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SUMMARY
FIRST FIRST LADY to come under criminal investigation
FIRST FIRST LADY to almost be indicted acccording
to one of the special prosecutors
NUMBER of Hillary Clinton fundraisers
convicted of, or pleading no contest to, crime: 5
NUMBER OF TIMES that Hillary Clinton, providing
testimony to Congress, said that she didn't remember, didn't
know, or something similar: 250
NUMBER OF CLOSE BUSINESS
partners of Hillary
Clinton who ended up in prison: 3. The
Clintons' two partners in Whitewater wereconvicted of 24 counts
of fraud and conspiracy. Hillary Clinton's partner and mentor
at the Rose law firm, Webster Hubbell, pleaded guilty to federal
mail fraud and tax evasion charges, including defrauding former
clients and former partners out of more than $480,000. Hillary Clinton was mentioned 35
times in the indictment.
IN THE 1980s,
Hillary Clinton made a $44,000 profit on a $2,000 investment
in a cellular phone franchise deal took advantage of the FCC's
preference for locals, minorities and women. The franchise was
almost immediately flipped to the cellular giant, McCaw.
HILLARY CLINTON AND HER HUSBAND set up a resort land scam known as Whitewater in
which the unwitting bought third rate property 50 miles from
the nearest grocery store and, thanks to the sleazy financing,
about half the purchasers, many of them seniors, lost their property.
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.
HRC'S 1994 HEALTH CARE PLAN, according to one account, included fines of up
to $5,000 for refusing to join the government-mandated health
plan, $5,000 for failing to pay premiums on time, 15 years to
doctors who received "anything of value" in exchange
for helping patients short-circuit the bureaucracy, $10,000 a
day for faulty physician paperwork, $50,000 for unauthorized
patient treatment, and $100,000 a day for drug companies that
messed up federal filings.
TWO MONTHS after
commencing the Whitewater scheme, Hillary Clinton invested $1,000
in cattle futures. Within a few days she had 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.
IN 1996,
Hillary Clinton's Rose law firm billing records, sought for two
years by congressional investigators and the special prosecutor
were found in the back room of the personal residence at the
White House. Clinton said she had no idea how they got there.
DRUG DEALER Jorge
Cabrera gave enough to the Democrats to have his picture taken
with both Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. . . Cabrera was arrested
in January 1996 inside a cigar warehouse near here in Dade County,
where more than 500 pounds of cocaine had been hidden. He and
several accomplices were charged with having smuggled 3,000 pounds
of cocaine into the United States through the Keys
In 2000, Hillary
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.
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
HILLARY CLINTON'S participation
in a Whitewater related land deal became suspicious enough to
trigger an investigation by the Arkansas Supreme Court.
IN 2007, A
Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton became a target of the FBI 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.
HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTED the appointment of Rudy Giuliani's buddy, Bernie
Kerick, to be Secretary of Homeland Security,. Kerick subsecquently
withdrew and not long after was indicted.
AP - Democrat
John Edwards said the top strategist for presidential rival Hillary
Rodham Clinton [Mark Penn] has ties to the controversial Blackwater
security firm, and warned against installing "a group of
corporate Democrats" to replace the Bush White House. Edwards
suggested similarities between Clinton, the Democratic front-runner,
and the Republican president. Penn, Clinton's pollster and senior
strategist, is the worldwide president of Burson-Marsteller,
a public relations firm. A subsidiary, BKSH, helped prepare Blackwater
founder Erik Prince for a contentious congressional hearing this
week, but Burson-Marsteller says the relationship has ended.
Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said Penn had done no work
on the Blackwater account.
KATHRYN JOYCE AND JEFF SHARLET, MOTHER JONES - Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton
has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and
prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group
known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers
such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick
Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. . . Clinton's
prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"),
a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and
military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf
of Christ. . . [the leader's] friends include former Attorney
General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative
Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). The Fellowship's God-led men have also
included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death
squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official
disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre
of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton,
says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington,
Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members
of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.
JOSHUA GREEN, THE ATLANTIC, 2006 - Clinton's proficiency
in this innermost sanctum has unnerved some of the capital's
most exalted religious conservatives. "You're not talking
about some tree-hugging, Jesus-is-my-Buddha sort of stuff,"
says David Kuo, a former Bush official in the Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives, who worked with Clinton to promote
joint legislation and who, like Brownback, has apologized to
her for past misdeeds. "These are powerful evangelicals
she's meeting with."
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."
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).
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.
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
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
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 . . , 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.". . . 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.
"
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.
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.
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. . .
WALL STREET JOURNAL
- The core of [HRC'S] team includes several staunch loyalists
from her husband's time in power, including former Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright, former United Nations ambassador
Richard Holbrooke, and Samuel "Sandy" Berger, who succeeded
Mr. Lake as national security adviser during Mr. Clinton's second
term. . . WIKIPEDIA - In April 2005, Berger plead guilty
to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention
of classified material from the National Archives in Washington.
According to the lead prosecutor in the case Berger only took
copies of classified information and that no original material
was destroyed, however there is notable controversy and speculation
that he might have removed or destroyed originals of other unknown
documents as well. |
DETAILS
WHY IS THE MEDIA CONCEALING
HILLARY CLINTON'S RIGHT WING RELIGIOUS TIES?
Thanks to alternative media coverage
- including that of the Progressive Review - there has been a
slight increase in corporate press coverage of John McCain's
ties to extremist Christian evangelist John Hagee. But even
conventional liberals like Bill Moyers and EJ Dionne, while finally
citing the McCain-Hagee connection, still refuse to delve into
Hillary Clinton's ties to The Fellowship, a secret rightwing
religious group involving a number of Washington big names like
herself.
The story has been well documented
by such publications as Harper's, the Los Angeles Times and Mother
Jones. And it's not a new tale, but it's one the Washington media
runs away from, in part because it might wreck the journalists'
comfortably servile relationship with some of their sources -
with the Clintons near the top of the list.
It's Washington journalism at its
worst, the sort of politician-pet relationship that led the media
to so badly mislead the public about the Iraq war and, for that
matter, many other crucial facts about the Clintons. To this
day, for example, the media is tough on Barack Obama's Tony Resko
relationship but doesn't mention Hillary Clinton's much deeper
relationship with Webster Hubbell.
As we noted about a week ago, the
two big exceptions to the media cover up of The Fellowship are
Andrea Mitchell and Jim Popkin of NBC, who reported:
"In his preaching, [Fellowship leader Douglas] Coe repeatedly
urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It's a commitment
Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded
from his followers -- a rhetorical technique that now is drawing
sharp criticism.
"'Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of
the immense power these three men had, these nobodies from nowhere,"
Coe said.
"Later in the sermon, Coe said: "Jesus said, You have
to put me before other people. And you have to put me before
yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party.
You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your
own life and ahead of other people."
Coe also quoted Jesus and said: "One of the things [Jesus]
said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father,
mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple.'
So I don't care what other qualifications you have, if you don't
do that you can't be a disciple of Christ."
The sermons are little surprise to writer Jeff Sharlet. He lived
among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by
their secrecy and rhetoric.
"'We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler,
Lenin and Mao. And I would say, 'Isn't there a problem with that?'
And they seemed perplexed by the question. Hitler's genocide
wasn't really an issue for them. It was the strength that he
emulated," said Sharlet. . . 'They're notoriously secretive,'
Sharlet said. 'In fact, they jokingly call themselves the Christian
Mafia. Which becomes less of a joke when you realize that they
really are dedicated to being what they call an invisible organization.'"
SOURCE WATCH The Fellowship, headquartered in Washington D.C.,
is a humanitarian religious-right Christian organization about
which very little is known. Their signature event is the annual
National Prayer Breakfast but that is only a small part of their
activities. They are heavily involved in the political culture
of Washington, counting at least a dozen Senators and Congressman
as known members. The group has also gone by the names Family,
Foundation, C Street Center, and International Christian Leadership.
An article published in the March 2003 issue of Harper's entitled
"Jesus Plus Nothing" by Jeffrey Sharlet provides an
excellent exposition; however, Sharlet infiltrated only at the
lowest level and so his article is woefully short of details
concerning the organization, its mission, or who runs it.
In a June 12, 2003, followup interview
by Anthony Lappé for Guerrilla News Network, Jeffrey Sharlet
declares that the group's goal and aspiration are "an 'invisible'
world organization led by Christ"; and that in his view,
their "core issue is capitalism and power."
In 1972, The Fellowship was reorganized
to be even more clandestine, shedding the overhead of a typical
high-profile nonprofit so that it was essentially little more
than a holding company disbursing cash to dozens of ministries
beneath it. By 1985, The Fellowship had 150 individual ministries
beneath it. This model continues to this day with countless ministries
coming into and going out of existence depending upon the current
needs of the organization and the initiatives it wishes to fund.
As Sharlet writes in his Harper's piece, The Foundation believes
that its mobile "cell" structure, which it likens to
those organized by Lenin, Bin Laden, and Hitler, makes it far
more efficient than a hierarchical organization. And just like
Enron's many shell corporations, their cell structure has the
additional advantage of being able to move money around very
quickly and in a way that makes it difficult to track or audit.
. .
Those in the Fellowship who are
asked about their role either deny its existence or politely
refuse to answer questions about it. All have taken a vow of
silence not to speak about The Fellowship.
http://www.toobeautiful.org/lat_020927.html
tp://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525
HILLARY CLINTON HEAVY INTO RIGHTWING
RELIGIOUS POWER CULT
HILLARY CLINTON'S RIGHTWING RECORD ON INTERNATIONAL
LAW
STEPHEN ZUNES, FOREIGN
POLICY IN FOCUS - Senator Hillary Clinton has opposed restrictions
on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that
engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Indeed, she
has supported unconditional U.S. arms transfers and police training
to such repressive and autocratic governments as Egypt, Morocco,
Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan,
Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Chad, just to name a few. She has also
refused to join many of her Democratic colleagues in signing
a letter endorsing a treaty that would limit arms transfers to
countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic
human rights violations.
Civilian Casualties
Not only is she willing
to support military assistance to repressive regimes, she has
little concern about controlling weapons that primarily target
innocent civilians. Senator Clinton has refused to support the
international treaty to ban land mines, which are responsible
for killing and maiming thousands of civilians worldwide, a disproportionate
percentage of whom have been children.
She was also among a minority
of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority last
year in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting
U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against
civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains
hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size
of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up
to 30%, become de facto land mines. As many as 98% of the casualties
caused by these weapons are civilians.
Senator Clinton also has
a record of dismissing reports by human rights monitors that
highlight large-scale attacks against civilians by allied governments.
For example, in the face of widespread criticism by reputable
human rights organizations over Israel's systematic assaults
against civilian targets in its April 2002 offensive in the West
Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored a resolution defending the
Israeli actions that claimed that they were "necessary steps
to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist
infrastructure in the Palestinian areas." She opposed UN
efforts to investigate alleged war crimes by Israeli occupation
forces and criticized President Bush for calling on Israel to
pull back from its violent re-conquest of Palestinian cities
in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
Similarly, when Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights
groups issued detailed reports regarding Israeli war crimes during
that country's assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Senator
Clinton insisted they were wrong and that Israel's attacks were
legal. Furthermore, though these groups had also criticized the
radical Lebanese group Hezbollah for committing war crimes by
firing rockets into civilian-populated areas in Israel, exhaustive
investigations have revealed absolutely no evidence that they
had used the civilian population as "human shields"
to protect themselves from Israeli assaults. Despite this, Senator
Clinton, without providing any credible evidence to the contrary,
still insists that they in fact had used human shields and were
therefore responsible for the death of more than 800 Lebanese
civilians.
Senator Clinton has voted
to send tens of billions of dollars unconditionally to Baghdad
to prop up that regime, apparently unconcerned about the well-documented
reports of death squads being run from the Interior Ministry
that have killed many thousands of unarmed Sunni men.
In Senator Clinton's world
view, if a country is considered an important strategic ally
of the United States, any charges of human rights abuses –
no matter how strong the evidence – must be summarily dismissed.
Indeed, despite the Israeli government's widespread and well-documented
violations of international humanitarian law, Senator Clinton
has praised Israel for its "values that respect the dignity
and rights of human beings."
IT'S COST THE TAXPAYERS $2.3 BILLION TO KEEP HILLARY
IN THE SENATE
LA TIMES - To fuel her rise, Clinton has
relied on the controversial funding device known as "earmarking."
The earmarks enabled her to win favor with important constituents,
many of whom provided financial support for her campaigns. .
. Since taking office in 2001, Clinton has delivered $500 million
worth of earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations.
About 64% of those corporations provided funds to her campaigns
through donations made by employees, executives, board members
or lobbyists, a review by the Los Angeles Times shows.
All told, Clinton has earmarked more than
$2.3 billion in federal appropriations for projects in her state
since her election to the Senate, much of it for public works
projects funded in conjunction with fellow Democratic Sen. Charles
E. Schumer and others in the New York congressional delegation.
CATALOG OF HILLARY CLINTON'S LIES
STUART TAYLOR JR, NATIONAL JOURNAL - Let's
take a trip down memory lane -- from the tawdriness of the 1992
presidential campaign through the mendacity of the ensuing years
-- to revisit a sampling of why so many of us came to think that
Hillary's first instinct when in an embarrassing spot is to lie.
Gennifer and Monica: Former lounge singer
Gennifer Flowers surfaced in early 1992 with claims -- corroborated
by tapes of phone calls -- that she had had a long affair with
then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who had arranged a state job
for her. Bill Clinton told the media, falsely, that the woman's
"story is untrue."
Although well aware of her husband's philandering
history, Hillary backed his squishy denials, famously asserting
on "60 Minutes" that she was not "some little
woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette." More deceptively,
she suggested to ABC's Sam Donaldson that Bill's contacts with
Flowers were just an example of how he loved to "help people
who are in trouble" and "listen to their problems."
"Hillary's words uncannily foreshadowed
her insistence six years later to ... a White House aide that
Bill had 'ministered' to [Monica] Lewinsky because she was a
troubled young woman," Sally Bedell Smith writes in her
fine new book about the Clintons, For Love of Politics. Hillary
has continued to insist that she believed what she said about
Lewinsky. But friends and former aides have told Smith and others
that she knew her husband was lying all along.
Travelgate: The first Clinton scandal after
Bill became president started in May 1993, when Chief of Staff
Mack McLarty fired the seven employees in the White House office
that arranges travel for the press corps. The White House cited
gross financial mismanagement. (The charge was never substantiated.)
The sudden firings created a media uproar, especially when the
dismissed employees were quickly replaced by friends and relatives
of the Clintons.
Hillary later told the General Accounting
Office, in a document prepared by her attorney, that she had
no role in the decision to fire the employees, did not know the
"origin of the decision," and "did not direct
that any action be taken by anyone" other than keeping her
informed.
But her statements were contradicted by
evidence, including a long-concealed memo to McLarty and a written
chronology prepared by White House aide David Watkins that came
to light years later. Hillary, Watkins wrote, had said that "we
need those people out and we need our people in" and had
made it clear that "there would be hell to pay" unless
she got "immediate action." Another aide wrote that
Hillary intimate Susan Thomases had said, "Hillary wants
these people fired."
While saying that no provable crime had
been committed, Robert Ray, who had succeeded Kenneth Starr as
independent counsel, reported in October 2000 that Hillary's
statements had been "factually false" and that there
was "overwhelming evidence that she in fact did have a role
in the decision to fire the employees."
Cattle futures: The New York Times revealed
in March 1994 that in 1978, just before her husband became governor,
Hillary had made a $100,000 profit on a $1,000 investment in
highly speculative cattle-futures contracts in only nine months.
Hillary's first explanation (through aides) of this extraordinary
windfall was that she had made the investment after "reading
The Wall Street Journal" and placed all the trades herself
after seeking advice from "numerous people." It was
so preposterous that she soon had to abandon it. Eventually,
she had to admit that longtime Clinton friend James Blair had
executed 30 of her 32 trades directly with an Arkansas broker.
In an April 1994 press conference, Hillary
denied knowing of "any favorable treatment" by Blair.
But the astronomical odds against any financial novice making
a 10,000 percent profit without the game being rigged led many
to believe that Blair, the outside counsel to Arkansas-based
poultry giant Tyson Foods, must have put only profitable trades
in Hillary's account and absorbed her losses. The heavily regulated
Tyson needed friends in high places, and Bill Clinton helped
it pass a 1983 state law raising weight limits on chicken trucks.
Removal of Vince Foster documents: During
the same press conference, Hillary was asked why her then-chief
of staff, Maggie Williams, had been involved in removing documents
from the office of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster after
his suicide. Foster had been a partner of Hillary's at the Rose
Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark. "I don't know that she did
remove any documents," Hillary said. But it was reported
three months later that Hillary had instructed Williams to remove
the Foster documents to the White House residence. Then they
were turned over to Clinton attorney Bob Barnett.
Castle Grande: In the summer of 1995, the
Resolution Trust Corp. reported that Hillary had been one of
11 Rose Law Firm lawyers who had done work in the mid-1980s on
an Arkansas real estate development, widely known as Castle Grande,
promoted by James McDougal and Seth Ward. McDougal headed a troubled
thrift, Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, and had given Hillary
legal business as a favor to Bill. McDougal and his wife, Susan,
were the Clintons' partners in their Whitewater real estate investment.
Ward was father-in-law to Webb Hubbell, another former Rose Law
Firm partner, who was briefly Clinton's associate attorney general
in 1993. Later, Hubbell went to prison for fraud, as did James
McDougal.
Castle Grande was a sewer of sham transactions,
some used to funnel cash into Madison Guaranty. Castle Grande's
ultimate collapse contributed to that of the thrift, which cost
taxpayers millions. Hillary told federal investigators that she
knew nothing about Castle Grande. When it turned out that more
than 30 of her 60 hours of legal work for Madison Guaranty involved
Castle Grande, she said she had known the project under a different
name. A 1996 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report said that
she had drafted documents that Castle Grande used to "deceive
federal bank examiners."
Prosecutors later came to believe that
Hillary had padded her bills; she "wasn't guilty of [knowingly]
facilitating nefarious transactions -- she was guilty of doing
less work than she took credit for," Jeff Gerth and Don
Van Natta Jr. explain in their 2007 biography, Her Way. Hillary
herself never took refuge in this explanation.
Billing records: Hillary's billing records
for Castle Grande were in a 116-page, 5-inch-thick computer printout
that came to light under mysterious circumstances on January
4, 1996 -- 19 months after Starr's investigators had subpoenaed
it and amid prosecutorial pressure on Clinton aides who had been
strikingly forgetful. For most of that time, Hillary claimed
that the billing records had vanished. But a longtime Hillary
assistant named Carolyn Huber later admitted coming across the
printout in August 1995 on a table in a storage area next to
Hillary's office; Huber said she had put it into a box in her
own office, without realizing for five more months that these
were the subpoenaed billing records.
This implausible tale, on top of other
deceptions, prompted New York Times columnist William Safire
to write on January 8, 1996, that "our first lady ... is
a congenital liar."
The next day, the White House press secretary
said that the president wanted to punch Safire in the nose for
insulting his wife. Five days later, the president invited Monica
Lewinsky to the Oval Office for what turned out to be one of
their 10 oral-sex sessions. Two years and 13 days after that,
Hillary was on the "Today" show suggesting that her
husband's Lewinsky affair was a lie concocted by "this vast
right-wing conspiracy."
http://nationaljournal.com/taylor.htm
|
HILLARY CLINTON claims she played
pickup basketball when she was young, presumably to get ready
for her race against Obama. Newsmax has compiled a list of other
little known facts about HRC, an obscurity some feel is due to
their non-existence:
- She was named after Sir Edmund
Hillary. who climbed Mount Everest.
- She was a Yankees fan when she
lived in Chicago.
- She told upstate New Yorkers she
had been a "duck hunter."
- She claimed on Sept. 11 daughter
Chelsea was jogging around the World Trade Center. |
HRC AND WEBSTER HUBBELL
SUSAN SCHMIDT, WASH POST, 1998 - Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr yesterday
secured a new federal indictment of Webster L. Hubbell, alleging
that the former top Justice Department official lied to Congress
and federal banking regulators to conceal work that he, Hillary
Rodham Clinton and their law firm did in the mid-1980s for a
rogue savings and loan.
The 15-count indictment alleges that Hubbell
covered up the Rose Law Firm's involvement in a phony multimillion-dollar
land deal that caused losses big enough to bankrupt Madison Guaranty
S&L, the thrift owned by the late James B. McDougal, the
Clintons' Whitewater business partner. Hillary Clinton's legal
work for Madison in the mid-1980s is referred to throughout the
indictment but she is accused of no wrongdoing. . .
Hubbell pleaded guilty in 1994 to charges
lodged by the independent counsel that he bilked Rose Law Firm
clients and partners. . .
The independent counsel lodged no Whitewater
charges in his impeachment report to Congress on President Clinton
and closed down his Arkansas office months ago without bringing
charges against Hillary Clinton. The Hubbell indictment was issued
by a grand jury here. . .
While Hillary Clinton's name is not mentioned
in the indictment, her actions are described, albeit obliquely.
She is mentioned some 35 times throughout the indictment, but
only as Rose's "1985-86 billing partner" for the Madison
account. The document describes some of her work on Madison's
ill-fated Castle Grande project, an 1,100-acre industrial and
trailer park development south of Little Rock.
Some of the loans that the accountants
were blamed for allowing Madison to make were Castle Grande transactions
that Hillary Clinton and Hubbell worked on for his father-in-law,
Seth Ward. The indictment charges that Hubbell falsely told regulators
and Congress he did no work on Castle Grande matters and was
not aware of what work Rose did for Madison.
The indictment contends that Hillary Clinton
prepared a real estate option agreement used by Madison officials
to deceive federal regulators about hundreds of thousands of
dollars in bogus real estate commissions that were being paid
to Ward. While charging there was a scheme to hide the commissions
and the tottering condition of the thrift, the indictment makes
no allegation that Hillary Clinton knew anything about it. .
.
Starr also has been investigating payments
of more than $700,000 in consulting fees to Hubbell from Clinton
allies and Democratic Party supporters after he left the Justice
Department in the spring of 1994 amid allegations he defrauded
his former firm and clients.
LYING FOR HILLARY
One of the issues that came up in
a lengthy suit (American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc, et al.
v. Hillary Rodham Clinton, et al.) was whether White House aide
Ira Magaziner, speaking on behalf of Hillary Clinton's health
task force, told the truth when he claimed that only federal
employees were members of the group. This was found to be false
and Judge Royce Lamberth issued an opinion, part of which follows:
"[I]t is clear that the decisions
here were made at the highest levels of government, and that
the government itself is--and should be--accountable when its
officials run amok. . . The court agrees with plaintiffs that
these were not reckless and inept errors taken by bewildered
counsel. The Executive Branch of the government, working in tandem,
was dishonest with this court. . . .
"The Department of Justice
has a long tradition of setting the highest standards of conduct
for all lawyers, and it is a sad day when this court must conclude,
as did the United States Attorney in his investigation, that
the Department of Justice succumbed to pressure from White House
attorneys and others to provide this court with "strained
interpretations" that were "ultimately unconvincing."
"It seems that some government
officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse than the
underlying conduct. Most shocking to this court, and deeply disappointing,
is that the Department of Justice would participate in such conduct.
This was not an issue of good faith word games being played with
the Court. . . . The United States Attorney found that the most
controversial sentence of the Magaziner declaration--"Only
federal government employees serve as members of the interdepartmental
working group"--could not be prosecuted under the perjury
statute because the issue of "membership" within the
working group was a fuzzy one, and no generally agreed upon "membership"
criteria were ever written down. Therefore, the Magaziner declaration
was actually false because of the implication of the declaration
that "membership" was a meaningful concept and that
one could determine who was and was not a "member"
of the working group. . . "
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1997 - It was just symbolic and, in the end,
the money comes out of our pockets but at least one judge has
called the White House for lying, assessing a fine of over a
quarter of a million dollars. As the above excerpt from Judge
Lamberth's opinion indicates, this was no minor peccadillo but
rather, "The Executive Branch of the government, working
in tandem, was dishonest with this court." At issue was
the composition of Hillary Clinton's health task force, a body
stacked with those from the medical industry who would gain most
from the faux reforms of the Clintonistas.
You might think a federal judge
calling one of Mrs. Clinton's top aides a liar would be big news,
but the Washington Post found room on its front page for "Seniors
Strut Their Stuff in Pool Pageant" while burying the health
care story on page 21 under a boring headline. That was nine
pages better than the New York Times, which ran the story under
"Judge Rules Government Covered Up Lies on Panel,"
hardly descriptive of the story's significance.
ATTORNEY CLINTON
During the 1992 campaign, Hillary Clinton
defended her role in the Madison Guarantee S&L scandal by
saying, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies
and had teas. But what I decided to do was pursue my profession,
which I entered before my husband was in public life."
Forgotten, however, is what inspired this
homily: accusations that Ms. Clinton had represented Whitewater
business partner Jim McDougal's S&L before her husband's
government. Here's what the New York Times reported on March
17, 1992: "Hillary Clinton said today that she did not earn
'a penny' from state business conducted by her Little Rock law
firm and that she never intervened with state regulators on behalf
of a failed Arkansas savings and loan association. . . "
Records would show that she did, in fact,
represent Madison before the state securities department. After
the revelation, she says, "For goodness sakes, you can't
be a lawyer if you don't represent banks."
Susan McDougal recalled Ms. Clinton coming
in and drumming up the business. Ms. McDougal told the Washington
Post: "The problem was finances, her finances." The
Washington Times quoted an unnamed Clinton business associate
who claimed the governor used to "jog over to McDougal's
office about once a month to pick up the [retainer] check for
his wife."
Jim McDougal's version of the story, according
to the LA Times, was that Clinton asked him to throw some legal
work his wife's way to help the Clintons out of a financial crunch:
"I hired Hillary because Bill came in whimpering that they
needed help."
Hillary Clinton wrote Jim McDougal enclosing
a power of attorney for him to sign "authorizing me to act
on your behalf with respect to matters concerning Whitewater
Development Corporation." Another power of attorney was
enclosed for Susan McDougal. The power of attorney included the
right to endorse, sign and execute "checks, notes, deeds,
agreements, certificates, receipts or any other instruments in
writing of all matters related to Whitewater Development Corporation."
This letter, uncovered in 1993 by Jerry
Seper of the Washington Times, directly contradicted the claim
of the Clintons that they were "passive shareholders"
in Whitewater.
From a 1996 Chicago Tribune editorial:
"The legal issues will sort themselves out in time. But
one thing has become all too clear. Bill and Hillary Clinton
and their aides have made a concerted effort to deceive official
investigators and the American public with half truths and outright
lies . . . It's not clear what the Clintons want to conceal,
but it's clear that they have made extraordinary efforts to do
so."
WHITEWATER
WHAT WHITEWATER WAS ALL ABOUT: Almost totally
lost in the Clinton saga known as Whitewater is what Whitewater
was originally all about. It was basically a land resort scam
of the sort that local TV stations win awards for exposing. Here's
how it happened:
In the late 1970s, the Clintons and McDougals
buy land in the Ozarks with mostly borrowed funds. The Clintons
get 50% interest with no cash down. The plot, known as Whitewater,
is fifty miles from the nearest grocery store. The Washington
Post will report later 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."
HRC writes Jim McDougal, said that "If Reagonomics works
at all, Whitewater could become the Western Hemisphere's Mecca."
More than half of the purchasers will lose their plots thanks
to the sleazy form of financing used. The McDougals will be among
a number of close HRC's friends and business associates who will
end up in jail..
HRC AND ETHNIC
SLURS
Virtually no attention has been given to
Hillary's Clinton's reported anti-Jewish statements. This is
another example of the impenetrable media bubble placed around
HRC since her husband first ran for president.
There have been a few exceptions. For example,
in August 2000, the NY Post reported:
"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."
That same year former Arkansas state trooper
Larry Patterson claimed that in their frequent arguments, Bill
and Hillary Clinton would use such expressions as "Jew motherf*cker,"
"Jew Boy" and "Jew Bastard."
That same year, the Review discussed the
issue of how the media handles these matters:
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - The kid gloves
treatment of Hillary Clinton's alleged ethnic slurs is, of course,
in marked contrast to the media handling of, say, John Rocker,
Louis Farrakhan 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.
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.".
. .
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.
CATTLE FUTURES
TWO MONTHS after commencing the Whitewater
scheme, Hillary Clinton invested $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.
AGBIZ TILLER - 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.
WASHINGTON TIMES, 2007 - Mrs. Clinton initially
explained her success by claiming to have done all her own research
studying the Wall Street Journal. Then she admitted that Jim
Blair, the outside counsel for Tyson Foods, advised her and placed
most of her trades. Mr. Blair helped her open her trading account
in mid-October 1978. That was three weeks before her husband
rode to certain victory (63 percent of the vote) in his race
for Arkansas governor, a position from which he would enforce
the state's environmental policies affecting chicken waste and
appoint numerous regulatory officials overseeing Tyson. The odds
of a retail trader executing the intraday transactions that generated
a 530 percent overnight return, which Mrs. Clinton achieved on
her first day, "are about the same as [the odds] of finding
the Dead Sea Scrolls on the steps of the State House in Little
Rock," according to estimates by Wall Street Journal financial
columnist Caroline Baum and commodities speculator Victor Niederhoffer
in their devastating account of Mrs. Clinton's trading activity.
HRC AND WAL-MART
WARD HARKAVY, VILLAGE VOICE 2000 - Twice in three days last week, Hillary Rodham
Clinton basked in the adulation of cheering union . . . They
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.
. .
As she was leaving the dais, she ignored a reporter's question
about Wal-Mart, and she ignored it again when she strode by reporters
in the hotel lobby.
But there are questions. 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.
But nobody got greener than Sam Walton and his family. For several
years in the '80s, he was judged the richest man in America by
Forbes magazine; his fortune zoomed into the billions until he
split it up among relatives. It's no surprise that Hillary is
a strong supporter of free trade with China. Wal-Mart, despite
its "Buy American" advertising campaign, is the single
largest U.S. importer, and half of its imports come from China.
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. . .
And the Clintons depended on Wal-Mart's largesse not only for
Hillary's regular payments as a board member but for travel expenses
on Wal-Mart planes and for heavy campaign contributions to Bill's
campaigns there and nationally. . .
During the same period, small towns all over America began complaining
that Wal-Mart was squeezing out ma-and-pa stores and leaving
little burgs throughout the Midwest and South with downtowns
that featured little more than empty storefronts.
MOTHER JONES, 2003 - More than two-thirds of all Wal-Mart employees
are women -- yet women make up less than 10 percent of top store
managers. Back when she was first lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton
became the first woman appointed to the Wal-Mart board, and tried
to get the company to hire more women managers, but that effort
apparently went the way of national health insurance. Wal-Mart
today has the same percentage of women in management that the
average company had in 1975.
LISA FEATHERSTONE, NATION, 2005 - Unlike so many horrible things,
Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based
company prospered under the state's native son Bill Clinton when
he was governor and President. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen,
were close to the Clintons, and for several years Hillary Clinton,
whose law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company's
board of directors. Bill Clinton's "welfare reform"
has provided Wal-Mart with a ready workforce of women who have
no choice but to accept its poverty wages and discriminatory
policies.
FLAG BURNING
ST PETERSBURG TIMES EDITORIAL, 2005 - Sen. Hillary Clinton's decision to co-sponsor
a bill to make it a crime to burn the American flag amounts to
political pandering of the worst kind. She was against outlawing
flag-burning before she was for it.
The New York Democrat says she opposes
a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning but has signed
on to a bill that would ostensibly accomplish the same thing
by federal statute. Her position is unprincipled. Clinton may
think this is a middle-ground position with broad political appeal,
but most people will see it for what it is. . .
The measure she has co-sponsored along
with Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, is the Flag Protection Act
of 2005. One provision would make it a crime punishable by up
to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine, to burn an American flag
of "any size" if a person knows that it is "likely
to produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace."
The crime is not the act of burning the
flag (since old and tattered flags are burned regularly by veteran
groups) but to burn a flag in criticism of the American government
when someone is nearby who cannot control his impulses. This
gives remarkable power to those in our society who resort to
violence in response to disturbing speech and messages.
The Democratic Party doesn't need another
candidate who lacks the backbone to take a clear, principled
stand, and it certainly doesn't need a candidate who doesn't
believe in the First Amendment.
JOHNNY CHUNG
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/
MANA FROM HAVANA
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..
ANOTHER LAND DEAL
JERRY SEPER, WASHINGTON TIMES, 2000 - 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.
HILLARY CLINTON SAYS SOME TORTURE ACCEPTABLE
BEN SMITH, NY DAILY NEWS -
Despite her apparent opposition to torture, Hillary Clinton said
in a Daily News editorial board meeting yesterday that the practice
is acceptable in some circumstances. Clinton got a rousing reception
from the human rights community, and seemed to take an uncharacteristically
bright-line stance, in a recent statement on the Senate floor
during the debate over torture.
"Have we fallen so low as to debate
how much torture we are willing to stomach?" she asked at
one point, and left anti-torture commentators, and even Clinton
critics like Andrew Sullivan, with the impression that she'd
emerged into a kind of un-Clintonian moral clarity and said no
to torture.
But at yesterday's Daily News editorial
board meeting, it emerged that she's not actually against torture
in all instances, and that her dispute with McCain and Bush is
largely procedural.
She was asked about the "ticking time
bomb" scenario, in which you've captured the terrorist and
don't have time for a normal interrogation, and said that there
is a place for what she called "severity," in a conversation
that included mentioning water-boarding, hypothermia, and other
techniques commonly described as torture.
"I have said that those are very rare
but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing
that," she responded. "Again, I think the President
has to take responsibility. There has to be some check and balance,
some reporting. I don't mind if it's reporting in a top secret
context. But that shouldn't be the tail that wags the dog, that
should be the exception to the rule."
Asked again about these methods, she said:
"In those instances where we have
sufficient basis to believe that there is something imminent,
yeah, but then we've got to have a check and balance."
TO INDICT OR NOT TO INDICT
ON APRIL 27, 1998,
deputy independent counsel Hickman Ewing met with his prosecutors
to decide on whether to indict Hillary Clinton. Here's what happened
as reported by Sue Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf in their book,
"Truth at Any Cost:"
"[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. . .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."
CNN, MAR 18, 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 said those interviews by investigators
were primarily with other people in the Rose Law Firm. Ewing
said he had questioned Mrs. Clinton about her representation
of Jim McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan when she
was at the Rose Law firm in Little Rock. "I don't know if
she was telling the truth. I did not circulate the draft. I showed
it to one lawyer (in the independent counsel's office) who said
he didn't want to see it," Ewing said, under questioning
from McDougal attorney Mark Geragos. . .
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.
LINCOLN BEDROOM
FOX NEWS, 2000 - 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
CASTLE GRANDE
1999 Mrs. Clinton is mentioned 36 times
in the fraud indictment against Webster Hubbell. Writes the AP's
Peter Yost: "Starr alleges Hubbell concealed his own and
Mrs. Clinton's work during the 1980s on a failed Arkansas land
deal, known as Castle Grande, that federal regulators say was
riddled with 'insider dealing, fictitious sales and land flips.'"
Yost notes the criminal contempt trial of Susan McDougal: "The
indictment against Mrs. McDougal details a series of grand jury
questions about Mrs. Clinton and Castle Grande that Mrs. McDougal
refused to answer." The Castle Grande project involved a
baroque set of deals aimed at least in part in shoring up the
McDougal's failing savings and loan.
Not until the immaculate reconception of
Mrs. Clinton's billing records in 1996 did her extensive role
in the matter come to light. Billing records documenting HRC's
work on the Castle Grande development scam were discovered in
the family quarters of the White House. HRC said she has no idea
how they got there.
She also claimed that she could not remember
her work on the project nor 15 conversations with Hubbell's wheeler-dealer
father-in-law, Seth Ward. In the end, Castle Grande cost the
S&L nearly $4 million in unpaid principal and interest.
THE TRAVEL OFFICE CASE
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 a 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 White 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."
TPR, 2000 - Here is what Ray said, which
we were only able to find buried in the NY Times and not at all
in the Washington Post (which played the story on A6): "It
is, in the independent counsel's judgment beyond peradventure,
that as a matter of historical fact, Mrs. Clinton's input into
the process was a significant - if not the significant - factor
influencing the pace of events in the travel office firings and
the ultimate decision to fire the employees. Accordingly, the
independent counsel concludes that Mr. Clinton's sworn testimony
that she had no input into Watkins's decision or role in the
travel office firings is factually inaccurate." In other
words, she lied.
Robert Ray, the prosecutor
may not be able to say this, but we, as citizens, can. Just as
we can say with enough certainty for electoral purposes that
she lied about Whitewater, her legal activities in Arkansas,
her investment in cattle futures, her missing file boxes, and
her activities in the wake of Vince Foster's death. We may be
wrong about any or all of these, but if so it is only because
Mrs. Clinton herself has deliberately, cynically, and deceitfully
attempted to conceal matters from us. We may be wrong, but we
are entitled to make the judgment.
It is worth recalling that
Mrs. Clinton was mentioned 36 times in the fraud indictment against
Webster Hubbell. She also said "I don't recall" or
its equivalent 50 times in a statement to a House investigating
committee that was only 42 paragraphs long.
Mrs. Clinton's victim, Bill Dale, put it
this way: "Everyone, especially Robert Ray, knows Hillary
Clinton lied under oath about her key role in firing me and my
colleagues . . . Of course, the Clinton Justice Department prosecuted
me with no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part. Despite my
38 years of government service, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried
to destroy my good name. They put my wife and me through pure
hell."
|
Number of times Hillary Clinton
said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in a statement
to a House investigating committee: 50. Number of paragraphs
in this statement: 42 |
IT TAKES MORE THAN A VILLAGE
TO GET CREDIT FROM CLINTON
Things that happened to Barbara
Feinman after becoming ghostwriter for "It Takes a Village,"
Hillary Clinton's book-like substance:
-- She got no acknowledgement
in the book by HR Clinton, contrary to what was stipulated in
the contract.
-- A reporter asked her how much
she had written and she replied, "All I can say is they
didn't pay me $120,000 to spell-check it."
-- The White House spread rumors
that Feinman had been fired.
-- Simon & Schuster refused
to pay the last $30,000 of her fee. Asked why, Feinman was told
that the White House didn't want her paid.
[Reported by William Triplett
in Capital Style]
|
From a 1996 Chicago Tribune editorial:
"The legal issues will sort themselves out in time. But
one thing has become all too clear. Bill and Hillary Clinton
and their aides have made a concerted effort to deceive official
investigators and the American public with half truths and outright
lies . . . It's not clear what the Clintons want to conceal,
but it's clear that they have made extraordinary efforts to do
so." |
WIKIPEDIA - Clinton's acknowledgment section began:
"It takes a village to bring a book into the world, as everyone
who has written one knows. Many people have helped me to complete
this one, sometimes without even knowing it. They are so numerous
that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually,
for fear that I might leave one out." .
THE PETER
PAUL FUNDRAISER
Three days after telling the Washington
Post that Peter Paul made no contribution to her August 12, 2000
gala and that her campaign would not accept contributions from
him, Hillary sent this letter
[The story that follows
has many loose ends, but one thing is certain, and eerily typical
of the Clinton saga: the extraordinary number of criminals, con
artists and other low life the Clintons have had as friends,
employees, business partners, and supporters. This story involves
just one fundraising event yet the cast of Clinton connected
criminals include Peter Paul, Aaron Tonkin, Jim Levin, and Raymond
Reggie. Add the McDougals, Web Hubbell, Dan Lasater, Jorge Cabrera,
and the more than 40 other convicted individuals and companies
connected to the Clinton machine and you have to start wondering
when the Democrats discover this may not be the best they can
do.]
 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.
Later, Paul would change his story claiming
that his involveme nt
stemmed from his desire to hire ex-president Bill Clinton, a
deal he claimed became contingent on his not only producing but
funding the HRC gala, costing him $2 million in kind and in cash.
The Clinton campaign would also have to change its story: by
September, Paul's Stan Lee Media had contributed $100,000 to
HRC's campaign despite Wolfson's protest. According to Salon,
"Bill Clinton was reportedly promised an additional $15
million in Stan Lee stock to join the board. . . Paul also says
then-DNC Chairman Ed Rendell said it would be 'nice' if Paul
gave $150,000 to the DNC after Paul sought a presidential pardon
for his two prior convictions."
The man with whom Clinton was allegedly
going into business had a known criminal past. According to Worldnet
Daily, "Paul has pleaded guilty to a 10(b)5 violation of
the Securities and Exchange Commission for not publicly disclosing
control of Merrill Lynch margin accounts that held stocks in
his company, Stan Lee Media. . . Under the Carter administration,
he was convicted for cocaine possession and an attempt to confiscate
more than $8 million from Fidel Castro in a black market coffee
transaction the Cuban dictator was using to defraud the Soviet
Union."
The Washington Post reported that "In
1983, Paul violated parole by traveling to Canada under a false
identity and ended up pleading guilty in federal court to making
false statements to customs inspectors. Paul went to prison in
California. When paroled, he stayed in California."
The Post also noted that, "In 1998,
Paul co-founded Stan Lee Media, a Hollywood-based Internet animation
studio. The company was named for Paul's business partner, Stan
Lee, creator of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. Almost from
the start, prosecutors alleged, Paul and a few co-conspirators
manipulated the market for the stock of Stan Lee Media: They
artificially inflated the stock to a peak value of $350 million,
creating a false appearance of demand by making transactions
through and between accounts that Paul controlled but maintained
in the names of others. Paul and his co-conspirators misused
the brokerage account to borrow more than $4 million from Merrill
Lynch, money prosecutors say they used to buy real estate, travel
and make political contributions. Stan Lee was never implicated
in the scheme."
After the indictment and the collapse of
his firm Paul filed suit arguing that Hillary Clinton had never
properly reported his $2 million contribution to the campaign.
The suit was thrown out because Paul had become a fugitive under
arrest in Brazil. On his return, however the suit was refiled.
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.
There is one other thing, as Worldnet Daily
reports: "Bill and Hillary Clinton head an all-star cast
of witnesses in a lawsuit by business mogul Peter Franklin Paul
that alleges the former president reneged on a $17 million deal
in which he promised to promote a business in exchange for massive
contributions to his wife's Senate campaign.
"The potential witness list includes
celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Brad Pitt, Barbra Streisand,
James Brolin, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, George Hamilton, Olivia
Newton John, John Travolta, Diana Ross, Shirley McLaine, Michael
Bolton, Toni Braxton, Paul Anka and Larry King.
"Also on the list are former Vice
President Al Gore, the Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton, former
Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security chief Michael
Chertoff, former California Gov. Gray Davis, former Democratic
National Committee Chairman Terrence McAuliffe, CBS News reporter
Mike Wallace and ABC News reporter Brian Ross.
"Paul told WND these people, and many
others, have direct knowledge of the alleged frauds. He says
he explained, for example, in person to actors Pitt and Travolta
that his personal contribution of some $2 million for a Hollywood
gala and fund-raiser for Sen. Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000
was done in exchange for Bill Clinton promoting Paul's Internet
business, Stan Lee Media, after leaving office.
"Clinton was promised an additional
$15 million in stock to join the board of the company, which
Paul formed in partnership with famed Marvel Comics creator Stan
Lee.". . . On April 7, a judge in Los Angeles dismissed
Sen. Clinton as a defendant in the civil lawsuit, but she will
be deposed as a material witness in preparation for a trial set
for March, 27, 2007."
The story - and not just the characters
behind it - is a remarkable one, making all the more incredible
the failure of the establishment media to report it in more than
a perfunctory manner. Two excerpts from a sworn statement of
Paul give the flavor:
- "While attending the August 13,
2000, brunch at Barbra Streisand's house, Chelsea Clinton came
up and spent approximately 25 minutes with my wife, Mr. Oto,
and myself, recapping the events of the day before, and narrating
what her parents did after they left the Gala VIP Dinner at 2:30
a.m. the night before. Chelsea related that she and her parents
had stayed up playing scrabble, discussing the Gala and the prospect
of her father�s working with the creator
of Spider Man when he left the White House. . ."
- "Through the Secret Service, I arranged
for a private meeting with the Clintons at the National Italian
American Dinner in Washington in 1994, where my then-client,
'Fabio,' chased Hillary Clinton around a conference table and
then physically lifted the First Lady, from her sitting position
on the floor, for a series of romance-pose photographs."
Clearly, ex-con Paul is not someone to
trust easily. But the same is true of Hillary Clinton, the only
first lady to come under criminal investigation, who once told
a House committee "I don't recall" or its equivalent
50 times in 42 paragraphs.
But a real press would be out covering
this story, not sweeping it under the rug.
THE ROSEN TRIAL
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 2005 - 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 a 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 had deliberately
understated the costs of an August 2000 gala fund-raiser for
Mrs. Clinton. . .
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.
[Aaron] 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." . . .
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.
THE PELLICANO
CONNECTION
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 |