source of $1 million in fly-now-pay-later campaign trips that essentially financed the last stages of the campaign without the bother of reporting the de facto contribution. The White House fires seven long-term employees for alleged mismanagement and kickbacks. The director, Billy Dale, charged with embezzlement, will be acquitted in less than two hours by the jury. An FBI agent involved in the case, IC Smith, will write later, "The White House Travel Office matter sent a clear message to the Congress as well as independent counsels that this Whit House would be different. Lying, withholding evidence, and considering - even expecting - underlings to be expendable so the Clintons could avoid accountability for their actins would become the norm."

CNN OCT 18 2000 - Independent Counsel Robert Ray's final report on the White House travel office case found first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's testimony in the matter was "factually false," but concluded there were no grounds to prosecute her. The special prosecutor determined the first lady did play a role in the 1993 dismissal of the travel office's staff, contrary to her testimony in the matter. But Ray said he would not prosecute Clinton for those false statements because "the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that she knew her statements were false or understood that they may have prompted the firings. . . The final report concludes that "despite that falsity, no prosecution of Mrs. Clinton is warranted."

CNN, JUN 22 2000 - Ray also criticized the White House on Thursday for what he called "substantial resistance" to providing "relevant evidence" to his investigators. "The White House asserted unfounded privileges that were later rejected in court," Ray said. "White House officials also conducted inadequate searches for documents and failed to make timely production of documents, including relevant e-mails."

WHAT WHITEWATER WAS REALLY ABOUT

At one point Hillary Clinton wrote Jim McDougal, "If Reaganomics works at all, Whitewater could become the Western Hemisphere's Mecca." In fact, the 203 acre plot was fifty miles from the nearest grocery store. The Washington Post later reported that some purchasers of lots, many of them retirees, "put up houses or cabins, others slept in vans or tents, hoping to be able to live off the land." More than half of the purchasers lost their plots thanks to the sleazy form of financing used. In short, Whitewater was the sort of resort land scam for which a local TV station would have won an Emmy for exposing.

WHY HRC DOESN'T KEEP A DIARY

On the Jim Lehrer Newshour in 1996, HRC was asked if she kept a diary:

JIM LEHRER: Are you keeping a diary? Are you keeping good notes on what's happened to you?

HILLARY CLINTON: Heavens no! It would get subpoenaed. I can't write anything down. (laughing)

JIM LEHRER: So well, when it comes time to write this book, you're just going to sit down and try to remember all this?

HILLARY CLINTON: I have tons of, you know, schedules and information and all that stuff, but you know, there's been a real crimp put in history by these absurd investigations that have gone on where people, you know, don't even want to, you know, say I had dinner last night with--because if you say that, the person you had dinner with is likely to get called before some committee somewhere. Her response: "Heavens, no! if I could get subpoenaed. I can't write anything." She added that her comments would be used to "go after and persecute every friend of mine, everybody I've ever talked with, everyone I've had a conversation with. ~ It's very sad."

JUNE 2005. . .

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH ED KLEIN'S BOOK

ONE ONLY NEEDS TO READ a chapter or two of Ed Klein's book on Hillary Clinton to understand the problem. It is written by - and in the style of - someone who has contributed to both Parade Magazine and Vanity Fair, two of the most unnecessary publications in the land. It is Walter Scott and Dominic Dunne go to Arkansas.

The real crime in the eyes of the establishment, however, is not the style but the target. After all, Vanity Fair feeds off of the same class that is so upset about the Klein book. Clintonistas are big Vanity Fair readers. But when you come right down to it, it is little more than Parade Magazine for the college educated. A sterling investigative journalist once went to the monthly with a major scoop. It was rejected on the grounds that Vanity Fair does not do "substantive stories."

No, Klein's real crime was applying the accepted standards of Vanity Fair to a political icon of its readership and of fans so fanatical they rival those of Michael Jackson. And even during the latter's entire trial we never heard one of his critics described as a "Jackson hater." In the case of HRC's supporters, however, you are either with them or you "hate her," a dichotomy worthy of psychotherapy.

So, yes, the Klein book is trash journalism, but of precisely the sort people gladly accept when applied to movie stars and Donald Trump. It is only when the subject is a major political figure that the media and other establishment prudes come out in force because politics is their religion and if it were not so then they would have to admit that they hobnobbed daily with egomaniacal lowlifes rather than with sacred figures of American democracy.

If this were Britain, Klein would have no problem. The Brits take trash journalism in stride, implicitly understanding that it performs the democratic service of keeping a nation's leaders from taking themselves too seriously and the voters from following suit. One need only compare the coverage of Princess Diana and Saint Hillary to get the idea.

If we were to follow the British model, we might be able to bring our own monarchy into disrepute as well. Instead, the media has treated two of the greatest frauds in American political history - Clinton and Bush the Younger - as admirable and profound and wrapped them in a bubble of immunity from serious examination and criticism. And Hillary Clinton with them. In short, the media has been an unindicted coconspirator in a major fraud against the American people and their republic.

It began, in the Clintons' case, with a media-wide refusal to look seriously at what had happened in Arkansas, one of the most corrupt and drug-infested stats of the union, and in the Clinton machine that ran it. Instead, here are some of the early media messages on the Clintons:

- "If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk way winners . . . Thank you very much and tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for her." -- Dan Rather, talking with the Clintons via satellite at a CBS affiliates meeting

- "Roger Clinton's life is in some ways the story of any younger sibling clobbered by the spectacular success of the one who came before . . . If your brother is Christ, you have a choice: become a disciple, or become an anti-Christ, or find yourself caught somewhere between the two" -- Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post

- "In the midst of redesigning America's health care system and replacing Madonna as our leading cult figure, the new First Lady has already begun working on her next project, far more metaphysical and uplifting.... She is both impersonal and poignant -- with much more depth, intellect and spirituality than we are used to in a politician . . . She has goals, but they appear to be so huge and far off -- grand and noble things twinkling in the distance -- that it's hard to see what she sees." -- Martha Sherrill, Washington Post

The real problem with Klein's book is that he wastes a lot of time on Hillary Clinton trivia without touching (or touching only lightly) on many of the major issues and conundrums, a number of them raising criminal questions. Even his coverage of the psychosexual HRC fails because he does not resolve or even illuminate such fascinating questions as how come alleged lesbian Clinton had an alleged affair with Vince Foster?

The Clintonistas say this is none of our business. But as your editor argued early in the Clinton administration, sexual behavior can be a window onto political landscape. For example, Clinton's Don Juan approach to sex was directly mirrored in his political infidelity to issues, principles and the truth.

Further, Clinton was accused of serial sexual abuse of women up to and including rape - women who had often been multiple victims: first as abused sexual partners and then as terrorized, bribed, or publicly trashed former partners. One even left the country to get away from it all.

Yet in one of the great gestures of political hypocrisy, the women's movement - having achieved all sorts of laws to prevent such occurrences in private business - dismissed the Lewinsky case as none of anyone's business even though Clinton's lying directly affected the right of another woman to receive a fair trial on her charges against the president. In one swoop, the women's movement announced, de facto, that sexual abuse by powerful male bosses didn't matter as long as it agreed with them politically.

Similarly, certain aspects of Hillary Clinton's life are politically and journalistically important even though they involve sex.

For example, before she is elected president, it would be good to know whether - as White House FBI agent Gary Aldrich has claimed - she and aides really did hang sexual ornaments on the presidential Christmas tree. Not a big deal to be sure, but somewhat in the same category of an Arkansas state trooper's claim that Bill Clinton had sex in the parking lot of his daughter's elementary school. Does one really want someone that graceless in the White House?

On a far more substantive matter, it would be enlightening to know more about Hillary Clinton's relationship with Vince Foster because - whether he was killed or committed suicide - he clearly didn't die at Ft. Marcey Park and HRC's behavior around the time of his death needs closer examination.

Less than three hours after Foster's body was found, his office was secretly searched by Clinton operatives, including Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff. Another search occurred two days later. Meanwhile, US Park Police and FBI agents were not allowed to search the office on grounds of "executive privilege." It will be reported later that Whitewater files were among those removed.

Foster's suicide note was withheld from investigators for some 30 hours. The note was in 27 pieces with one other piece missing. Foster's personal diary was withheld from the special prosecutor for a year despite being covered by a subpoena.

Jerry Parks, a Clinton security aide in Arkansas known to have been keeping dossier on Clinton, was gunned down two months after Foster's death in his car outside of Little Rock. Parks was shot through the rear window of his car and shot three more times, thru the side window, with a 9mm pistol. Parks ran American Contract Services, the business which supplied bodyguards for Clinton during his presidential campaign and the following transition. Bill Clinton still owed him $81,000.

Parks had also collected detailed data on Clinton's sexual escapades, including pictures and dates, perhaps for HRC. The night before Foster died, Parks' wife Jane says she heard a heated telephone conversation with Vince Foster in which her husband said, "You can't give Hillary those files, they've got my name all over them." Mrs. Parks also claimed federal agents subsequently removed files and computer from their house. And she said that upon learning of Vincent Foster's death, her husband told her, "I'm a dead man."

Thus do sex, politics and misdeeds intermingle. But there is plenty else Klein could have investigated but didn't - except sometimes with a passing mention. Such as the sudden reappearance of the Whitewater files, the dubious cattle futures deal, the scummy nature of the Whitewater real estate scam from the start, and the abuse of the White House travel office.

For example, shortly after moving into the White House Hillary Clinton and David Watkins moved to oust the White House travel office in favor of World Wide Travel, Clinton's source of fly-now-pay-later campaign trips. Little Rock Worldwide Travel had provided Clinton with $1 million in deferred billing for his campaign trips. Clinton aide David Watkins boasted to a travel magazine, "Were it not for World Wide Travel here, the Arkansas governor may never have been in contention for the highest office in the land." In fact, without agency's dubious largess, the Clinton campaign might not have made it through the later primaries.

In order to get its friends the job, the White House fired seven long-term travel office employees for alleged mismanagement and kickbacks. The director, Billy Dale, charged with embezzlement, was acquitted in less than two hours by the jury. An FBI agent involved in the case, IC Smith, wrote later, "The White House Travel Office matter sent a clear message to the Congress as well as independent counsels that this White House would be different. Lying, withholding evidence, and considering - even expecting - underlings to be expendable so the Clintons could avoid accountability for their actions would become the norm."

In short, there's still a good book out there for someone to write about Hillary Clinton. Ed Klein didn't do it.

o

EDWARD KLEIN IN INTERVIEW WITH NATIONAL REVIEW - I think Elizabeth Moynihan, Senator Moynihan's wife, had it right when she told me that Hillary is duplicitous. Hillary acts as though she is chosen by God, and that gives her the right to use any means to justify her ends. If she becomes president, it's going to be deja Clinton all over again. . .

Like Nixon, Hillary is paranoid and has an enemies list. Like Nixon, Hillary has used FBI files against her enemies. Like Nixon, Hillary believes that the ends justify the means.

WHO NEEDS BILL WHEN HILLARY HAS ALL THESE GOP FRIENDS?

THE HILL- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was having trouble l drumming up support for his bill to offer full-time benefits to military reservists. Then, about 20 minutes before he was to hold a news conference announcing the bill, Graham's staff got a message that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) wanted to become his chief co-sponsor, an idea that caught Graham entirely by surprise. Graham agreed, and when Clinton arrived at the press conference a few minutes later, Graham recalled, "It seemed like a tornado came through. . . . Cameras started clicking like crazy because it was me and her.". . .

Now other conservative Republicans are teaming with Clinton, or allowing her to team up with them, hoping to bring a touch of glamour and a seal of bipartisanship to their legislation. In fact, Clinton has systematically formed partnerships with many of the Senate's most powerful and conservative members on a host of legislation, even as she has helped to craft the Democratic leadership's overall legislative agenda.

Last week, Clinton joined Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to launch yet another bipartisan joint venture, this one on health-information technology. . . Clinton was more willing to offer personal praise for Frist, expressing her appreciation on the floor for his "leadership" on the issue. "I'm pleased to be introducing this legislation today with the majority leader," she said. "It's a priority for both of us."

MAY 2005. . .

JUDY WOODRUFF - Record numbers of Americans continue to die in Iraq. No end to the violence in sight that most people can see. When should the United States begin significant troop withdrawals?

HILLARY CLINTON - You know, I am not one who feels comfortable setting exit strategies. We don't know what we're exiting from. We don't know what the situation is moving toward. . . How do we know where we're headed, when we don't know where we are?

BEHIND THE ROSEN ACQUITTAL

The acquittal of Hillary Clinton's former fundraiser David Rosen follows a bizarre trial in which a Clinton-appointed judge announced Mrs. Clinton not culpable before any evidence had been presented and a prosecutor concealed from the jury an damaging tape astounding even the judge.

As Newsmax reported on May 18:

Prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg announced yesterday that he would not introduce the government's strongest evidence that Rosen is guilty . . . 'The government does not intend to introduce the tape or elicit any testimony from the witness about that conversation,' Zeidenberg told Judge A. Howard Matz.

Judge Matz was stunned by Zeidenberg's announcement, and hinted that the Bush prosecutor was throwing away his case. 'You couldn't keep [the tape] out,' an incredulous Matz protested. 'I wouldn't let you keep it out.'"

"But eventually the Clinton appointed judge relented, saying he said he would allow Zeidenberg to file a 'real pithy' argument in lieu of introducing the Rosen tape.

"The Bush prosecutor went so far as to trash the Rosen audiotape, arguing that it was 'hearsay,' and requesting that Judge Matz bar even the defense from referencing it.

The recording, made by Kennedy in-law Raymond Reggie during a September 2002 meeting with Rosen at a Chicago steakhouse, was believed to offer evidence supportive of the prosecution's argument that Rosen deliberately understated the costs of an August 2000 gala fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton. Said Newsmax:

News that the Bush Justice Department has decided to deep-six its best evidence against Rosen not only improves his chances for acquittal - it dramatically lessens the pressure on him to implicate higher-ups in additional crimes.

The Bush administration has a long history of abandoning prosecutions against top Clinton figures. Just last month, Noel Hillman - head of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section - declined to prosecute former national security adviser Sandy Berger for his admitted theft of top secret terrorism documents, some of which he destroyed. Instead, Berger was allowed to plead guilty to a one-count misdemeanor of unauthorized removal of classified material. Hillman recommended that he serve no jail time, and instead pay a $10,000 fine. Hillman's signature appears on Rosen's indictment.

In 2003, the Bush Justice Department dropped a compelling case against Mrs. Clinton, despite strong circumstantial evidence that she traded votes in the Hasidic enclave of New Square, N.Y., for presidential clemency that her husband later granted to four village leaders.

Though New York's Hasidic community overwhelmingly backed her opponent Rick Lazio in 2000, New Square voted for Hillary by a staggering margin of 1,400 to 12.

In 2002, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York dropped an even more compelling case against former first brother Roger Clinton, who was accused of accepting bribes in exchange for presidential pardons.

In its first month in office, the Bush Justice Department struck a deal with Indonesian billionaire Mochtar Riady, who had funneled millions of dollars in illegal foreign donations into Clinton campaign coffers.

Riady was ordered to pay an $8 million fine and perform community service in his home city of Jakarta, where U.S. officials had no jurisdiction to enforce the sentence.

The Bush family has grown increasingly close to Mr. Clinton over the last year - especially since Bush 41 teamed up with Mr. Clinton in tsunami relief efforts. Recent reports claim that President Bush and his brother Jeb now refer to the former president as "Bubba" and "Bro."

In his opening statement in the Rosen trial, prosecutor Zeidenberg promised he would take great pains not to implicate Mrs. Clinton in any wrongdoing, telling the court:

"You will hear no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in any way shape or form. In fact, it's just the opposite. The evidence will show that David Rosen was trying to keep this evidence from the campaign." |||

On May 20, Martha Carr in the New Orleans Times Picayune - the only major paper to give the story serious coverage - reported:

A transcript of the tape obtained by The Times-Picayune shows that while some parts could have helped bolster the government's case, others contained potentially embarrassing details about the fast-and-loose practices of top Democratic fund raisers and party officials. The judge ultimately agreed to exclude its contents. . .

While Reggie agreed to help the feds almost three years ago, his role as government informant was kept secret until recently in an effort to conceal his cooperation in at least two other unrelated investigations, one involving a state senator, and the other, a prominent political figure who may have been illegally soliciting national campaign donations from foreign nationals, according to an FBI affidavit. The government has agreed to recommend that Reggie's sentence not exceed five years in return for his cooperation, he testified Thursday.

Like several other actors in the political drama being played out in the Los Angeles courtroom, Reggie, who was invited to state dinners and even slept at the White House, watched his high-powered world come crashing down after his wheeling and dealing got out of control. . .

The underwriter of the Hollywood gala, Peter Paul, is a three-time convicted felon who built an Internet company with Spider-man creator Stan Lee. He awaits sentencing for bilking investors out of $25 million. His former company, Stan Lee Media, is now defunct.

Tonken, who organized the gala, is serving five years in prison for defrauding charities out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, after years of consorting with the rich and famous in Los Angeles, driving luxury vehicles and living off borrowed money.

Lastly, there is Jim Levin, a Chicago businessman and Clinton confidant who has pleaded guilty to federal bribery, fraud and conspiracy charges in connection with the awarding of public contracts to his family's fencing company.

The judge - a Clinton patronage pick pushed by Barbara Boxer - not only didn't recuse himself as a more cautious jurist might have under the circumstances, he was unusually loquacious. In a NY Sun story he was quoted as saying that Paul was "a thoroughly discredited, corrupt individual" and "a con artist." Metz also said, "This isn't a trial about Senator Clinton. Senator Clinton has no stake in this trial as a party or a principal. She's not in the loop in any direct way, and that's something the jury will be told."

What's curious about this is that at least two witnesses had told investigators that they had informed Mrs. Clinton about the hidden campaign cash.

Prsecutor Zeidenberg was equally anxious to exonerate Hillary Clinton, telling Matz, "You will hear no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's just the opposite. The evidence will show that David Rosen was trying to keep this evidence from the campaign."

But as Newsmax reported on May 12:

Zeidenberg didn't explain, however, how Mrs. Clinton's then-spokesman, Howard Wolfson, seemed to have knowledge of the event's true costs at a time when senior Clinton campaign officials were supposedly in the dark. Speaking to the Washington Post five days after the Aug. 12 event, Wolfson acknowledged that Mr. Paul had contributed "$1 million" - far more than the $400,000 Rosen would later report. Wolfson also seemed to know specific details about the underreported contribution, telling the Post: "It was an in-kind contribution ... and not a check." Paul told NewsMax last month that Wolfson's comments show that senior Clinton campaign officials "knew there was an issue about my involvement and they knew there was an issue about how much it cost" well before Rosen filed false reports with the FEC.

It helps to remember that the Clinton-Bush coziness goes back to the days of Iran-Contra, when Papa Bush was supervising covert arms shipments to Latin America out of Arkansas (with drugs making the return trip) and Governor Clinton was busy looking the other way. Further, as was clear during abortive Republican investigations into various Clinton scandals, in the culture of impunity of Washington, politics stops at corruption's edge. Almost all major corruption is either bipartisan or common enough that one side can effectively blackmail the other.

Still, the Rosen case could be a forewarning of what lies ahead for 2008. As we have pointed out, the GOP Justice Department has all the Hillary files and the Bush regime might just be holding its fire until a more useful time - like during the middle of a presidential campaign.

TIMES PICAYUNE MAY 20

NEWSMAX MAY 18
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/18/94801.shtml

REGGIE-ROSEN TAPE EXCERPTS

THE PROSECUTORS seem to have deliberately drained the life out of the Rosen case, which comes within a hair's breath of Hillary Clinton, but the New Orleans Times Picayune did better with this May 7 story:

MARTHA CARR AND GORDON RUSSELL, NEW ORLEANS TIMES PICAYUNE - Hotshot political fund-raiser David Rosen didn't hesitate when an old friend, visiting Chicago, called to invite him to a pricey meal at Morton's steakhouse. What Rosen didn't know was that his buddy, Democratic Party operative Ray Reggie of New Orleans, was working with FBI agents to record secretly the entire conversation, a tape that is expected to be key evidence as one of the hottest political trials of the year begins Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

A partial transcript of the Sept. 4, 2002, tape obtained by The Times-Picayune captures a conversation rife with gossip about the seamy side of political life, including the sex, drugs and prostitutes enjoyed by big-name Democratic stalwarts. But in due course Reggie deftly steers the conversation toward the feds' main interest: an August 2000 Hollywood fund-raiser for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton that is at the center of Rosen's alleged crimes.

In a detailed discussion of the event, Rosen acknowledges that the gala probably cost far more to produce than he reported on federal campaign forms, a criminal offense and the central question at issue in the case. . .

Reggie first met Rosen when he signed on as a fund-raiser and media strategist for Hillary Clinton's Senate bid. Rosen was Clinton's national finance director, and Reggie, with his ties to the Kennedy family, was a powerhouse fund-raiser for the Clintons in Louisiana. After their months spent together separating wealthy Democrats from their hard-earned cash, Rosen was likely not surprised that Reggie would call to catch up with him during a stop in Chicago. . .

The chit chat ranges from speculation that a wealthy Clinton donor was using cocaine to lusty remarks by Rosen about the donor's young daughter. Rosen does not hesitate to disparage President Clinton, noting that he began calling regularly -- once a week -- after Rosen went to work for Hillary Clinton. "Go screw yourself , Mr. President," Rosen says, pretending to pick up one such call.

The salaciousness reaches its pinnacle with Rosen's rambling anecdote about a fat cat Clinton donor who said after a night of partying that he sent prostitutes to the hotel rooms of two top Clinton loyalists.

"So the next day, (one of the loyalists) calls (the donor) from the golf course with Clinton," Rosen told Reggie. "Clinton gets on the phone, he goes, I just wanna tell you something. . . . The day I'm outta office, I'm going out with you."

A lawyer for one of the Clinton insiders named on the tape denied the substance of the story. Kendall, Clinton's lawyer, declined to comment on the anecdote.

Reggie takes his own swipe at a party big shot, Al Gore, who flew into New Orleans for the 2002 Super Bowl, absent the privilege he enjoyed as vice president. "I mean, I felt bad," said Reggie, who took Gore to the Ritz Carlton while he waited to fly out. "Here you are, the former VP, and the guy's like flying in a little, you know, nothing plane. And he's gonna catch a Yellow Cab. I'm like, no."

To that, Rosen added that he'll never work for Gore again. The former vice president, whom he thought he knew well, failed to recognize him at an event. "I won't cross the street for that guy," he said. "I was willing to get talked back into another round with his ass. And I went to an event, and he was there. And I'm with him one-on-one a hundred times. At least. And he thought I was the valet parker."

JANUARY 2005

HILLARY CLINTON SUCKS UP TO CHRISTIAN RIGHT

MICHAEL JONAS, BOSTON GLOBE - On the eve of the presidential inauguration, US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced an issue some pundits say helped seal a second term for George W. Bush: acceptance of the role of faith in addressing social ills. In a speech at a fund-raising dinner for a Boston-based organization that promotes faith-based solutions to social problems, Clinton said there has been a "false division" between faith-based approaches to social problems and respect for the separation of church of state.

"There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles," said Clinton, a New York Democrat who often is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008.

Addressing a crowd of more than 500, including many religious leaders, at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza, Clinton invoked God more than half a dozen times, at one point declaring, "I've always been a praying person." She said there must be room for religious people to "live out their faith in the public square."

APRIL 2004

TAKES 40 ROOMS TO VACATION WITH HILLARY

JAMAICA OBSERVER - Former US first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, left Jamaica yesterday after a one-week vacation at the exclusive Tryall Club in Hanover, highly placed sources confirmed. Hotel officials declined to confirm or deny Rodham Clinton's stay at the property, but one knowledgeable source told the Observer: "She had a quiet, delightful and restful holiday. That was the way she wanted it." According to Observer sources, between her aides, friends and Secret Service protectors Rodham Clinton's entourage occupied 40 rooms.

FEBRUARY 2004

ETHICS-CHALLENGED BRIDGE COMMISSION TOLD TO IMITATE HILLARY CLINTON

GARRETT THEROLF, MORNING CALL - The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, urged to reform its relationship with the public in the wake of deception and possible ethical lapses last year, has defied its critics by pulling an even thicker veil of secrecy over itself. More business has moved out of public meetings to behind closed doors, including presentations and deliberations related to lucrative contracts for engineering and public affairs work.

The communications strategy has also helped to obfuscate the commission's affairs with the hiring of two media consultants who trained nine senior staffers how to duck tough questions, in part by gathering them around a videotape monitor twice to study Hillary Clinton's "blocking" techniques during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Bridge commission staffers also were ordered to use vague language in any writing they prepare in case those documents are seen by outsiders.
That order, obtained by The Morning Call, advises staffers and frequent bridge commission contractors against using about 60 common words and phrases, including "must," "thorough," "final" and "safe."

Chief Engineer George Alexandridis explained the reason for the ban in a preface to the memo: "Because documents that are prepare by us or our consultants are scrutinized carefully by other agencies, the public and the media, it is important that they do not include absolutes and positive statements.". . .

Patellen Corr and Jennifer Franklin taught a technique they called "blocking and bridging," Corr said in an interview. The technique teaches public officials ways to block tough questions and to bridge to topics that the official would rather talk about. . .

To demonstrate the technique, the executives scrutinized a tape of Hillary Clinton's January 1998 interview on NBC's "Today Show" shortly after news of the Lewinsky affair was first reported in The Washington Post. The interview began with anchor Matt Lauer asking Hillary Clinton if President Clinton had described to her the nature of his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton responded by changing the subject to the then-recent death of co-anchor Katie Couric's husband and issued her condolences - a pivot identified as the "block" during Corr and Franklin's training.

Clinton then said, "Well, have talked at great length. And I think as this matter unfolds, the entire country will have more information" - identified during the session as a "bridge" to more comfortable terrain without answering the question directly or completely.

Corr said the condolences for Couric are the example of a useful interview technique because "that is showing how someone can start an interview that will probably be hostile, making sure that potential hostility does not let anyone forget that they are human."

OCTOBER 2003

WHY BUSH'S SUDDEN
INTEREST IN SEX TOURISM?

To those surprised by George Bush's sudden interest in the evils of sex tourism (in his UN speech), Undernews Irregular Richard L. Franklin offers this theory: it was a shot across Hillary Clinton's bow, a reminder that now the Justice Department files are in the hands of the Republicans.

One of those deeply involved in the Clinton fundraising scandals was an Asian businessman described in some reports as a major underground crime figure with a specialty in brothels, including those featuring under-aged girls.

This could be a big embarrassment for Hillary Clinton, who once told a women's conference, "We are working to stop trafficking of women and girls in this region and around the world. No government and no citizen can rest until we stop this modern form of slavery, protect its victims and prosecute those who are responsible."

The embarrassment is heightened by the existence of a photo of the two Clintons and the businessman with big smiles, standing in front of the shield of the Democratic National Committee.

SEPTEMBER 2003

REUTERS - Federal authorities in New York on Monday said they have completed the extradition of Peter Paul, the co-founder of defunct online entertainment company Stan Lee Media, from Brazil to the United States to face conspiracy and securities fraud charges. Paul left the United States in late 2000 or early 2001 and was arrested in Brazil in August 2001. He has been held in a Brazilian prison. In July the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered his return to the United States to face charges. . . He is represented by Judicial Watch, an organization well known for pursuing claims of government corruption. . . They have claimed Paul has detailed information about donations made to the 2000 U.S. Senate campaign of former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), who was eventually elected to represent the state of New York. "Judicial Watch is pleased that Peter is finally back in the United States," Tom Fitton, the president of the organization, told Reuters. "He's eager to cooperate so that all are held accountable, especially Hillary and Bill Clinton."

JIM DWYER, NY TIMES - By the end of the night, 'no' was not quite the word ringing in every ear as the guests - about 150 major campaign donors to the former president or to the senator - left the gathering. During cocktails in the back yard, one group heard former President Bill Clinton say that the national Democratic Party had 'two stars': his wife, the junior senator from New York, and a retired general, Wesley K. Clark, who is said to be considering a run for the presidential nomination."

And during the dinner, according to a dozen people who were at the event, they heard Mrs. Clinton say how important their support would be 'for my next campaign, whatever that may be.' Later, Mr. Clinton, in discussing the presidential field, said, 'We might have another candidate or two jumping into the race.'

To others at the party, Mrs. Clinton, in alluding pointedly to an unspecified campaign, was merely having mild fun about a candidacy that not only has never been announced but whose existence has repeatedly been denied.

Any other interpretation, say Senator Clinton and her aides, was a matter of wishful listening among eager political supporters. While they did not deny the remarks attributed to either of the Clintons, they said that these were casual comments, made about the need to raise funds for Mrs. Clinton's race for the Senate in 2006 - not about a run for president next year.

Asked if it was impossible that she would run for president next year, she laughed. Asked again, she laughed again, then responded: 'I have said I am not running. If I knew another foreign language, I'd say it in that. I'm saying, 'I'm not going to do it.'

AUGUST 2003

HILLARY CLINTON - Many of those who are most adamantly against me are really throwbacks to closing the door of opportunity on working people and middle-class families and on women's rights and civil rights.

HILLARY LEAVES JET PASSENGERS IN HOLDING PATTERN

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton seems to be following in her husband's footsteps in more ways than one, even holding up commercial air traffic when it suits her schedule. Back in 1993, America got its first dose of the Clintons' royal pretensions, when newly minted President Bill Clinton held up air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport for two hours while he sat on Air Force One getting a $200 haircut from chi-chi stylist Cristophe.

Now comes word that Hillary caused a similar delay at New York's JFK airport, with the New York Post reporting that American Airlines kept a plane full of passengers on the ground because her highness couldn't manage to make it to the airport on time.

"The flight out of JFK the other night sat on the tarmac without explanation until an hour and a half after the scheduled departure time," the paper's Page Six reports. "A few people in first class found out the reason for the delay when an unapologetic Hillary Clinton and her entourage of flunkies and bodyguards hurried onto the plane so she could make it to a book signing for 'Living History.'"

JUL 2003

||| HILLARY CLINTON TO BBC

I liked the traditional duties of keeping a house . . I'm not the greatest at it in the world but I loved doing it. I mean, it was inviting people to come to your home and therefore it mattered to me what china we used, what the flowers looked like, what the menu was. . .

[HRC also continue to foster the myth that she was the first professional woman in the White House when, in fact, Lady Bird Johnson was an accomplished businesswoman.]

Well, I think that there's a lot of debate about the issues that I present - not only the ones you're referring to, but certainly to being the first professional woman to be in the position of first lady.

||| NEWSMAX

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has subtly but carefully altered her stance on running for president in 2004. . . During her trip to London this weekend, Mrs. Clinton hinted during a television interview that a 2004 run "might happen." Appearing Friday on BBC Channel 4's "Richard and Judy Show," Mrs. Clinton was pressed on whether she might challenge President Bush as early as next year. "You never know what might happen," she told the TV duo, after first dismissing as "rumors" reports that she was considering a run in 2004.

The day before, Mrs. Clinton was challenged by BCC radio interviewer Martha Kearney, who complained that the top Democrat's often-repeated answer that she has "no intention" of running for president in either 2004 or 2008 "doesn't really rule anything out, does it?" Well, but it is as close as I can come," Mrs. Clinton responded.

JUN 2003

THE BOOK ON HILLARY

DICK MORRIS, NATIONAL REVIEW - In your new book, Living History, you correctly note that when you asked me to help you and Bill avert defeat in the congressional election of 1994 I was reluctant to do so. But then you assert, incorrectly, that my reluctance stemmed from difficulties in working with your staff. . . The real reason I was reluctant was that Bill Clinton had tried to beat me up in May of 1990 as he, you, Gloria Cabe, and I were together in the Arkansas governor's mansion. At the time, Bill was worried that he was falling behind his democratic primary opponent and verbally assaulted me for not giving his campaign the time he felt it deserved. Offended by his harsh tone, I turned and stalked out of the room.

Bill ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and cocked his fist back to punch me. You grabbed his arm and, yelling at him to stop and get control of himself, pulled him off me. Then you walked me around the grounds of the mansion in the minutes after, with your arm around me, saying, "He only does that to people he loves.". . . When the story threatened to surface during the 1992 campaign, you told me to "say it never happened.". . . That, and not the invented conversation in your memoir, was the reason that I was reluctant to work for Bill again.

BYRON YORK, THE HILL - When she learned in 1993 that there were "concerns of financial mismanagement and waste" in the White House Travel Office, Clinton writes, "I said to Chief of Staff Mack McLarty that if there were such problems, I hoped he would 'look into it.'" According to Living History, that's when the investigative Dr Pepper machine geared up. After Clinton's "offhand comment," she writes, an audit by KPMG Peat Marwick discovered financial irregularities in the office. Then, "based on these findings, Mack and the White House Counsel's Office decided to fire the Travel Office staff and reorganize the department."

To hear her tell it, Clinton had almost nothing to do with any of it. But the independent counsel's report on Travelgate tells another story. McLarty told a grand jury that Clinton pressed him to take action on the Travel Office issue. "The fact that the first lady, one of the principals, had raised this issue, that adds an element of priority to any matter, and it did to this one," he testified.

Former White House aide David Gergen told the grand jury that he remembered a conversation with McLarty in which McLarty said the first lady was "very upset" about the Travel Office and was "ginned up on that issue ... and that there were at least two occasions when she made it clear to him that she wanted action taken."

Then there was former White House administrator David Watkins. He told the grand jury that Clinton told him, before the KPMG audit was completed, "Well, you know, we need to have our people in there." Watkins later wrote that both he and McLarty "knew that there would be hell to pay if ... we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the first lady's wishes."

After Clinton's pressuring, Watkins fired the Travel Office workers in May 1993. Watkins wrote that when he told McLarty, the chief of staff "clearly was relieved."

In 1995, lawyers for the independent counsel asked Clinton who made the decision to fire the Travel Office workers. She answered, "Well, the best I know is David Watkins and Mack McLarty, I assume, based on what I have learned since and read in the newspapers." The lawyers asked if Clinton had any role in the firings. "No, I did not," she said. They asked whether she "had any input with either Mr. McLarty or Mr. Watkins as to that decision." She answered, "I don't believe I did, no."

The first lady's statements, under oath, were patently false. And indeed, at the end of the investigation, independent counsel Robert Ray determined that "Clinton did play a role and have input in the decision to fire the Travel Office employees and that her testimony to the contrary was factually false."

GREG ESTABROOK, TUESDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK, ESPN - Once again, Clinton is presented as the author of what is actually a ghosted book. . . This time around, the pages of "Living History" thank three people -- the much-admired former White House speech writer Alison Muscatine, veteran ghost Maryanne Vollers and researcher Ruby Shamir -- who are assumed to be the actual authors. But the cover and the frontispiece still boldly state, "by Hillary Rodham Clinton."

"Living History" is a 562-page book. A work of that length would take an average writer perhaps four years to produce; a highly proficient writer might finish in two years, if working on nothing else. Clinton signed the contract to "write" the book about two years ago. About the same time, she also was sworn in as a member of the United States Senate. Clinton took an oath to protect the Constitution and to serve the citizens of New York. So in the last two years Clinton has either been neglecting her duties as a United States Senator - that is, violating her oath -- in order to be the true author of "Living History," or she is claiming authorship of someone else's work. . .

If you didn't write something, and claimed to the world that you did, what you would be doing is lying. Wouldn't it be a nice gesture if United States senators did not lie?

Perhaps you're thinking, "But all people who reach the limelight lie about being authors." No, they don't. Consider that the previous book project of Maryanne Vollers, one of Hillary's ghosts, was about Jerri Nielsen, the doctor who had to be airlifted out of Antarctica. How was that book presented? As "Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole" by Jerri Nielsen with Maryanne Vollers. No lying about the true author.

Consider that John McCain's autobiographical work, "Faith of My Fathers," proclaims on its cover "by Mark Salter, with John McCain." The true author's name is there for everyone to see, and this neither detracts from sales ("Faith of My Fathers" was a commercial success) nor causes anyone to think any less of McCain. Famous people who care about their honor, like McCain, freely acknowledge using ghostwriters -- this is called "honesty." Famous people with serious ego problems, or who don't care about their honor, lie about being authors.

Now suppose you were a college student, hired someone to write a thesis paper for you, then submitted the work as your own. Suppose, when caught, rather than confess, you indignantly insisted you were the true author. What would happen to you is that you'd be expelled. For you to lie about having written something would be considered inexcusable.

HRC HAS BEEN A NON-CANDIDATE BEFORE

LARRY KING SHOW, APRIL 29, 1997 - CALLER: Are you considering running for office in the future?

H CLINTON: No, no.

KING: At all?

H CLINTON: No.

KING: No circumstance under which you would?

H CLINTON: Not that I can imagine. That is not anything I have ever thought of for myself...

Two years later she was running for Senate.

WHY HILLARY CLINTON IS IMPORTANT

1. Hillary Clinton is not a figure out of the past nor a has-been. She and Al Gore are currently the most popular candidates for president among Democrats. For all the money and effort that Lieberman, Kerry, Gephardt and the others have put into the race, they still lag HRC by 13 points or more and Gore by 33 points or more. What this means is that HRC remains a significant dark horse candidate regardless of what she says now. So who she is and what she does matters. Especially since Republicans are salivating at the thought of her running.

2. The Review's recent coverage of HRC has been slight compared to the archaic media. In fact, the article in question was 398 words long, only 97 more words than in the complaining letters. In contrast, the NY Times has written six articles totaling 5,700 words in the past week, the LA Times sent two reporters and two researchers to the Big Apple to cover the story, the Washington Post gave a detailed timeline of book sales, and NPR gave an extraordinary four minutes to a discussion of HRC's opus.

We thus have a long way to go before our coverage becomes obsessive. Further, our dossier on the Clintons has been more than matched by our archives on the Bushes, which has received more than a quarter of a million hits in the last three years.

3. The myth that the Clinton story is about sex makes about much sense as the Bush story about WMDs in Iraq. Even the impeachment story wasn't about sex but about presidential lying to prevent a fair court case for Paula Jones. The Clinton machine story was one of a never-ending list of scandals that included successful convictions of drug trafficking, racketeering, extortion, bribery, tax evasion, kickbacks, embezzlement, fraud, conspiracy, fraudulent loans, illegal gifts, illegal campaign contributions, money laundering, perjury, and obstruction of justice. The Clintons were basically mobbed-up politicians from one of the most corrupt states in the union and acted that way.

4. The sex angle is important primarily as a window onto the values and principles of participants. As I wrote in 1994 in 'Shadows of Hope:'

"There is sometimes a dizzying ad hoc quality to Clinton's policies. Perhaps this should be expected of a president who may be the first to have cited Machiavelli as a defense. Clinton often seems a political Don Juan whose serial affairs with economic and social programs share only the transitory passion he exhibits on their behalf." Besides if a politician lies that easily to his wife, why should I believe he'll tell me the truth?

5. It perhaps helps to know something rarely reported about the scandal that gave all the others their name. Whitewater was basically a resort land scam fifty miles from the nearest grocery store. A local TV reporter exposing it would have probably have won an Emmy. More than half of the purchasers, many of them retirees, would lose their plots thanks to the sleazy form of financing used. Two months after commencing the Whitewater deal, Hillary Clinton invested $1,000 in cattle futures. Before bailing out she earned nearly $100,000 on her investment. Many years later, several economists would calculate that the chances of earning such returns legally were one in 250 million.

5. The real Clinton story has always been available to any journalist curious enough to look into it. Several months before the 1992 convention, the Review published a list - the first in the country - of more than two dozen individuals and institutions whose connections with Clinton raised question about his candidacy. Some of this information, incidentally, came to us from liberal student activists at the University or Arkansas. Each of these connections would later figure in what became known as the Clinton scandals. It is wiser to learn and act on such information before rather than after a nominating convention.

6. The massive coverage of Hillary Clinton's book has generally ignored HRC's repeated lack of forthrightness on a variety of matters. For example, in a statement answering questions from a House investigating committee, Hillary Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent 50 times. Her statement was only 42 paragraphs long.

4. In fiercely defending Clinton, liberals dissed integrity, their own political heritage, women, and set themselves up for losing the 2000 election. Missing from all the discussion of that election are some important results from the exit polling:

- 68% of voters thought Clinton would go down in history more for his scandals than for his leadership.

- 44% said that the scandals were somewhat to very important.

- 57% thought the country to be on the wrong moral track.

4. The Clinton years were disastrous for the Democratic Party, again something party members refuse to admit. At every level - from Senate to statehouse - the Democrats lost more seats during their incumbency than at any time since Grover Cleveland.

5. The Clinton administration was the warm-up band for the Bush administration. During that period, the country drastically lowered its expectations of public decency, integrity, civil liberties, and social democracy. The failure of liberals to stand up against Clinton's crypto-Republican policies foreshadowed the unwillingness of liberals to stand up against Bush in his anti-constitutional and manically belligerent acts. By the end of the Clinton years, liberal America had lost the capacity and the will to defend itself.

6. It is not the Review, but the Democratic Party that needs to put the Clintons behind them. As long as Hillary Clinton remains the best idea that Democrats have for a president, both the party and the country will remain in critical danger.

7. That's news and we'll report it. - SAM SMITH

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Why should Jayson Blair be held to a higher standard of truth-telling than Tony Blair? Or George Bush? Or Hillary Clinton?

If it's wrong for newspapers to have published Jayson Blair's articles, why is it all right for them to promote Hillary Clinton's book?

What is the objective way of covering a lie?

And while we're on the subject, in what ways do Martha Stewart's stock trading practices differ from Hillary Clinton's cattle futures trading practices?

THE JAYSON BLAIR OF POLITICS

AFTER spending weeks trying to convince us how shocked - shocked - it was to find a liar in its midst, the American media has gone back to promoting one of the country's most prominent dissemblers.

Although there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton was a role model for Jayson Blair, she and her husband left as a legacy to young America the idea that it was okay to lie if you were clever enough about it.

And so now we are back to business with Time putting HRC on the cover, newspapers and TV shamelessly promoting her book and the Washington Post even giving space to Clinton flakmeister Mandy Grunwald on how the media should have handled the Blair story.

Grunwald says, "Damage control requires being independent enough to assess the depth of the damage. It means defining the audiences you need to communicate with . . . Then you need a credible message, credible messengers (inside and outside your organization) and effective channels for communication."

Thus the Post sought advice from a Clinton adviser on how to handle lies within the media, which is almost as telling as the fact that so few within either the media or politics understand the difference between words that are merely 'credible' and those that are actually truthful. - SAM SMITH

NEWSMAX- Former senior White House advisor Dick Morris is challenging Hillary Clinton's claim that her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky came as a surprise to her, revealing that on several prior occasions, one of Mrs. Clinton's most trusted aides was dispatched to interrupt Mr. Clinton's extramarital liaisons. "I know that she wasn't [surprised] because Betsey Wright, his chief of staff [in Arkansas], had the full time job - in addition to helping him run the state - of fishing him out of bedrooms," he told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley on Saturday. . . "[Wright] once told me over the phone, 'I've had to pull [Bill] out of one-too-many bedrooms,'" Morris claimed.

Working on Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, Wright compiled a list of 19 women who she described as potential "bimbo eruptions." According to published accounts, Mrs. Clinton personally sought out San Francisco private detective Jack Palladino, whose job it was to discourage the women from coming forward. According to Federal Election Commission records, Palladino was paid $110,000 from the campaign's federally matched account.

NEWSMAX - A photo showing Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton frolicking on a sailboat together during the time Sen. Clinton now claims she was shunning her husband has deepened doubts about the credibility of her book, "Living History." Seen above aboard Walter Cronkite's sailboat on August 25, 1998, the photo was snapped as Cronkite took his guests for an outing off Martha's Vineyard. The excursion took place just ten days after Mrs. Clinton claimed she had banished her husband from family activities after he admitted the truth about Monica Lewinsky. Instead of looking abandoned and forlorn, Mr. Clinton strikes a triumphant pose, standing in back of his smiling wife with his fist pumped into the air. In her book, however, Mrs. Clinton insists that while she and her family were vacationing at the Vineyard, "I could barely speak to Bill, and when I did it was a tirade. Buddy the dog came along to keep Bill company. He was the only member of our family who was still willing to." But as this telltale photo indisputably reveals, the above statement is incontrovertibly false.

NY POST - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was facing questions yesterday about her new book's dramatic account of when she first learned about Monicagate. In "Living History," Clinton writes that she didn't find out the truth of the Monica Lewinsky affair until Aug. 15, 1998, when her husband told her. But a previous, well-regarded account tells a very different story. Washington Post reporter Peter Baker, author of a 2000 book on the Lewinsky scandal, wrote that Bill Clinton asked his lawyer, David Kendall, to break the news to Hillary. Kendall told Hillary on Aug. 13 - two days before she says she found out, according to Baker. Baker said yesterday he has "several very good sources" who assure him that Hillary first learned of the affair from Kendall. "I stand by what I wrote," Baker said of the differences, reported in The Washington Post's Reliable Sources column. But Kendall backed Hillary's account. Hillary's office had no comment.

NEWSMAX - In an interview to be broadcast Sunday, New York Senator Hillary Clinton makes the bizarre claim to ABC's Barbara Walters that her husband had never lied to her before Aug. 15, 1998, when he supposedly came clean about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. "She went through all of the investigations in the White House, all of which turned out to be either a false alarm or that they had done nothing wrong," Walters told syndicated radio host Sean Hannity. "So when [Lewinsky] happened, [Hillary] said, and I'm almost quoting, 'Oh my gosh, one more thing,'" the ABC News star explained. "She also said that her husband had never lied to her. And I think that his lying to her was almost worse that the fact that he had this relationship."

Hannity was incredulous at the claim that Clinton's Lewinsky lie was his first. "Am I understanding you correctly?" he asked Walters. "She's telling you in this interview, even though Gennifer Flowers, when she held that press conference in 1992 . . . [that] the only time she really believed that he had this relationship with Gennifer Flowers was after he gave the deposition?" Growing a bit defensive, Walters replied, "Look, I'm just telling you what she says, OK?"

DECEMBER 2000

RECOVERED HISTORY
What various people said
when Newt Gingrich
got $4.5 million
in a book deal

JAMES CARVILLE: This is the first guy who tried to cash in before he was sworn in.

BILL CLINTON: [I don't] even know how to think in these terms.

REP DAVID BONIER: This is an arrogant act for a man who's about to assume one of the most powerful positions and offices in our land. Before he gets to the public business, he's taking care of his own private profits.

REP CARRIE MEEK: Exactly who does this speaker really work for? Is it the American people or his New York publishing house?

REP CHARLES RANGEL: Whey doesn't Newt end this by giving the $4.5 million to Boys Town?

HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE: The committee strongly questions the appropriateness of what some would describe as an attempt by you to capitalize on your office.

---

OPEN LETTER FROM JUANITA BROADDRICK: I remember it as though it was yesterday. I only wish that it were yesterday and maybe there would still be time to do something about what your husband, Bill Clinton, did to me. There was a political rally for Mr. Clinton's bid for governor of Arkansas. I had obligated myself to be at this rally prior to my being assaulted by your husband in April, 1978. I had made up my mind to make an appearance and then leave as soon as the two of you arrived. This was a big mistake, but I was still in a state of shock and denial . . . As soon as you entered the room, you came directly to me and grabbed my hand. Do you remember how you thanked me, saying "we want to thank you for everything that you do for Bill". At that point, I was pretty shaken and started to walk off. Remember how you kept a tight grip on my hand and drew closer to me? You repeated your statement, but this time with a coldness and look that I have seen many times on television in the last eight years. You said, "Everything you do for Bill". You then released your grip and I said nothing and left the gathering. What did you mean, Hillary? Were you referring to my keeping quiet about the assault I had suffered at the hands of your husband only two weeks before? Were you warning me to continue to keep quiet? We both know the answer to that question.

SEPTEMBER 2000

HILLARY WATCH
Arkansas Space Invader

NEWSMAX: Hillary's Lazio moment came during her husband's bid for a fifth term as Arkansas' governor. His Democratic primary opponent, Tom McRae, the head of Little Rock's Rockefeller Foundation, had called a press conference to complain that Gov. Clinton was dodging debates. As McRae rattled off the list of Clinton's failures in office, a woman standing in the back of the room shouted, "Get off it, Tom." It was Hillary Clinton, who had shown up unannounced to heckle her husband's opponent.

"Do you really want an answer, Tom?" Hillary hollered. "Do you really want a response from Bill when you know he's in Washington doing work for the state?"
Then, in a moment mirroring the one where Lazio pulled his soft-money pledge from his pocket, Mrs. Clinton pulled a four-page prepared statement from her handbag. The late investigative reporter George Carpozi described the confrontation in his 1994 book "Clinton Confidential":

"McRae, a gentle man with impeccable credentials ... stared, mouth agape, at Hillary, who stepped forward attired in a hounds-tooth tweed blazer, turtleneck, and pearl earrings . . . Hillary began reading from a Rockefeller Foundation document, which in fact praised her husband to the hilt and sounded like a point-by-point rebuttal to the very criticisms McRae had raised."

FOX NEWS: Hillary Rodham Clinton denied allegations that she or her fund-raisers offered overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom and Camp David to supporters of her Senate campaign. "We have friends and supporters come and spend time with us and spend the night with us that we are getting to know and who like spending time with us," Clinton said when questioned at a campaign stop at a western New York diner. "I don't see what's news about that.". . . White House staffers said that since the summer of 1999 there have been at least 26 instances in which people, mainly couples, were overnight guests after donating to the first lady's campaign or promising to do so.

. . . "The Lincoln Bedroom was never sold," Clinton said in 1997, when the White House released a list of 938 guests who had spent the night at the executive mansion up to that point in the Clinton presidency. The list included the names of political supporters, as well as entertainment luminaries and old Clinton friends.DRUDGE REPORT: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has given supporters and contributors to her senate campaign rides aboard her Air Force plane, the Drudge Report has learned. Just as White House staffers tried over the weekend to reconcile names and dates of contributors who've stayed overnight at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Camp David -- while neither of the Clintons were present. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart confirmed a Drudge Report exclusive that alleged financial contributors to the first lady's campaign have stayed at the White House, but he dismissed the notion that the first lady did anything improper.

NY POST: Gail Sheehy, who claimed this week that George W. Bush might suffer from dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, denies she is biased even though she has donated $3,550 to Democrats since July 1999 . . . Sheehy was reimbursed by Vanity Fair for most of the money she gave to Democratic candidates and causes. "She was really just buying tickets to fundraising events to get close to people she was writing about," Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak says. Federal Election Commission records obtained by NewsMax.com show that Sheehy gave $1,000 to the ill-fated presidential campaign of Bill Bradley while she was researching a profile on the former senator . . . "It was a good way for Gail to get access to Hillary Clinton," Kseniak tells PAGE SIX. Giuliani was holding press conferences and making public appearances, so Sheehy didn't make any contributions to Republicans. "But Hillary Clinton had much more restricted press access," Kseniak says.

---

AUGUST 2000

NY POST: The Arkansas man who accused Hillary Rodham Clinton last month of uttering an anti-Semitic slur in 1974 has passed a lie-detector test arranged by The Post. Paul Fray, who has charged Mrs. Clinton called him a "f- - -ing Jew bastard" after Bill Clinton lost his race for Congress, cleared the polygraph exam administered Sunday near his home here. "There's no doubt in my mind that Mr. Fray is truthful," concluded state-licensed Arkansas polygrapher Jeff Hubanks, who gave the three-hour test.

. . . The findings were reviewed yesterday by another expert, Richard Keifer, a former head of the FBI's polygraph unit who has 20 years of experience. Keifer judged the results "inconclusive" because they didn't meet the high federal polygraph standards - but said he found nothing to indicate Fray was lying . . .
Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said, "Paul Fray is an admitted liar, and we're not going to be responding to his lies anymore."

NY POST: Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard's wife wrote to Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday, seeking a meeting "as soon as possible" to discuss clemency for her husband, The Post has learned. A "grateful" Esther Pollard contacted Clinton "wife to wife" after the Post reported Thursday that the Democratic Senate candidate moved to block Pollard's transfer to a potentially dangerous unit in the federal prison where he is serving a life sentence . . . A former US Navy intelligence analyst who passed military secrets to Israel, Pollard pleaded guilty to spying and has been behind bars for 15 years.

NY POST: The Clintons' upstate vacation got off to an embarrassing start yesterday when it was revealed the owner of the lakeside home where they are staying is a million-dollar tax delinquent. Developer Thomas McDonald, who is hosting Bill and Hillary at his estate near Syracuse, owes the state $938,357 in unpaid income taxes, interest and penalties, state officials said. "This is obviously one of our more significant personal income-tax delinquencies," said Marc Carey, spokesman for the state Department of Taxation. McDonald's lawyer, Paul Predmore, said his client also has an outstanding federal income tax bill, but he refused to say how much McDonald owes. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said officials have been aware of McDonald's tax problems since last year. "People from time to time have issues with either the IRS or the state, and they generally get resolved," Lockhart said.

NEW YORK POST: Rick Lazio's fans in the Finger Lakes region expressed outrage yesterday that local officials have ordered them to remove "Lazio" signs from their yards - just days before the Clintons arrive for their upstate vacation. Some residents of Skaneateles, where Bill and Hillary Clinton will spend the weekend, were visited this week by village police and received letters informing them that they were violating an ordinance barring political signs more than 30 days before an election . . . Even the Skaneateles mayor admits that the local ordinance isn't clear. It says political signs can be posted only for 30 days - but it doesn't say anything about only 30 days before the election. Mayor Don Price said he has thrown in the towel and won't enforce the "ambiguous" law.
"Some people have become emotional about this election," said Price, who doesn't run on a party line and who refused to say how he is registered (sources say he's a Democrat).

JULY 2000

The question is not whether Hillary Clinton is anti-Semitic. No one will ever know because, like her husband, Hillary Clinton enjoys the immunity of postmodernism: she isn't anything. As the semiotician Marshall Blonksy has written, postmodernism regards "'the individual' as a sentimental attachment, a fiction to be enclosed within quotation marks. If you're postmodern, you scarcely believe in the 'right clothes' that take on your personality. You don't dress as who you are because, quite simply, you don't believe 'you' are. Therefore you are indifferent to consistency and continuity . . . Character and consistency were once the most highly regarded virtue to ascribe to either friend or foe . . . Today, for the first time in modern times, a split or multiple personality has ceased to be an eccentric malady and becomes indispensable."

Because much of the media is both literal and has a memory span of only months at best, politicians such as the Clinton are held accountable primarily for their latest words or actions.

Thus the Clintons can reinvent themselves as often as they like; they are the moral equivalent of Jim Carrey's face. And thus it should come as no surprise that a year ago last April, this woman whom five persons heard use ethnic epithets, told a White House dinner: "It isn't enough to look deep into our own hearts and say we find them free of hatred. We have to do more. Every time we let a religious or racial slur go unchallenged or an indignity go unanswered, we are making a choice to be indifferent, a choice to constrict the circle of human dignity - a choice, I believe, to ignore history at our children's peril."

One of the unpleasant side-effects of the past eight years has been an increasing tendency to divide America into two groups: good people and haters. This has largely served to make more arrogant and hypocritical those claiming to be the former and make more angry those accused of being the latter.

President Clinton and his wife have played no small role in this -- Sister Souljah was one of his first targets of convenience -- and they have probably used the word "hate" more frequently than any White House predecessors. With the semiotic slipperiness that is his hallmark, the word has been applied with equal vigor to those who burn down black churches and to those who criticize the Clintons' behavior, creating a seamless accusatory blend.

Unfortunately, many liberals have accepted the Clintons' dichotomized view of America, one coincidentally pretty much split down the demographic fault line delineating their constituency. It is unfortunate because it has encouraged self-righteous behavior that instead of fostering diversity, has merely created more division. And there's always the danger, as in the case of Mrs. Clinton, that you will get hoisted on your own petard.

ZERO TOLERANCE
MULTIPLE STANDARDS

The kid gloves treatment of Hillary Clinton's allegedly ethnic slurs is, of course, in marked contrast to the media handling of, say, John Rocker, Louis Farrakahn or Jesse Jackson. But she is not the only one who has been give a pass. A reader sends along a 1997 issue of the Progressive with an article by Susan Douglas that includes this:

"As ABC News reminded us over and over, the lesson from Tiger Woods's victory is 'that anyone can make it to the top.' Woods was immediately canonized by every news outlet in the land as a breakthrough, trans-racial saint, an agent of integration and goodwill. The newscasters genuflected. Once again, the future of western civilization was freighted onto the shoulders of the latest guy who can throw/hit/kick a ball. The media pilloried pro-golfer Fuzzy Zoeller for making racist remarks about fried chicken and collard greens. But they have virtually ignored Woods's own racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks.

"In the April issue of GQ, Woods speculated that 'good-looking women hang around baseball and basketball' because 'black guys have big dicks.' And he asks: Why do lesbians always get to their destination so quickly? He answers: 'Because lesbians are always going sixty-nine.' This doesn't fit into the pack journalism "new-messiah" image, now does it? So just let it slide."

But the current masters of applying multiple standards to matters claimed to be worthy of zero tolerance may well be the Blair government. Not only was Tony Blair's campaign to end under-aged drinking in bars celebrated by his son turning up dead drunk on a London sidewalk, but Home Secretary Jack Straw, riding in a car driven by a special branch officer, was pulled over for doing 103 mph on a motorway. The incident occurred at 8:55 am as Straw was rushing to a meeting with Blair, perhaps to discuss new measures to make the British behave. Straw, hit man for Blair's zero tolerance policies, also has a son who got into trouble with the police after selling ten pounds (sterling) of marijuana to an undercover reporter.

---

NEWSDAY: New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer was accused of threatening unspecified action against talk-radio station WABC after getting embroiled in an on-air quarrel with talk-show host Sean Hannity and author and Clinton critic Laura Ingraham. A spokesman for Spitzer denied the charge leveled by producer Eric Stanger. The fracas began during the regular program featuring Hannity, a host with conservative leanings. Spitzer appeared via telephone as the Democratic participant in a discussion with Hannity and Ingraham, author of "The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places." Spitzer spokesman Scott Brown said Spitzer had been told the subject was to be Republican vice presidential candidate Richard Cheney. The debate grew heated, straying from the subject of Cheney. But as Hannity continued talking over his responses, Spitzer attacked Rep. Bob Barr as a hypocrite who had fathered an illegitimate child, apparently mistaking Barr for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has admitted an extramarital affair. Spitzer kept to that position, although Hannity gave him a chance to step back. Spitzer hung up when the show went to a commercial. But shortly afterward, according to Stanger, Spitzer called the station control room and began speaking with him. "At one point," Stanger said, "he says to me, 'Let me assure you, I intend to use my capacity of the office of attorney general to act on this.'" "My eyebrows went up," Stanger said. "I said, 'Sir, is that a threat?'" Stanger said Spitzer immediately responded, "No, no, no. What I meant is that I am going to call my friends in government to tell them to boycott the show." Brown denied that Spitzer had threatened the station. Spitzer felt "sandbagged," Brown said, because he expected to talk about Cheney and did not know Ingraham would be on the show. Brown also acknowledged the reference to Barr was a mistake.

---

Jeff Johns, program director of WLKK in Erie, PA, tells the Washington Times, "Imagine my surprise when I got the call on Tuesday asking if I was interested in speaking with Mrs. Clinton regarding her new health plan for children and the campaign for the Senate. Apparently [Mrs. Clinton's] media types figure Erie County, PA, and Erie County NY [which surrounds Buffalo] are one and the same."

---

JOHN MCCASLIN, WASHINGTON TIMES: Let's get this straight: President Clinton couldn't "recall" being alone with Monica Lewinsky in the West Wing of the White House. Yet 26 years ago, he recalls, Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't utter an anti-Semitic slur against his congressional campaign manager, Paul Fray.

Mrs. Clinton couldn't locate her missing Rose Law Firm billing records in the White House family quarters, until such time as they mysteriously reappeared next to an ironing board. Yet this week, Mrs. Clinton easily retrieved a handwritten letter, dated July 1, 1997, in which Mr. Fray asks the first lady for forgiveness (for what we don't know).

---

THE LIBERAL JOHN ROCKER?

Whatever the facts of the matter, the accusation in a new book that Hillary Clinton called one of her staffers a "Jew bastard" in 1974 adds a significant new problem to her already troubled effort. Clinton flatly denied the incident ever happened and quoted her husband as saying, "I was there on election night in 1974 and this charge is simply not true."

The campaign also produced a 1997 handwritten letter from the man allegedly excoriated, Paul Fray, to Hillary Clinton in which he says, "I have wronged you. I ask for your forgiveness because I did say things against you, and called you names, not only to your face -- but behind your back . . . names that are unmentionable." The circumstances under which Fray allegedly wrote the letter are not clear but the document is reminiscent of the affidavits signed by various women denying being sexually involved with Clinton's husband. The Clintons have the largest collection of affidavits and letters attesting to alleged non-events to be found in contemporary politics.

Fray's comments, quoted in Jerry Oppenheimer's new book, "State of a Union," have been verified not only by his wife but by another Clinton aide at the time, Neill McDonald.

According to Michael Kramer in the NY Daily News:

"The slur allegedly was uttered at a heated, finger-pointing session at Bill Clinton's Fayetteville, Ark., campaign headquarters on election night in 1974, following his defeat in his first try for political office, a run for Congress in Arkansas' 3rd Congressional District. In the room that night were Bill Clinton; his then-girlfriend, Hillary Rodham; Paul Fray, Clinton's campaign manager, and Fray's wife, Mary Lee. Another campaign worker, Neill McDonald, was just outside the door and says he heard everything. The story of that encounter has been widely reported before, but without any charge that Hillary Rodham ripped into Paul Fray using an anti-Semitic slur. In interviews with The News on Friday and Saturday, the Frays and McDonald all confirmed that Hillary uttered the slur. McDonald said Hillary was speaking in the "heat of battle" and that he doesn't believe she is an anti-Semite. McDonald added that he is and has always been a supporter of the Clintons."

If that was the end of the story, it might soon fade. But what threatens to turn Clinton into the liberal John Rocker are other reports of anti-Semitic comments by her. In fact, the story was actually broken by Newsmax last fall when former Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson gave this description to the news service's Christopher Ruddy:

RUDDY: You mentioned that Bill and Hillary Clinton would frequently argue with one another using the worst expletives known to mankind, sometimes in the presence of their daughter Chelsea. One of the comments, you said, was an epithet that they frequently used about Jews. What was that?

PATTERSON: Yeah, they'd use - it was fairly common for both of them to tell ethnic jokes and use ethnic slurs about Jews.

RUDDY: What was the particular epithet that they'd use to each other?

PATTERSON: "Jew Motherf----r", "Jew Bastard".

RUDDY: They would refer to each other that way in the presence of troopers?

PATTERSON: Yes, that was quite common.

RUDDY: Why do you think they would do that?

PATTERSON: I don't know. ...

RUDDY: There's a couple of things going on here. They would make these clearly anti-Semitic epithets to one another, put-downs.

PATTERSON: Correct

RUDDY: And this was done, over the course of six years you heard it enough that you knew that it was fairly commonplace between the two of them?

PATTERSON: Right . . .

Dick Morris has joined the fracas, repeating his previous claims that on one occasion HR Clinton said to him, "Money, that's all you people care about is money." Morris says he responded, "By money, Hillary, by you people, I assume you mean political consultants?" And she said, 'Oh yes, of course that's what I mean.' But it wasn't what I thought she meant."

The president had risen to HR Clinton's defense but his credentials are more than a little suspect ever since the tapes of his conversations with Gennifer Flowers, which included this Flowers comment on Mario Cuomo: "Well, he seems like he could get real mean . . . I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have some mafioso major connections." And Clinton replies, "Well, he acts like one."

And then there's that police sting video of Roger Clinton saying he has to get some cocaine for his brother who has a nose like a vacumn cleaner, in which Roger makes free use of the word nigger, a term trooper Patterson says he also heard from WJ Clinton when talking about Jesse Jackson and prominent Little Rock black figure, Robert 'Say' McIntosh.

HR Clinton has already received campaign absolution from Ed Koch and Abe Foxman. How the rest of he constituency will react remains in doubt, but it is probably the best news John Rocker has heard in some time.

JUNE 2000

Some stats from Slate: Percentage of photos on Rick Lazio's web site that show the candidate with his family: 14.3. Percentage of photos on Hillary Clinton's web site that show the candidate with her family: 0

MAY 2000

VILLAGE VOICE: [Union supporters of HRC at a campaign lunch] would have dropped their forks if they had heard that Hillary served for six years on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, a union-busting behemoth. If they had learned the details of her friendship with Wal-Mart, they might have lost their lunches. She didn't mention Wal-Mart . . . In 1986, when Hillary was first lady of Arkansas, she was put on the board of Wal-Mart. Officials at the time said she wasn't filling a vacancy. In May 1992, as Hubby's presidential campaign heated up, she resigned from the board of Wal-Mart. Company officials said at the time that they weren't going to fill her vacancy. So what the hell was she doing on the Wal-Mart board? According to press accounts at the time, she was a show horse at the company's annual meetings when founder Sam Walton bused in cheering throngs to celebrate his non-union empire, which is headquartered in Arkansas, one of the country's poorest states. According to published reports, she was placed in charge of the company's "green" program to protect the environment . . . Was Hillary the voice of conscience on the board for American and foreign workers? Contemporary accounts make no mention of that. They do describe her as a "corporate litigator" in those days, and they mention, speaking of environmental matters, that she also served on the board of Lafarge, a company that, according to a press account, once burned hazardous fuels to run its cement plants.

NEWSMAX: Without the actions of the government jailers who operated the Federal Prison Medical Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, where key Whitewater witness Jim McDougal died on March 8, 1998, Mrs. Clinton likely would have been otherwise engaged Tuesday evening [the night of her senatorial nomination] as a defendant in her own criminal Whitewater trial. The astonishing turn of events that spared the first lady from indictment two years ago is described in the latest Whitewater tome to hit the bookstores, "Truth at Any Cost," by The Washington Post's Sue Schmidt and Time magazine's Michael Weisskopf.

On April 27, 1998, Independent Counsel Ken Starr's chief Little Rock deputy Hickman Ewing assembled his team of prosecutors to decide whether to indict Hillary. "[Ewing] paced the room for more than three hours, recalling facts from memory in his distinctive Memphis twang. He spoke passionately, laying out a case that the first lady had obstructed government investigators and made false statements about her legal work for McDougal's S&L, particularly the thrift's notorious multimillion-dollar Castle Grande real estate project." However, as Schmidt and Weisskopf report, Ewing's case against the first lady had a giant hole in it.

"The biggest problem was the death a month earlier of Jim McDougal.... Without him, prosecutors would have a hard time describing the S&L dealings they suspected Hillary Clinton had lied about."

NEWSMAX

---

Less than four months after the national press condemned a Buffalo talk radio host for asking Senate hopeful Hillary Clinton about her alleged affair with the late Vince Foster, the New York media is front paging rumors that her opponent, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is having an affair with a 45-year-old Manhattan businesswoman. "Mayor Admits Upper East Side Mom is His Gal Pal," blared the headline on Thursday's New York Daily News, leaving the impression that Giuliani has acknowleged cheating on his wife Donna Hanover. In fact, the New York mayor has done no such thing, admitting at a Wednesday press conference only that he and Judith Nathan are "good friends." The day before, The New York Post published a photo of Giuliani leaving a Manhattan eatery with Judith Nathan, kicking off a tabloid feeding frenzy that began with a Tuesday item about Giuliani and his "companion" on the News' gossip page.

. . . In January, Mrs. Clinton called questions about her own alleged affair with Foster "inappropriate" and "out of bounds," telling Buffalo radio host Tom Bauerle, "I do hate you for asking about that." The national press, including editorial writers for both The Daily News and The New York Post, resoundingly agreed, excoriating Bauerle for posing sex questions to Hillary. In fact, media wags considered the foray into Mrs. Clinton's sex life so outrageous that TV network news divisions clamored for an interview Bauerle. "Today Show" host Matt Lauer personally grilled the radio talker on the appropriateness of raising questions about the first lady's marital fidelity. The attacks on Bauerle grew so intense that he disappeared for a few days. Within two weeks of his interview with Clinton, his station, WGR55AM in Buffalo, canceled his popular "Breakfast with Bauerle" show, replacing it with an all sports talk show which Bauerle continues to host.

NEWSMAX

* * * NEWSMAX: The New York press corps hasn't been able to aggressively question Senate candidate Hillary Clinton because she's using her Secret Service security detail to physically block reporters. That was the charge made by New York Post Albany bureau chief Fred Dicker . . . Appearing on CNBC's Hardball, Dicker was asked by host Chris Matthews why the first lady refuses to appear on the Sunday TV talk shows . . .

MATTHEWS: Why don't you folks in the local press corps grill her on who she is and where she came from?

DICKER: I'll give you the answer to that, Chris. We try and the Secret Service stops us. I mean, she'll show up at a local event and you'll go up to her like you would any candidate, and say, "Mrs. Clinton, can I ask you...." and she runs off and the Secret Service blocks us. She's done that time after time after time. You can't get to her. She's using the resources of the federal government to prevent us from just having the kind of access you would take for granted with any other politician . . .

During a 1996 fund-raising swing through Arizona, local reporters complained that Secret Service was interfering with press coverage that posed no physical risk to the first lady whatsoever. "Reporters at the Monday afternoon speech were kept at arm's length from the first lady by Secret Service agents, who warned the press not to yell out questions," reported The Arizona Republic at the time. Hours earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected a White House bid to keep some of Mrs. Clinton's Whitewater records sealed.

Last March, at least one reporter accused Mrs. Clinton's bodyguards of physically attacking journalists as they tried to cover her march in New York's St. Patrick's Day parade, where she was roundly booed. "Secret Service agents literally are pushing press to the ground," Metro Network newsman Glenn Schuck told a WABC-NY radio audience. "They just lost their minds, in my opinion. I mean they just started pushing and shoving; female camera people five feet tall were getting thrown to the ground, cameras flying. Myself, I was grabbed by the shoulder, I was thrown back over. I think somebody from Channel 11 landed on my back. From that point it really didn't get any better." The bizarre episode was dismissed by Schuck's media colleagues, including one Washington based columnist who told NewsMax.com she didn't believe it happened even after hearing Schuck's report on tape . . .

Five weeks after the St. Patrick's Day assaults, an NBC camera crew was beaten by federal agents as they attempted to film the Clinton administration's gun-point abduction of Elian Gonzalez. The network's sound man was slammed in the head with a rifle butt. An NBC cameraman was slugged twice and held down by an agent who kept a boot on his back for the duration of the raid. He was later hospitalized. Both were told they'd be shot if they moved. The assaults were corroborated by a third member of the NBC crew and at least one Gonzalez family friend who witnessed the attack.

* * * WORLDNET DAILY: The FBI has turned up evidence showing first lady Hillary Clinton's "White House Office Database," nicknamed WHODB, may have been illegally commingled with the Democratic National Committee's database for fund-raising purposes, documents show. And the evidence was compelling enough for the FBI director in 1997 to urge the attorney general to assign an independent counsel to investigate. She never did . . .

Under the heading, "Misuse or Conversion of Government Property," [FBI Director Louis] Freeh wrote: "Despite a January 1994 warning from the White House Counsel's Office not to use WHODB for political purposes, the new memo for Erskine Bowles and Harold Ickes shows an intent to do just that."

The memo, written by a former Bowles aide, states: "Harold and Deborah DeLee want to make sure WHODB is integrated w/DNC database . . .

APRIL 2000

NY POST: Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign returned $22,000 in "soft money" to a businesswoman linked to a Democratic campaign contribution from a drug smuggler in Havana. The donation by Vivian Mannerud Verble, first reported by The Post yesterday, was the largest single contribution received by Clinton's soft-money committee. Verble, whose company runs charter flights between Cuba and Miami, also served as the fund-raising intermediary between Jorge Cabrera and the Democratic National Committee in 1995, according to congressional investigators. The probers reportedly learned that Cabrera cut a $20,000 check to the DNC from a bank account in which he also kept profits from his lucrative cocaine trade. The DNC eventually returned the money, while Cabrera pleaded guilty to importing 6,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States. He is serving a 19-year federal prison sentence in Florida . . . Although Verble was never charged with any criminal wrongdoing, she was at the center of one of the most embarrassing fund-raising scandals in the Clinton administration. Verble was back in the news this January when she volunteered to fly Elian Gonzalez back to Havana on a private jet operated by her company, Airline Brokers Co.

ASBURY PARK PRESS: First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has found financial support for her Senate bid in a most unlikely place, the law firm of former White House independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Clinton's campaign received $32,250 in donations from the political action committee for the Kirkland & Ellis law firm during the first three months of 2000 . . . The money came from 33 attorneys and one legal assistant at the firm. No one from Kirkland & Ellis has contributed to New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's Senate campaign during the same period, records show. And no other law firm's attorneys were nearly as generous in combined contributions to Clinton during the first quarter . . . A recent report in The New Yorker magazine noted that law partners were split over whether Starr should be allowed to return to the firm's Washington office.

JERRY SEPER, WASHINGTON TIMES: The Arkansas Supreme Court, which is considering disbarment proceedings against President Clinton, yesterday said it also is investigating whether first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton engaged in fraud in a questionable Whitewater-related land deal. The probe, confirmed by the court's Committee of Professional Conduct, has focused on accusations about Mrs. Clinton's legal representation of a failed Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association real estate venture, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. called a "sham." A major area of concern is an option agreement that facilitated a $300,000 payment to Seth Ward, father-in-law of Mrs. Clinton's law partner, Webster L. Hubbell. The option, written by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Hubbell while they were at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm, guaranteed Mr. Ward a payoff and negated his liability in the project.

WASHINGTON TIMES

MARCH 2000

NEWSMAX: News staff at WABC Talk Radio in New York want to know why Secret Service agents got physical with at least a half dozen reporters who were covering First Lady Hillary Clinton as she marched in Friday's St. Patrick's Day parade. In-studio newsman George Weber told NewsMax.com that he's been trying to get answers since Monday, after his in-the-field partner Glen Shuck was grabbed by Mrs. Clinton's bodyguards and thrown over another reporter, landing on his back . . . So far, his calls to the White House and the Secret Service have gone unreturned, Weber told NewsMax.com. . . . The WABC newsman says he can't understand why other news organizations have shunned the story of the attack by Hillary's guards, especially since Shuck was one of six reporters who were assaulted . . . In another incident, Hillary's bodyguards attempted to block a CBS cameraman filming the crowd as they booed the First Lady. "That's a first for me," said Weber, "to hear that the Secret Service was actually trying to block camera people from taking shots of citizens who are on a parade route."

NEWSMAX: Secret Service agents protecting first lady Hillary Clinton roughed up several reporters along the route of New York City's St. Patrick's Day parade, WABC Radio reported Friday afternoon . . . "Secret Service agents literally are pushing press to the ground," reported WABC's Glenn Shuck . . . "At one point one (Secret Service agent) grabbed me on my right side with his hands, and kind of grabbed my coat to hold me back, definitely forcefully," Shuck told afternoon drive-time talk show host Sean Hannity. "The Secret Service just lost their minds, in my opinion. I mean they just started pushing and shoving; female camera people five feet tall were getting thrown to the ground, cameras flying. Myself, I was grabbed by the shoulder, I was thrown back over. I think somebody from Channel 11 landed on my back. From that point it really didn't get any better."

NEWSMAX

 

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