MARCH 1999
STARBUCKS SLAYINGS
Police have charged a single
suspect in the 1997
gang-style slaying of three employees of a Georgetown
Starbucks. The murders have attracted attention for a
number of reasons:
-- Being killed in Georgetown
is considered more
newsworthy by local media than being murdered in less
elegant parts of town.
-- In the contemporary
gestalt, a murder at Starbucks
creates some of the same horror as a murder in a
church did in earlier times.
-- One of the victims,
Mary Caitrin Mahoney, was
formerly an intern at the White House and Monica
Lewinsky was reported to have told Linda Tripp that
she didn't want to end up like her.
Police say the killings
were the result of a botched
holdup. Certainly, the arrest came after a long and
botched investigation. It was initially hampered by
the decentralization of the homicide squad shortly
before the murders. Police sources complained that
the move by then Chief Larry Soulsby prevented the
concentration of investigative effort vital in the
critical hours immediately after such a crime.
Soulsby later resigned in the wake of unrelated
scandals. Subsequently a police informant in the case
was killed while serving as part of a sting operation
in a drug case.
The first detective on
the Starbucks scene called it
"one of the most difficult cases I've ever handled."
The murders took place after closing. It is not clear
how the murderer(s) gained entrance. No money was
taken and no neighbors heard the ten shots that were
fired. As late as a day before the arrests, police
were saying that there were two gunmen involved, but
now they believe that suspect Carl Derek Cooper used
two weapons in the attack.
If so, he did a lot of
damage in a short period,
killing three people -- two with one bullet each and
hitting Mahoney five times. Although Mahoney was
reported to have been fleeing, she was struck in the
face, neck and chest. Police say that Cooper -- who
has been previously convicted of robbery, car theft
and gun and drug violations -- used two guns in other
crimes. The victims' pockets were picked but a
register and a safe filled with cash were left
untouched.
An obituary in the Washington
Blade, reported that
Mahoney, 24, had been a founder of the Baltimore
Lesbian Avengers. She founded a women's issues
discussion group at Towson State University, was a
board member of the 31st Street Bookstore in
Baltimore, and worked on Bill Clinton's presidential
campaign as well as interning for the Clinton White
House when he was newly elected.
The lawyer for suspect
Cooper has complained that his
client was questioned excessively without legal
counsel.
FIRST FUGITIVE
A husband-and-wife investigator
team that interviewed
over 200 witnesses for Paula Jones' lawyers says they
uncovered more accusations of rape and sexual assault
against President Clinton.
In an interview with Carl
Limbacher of NewsMax, Rick
and Beverly Lambert also confirmed a story recounted
by Roger Morris in 'Partners in Power" concerning a
woman attorney who had run into Clinton at a
Democratic fundraiser in the late 1970s. Said Beverly
Lambert: "She offered Clinton a ride home. And once
he got her alone in her car, he grabbed this woman
and assaulted her. He did his trademark thing;
exposed himself, asked her to 'kiss it,' and pushed
her head down into his lap."
According to both Morris
and the Lamberts, Clinton
apologized to the woman's husband after he threatened
to kill him if he ever went near his wife again.
Limbacher reports that
Beverly Lambert has a number
of what she described as strong assault leads on
Clinton: "I can promise you that if someone calls us
to
gather information on Clinton's pattern of forceful
sexual behavior, we
have that. But no one has ever asked us about it
before. There are so
many, so many. They went on and on and on and they
all had basically the
same story. That's the nauseating part, to me."
NEWSMAX
http://www.newsmax.com
QUESTION OF THE DAY
If unrestrained sex is
to be a perk of power during times of a rising stock market don't
we owe it to Alan Greenspan to throw him a little orgy so he
can get in on the fun?
WORD OF THE DAY
"I don't want to make
a career out of being Monica Lewinsky forever." -- Monica
Lewinsky
STATS OF THE DAY
-- Average number of guilty
pleas or convictions per independent counsel investigation since
1978: 3.1
-- Percent of convictions overturned: 8%
-- Acquittals as a percent of convictions or guilty pleas: 13%
-- Total number of convictions or guilty pleas: 62
-- Percent of Americans who say the independent counsel law should
be renewed: 61%
[USN&WR]
SECOND QUESTION OF THE
DAY
How come President Clinton
remembers things that happened in Hope, Arkansas, so much better
than he remembers things that happened in Little Rock or Washington?
QUESTION OF THE DAY
Why did all those members
of the Commission of the European Union resign over a mere matter
of corruption when they could have just hired Bob Bennett and
David Kendall and toughed it out the way our president has?
Little noted in the media
was the sudden retirement of NSA director Lt. General Kenneth
Minihan, who took over the agency in 1996. Some see the move
as an attempt by Clinton to gain control over the NSA as he did
earlier with top level shifts at the FBI and CIA. The NSA is
deeply involved in the China scandals and there are ties linking
Webster Hubbell, the late Vince Foster, and NSA in controversial
aspects of national encryption policy. Little noted in the media
was the sudden retirement of NSA director Lt. General Kenneth
Minihan, who took over the agency in 1996. Some see the move
as an attempt by Clinton to gain control over the NSA as he did
earlier with top level shifts at the FBI and CIA. The NSA is
deeply involved in the China scandals and there are ties linking
Webster Hubbell, the late Vince Foster, and NSA in controversial
aspects of national encryption policy.
BETTER TO RECEIVE THAN
TO GIVE
Mike Espy is being touted
these days as an example of how evil the Independent Counsel
law is. While it is true that the former Agriculture Secretary
was acquitted, at least part of the credit goes to a badly written
law that makes it difficult to convict government officials unless
you can prove they did something specific in return for any payoffs.
Before any more tears are
shed on behalf of Espy, however, it may help to know that:
-- Sun Diamond Growers
was convicted of providing illegal gratuities to Espy. The case
is on appeal.
-- Richard Douglas was
convicted of making false statements in denying he had given
gratuities to Espy.
-- Ronald Blackley was
convicted of receiving over $20,000 from prohibited sources while
serving as Espy's chief of staff.
-- Smith Barney paid a
million dollar fine for offenses including giving an illegal
gift to Espy.
-- Tyson Foods paid the
government $6 million in fines and costs for offenses that included
gifts of over $12,000 to Espy.
-- Jack L. Williams was
found guilty of making false statements concealing knowledge
of gifts to Espy and his girlfriend.
-- The Robert Mondavi Corporation
paid a fine of $100,000 for offenses including illegal gifts
to Espy.
In short, Espy is no victim.
He has merely illustrated the advantages to government officials
of laws that make it more legal to receive pay-offs than to give
them.
ESPY INVESTIGATION SUMMARY
http://oic.gov.smaltz/sum.htm
SCHIPPERS SAYS
GOP SAT ON EVIDENCE
Punching yet another hole
in the right-wing conspiracy theory of the Clinton investigation,
lead House attorney David Schippers has told NewsMax that the
GOP leadership refused to consider key evidence:
"Let me tell you,
if we had a chance to put on a case, I would have put live witnesses
before the committee. But the House leadership, and I'm not talking
about Henry Hyde, they just killed us as far as time was concerned.
I begged them to let me take it into this year. Then I screamed
for witnesses before the Senate. But there was nothing anybody
could do to get those Senators to show any courage. They told
us essentially, you're not going to get 67 votes so why are you
wasting our time."
Schippers says that while
a number of representatives looked at additional evidence kept
under seal in a nearby House building, not a single senator did.
And he also tells journalist Carl Limbacher that Juanita Broaddrick
was subjected to overt surveillance, a technique used to intimidate
witnesses (including Foster case witness Patrick Knowlton)
NEWSMAX: http://newsmax.com
THE REVIEW LIST
A few of the matters
not mentioned by Liz Mundy
in her 111-paragraph story
on Hillary Clinton
in the Washington Post Magazine
--HRC's involvement in
a real estate scam in which over half the purchasers lost their
land because of the financing deal involved.
--HRC's virtually statistically
impossible profit in the futures market.
--HRC misleading the public
and prosecutors about her role in Whitewater.
--HRC's role in Travelgate,
the abuse of FBI files, and the coverup following Vince Foster's
death.
WORD
"For people to say
that the president of the United States having -- allegedly --
telephone sex is strictly private, and it has nothing to do with
official duties -- it means they've never been acquainted with
the world of espionage and the world of blackmail. And certainly,
the White House itself is one of the most targeted places in
the world in terms of foreign espionage." -- Sam Nunn, former
chair of the Senate Armed Service Committee.
INDEPENDENT COUNSEL
BATTLE
The effort to kill the
independent counsel law is running into a few problems. From
the start, the move has been pressed by a Washington establishment
anxious to get about its business without anyone suggesting that
its business might be a violation of the law. The latest poll
finds, on the other hand, that 61% of Americans support the idea
of an independent prosecutor. Further, congressional leaders
have had to confront the problem that whatever "structural
flaws" (to use the structurally flawed Janet Reno's phrase)
are in the independent counsel statute, relying on the Justice
Department is just a few steps short of selling the chicken coop
to a bunch of foxes. As this debate continues, here are a few
things to keep in mind:
-- The Justice Department
under Janet Reno has been consistently and notoriously incapable
of policing its administration. As the China scandal unfolds
it will likely become increasingly clear how complicit, indecisive,
and unreliable Justice has been. DOJ has either blown or taken
a dive in investigations into the FBI files, the dealings around
the Clinton health care legislation, and campaign contributions.
It hasn't even moved to collect back taxes from Webster Hubbell.
-- 85 percent of the costs
of independent counsels since 1978 have occurred in just four
cases.
-- Any reliable judgement
as to whether a particular case is costing too much can only
be made by comparing it to comparable prosecutions by the Justice
Department. No such financial information is available.
-- We do know, however,
that W.J. Clinton's trip to China cost $5 million more than the
Starr investigation had up to that point.
-- One of those testifying
against the reauthorization of the independent counsel bill was
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder who is an excellent example
why Justice is not up to investigating its own administration
colleagues. Holder is a political appointee who demonstrated
little skill as a US Attorney but nonetheless was named to the
number two justice position.
-- Janet Reno has been
inexplicable inconsistent in her positions on the measure. Five
years ago she told a Senate hearing that the "costs and
burdens" of an independent counsel are "far, far outweighed
by the need" for such legislation. Her "firm conviction"
was that "the law has been a good one."
-- Since 1978 independent
counsels have gained 62 convictions or guilty pleas -- including
one governor and one deputy attorney general. That's an average
of 3.1 convictions or guilty pleas per investigation.
THE GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
LOYALTY INVESTIGATION (CONT'D)
I hate to defend George
Stephanopoulos again, but a reader has sent me a copy of the
code of ethics for government employers from Public Law 96-303.
Contrary to the views expressed to George S. by Katie Couric
and other commentators, loyalty to the president is not included.
What the code does say, however, is:
-- Put loyalty to the highest
moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party,
or government department.
-- Uphold the Constitution,
laws, and legal regulations of the United States and all governments
therein and never be a party to their evasion.
-- Expose corruption wherever
discovered.
-- Uphold these principles,
ever conscious that public office is a public trust.
WORD
Eric Margolis
Contributing Foreign Editor
Toronto Sun
In 1991, Chinese agents
began making very large
contributions to the presidential election campaigns
of Clinton and leading Democratic party senators and
congressmen. Intelligence intercepts by NSA showed
Chinese intelligence targeting 30 leading Democrats
in a wide-scale influence-buying campaign. China's
efforts sharply intensified during Clinton's 1996 re-
election campaign.
Bill and Hillary Clinton
warmly welcomed Chinese
agents at the White House. Beijing's objective was to
obtain access to secret American technology, and, for
the first time, to actively shape U.S. military and
trade policy toward China.
China succeeded brilliantly
on both counts. It always
amazes me how cheaply politicians can be bought. For
a mere $2 million or so, Clinton and the Democrats
kept U.S. markets open to Chinese exports, and
ignored China's poor human rights record. Clinton
went so far as to arrange the transfer of advanced
American missile guidance and control technology to
Beijing, permitting China to modernize and make more
accurate its small ICBM force targeted on the U.S.
This, not the sordid Monica
episode, was a crime, and
one for which Clinton deserved to be convicted. U.S.
intelligence followed a direct money trail from
Chinese Army HQ in Beijing to the Clinton White House
and senior liberal Democrats.
THE CHINA CLIPPER
& OTHER HORROR STORIES
Charles Smith of the journal
Softwar, who tracks the
links between politics, trade, and technology, has
shed new and disturbing light on the Clinton
administration's China dealings. Based in part on his
extensive Freedom of Information discovery, Smith
outlines this chronology:
-- In 1992 ATT comes up
with a tap-proof phone. The
government sees the device as a security threat.
-- Webster Hubbell is assigned
by Janet Reno to deal
with the secure phone issue. Documents relating to
Hubbell are still being withheld on national security
grounds, others are so censored that even their
classification level is blacked out.
-- Assistant Attorney General
Colgate writes Hubbell:
"AT&T has developed a Data Encryption Standard
product for use on telephones to provide security for
sensitive conversations. The FBI, NSA and NSC want
to purchase the first production run of these devices
to prevent their proliferation. They are difficult to
decipher and are a deterrent to wiretaps."
-- In 1993, Webster Hubbell
arranges to buy the
entire production run of secure AT&T phones using a
slush fund filled by drug war confiscations.
-- Part of the plan is
to refit the phones with a new
chip called Clipper that has been developed by NSA.
This chip allows the government to tap the phone
using a special key.
-- A supply of these refitted
phones is given to the
Drug Enforcement Agency. Now other government
agencies can tap the DEA.
-- The plan also mandates
Clipper chips for all
American telephones. According to the Colgate memo to
Hubbell, "FBI, NSA and NSC want to push legislation
which would require all government agencies and
eventually everyone in the U.S. to use a new public-
key based cryptography method."
--- According to a 1993
White House email from George
Tenet, Ron Brown insisted the Commerce Dept. be one
of the "key holders" for all Clipper phones. The
Clipper plan will eventually put on hold because of a
large public outcry.
-- ATT says it is wants
to distribute a limited
version of its secure phone until the Clipper chip
plan is ready.
-- In April 1994, Hubbell
resigns from the Justice
Department under allegations of fraud. By late June
1994, Lippo boss James Riady meets with John Huang,
Webster Hubbell and Bill Clinton during five days of
White House visits. Early the next week, a Lippo
unit pays Hubbell the first $100,000 of what is
reported to be over a half million dollars.
-- Two weeks after the
Lippo money is given to
Hubbell, former Lippo banker Huang gets a job at the
Commerce Department as Assistant Secretary. Huang's
position determines technology transfers to such
places as Indonesia and China. Huang is briefed 37
times on encryption communications by the CIA while
working at the Commerce Department. Immediately after
each briefing, Huang walks across the street to the
Lippo/Stephens Group offices and to make long
distance phone calls and send faxes to points
unknown. Huang and his wife will subsequently take
the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify at Senate
Congressional hearings.
-- In 1994, with administration
approval, ATT sells
its secure communications system to the Chinese Army.
The export is called "Hua Mei." Thus the Chinese Army
gets the secure communications equipment that the
American public can't.
-- Clinton also authorizes
a Chinese Army lab to
obtain designs similar to the Clipper chip. The
exchange is done in the guise of law enforcement
cooperation
between the Department of justice and the Chinese
police. Writes Charles Smith: "Bill Clinton and Janet
Reno have given the Communists the ability to track
every Chinese citizen."
In short, the Clinton administration:
-- refused to let ATT sell
an untappable phone to
American citizens
-- allowed ATT to sell this technology to the Chinese
Army
-- attempted to mandate a quick-tap chip for all
American phones, one whose use would be partly
controlled by Ron Brown and the Commerce Department
-- provided the DEA with phones that others in the
government could tap
-- sold the quick-tap chip technology to the Chinese
police.
SOFTWAR
http://www.softwar.net/dojweb.html
TPR'S CHART ON HOW
THE HUA MEI DEAL
CAME ABOUT
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm#webs
THE NATION'S BUSINESS
In her videotaped testimony
shown at the McDougal
trial, Hillary Clinton declares, "I never spent any
significant time at all looking the books and records
of Whitewater." But in 1993, Jerry Seper of the
Washington Times uncovered a letter that HRC had
written 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
is enclosed for Susan McDougal. The power of attorney
includes 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." The letter directly contradicts the
Clintons' claim that they were "passive shareholders"
in Whitewater.
HOW MANY FOREIGN POLICY
POSITIONS CAN YOU FIND?
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson
on China during just a few minutes on air with Chris Matthews:
RICHARDSON: We want to
engage China. It's not our enemy; it's our friend, but we're
leery of that friend. We have no illusions that they conduct
espionage, that they're undertaking a number of initiatives that
are not helpful to us, in Iraq, on missile technology, export
controls. But on the whole, Chris, they're a big, big nation,
and we want to engage that nation. We've done better engaging
China than isolating them.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me
ask you about a question. I used the word 'Communist' in describing
Red China. Is that still an appropriate term?
RICHARDSON: I don't believe
so. Their economy has moved in the direction of market economics,
capitalism. There's still a lot of socialist structures, both
in their economy.
. . . .
MATTHEWS: The reason I
get that--I want to get to the espionage in just a second, but
there's all kinds of political questions. You hear them all the
time about whether Com--Republic--People's Republican China,
companies should be allowed to come over here and buy seaports
in Southern California, should they be allowed to be involved
with the Panama Canal, once it's taken over completely by the
Panamanians? What is our policy? Are they to be trusted or not?
RICHARDSON: Chris, I believe
that they can be trusted, but all nations conduct espionage.
We shouldn't tolerate espionage, but on issues that don't involve
arm sales, that don't involve exports of sensitive technology,
that don't involve high-tech that is detrimental to the national
security, we should engage them. They're a huge market for us.
We should sell them environmental technology so that they reduce
their pollution but buy our products. They're a great potential
market for us.
MATTHEWS: But they're also
a danger, aren't they?
RICHARDSON: In some areas,
they have not been friendly to us, but our theory is engaging
them, bring them --bring them into the system, into the World
Trade Organization, into foreign policy.
STARR CROSSED?
The resignation of Ken
Starr's press agent, Charles Bakaley, is raising eyebrows because
of the attorney he hired to defend himself against a possible
Justice Department leak investigation. That attorney is Howard
Shapiro who:
-- was general counsel
to the FBI, the first political appointee to hold this post.
-- has been accused of sabotaging the investigation of the White
House's illegal use of FBI files by (a) giving the Clinton administration
warning of the pending investigation (b) pressuring FBI agent
Dennis Sculimbrene -- who had provided evidence that implicated
Hillary Clinton.
-- was accused of obstruction of justice by the House Government
Reform Committee, which also demanded his dismissal.
-- after leaving the FBI, represented Terry Lenzner when Lenzner
became a witness in the Starr probe.
Asks Joe Duggan in a Washington Times op ed: "Has there
been a mole in Kenneth Star's office? Botched investigations
and self-destructive actions by the special prosecutor's office
have long suggested this possibility."
GETTING BACK TO THE
NATION'S BUSINESS
The Drudge Report says
that the Utah ski vacation blowup between Bill and Hillary Clinton
was the result of Mrs. Clinton viewing the Juanita Broaddrick
interview during the trip: "According to the insider, Mrs.
Clinton viewed the video of the Dateline interview late in the
evening after Bill and Chelsea had gone to sleep. She was so
enraged at what she saw that she stormed into Bill's bedroom,
picked up an antique lantern and threw it at her sleeping husband!
A screaming match ensued. Chelsea overheard the argument and
broke down crying and later told her father that she had wished
he wasn't there. The vacation was quickly cut short."
Meanwhile the Clintons
managed to get together long enough to go to church and hear
their minister quote from Corinthians: "Love is patient;
love is kind. Love is not envious. . . It bears all things, believes
all things, endures all things," adding, however, that this
"doesn't mean love is a sucker for anyone's version of the
truth."
DRUDGE REPORT
http://drudgereport.com
SPIN OUT OF CONTROL
His spin a little out of
control, Vermont Senator James Jeffords -- who voted to acquit
Clinton -- said that Clinton's alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick
was a "private matter." Soon discovering that others
didn't share his view, he quickly apologized for his remarks.
Here's the exchange on Burlington's WKDR:
JEFFORDS: ... I think things
like that are supposedly a private affair that should stay that
way unless they get into the public domain by the abuse of the
use of the office of the president, as he did in carrying on
in the White House. ... But other than that, I'm not interested
in what people did 21 years ago.
HOST MARK JOHNSON: How
would that be a private matter?
JEFFORDS: Well, I don't
know why it wouldn't be a private matter. I can ask you [to look
at this] the other way around. If something had happened 21 years
ago with a woman who invited, at least under her story, the president
up to her hotel room and she was not happy with what happened,
I don't know why that's not a private matter.
JOHNSON: OK. Rape usually
isn't done in public.
JEFFORDS: Well, no -- she
claims she was raped. Whether she was or not, then why did she
wait that long and all that? I'm not going to make judgment on
the veracity of those things. And I think we could all spend
the whole day trying to figure that one out. But if you wait
21 years or whatever to reveal something, you have to question
what her reasons are.
Jeffords, who is up for
election next year, later issued a statement: "Juanita Broaddrick's
statements are disturbing and should be taken seriously, as any
claim of rape should be. ... I truly apologize if my inarticulate
comments this morning gave anyone the wrong impression."
FILEGATE
Linda Tripp, asked by Judicial
Watch in a deposition to produce audio tapes made during any
conversations with Monica Lewinsky concerning Filegate, refused
to do so on Fifth Amendment grounds.
STARBUCKS MURDERS
For the forensically minded
reader, here are two clips from the Washington Times on the gang-like
slaying of three DC Starbucks employees:
MAR 2: In the victims and
the office, police found bullets from a .38-caliber revolver
and bullets and shell casings from a .38-caliber semiautomatic
pistol. Because two guns were used to fire nine shots, investigators
think two persons committed the slayings. ~~~ Investigators initially
theorized the killings happened because Miss Mahoney -- the only
one who knew the combination to the store's safe -- did not open
it. But Mr. Evans was closest to the safe, and Miss Mahoney was
farthest away. Also, police originally thought a bullet found
in the ceiling was a warning shot. It now seems likely that it
was fired as Mr. Evans struggled with his killer, sources said.
The bullet was in the middle of the office, not above the safe,
contrary to earlier reports. During the struggle, one of the
gunmen fired his pistol into Mr. Evans' left shoulder from point-blank
range. As Mr. Evans fell, the killers shot him in the head and
chest, sources said. "They killed him, and they had to kill
everyone," a source familiar with the case said. Miss Mahoney
might have tried to back out of the office during the struggle.
She was shot five times as she fell into the hallway outside
the office. Mr. Goodrich died from a shot that passed through
his left arm and settled in his chest. After the shootings, the
robbers picked the pockets of the victims and took whatever money
they could find, sources said. They walked out the unlocked front
door without touching two registers filled with cash.
MAR 3: The Starbucks slayings
have frustrated investigators, who have no witnesses, little
forensic evidence and few leads. Police believe at least two
men killed Emory a. Evans, 25, Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 24, and
Aaron D. Goodrich, 18, during a botched robbery in the back office
of the coffee shop at 1810 Wisconsin Ave. NW. During a struggle
with Mr. Evens, his killer shot him in the left shoulder from
point-blank range and then fired twice more. Miss Mahoney was
shot five times in the face, neck and chest as she tried to flee
the office; Mr. Goodrich was killed when a bullet went through
his left arm and into his chest.
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Chasing the snakes
out of Washington
If my genes could vote
in Parliament, they would pretty much reflect the major ethnic
distribution of the United Kingdom save that my Irish blood is
not Catholic. In fact, that part of me has no religion at all
for -- as Oscar Wilde explained -- it is Irish Protestant. And
while I thus can not be accused of pimping for the Pope in what
follows, it is also true, contrary to current tendencies, Irishness
and Irish sympathies have not always been exclusively the realm
of the Friday fish crowd. From the earliest rumblings of Irish
revolt, Protestants have cropped up (albeit in insufficient numbers)
on behalf of the cause. From Presbyterians in the 1798 rebellion
to the IRA's Robert Erskine Childers, of whom Winston Churchill
said, "No man has done more harm or done more genuine malice,"
they have worked to fulfill Theobald Wolfe Tone's wish to "abolish
the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common
name of Irishman in place of the denominations. . ."
The somewhat less impressive
contribution of Irish-American Protestants has been the secularization
of St. Patrick's Day, liberating it for all citizens to enjoy
-- especially Irish Catholics. Were it not for early Irish-American
Protestants, St. Patrick's would probably still be a day of holy
obligation with the pubs closed and the faithful in church or
beating themselves with twigs or whatever one does on a holy
day of obligation.
Keeping in this cross-cultural
tradition, I would like to salute my Irish landsmanshaff for
their role in describing the Clinton scandals. During an era
when writing and thought are increasingly considered a bureaucratic
rather than a creative function, they have at least kept alive
a verbal tradition well described by Thomas Flanagan as "impudent,
eloquent, full of jokes and irreverence, by turns sardonic and
conciliatory, blithely subversive but, without warning, turning
to display wide and serious reading, a generosity of spirit,
[and] a fierce and authentic concern for social and political
justice."
No other ethnic or religious
subspecies in the present circumstances has come near. People
such as Tim Russert, Maurine Dowd, Michael Kelly, and Chris Matthews
have protected a vital part of the story -- not by uncovering
facts (many have done that far better) but baring souls.
To be sure, Dowd has gotten
squishy, Russert smirks and wriggles, and Kelly is something
of a late comer. Matthews, like the others, avoids key aspects
of the saga. But then his show's appeal lies not in its revelations
but in the fact that the host still doesn't know quite what to
make of it all. He is a man alternately struggling with the deepest
moral implications and then suddenly becoming a Philadelphia
schoolboy again, whispering and giggling with a guest behind
Sister Mary's back. Right or wrong, you realize something is
quite different about this program: it is real.
There is, in fact, a substantial
Irish subtext to the whole Clinton story. While many Irish-Americans
have joined blacks and feminists in presidential adulation based
upon the succor of saccharine symbolism, in Washington at least,
pragmatism seems to have the upper hand. Not only are a number
of Irish journalists prominent in the story but a couple of staffers
at the House Judiciary Committee even own an Irish pub (which
coincidentally caught fire just as impeachment hearings were
beginning). Further, two liberal Irish Republican politicians
have been featured in the story: Jack Quinn for opposing the
president (and getting the Paula Jones treatment as a result)
and Peter King, who voted to save the president's butt.
Some of the journalists
have been influenced by older Irish politicians -- Kelly by Gene
McCarthy, Russert by Moynihan, and Matthews by O'Neil. Out of
this relationship may have come the idea that while corruption
is only a venial sin, enjoying it at the expense of the poor,
the weak, and defenseless is a mortal one. Further Kelly and
Dowd, like myself, are DC homies, which lessens one's infatuation
with power. Powerful people, one learns early in a Washington
life, are just so many more boring adults.
It is easy to ascribe the
critical Catholic view of Clinton to prudishness, especially
when you grow up thinking that your body is a sacred vessel of
Christ rather than of the president. And there is little doubt
that the mother church, while not reducing adultery, has certainly
made it more painful; that it can be rightfully accused of cruelty
to women; and that it sometimes engages in self-exculpation worthy
of a politician.
Yet even those who walk
away from it never seem to walk away from the arguments, from
an understanding that there is always something important lying
in wait just beyond our present excuses and desires, something
that really matters. I think the Irish Catholic contribution
to this story stems from this sensibility. As one of the ilk
told me, "we know the difference between liars and fibbers.
Remember, we have both mortal and venial sins and we differentiate
between them."
It is precisely in this
vast territory between prudishness and rampant relativism that
the Clinton story has gotten lost. We live in a time of simplistic
oppositional presumptions. If you do not favor abortion, you
favor murdering doctors; if you don't like Clinton, you hate
him and love Tom Delay. And so forth.
The traditional Irish voice
both despairs of, and loves, life precisely because of its complexity;
it is the voice of the human before television, before spin,
before the semiotic terrorism of contemporary power.
Albert Camus, an Algerian,
also shared a moral stance that rejected both the prig and the
decadent. He put it this way:
"What is a rebel?
A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.
He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first
gesture of rebellion. A slave who has taken orders all his life
sudden decides that he cannot obey some new command. What does
he mean by saying 'no?' He means, for example, that 'this has
been going on too long,' 'up to this point yes, beyond it no.'
'you are going too far,' or, again, 'there is a limit beyond
which you shall not go.' In other words, his no affirms the existence
of a borderline."
So this St. Patrick's Day,
hoist a glass to those among the Washington establishment who
declared that there was a limit beyond which the president should
not go. Drink not to their success, not to their righteousness,
or even to their wisdom, but just to their willingness to draw
the line some place and try to drive a few snakes from this corrupted
capital. -- Sam Smith
MCDOUGAL RETURNS
Susan McDougal, returning
before a Little Rock jury, has gotten a free pass from much of
the media, so you may not know what this business is all about.
When before a grand jury on Whitewater matters, St. Susan of
Ark. showed utter contempt not only to the prosecutors but to
members of the grand jury, who attempted to take over the questioning
after McDougal refused to answer prosecution questions. The grounds:
not self-incrimination, but McDougal's view that the prosecution
wasn't fair enough for her tastes. At one point she even suggested
that she might answer questions if the lead prosecutor would
resign, a legal principle not heretofore part of American jurisprudence.
Among the questiobns:
-- What did she mean by
writing on a $5,000 check "Payoff Clinton?"
-- Did Clinton lie about
the $300,000 loan McDougal received with the help of David Hale?
MONICA VS. JUANITA
As the alleged rape of
Juanita Broaddrick heads for the media dustbin, the Washington
Post Style section ran three front page stories on Monica Lewinsky's
interview with Barbara Walters. Thus do the forces of media post-modernity
alter our perceptions of the world while still managing to sit
on panels and talk about their objectivity with straight faces.
There is simply no way a 2-hour infomercial for the president's
latest (one supposes) concubine can be justified as journalistically
more important that the strong possibility that the president
is a rapist. But there you had the Post's media critic, Howard
Kurtz, right in the center of the Style spread -- helping to
shove Broaddrick out of sight, out of mind.
And the Post was not the
worst. That title goes to NBC, which not only came damn near
not running its Broaddrick exclusive at all, not only is now
preventing even its own outlets from making free use of the tape,
but as of March 3 had not mentioned Broaddrick on its Nightly
News. NBC News found time for run two stories promoting the ABC
interview with Monica, but not its own Broaddrick exclusive.
The media is once again
busily harboring the First Fugitive From Justice. Fred Barnes
of the Weekly Standard said it well:
"For the media to
allow the story to die with no response from Clinton and only
a curt denial from his lawyer would be a travesty. If there's
a journalistic standard for such cases, it was set in the Clarence
Thomas and Bob Packwood episodes. In both, the press investigated
aggressively, even though the accusations involved incidents
that had occurred years before. Nor was the fact that Anita Hill
merely accused Thomas of talking dirty an impediment to reportorial
zeal. Packwood was charged with groping and kissing, not rape
-- and again, the media went after him relentlessly."
The Anita Hill hearings,
incidentally, ran for eight days.
QUID PRO QUO
The deal was that I wouldn't
tell the truth about him and he wouldn't tell any lies about
me -- Dolly Kyle Browning
LOYALTY UBER ALLES
If you were to read the
stories about Clinton casually, you might assume that a Mafioso
code of tribal loyalty has effectively replaced the Constitution
and the Federal Code as the law of the land. Linda Tripp has
been berated mercilessly for choosing legality over loyalty.
Christopher Hitchens has been assailed for not being loyal to
a White House propagandist. And now Newsday has chided Michael
McCurry for "berating his old boss" and George Stephanopoulos
for being "the first major pundit-player to raise the prospect
of impeachment last January." In Newsday's view, as a result
of this disloyalty, "the presidency itself is besmirched,
and the bond of trust and confidentiality between the commander
in chief and his lieutenants is eroded further."
DEPT OF SILLY TALK
Unless Mr. Nixon wants
to serve out the remaining two years of his presidency oddly
isolated from the people he leads, he must find a way to resume
a normal dialogue with the American people and the press. ~~~
A former Nixon adviser put it aptly this week: "The president
should have a reflective conversation with someone on television
and really talk about where he is in life, what his aspirations
are, talk about his past, try to help us sort this out."
-- From a New York Times editorial (with one small change by
TPR -- the word Nixon was substituted for the word Clinton to
show how bizarre the NYT editorial board is these days)
SCORCHED EARTH UPDATE
As noted here before, one
reason some media types have been so supportive of, or circumspect
about, W.J. Clinton's sexual predation is that they don't want
anyone looking into their own activities. There is now explicit
cause for the fear. Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has told Salon
magazine that he would start investigating the private lives
of media personalities. "All the media moguls better look
out. . .Apparently [one anchor] is like a rabbit -- I mean he's
got a revolving door to his office. And many of them have been
divorced four or five times. A lot of the divorce transcripts
are available."
Meanwhile, riding the myth
that Clinton was impeached for his sexual activities, Flynt will
publish in early April a special report on the sexual activities
of congressional Republicans including a Senator and a House
manager who continued their affairs during the impeachment proceedings.
Says editor Allan MacDonell, "We have pictures of them in
bars, beaches. They're kissing and groping."
MacDonell also indicated
that some details will be held until the 2000 elections, since
there's time for someone exposed to claim later they've had a
change of heart.
Flynt and company had much
of the material in time for the impeachment trial but, according
to one source, they did not want to disrupt proceedings: "There
seemed to be bipartisanship in the Senate, even when there seemed
there wasn't an overlying desire for a bipartisan conclusion
to this. And we respected what they were doing."
The legality of a publication
threatening to release information absent a political outcome
desired by the publication has yet to be raised.
STARR BLESSED
TPR is not the only one
who thinks Kenneth Starr has been a real friend to Clinton. Conservative
columnist Joseph Farrah made the point recently in a column and
now Al D'Amato has told Newsmax's Carl Limbacher that Starr botched
his probe into Whitewater: "I just think he did a horrific
job."
An example: When D'Amato's
committee tried to learn whether Vincent Foster had been tipped
off about an impending FBI search of David Hale's office a few
hours before Foster was found dead, "I have to say that
Ken Starr didn't help us. Oh no, he went out of his way because
he got one of his great friends to represent Judge Hale and insisted
on immunity from prosecution so we couldn't hear the story of
what actually took place. There was an absolute total fear on
the part of the Democrats that Judge Hale, if permitted to testify,
would have rocked the country." D'Amato noted that five
and a half years after Foster's death, we still have no report
on the White House post-death clean-up of Foster's office.
"We were able to pin
down with some definiteness phone calls at a specific time from
the First Lady to her chief of staff Maggie Williams. The initial
phone call came while [Mrs. Clinton's] plane was in the air.
And then another call followed, as soon as the plane landed,
to Maggie Williams. And within a matter of 15 minutes of that
second call, Maggie Williams was in Vince Foster's office."
NEWSMAX http://newsmax.com
THE ATTACK ON SMALTZ
David Broder has used the
Mike Espy case to launch a attack on the independent counsel
law when, in fact, Espy's prosecutor Donald Smaltz got a lot
closer to the truth than Ken Starr ever did. And for far less
money.
Broder's article was typical
of the deceptive reporting about independent counsels currently
in vogue. For example, he correctly said that Smaltz had spent
$17 million investigating but failed to repot that Smaltz had
also collected over $11 million in criminal fines, civil penalties,
damages and costs. Nor was it pointed out (as it seldom is in
the case of Starr, either) that 30% of the expenses was paper
reimbursement to other federal agencies for staff time by FBI
agents, Justice Department officials and so forth.
Broder also further perpetuated
the illusion that Smaltz's efforts were only directed at Espy,
who was acquitted -- in no small part because under current statutes
it is not enough to merely be involved in a payoff shceme, it
has to be proved that you did something in return. Broder and
other reporters have repeatedly failed to note that though Espy
was acquitted of wrongfully receiving payoffs, other defendants
were convicted of giving them to him -- and paid for it in millions
of dollars in fines and jail sentences
Smaltz actually racked
up more than 15 convictions or settlements and was perhaps on
his way to uncovering some of Arkansas' dirty drug trafficking
secrets when Janet Reno pulled the plug on him.
Convictions won included
wire fraud in connection with an illegal campaign contribution,
false filings to obtain agricultural subsidy payments, defrauding
the FEC, interstate transportation of stolen property, money
laundering, false statements to government agents, a $1 million
fine against Smith Barney for its role in the scandal, and $6
million in fines and payments by Tysons Food for illegal gratuities
to Espy.
The attack on Smaltz is
the most dramatic evidence that the politicians, lobbyist-lawyers,
and media in Washington want the independent counsel gone --
and the facts be damned.
CHINESE ESPIONAGE: A US federal judge has ordered
the Commerce Department to release documents relating to the
Chinese Commission of Science, Technology & Industry for
National Defense, a Chinese Army unit. Commerce initially claimed
it has no records of meetings between it and COSTIND. Then the
documents began showing up piece meal.
BOOK SAYS ISRAEL
BLACKMAILED CLINTON
WITH MONICA TAPES
Neal Travis of the New
York Post reports that, according to a new book on the Mossad,
Israel blackmailed President Clinton with 30 hours of tapes of
his phone sex talks with Monica Lewinsky. The agency allegedly
agreed not to release the material in return for Clinton calling
off an FBI hunt for a top-level Israeli mole supposedly in the
White House. The allegation appears in "Gideon's Spies -
The Secret History of the Mossad," written by Gordon Thomas
and due out next week. The White House response through spokesman
P.J. Crowley: "The only thing I can possibly say is we'll
skip the book and wait for the movie."
Lewinsky testified under
oath that after a session of heavy petting and oral
sex in the White House, Clinton told her a foreign embassy was
tapping
the two phone lines in her DC apartment. She claims Clinton told
her that if questioned they should say they knew their calls
were being bugged and were only joking to fool the tappers. Starr
did not pursue the matter.
Thomas told the NYP: "So
far as anyone knows, the Israeli agent MEGA - a much more important
spy than the imprisoned CIA traitor Jonathan Pollard, and probably
his controller - is still in place at the White House."
THE REVIEW LIST
Memory lapses of
Clinton Administration
figures in testimony
on Capitol Hill as compiled by
Softwar newsletter.
Bill Kennedy ====== 116
Harold Ickes ======= 148
Ricki Seidman ======== 160
Bruce Lindsey ======== 161
Bill Burton ========== 191
Mark Gearan =========== 221
Mack McLarty =========== 233
Neil Egglseston ============ 250
Hillary Clinton ============ 250
John Podesta ============= 264
Jennifer O'Connor ================= 343
Dwight Holton ================= 348
Patsy Thomasson ===================== 420
Jeff Eller =================================== 697
[SOFTWAR http://www.softwar.net]
Matt Drudge reports that NBC News has issued
an order restricting the use of Juanita Broaddrick's Dateline
interview. Outlets must go to network lawyers to get permission
to use any of the tape.
WORD
Lie back and like it
I expected more of a reaction
to Juanita's plight, or at least some reaction, from organized
feminism. After all, organized feminism, in the image of National
Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland, has been on
TV almost nightly for two years now arguing that whatever The
First Flasher's sins, they weren't
that bad.
Then there was Gloria Steinem's famous pro-Clinton, pro-Monica,
What's-A-Little-Consensual-Sex-Between-Interns-and-the-Boss essay
a year ago in the New York Times. "Like most feminists,"
she wrote, "most Americans become concerned about sexual
behavior when someone's will has been violated; that is, when
`no' hasn't been accepted as an answer."
I thought perhaps this weekend she'd become concerned herself
about the possibility, at least, that her guy's not always keen
on the ``no'' end of the deal. For Steinem, Ireland and most
thinking women understand, I hope, what many others do not: that
the vast majority of victims (85 percent) do not report rape;
that false rape accusations are extremely rare; that rape convictions
are a 50-50 proposition at best and that only 2 percent of rapists
who are convicted go to prison.
These figures come via Wendy Murphy, who's represented dozens
of sexual assault victims, and from statistics in the 1994 Violence
Against Women Act. Clinton, by the way, supported that act and
signed it and, no doubt, was heartened by it. ~~~ It would appear
we have two paths to success, ladies. Shut up and take it. Or
lay back and like it. -- Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald
LIP BITING
NewsMax reports that, according
to a former rape investigator with the New Orleans Police Department,
lip biting is a common MO for rapists:
"The reason rapists
bite is because, even with the full weight of her attacker on
top of her, the woman is often able to resist the parting of
her legs by locking her ankles. The rapist's arms are busy keeping
her pinned down. The only weapon the rapist has left is his teeth,
which he uses to bite while demanding she open her legs. The
lips are very sensitive. Biting them is so painful it distracts
the victim, allowing a rapist to overcome her resistance. The
victim can only hold out for so long as the blood flows into
her mouth. Some women are stronger than others and I've seen
their lips half-torn from their faces before they give up."
NEWSMAX http://newsmax.com
TANGLED WEBS
|
|
|
WILLIAM
HAMBRECHT |
WJ CLINTON
received major donations
from Hambrecht. |
|
|
|
|
SALON MAGAZINE
backed by Hambrecht |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WILLIAM PERRY
former DOD Secretary
and business associate of Hambrecht |
|
|
CHAIRMAN MAO
Marshall Lei was aclose associate |
|
H&Q TECHNOLOGY
PARTNERS
Formed by
Hambrecht and Perry. Perry remained involved even while Secretary
of Defense. |
|
MARSHALL LEI
Father of Madame Nei Li |
|
GALAXY NEW TECHNOLOGY
Joint Sino-American
venture started by SCM/BROOKS |
SCM/BROOKS
Financed
by H&Q |
MADAME NEI LI
Held rank
of Chinese general
ADLAI STEVENSON
Former US
Senator
Co-chaired Hua Mei Venture |
HUA MEI VENTURE
Galaxy and
SCM/Brooks were involved in exportinng large quantities of AT&T
communications equipment to China. |
CHINESE ARMY GENERAL DING HENGGAO
Husband of Madame Nei Li |
CHINESE COMMISSION ON SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY & INDUSTRY FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE
GENERAL HENGGAO
was director of COSTIND |
|
|
|
|
|
PEOPLE'S
LIBERATION ARMY
Received logistical and technological
support from COSTIND |
TIGER SONG
Hua Mei system
reconfigured by PLA for re-export. |
IRAQ
Purchased
Tiger Song from Chinese and used for air defense command and
control. It would become a target of US aircraft. |
|
This chart is based on
a story by Charles R. Smith of Softwar.
Smith has been a leading analyst of the Clinton saga and its
connections to encryption policy, technology transfers and espionage. |
THE LAST LIE
No story since Vietnam has been covered
as badly by
the American media. Right to the end. Using a
perversion of language worthy of Clinton or David
Kendall, the media has been referring to the Senate's
pending action as an "acquittal." Even such
publications as the New York Times and the Washington
Post have engaged in this cynical doublespeak.
In fact, in order to acquit the Senate
would have to
vote to find Clinton not guilty. No one even
suggested such an absurdity. As former Justice
Department attorney Todd Gaziano pointed out in the
Washington Times:
"The word acquittal is nowhere mentioned
in the
impeachment clauses, Its proper meaning can only be
discerned by analogy to a criminal trial. ~~~ A
criminal jury can deliver three message to the judge.
The jury can return a unanimous (or in some states a
near unanimous) verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt. The jury can return a unanimous (or in some
states a near unanimous) verdict of not guilty, which
leads to an acquittal. Or the jury can tell the judge
that it is deadlocked."
The Senate has been clearly headed -- by
any honest
use of the language -- towards a deadlock. A
defendant released because of a hung jury is not
acquitted and may be tried again. It is proper to say
that the "Senate was deadlocked" or the "Senate
failed to convict" but it is absolutely false -- and
a measure of the depth of the media Clinton
codependency -- to say "the Senate acquitted."
DEADLOCKED PUBLIC
The polling data that pro-Clinton media
have used to
sway public opinion has been highly distorted as
well. A fair summation of the public's view would be
that it has been consistently conflicted. For
example, three quarters of the public believed
Clinton committed the crime of perjury but almost
that many didn't want him removed from office and
gave him high marks for his performance as president.
And that's just part of the confusing story.
A recent
survey by the Center on Policy Attitudes finds, for
example, that the percent of Americans who trust the
federal government has dropped from 38% in 1997 to
21% today. Back in the 1960s 75% of Americans said
they trusted the government. Thus at the height of
the president's popularity, few trust his government.
Further, at the peak of what the media
is projecting
as a feel-good era, 75% of the public agree that
"government is run by a few big interests looking out
for themselves." And turnout in last fall's election
was the poorest (as a percent eligible voters) since
1942.
One constant media theme in recent days
has been what
a bad job the House managers did, yet two-thirds of
the country thinks they did well. And yet even more
feel that way about the president's lawyers.
Here's another anomaly: while only a third
of the
country approved of the way the Senate handled the
impeachment proceedings, a majority felt the
president got a fair trial.
Further, at a time when Clinton is getting
his
highest performance approval ratings, a Zogby survey
finds him listed 2nd among the last 11 presidents as
being below average or a failure. Only Nixon beats
him on that score. On the other hand, Clinton ranked
6th among those for being great or nearly great. He
does stand out in one other way, only FDR gathered
fewer rankings as just average.
Now take the matter of sex. The public
clearly didn't
want Clinton removed for his sexual behavior. But
that doesn't translate into the libertinism projected
by much of the media. Only 21% in a Fox survey
admitted to cheating in a relationship (which some
defined as being as trivial as holding hands with
another person). Interestingly, Democrats were twice
as likely to cheat as Republicans.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen offers some interesting
insights on all this. He points out that "more than
90% of those who want the President thrown out of
office think he has committed crimes more serious
than anything having to do with Monica. In this view,
the Monica matter was all they could prove -- just
like
income tax evasion was all they could prove about
Capone. Those who don't want the President removed
think Monica is the issue. They have concluded that
the Monica stuff is disgusting but not worth throwing
him out of office over."
He also notes that seven out of ten Americans
would
have wanted the president removed from office if he
had timed military action to distract attention from
his own political problems. But this was never
pursued.
In the end, Clinton may have been helped
most by the
very cynicism about government, leading to the
conclusion: why punish him for what all politicians
do? Fifty-eight percent believe Clinton's ethics are
at least as good as most politicians. This has
remained constant throughout the year of Monica. Why?
Explains Rasmussen, "Because it's easy to believe
that arrogant men in Congress would abuse their
authority to hit on a young intern. To impeach this
President would have required convincing people that
his ethics were even lower than the political norm."
In short, the country's reaction to the
affair has
been consistently muddied, reflecting a sort of
deadlock of the public mind.
STARR FIX
A San Francisco reader writes to inquire
why Undernews, albeit critical of some of Kenneth Starr's major
decisions, has been so quiet about his prosecutorial excesses,
conflicts of interest and so forth. Here is an answer or two:
* Contrary to the mythology of investigative
reporting, there is actually too much news. The primary task
of the journalist is not so much discovery as proper filing.
Some news should be filed on the front page, some in a futures
folder, and some sent into the revenue stream of Waste Management
Inc. This all involves triage based on an ancient journalistic
formula: dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is. W.J. Clinton's
behavior is simply vastly more important than that of Kenneth
Starr.
* Earlier in this affair I described Starr
as the sort of lawyer you wouldn't mind having write your will
but you wouldn't want him to handle your divorce. Far from being
the evil monster Clinton supporters have portrayed, Starr is
your run-of-the-mill, hidden-agenda, interest-conflicted, establishment-coddling
corporate lawyer. He is no different in this respect than, say,
your average partner in Hale & Boggs, purveyor of top aides
to the Clinton White House. Clinton supporters should be grateful
that the investigation was headed by a reliable member of the
establishment rather than a truly skilled and aggressive prosecutor.
* Starr's ties to the tobacco industry
are similarly unremarkable especially given that Clinton's chosen
successor once grew the villainous weed himself and that Democratic
state attorneys general helped create a massive sweetheart deal
with the industry.
* Starr is not a lone ranger. He is CEO
of an office primarily staffed by persons seconded from the ranks
of federal law enforcement, such as Justice, the FBI, and US
Attorneys offices. The idea of Starr as a prosecutorial loose
cannon is simply wrong. This point was well made by Samuel Dash,
Starr's erstwhile ethics advisor, in an New York Times op ed:
"The people see the independent counsel as a special case
of abuse, but in fact they are observing how federal prosecutions
routinely operate. Yes, Kenneth Starr ~~~ may have wired an informer
to get incriminating statements from a suspect, threatened to
prosecute a minor figure to get that person to give up evidence
and called a mother before the grand jury. Though these strategies
have been denounced as outrageous examples of misconduct, they
are standard operating procedures of federal prosecutors."
Procedures, Dash noted, that have been judged by the Supreme
and other courts to be both legal and ethical. Procedures, he
might have added, that are used daily in the nation's largest
and longest abuse of prosecutorial power, the war on drugs, with
hardly a murmur from liberal America. This does not excuse such
practices, but if we are going to take them on let's not lose
interest the moment Clinton is let off the hook.
* Starr has not been guilty of everything
of which he has been accused. One of the problems that prosecutors
face is that they are not permitted to babble about their case.
The White House understood this and so embarked on a deceitful
spin and destroy mission against Starr, knowing that he could
not rise effectively to his own defense.
* Starr's actual record has been hidden
by the mainstream media. Thus many Americans do not know that
he has won more than a dozen convictions or guilty pleas including
that of the number two official in the Justice Department, a
former governor of Arkansas, and one of Clinton's closest friends
and business partners. By any fair historical standard, Starr
is an above average American political corruption investigator.
* There is a great tendency, in spectacular
cases, for the public and the media to second-guess the prosecution
every step of the way. In the end, prosecutors are what prosecutors
do. I have tried, although not completely successfully, to wait
until Starr has shown his hand before criticizing it. It is worth
noting, in this regard, that the prosecutor's investigation continues.
I believe that Starr took an inexcusable dive on the Foster death
and the Arkansas drug trade and, as a result, I confess not to
have much hope for the further denouement of this story. But
I also admit that only empiricism, and not hard facts, lead me
to such a premonition.
* Stuart Taylor of the National Journal
said it best when he wrote that Starr "was the wrong man
for the job: too political ambitious a Republican, too ignorant
in the ways of good prosecutors, too attached to his million-dollar-a-year
tobacco-stained law practice, too blind to appearances. His tenure
has, in my view been marred by a pattern of seriously bad judgments.
~~~ But I've seen no real evidence so far -- for all the innuendoes
-- that Starr has done anything dishonest. And in the end, this
remains: Faced with unrelenting obstructionism, stunning levels
of dishonesty and vicious personal attacks, Starr and his prosecutors
and investigators did their jobs. They amassed irrefutable --
and still unrefuted -- proof of Clintons' crimes. They brought
a president to justice."
A commercial pilot, hired to skywrite
a message about Washington monuments during Clinton's impeachment
trial was detained by Secret Service agents for four hours. The
message: "This is God. Convict + Remove. Or Else."
The pilot was accused of coming too close to off-limits air space
near the White House. In fact he had not violated any FAA laws.
MORE THAN SEX. . .
As NBC continues to block broadcast of
an interview with a woman who is alleged to have been assaulted
by President Clinton in the 1970s, there are reports that the
women is thinking of taking her story to another network.
NewsMax reports that a source who was present
the entire eight hours that NBC grilled Juanita Broaddrick and
those close to her says the Myers' team put the Clinton accuser
and her family through the wringer. "Their verdict: She's
'squeaky clean.' ~~~ "Dateline" also interviewed nurse
Norma Rogers, a key corroborative witness who treated Broaddrick's
bruises after her alleged attack by then-Arkansas Attorney General
Bill Clinton."
According to NewsMax, Myers called Broaddrick
to tell of NBC's cold feet saying, "The good news is, you're
credible. The bad news is, you're very, very credible."
And the Southwest Times Record reports
that "Broaddrick, owner of the Brownwood Manor Nursing Facility,
has been questioned by representatives of the House Judiciary
Committee at the Greenwood office of Republican state Sen. Bill
Walters, who is her attorney. Several committee members, including
U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Fort Smith, are serving as House
managers and prosecuting the impeachment case against Clinton
before the U.S. Senate."
Broaddrick last January signed an affidavit
in the Paula Jones case denying that Clinton had made unwelcome
advances on her. But in an April deposition for Kenneth Star,
Broaddrick recanted. Her testimony is sealed.
NEWSMAX
http://newsmax.com
SOUTHWEST TIMES RECORD
http://www.swtimes.com/1999/January/29/news/clinton.html
JANE DOES,
WE HARDLY KNEW YE
Broaddrick is not the only woman alleged
to have been assaulted by Clinton. There is, of course, Paula
Jones and Kathleen Willey (more on her below), but there are
at least five other instances ranging from alleged sexual assault
with physical harm to groping. One of these instances is described
in Roger Morris' 'Partners in Power:'
"A young woman lawyer in Little Rock
claimed that she was accosted by Clinton while he was attorney
general and that when she recoiled he forced himself on her,
biting and bruising her. Deeply affected by the assault, the
woman decided to keep it all quiet for the sake of her own hard
won career and that of her husband. When the husband later saw
Clinton at the 1980 Democratic Convention, he delivered a warning.
'If you ever approach her,' he told the governor, 'I'll kill
you.' Not even seeing fit to deny the incident, Bill Clinton
sheepishly apologized and duly promised never to bother her again."
Then there is the case of a former Miss
America, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, who had a short encounter with
Clinton in 1983. She initially told friends that then-Governor
Clinton had forced himself upon her but later said the incident
was consensual. She refused to talk about it for a number of
years but recently admitted the encounter to a Toronto newspaper
and also told of alleged intimidation of her family and friends.
Following the story's publication, according to Gracen lawyer
Vincent Vento, a caller contacted her and said, "You should
really keep your mouth shut about Bill Clinton and go on with
your life. You could be discredited. You could have an IRS investigation."
Since then, she has.
THE WILLEY CASE
In another indication that the real Clinton
scandal story is taking place far from the US Senate, Jackie
Judd & Chris Vlasto of ABC News have reported that a
"private investigator has become a key witness in the investigation
of whether someone tried to scare Kathleen Willey into remaining
silent about allegations President Clinton made an unwanted sexual
advance."
Sources familiar with PI Jarrett Stern's
work say he was hired by Saul Schwartzbach, a lawyer for Nathan
Landow, a developer and a shadowy figure in the Clinton scandals.
Says ABC: "Willey has testified that
Landow ~~~ pressured her to deny that Clinton made a sexual advance
toward her at the White House. The same sources say Landow had
Willey investigated at a time when she was a witness in both
the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and the Starr criminal
investigation."
Landow's involvement in the story could
prove a huge embarrassment to Al Gore and may help to explain
why Bill Bradley is being warmed up in the establishment bull
pen. Landow was a big operative in Gore's 1988 presidential campaign.
The Baltimore Sun reported that "Mr. Gore said that a group
of major Democratic fund-raisers led by Maryland developer Nathan
Landow had 'played a significant role in getting me change my
mind about running.' It wasn't so much the strength of the arguments
though. Landow and company promised to raise $4 million and Gore
said he'd make a run for it.
Landow raised over a half million dollars
in the 1992 and 1996 Clinton/Gore campaigns and his name has
come up in questionable land deals in DC and on an Indian reservation.
Landow has denied stories that he tried
to help Webb Hubbell in the alleged hush money case now reinstated
against the former Justice Department official. Al Hunt of the
Wall Street Journal who wrote the Hubbell-Landow story, responded
earlier this year that "I reported that the same Mr. Landow
secretly had tried to help Clinton confidant Webb Hubbell when
he was in legal and financial straits. Mr. Landow adamantly insisted
that wasn't true, either. I know he lied then, which makes his
credibility [in the Willey matter] suspect now."
The same year that Clinton had his alleged
encounter with Juanita Broaddrick, Landow was trying to break
into the hotel and gambling industries. According to a Washington
Post story at the time, "Two prominent Washington investors
with connections to the Carter administration were involved in
a proposal to build a hotel and gambling casino in Atlantic City,
with Washington gambling king pin Joe Nesline as a consultant.
The investors are multimillionaire builder Nathan Landow and
Smith Bagley, a Reynolds tobacco heir. Landow is under consideration
for appointment as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. Landow
acknowledge[d] a casual acquaintanceship with Nesline of many
years' standing, and an involvement in one other hotel-casino
venture in which Nesline also played a role."
"Nesline, who lives in the luxurious
Promenade high-rise apartment building owned by Landow at 5225
Pooks Hill Rd. in Bethesda, has been an internationally known
gambling figure for 40 years. He had long been identified in
local police files as the suspected 'godfather' of bookmaking
and other gaming action [in] and around Washington.
"With an arrest record spanning four
decades. Nesline has been charged with bribery and bootlegging
as well as gambling. He was convicted of carrying a deadly weapon
in the fatal shooting of a man at point-blank range in an after-hours
club in 1951."
The Post's Maxine Cheshire wrote that "Landow's
lawyer. Saul Schwartzbach, blamed himself for involving Nesline.
'I may have destroyed my client.' Schwartzbach said, because
he had consulted Nesline for half an hour for expertise that
would enable Landow and Bagley to negotiate knowledgeably in
what was to be a joint venture with Resorts International Inc.,
a conglomerate with gambling in the Bahamas and elsewhere.
The deal fell through.
Landow was also involved with Anthony Plate,
an associate of the Gambino Mafia family. Plate owned a 25 percent
stake in Quaker Masonry, a firm in which Landow served as vice
president and director. Reported the Post, "They [officers
of the Montgomery County's organized crime section] learned from
Florida police that [Landow] had a financial interest in a now
defunct corporation whose concealed owners allegedly included
an identified member of the Carlo Gambino Mafia 'family.'"
Landow was a beneficiary of Marion Barry's
urban renewal fire sales to prominent Democratic officials in
the 1980sw. A 1991 National Review article reported that "In
the late 1970s an estimated $100 million in federal property
was transferred to the D.C. government. The [Redevelopment Land
Agency] was put in charge of selling the transferred property,
as well as other tracts already owned by the city. The General
Accounting Office was openly critical of the RLA in 1982, charging
that city property (much of it a gift from the federal government)
was being sold for bargain-basement prices, often to political
friends of the mayor [Marion Barry]. ~~~ Nathan Landow, for example,
a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser, paid less than one-third
the market price for a piece of downtown real estate he purchased
from the RLA in early 1982."
Remember what the late Senator Phil Hart
had to say about his former occupation: "The Senate is a
place that does things 20 years after they should have been done."
There is no February 12 deadline on the Willey-Landow story.
MORE THAN SEX (Cont'd)
[Richard Morris on Matt Drudge's TV program]
MORRIS: When I was called by the House
Judiciary Committee just last weekend to testify or to meet with
them I met with 3 investigators of the committee. They asked
me not to use their names and I won't but they were each 50 years
of age or over, they weren't kids. They had decades of experience
working for the IRS, the FBI, and all kinds of other investigative
organizations; they told me that they were physically afraid
of retaliation. They asked me if I would testify . . .
DRUDGE: The ones questioning you were afraid?!
MORRIS: Exactly, they asked me if I would
testify and I said yeah. And they said aren't you afraid of retaliation?
And I said what are they going to expose, my sex life? You know
we have done all that. I've taken the trouble to not sin since
then. And they said no, no. I mean don't you know the list of
the 25 people who have died in mysterious circumstances in connection
with this investigation? And I said are you guys out of your
minds? And they said no, no. And one of them said I guarantee
you that each of us will have an IRS audit when this is over,
he said I'm saving my receipts I know that I am going to have
an audit. And I said, how does that work? And he said well the
head of the IRS and Hillary are very good friends.
DRUDGE: Let me get this straight, those
even questioning people at this point are afraid.
MORRIS: Yes. And we are not talking here
about some right wing nuts, or some people who are really paranoid.
We are talking about guys who have spent 20 or 30 years as top
level investigators for the IRS and the FBI who have retired
and are now on leave and brought back by the Judiciary Committee
and they specifically asked me not to mention their names on
the air.
TAINTED BLOOD
While working at the White House, the ubiquitous
Linda Tripp stumbled on something she wasn't meant to know anything
about. She received a phone call from someone who mentioned the
"tainted blood issue." The phrase meant nothing to
Tripp and when she tried to find out more from a White House
computer, the database denied her access. Testifying in a Judicial
Watch deposition recently, Tripp said, "It had been alarming
to me that when I tried to enter data from a caller that I was
working with on a tainted blood issue, that every time I entered
a word that had to do with this particular issue, it would flash
up either the word 'encrypted' or 'password required' or something
to indicate the file was locked."
At the time, Tripp was working as executive
assistant to Bernard Nussbaum, chief White House counsel. Also
on the staff: deputy counsel Vince Foster. The Ottawa Citizen
has since learned that Foster had tried to protect the Arkansas
firm shipping tainted blood from prison inmates in a lawsuit.
The New York Post has also reported that Foster may have been
worried about the tainted-blood scandal at the time of his death,
citing a mysterious phone call about the matter shortly after
Foster died.
The Citizen notes that W. J. Clinton was
governor of Arkansas "when the Canadian blood supply was
contaminated in the mid-'80s. He was generally familiar with
the operations of now-defunct Health Management Associates, the
Arkansas firm that was given a contract by Mr. Clinton's own
state administration to provide medical care to prisoners. In
the process, HMA was also permitted by the state to collect prisoners'
blood and sell it elsewhere.
"HMA's president in the mid-1980s,
Leonard Dunn, was a personal friend of Mr. Clinton's and a political
ally. Later, Mr. Dunn was a Clinton appointee to the Arkansas
Industrial Development Commission and he was among the senior
members of Mr. Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election team.
"The contaminated prisoners' plasma
is believed to have been infected with HIV and hepatitis C. Any
information linking Mr. Foster to HMA and its blood program is
bound to raise more questions about how much Mr. Clinton knew."
OTTAWA CITIZEN
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/990131/2231263.html
RENO TAKES ANOTHER DIVE
The best case for the oft-maligned special
prosecutors has once again been made by Janet Reno, who has taken
yet another dive, this time letting Harold Ickes off the hook
despite his involvement in the WH files case, improper fund-raising,
the sale of seats on Commerce Department trade missions, and
the Teamster scandal. Both the FBI and Justice's own campaign
finance unit head had urged an independent counsel and a federal
judge has stated that "a full review of the transcript of
Ickes'deposition shows his remarkable inability to recall certain
memorable facts."
It would seem that, whether in marriage
or corruption, you go to Reno to get off the hook.
THE MEDIACRATS
FROM AN ANTHONY LEWIS COLUMN LAST JUNE:
"Sidney Blumenthal, assistant to the President, made his
third appearance before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in Washington
last Thursday... Mr. Blumenthal decided to tell me about the
experience, as a grand-jury witness may do... Prosecutors asked
Mr. Blumenthal to leave the room so they could consult. After
five minutes he was called back, and Mr. Wisenberg asked him:
'Does the President's religion include sexual intercourse?'"
Only problem is, no on can find the exchange
in the grand jury transcript. Lewis has never retracted his smearing
of the special prosecutor nor apologized for having been taken
for a ride. What is in the record -- a somewhat smirking Matt
Drudge points out -- is a comment from the grand jury foreperson
in the closing moments of Blumenthal's appearance:
"We are very concerned about the fact
that during your last visit that an inaccurate representation
of the events that happened were retold on the steps of the courthouse."
"I appreciate your statement,"
Blumenthal responded.
THE CHINESE CONNECTION
NBC's Robert Windrem reports that "One-time
Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung has told the grand jury investigating
campaign finance irregularities of a broader, more sophisticated
effort by China's military intelligence agency to use campaign
contributions and investments to try to influence U.S. policy
and help Chinese intelligence operations. ~~~ Sources close to
the investigation say Chung, one of the key players in the Asian
money scandal, testified last November that in the summer of
1996, Liu Chao-Ying, the daughter of China's then top general
and a lieutenant-colonel herself in the army, told him the operation
involved others besides herself on the Chinese end, and others
besides Chung on the U.S. end. ~~~ Chung testified that Liu hinted
that his presidential friend Charlie Trie also was acting as
a conduit for contributions. Trie's lawyer, Reid Weingarten,
has consistently said he knows nothing of Trie's operations in
China. Trie contributed more than $1.2 million to the Democratic
Party and the President's Legal Defense Fund, almost all of which
has been returned as suspect. Ng Lap Seng, a Macao businessman
with links to the Chinese government, is believed by federal
investigators to have financed much of those contributions through
investments with Trie."
MSNBC STORY
http://www.msnbc.com/news/237345.asp
FEEDBACK
-- Whitewater Irregular and attorney Allan
Favish points out that, contrary to our story yesterday, Juanita
Broaddrick did not give a deposition to Kenneth Starr but only
an interview.
-- Bob VW thinks editor Sam was unfair
to Grover Cleveland in "Impeachable Defenses," when
he pointed out that Clinton had "done more damage to the
electoral prospects of other Democrats than any president of
his party since Grover Cleveland." Says VW: "Hey, why
knock Grover? According to the bio I've read he left the presidency
the first time after some electoral malarkey and came back in
a popular swell so strong that he easily could have been our
first three term President excepting that he wanted to live his
own life for a while." Personal to Bob: The comment was
a statistical and not a judgmental one.
-- David Martin writes: "Fine survey
of the activities of Nate Landow, except that you left out the
fact that it was he who hosted those two days of meetings on
his Eastern Shore estate with Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster two
days before Foster's death, not his daughter Carolyn and her
husband, Michael Cardozo as the Washington Post and Robert Fiske
both reported. To his credit, Chris Ruddy mentions it in his
book, but I'm not sure he knew at the time about the Landow mob
connections. Dan Moldea, though he has read the Ruddy book and
the Hubbell deposition which is Ruddy's source, repeats the Post/Fiske
misinformation." Personal to Howie Kurtz: when is the Post
going to let its readers in on what it knows about Nate Landow?
JANE DOE 5
NewsMax reports that NBC appears to have
interviewed at least five strong corroborating witnesses, "including
nurse Norma Rogers - who treated [alleged Clinton assault victim
Juanita] Broaddrick's bruises on a bus ride home from the scene
of the crime. One source close to Broaddrick describes her as
exasperated and bewildered: "After keeping this secret for
21 years, going public was the hardest decision she's ever made
in her life. Why did they send a crew down here for if they didn't
want to run the story?"
The Drudge Report says that White House
spokesman Joe Lockhart personally warned Fox News not to air
the Broaddrick story. "You guys will regret this,"
Lockhart told a Fox reporter. "Clinton haters have been
putting this story out for a decade now, as far back as the '92
campaign. If you go with the story after NBC News decided not
to, there won't be any argument about whether Fox News is right
wing or not."
Fox's Rita Cosby reported anyway: "The
alleged assault occurred when Broaddrick was at a nursing home
conference at this Little Rock hotel 21 years ago. At the time,
Bill Clinton was Arkansas's state attorney general and running
for governor. Sources say he was going to meet her in a conference
room, but at the last minute he switched the location to a hotel
room. A friend of Broaddrick's who attended the conference saw
her right after the alleged assault. Norma Kelsay told Fox News
that Broaddrick said she had been assaulted by Clinton. Quote,
'She was hysterical,' Kelsey said. 'Her lip was blue and bleeding,
and her hose were severely torn in the crotch area.' Three other
close to Broaddrick, say Broaddrick gave them similar accounts.
But Kelsay says Broaddrick told her never to tell anyone about
what happened in the hotel because she didn't want any publicity
and feared she would be blamed because she let him in her room."
The Broaddrick case is just one of several
the media has suppressed concerning alleged sexual assaults or
unwanted groping by Clinton. Typical of the mainstream media's
treatment of these serious allegations is the New York Times'
Frank Rich who referred to Broaddrick sarcastically as "the
lovely lady."
ALL IN THE FAMILY
From the January 4
Judicial Watch deposition
of Linda Tripp
Q Have you seen recent reports on the Drudge
report that news stories are being leaked by the Washington Post
to the White House, in advance of their publication? Have you
become aware of any such reports from Matt Drudge? ~~~
A I'm still unclear as to what your question
is. Am I aware of the Washington Post leaking stories to --
Q In advance to the White House as reported
by Matt Drudge?
A Well, that's completely commonplace.
Q What leads you to believe that?
A Because it happened, frequently. I mean
we would almost uniformly count on a Washington Post heads-up
prior to publication.
Q Where did you experience the Washington
Post heads-up?
A In the Counsel's Office and in the President's
Office and only by that I mean as it has to do with Bruce Lindsay,
because often he -- this always occurred late in the evening.
There were times I even spent the night on the couch in the Counsel's
Office because I couldn't get home because we were waiting to
see, if what we had been told by the Washington Post was ultimately
how it appeared in print, and the first issues came out late
at night.
Q Who was it that gave the heads-up from
the Washington Post?
A I think Bruce Lindsay was the contact
at the White House and I don't know with whom he spoke at the
Washington Post, but he would run upstairs and keep us posted
and then we would wait for the issue.
Q Did he say it was an editor who contacted
him?
A It was someone, I do remember it was
someone high up. It wasn't some gum-shoe reporter, but I just
don't remember who it was. ~~~
Q Were there any other reporters that you
know of that gave heads-up to the White House? Any other press
people?
A: Andrea Mitchell routinely with Bruce
Lindsay. I can only tell you on issues that impacted the Counsel's
Office, because it was those, it may well have been many more
or fewer, I don't know, but I know that those issues that the
Counsel's Office had press interest in we would hear from Bruise
[sic] what he had heard from his contacts.
CLINTON RAPE STORY FRONT PAGE IN WASHINGTON
The story the White House pressured the
media not to run -- with highly positive results so far -- was
the lead in the February 4 Washington Times: "The Clinton
story that's too hot too handle. White House accused of pressuring
networks to spike tale of Arkansas rape."
Suppressing the rape story has been key
to the media-enabled White House spin that whatever Clinton has
done wrong sexually simply involved consensual acts. In fact,
serious journalists have long known that Clinton's sexual activities
have left a trail of false affidavits, physical threats, public
abuse, and heavy pressure from state police and private investigators
-- far removed from the over-hormoned frat boy image projected
by the Clintonista press.
Non-public information contained in the
Starr referral about the Juanita Broaddrick story -- in which
an Arkansas woman is reported to have been assaulted by Clinton
-- was a factor in changing a number of moderate House Republican
votes towards impeachment.
Because of a potentially explosive interview
with Broaddrick by Lisa Myers that NBC has so far refused to
air, the story gained new life during the Senate trial. The Washington
Times story, however, is the most prominent and forthright handling
of the topic in mainstream print media.
The article, written by Bill Sammon and
Frank Murray, notes that in a March 1998 filing, Paula Jones'
lawyers called Broaddrick's story significant evidence that Clinton
"raped and sexually assaulted her and then bribed and/or
intimidated her and her family into remaining silent about this
outrage."
Broaddrick subsequently denied to Jones'
attorneys that the incident had occurred, but a number of contemporaneous
witnesses have confirmed her condition and description of the
encounter. Later Broaddrick changed her story in an interview
with Starr's office. A tape recording of Broaddrick talking with
Jones' investigators obtained by the Washington Times sheds some
light on this. In it, she said that her story was "so horrible"
she wouldn't repeat it. "Bad, bad, bad things, I can't even
begin to tell you," adding that "they won't get anything
out of me. I'm sorry . . . It's very private. We're talking about
something 20 years ago I'll deny anything."
More recently, however, Broaddrick agreed
to the lengthy Myers interview and is reported to be furious
-- after finally agreeing to tell her saga -- that NBC has chosen
to keep it under wraps.
Tim Russert, NBC Washington 202-885-4548;
Fax: 202-362-2009.
David Doss-Executive, Producer NBC Nightly news: 212-664-2331
Lisa Meyers: 202-885-4049.
Dateline: dateline@nbc.com
WHITEWATER RIPPLES
US News & World Reports notes that
Vernon Jordan's law firm is representing the Sudanese pharmaceutical
factory bombed by Clinton.
A politician commits perjury, coaching
a woman close to him to give false testimony. For this he loses
his wife, his fortune, his passport, his seat in the legislature,
and his summer home and finds himself $3.5 million in debt. He
may well end up in prison and thrown out of his private club.
This story clear does not come from the US, but rather from Great
Britain, ironically the font of all great principles of "high
crimes and misdemeanors" about which we have heard so much
recently. Apparently the current lot over there still takes perjury
pretty seriously. The target: a former Cabinet minister, Jonathan
Aitken, who drafted false testimony for his daughter to give
in a case on his behalf.
THE REVIEW LIST
Some public officials
who lost their jobs
for pursuing the truth
in the Clinton scandals
CHARLES LABELLA, the Justice Department
prosecutor who headed a federal probe into President Bill Clinton's
1996 re-election fund-raising and, along with the FBI, recommended
an independent prosecutor. Attorney General Janet Reno, taking
yet another dive in the scandals investigation, refused to follow
his advice. LaBella has now told the Los Angeles Times he has
decided to leave because Attorney General Janet Reno wants to
replace him: "Obviously, I did not have the confidence of
the attorney general and the deputy attorney general and so I
think it's time to move on," said LaBella, a 16-year veteran
of the Justice Department who has worked in New York and San
Diego.
MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ was a prosecutor on the
staff of Kenneth Starr. His attempts to uncover the truth in
the Foster death case were repeatedly foiled and he was the subject
of planted stories undermining his credibility and implying that
he was unstable. Rodriguez eventually resigned.
JEAN DUFFEY: Head of a joint federal-county
drug task force in Arkansas. Her first instructions from her
boss: "Jean, you are not to use the drug task force to investigate
any public official." Duffey's work, however, led deep into
the heart of the Dixie Mafia, including members of the Clinton
machine. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports that when she produced
a star witness who could testify to Clinton's involvement with
cocaine, the local prosecuting attorney, Dan Harmon issued a
subpoena for all the task force records, including "the
incriminating files on his own activities. If Duffey had complied
it would have exposed 30 witnesses and her confidential informants
to violent retributions. She refused." Harmon issued a warrant
for her arrest and friendly cops told her that there was a $50,000
price on her head. She eventually fled to Texas. The once-untouchable
Harmon was convicted in June 1997 of five counts of racketeering,
extortion and drug dealing.
BILL DUNCAN: An IRS investigator in Arkansas
who drafted some 30 federal indictments of Arkansas figures on
money laundering and other charges. Clinton biographer Roger
Morris quotes a source who reviewed the evidence: "Those
indictments were a real slam dunk if there ever was one."
The cases were suppressed, many in the name of "national
security." Duncan was never called to testify. Other IRS
agents and state police disavowed Duncan and turned on him. Said
one source, "Somebody outside ordered it shut down and the
walls went up."
RUSSELL WELCH: A Arkansas state police
detective working with Duncan. Welch developed a 35-volume, 3,000
page archive on drug and money laundering operations at Mena.
His investigation was so compromised that a high state police
official let one of the targets of the probe look through the
investigative file. At one point, Welch was sprayed in the face
with poison, later identified by the CDC as anthrax. He would
write in his diary, "I feel like I live in Russia, waiting
for the secret police to pounce down. A government has gotten
out of control. Men find themselves in positions of power and
suddenly crimes become legal." Welch is no longer with the
state police.
WITH ENEMIES LIKE THESE
The National Enquirer, according to the
Drudge Report, is about to report that David Schippers, the chief
investigative counsel for the Republican majority in the House
Judiciary Committee, hired his ex-mistress to help in his investigation.
Drudge says the Enquirer will run a full-page photo of Schippers,
his wife and his ex-mistress together during a House Judiciary
hearing. According to the paper, "Schippers former mistress
is currently working for him -- at taxpayer expense -- in his
effort to remove the president from office."
The story follows news reports that Republican
Congressman Tom DeLay once gave evasive and misleading answers
under oath in a business matter.
These incidents will undoubtedly give comfort
to those who believe that the president should not be convicted
of any offense anyone else in public life has ever broken. This,
however, would allow him to engage in murder, embezzlement of
public funds and fatal dueling, none of which seem to be in the
best interests of the nation.
THE MEDIACRATS
When Webster Hubbell's conviction got thrown
out of court it was the lead on ABC, CBS and CNN. When the charges
were reinstated by a higher court there was nothing on ABC, 12
seconds on CBS, and a bit more on CNN.
Amount of time given by ABC, NBC, and CBS
to 12 hours of important depositions for Judicial Watch by Linda
Tripp: 0 Amount by CNN; 2 minutes. Fox reported the story.
JUDICIAL WATCH
http://judicialwatch.org
CAN YOU SPOT THE SPIN?
In Breaking No New Ground, Blumenthal Blunts
His Sharp Edges: The very model of a modern gentleman -- Headline
in the New York Times
RUSH TO NON-JUDGMENT
Not since the days when W. J. Clinton's
old boss, J.W. Fulbright, rose on the Senate floor and solemnly
pronounced discrimination non-existent -- just a political issue
raised every four years -- has the Senate's capacity for hypocritical
bumfodder been so unrestrained. In fact, there is no surer sign
that the Senate is about to do something awful than its redundant
reiteration of solemn commitment to the Constitution, bipartisanship
and civility. As Harry Truman said, "Whenever a fellow tells
me he is bipartisan, I know he is going to vote against me."
Blended in a rush to non-judgment, the
Senate, White House and much of the media have convinced themselves
that the impeachment trial is, and should be, but another election;
in the end, Clinton will emerge victorious and that will be that.
To make this scenario work, however, it
has been essential that certain facts not gain credence. From
the House inquiry on, the primary subtext of this story -- seldom
even hinted at by the press -- is how much of the truth will
be kept under wraps until the impeachment saga is over.
As we come down to the final days, here
are a few things the public is not meant to know about:
-- Evidence that Clinton raped a woman
in 1978. As we have previously reported, this story has been
published by new media, the Washington Times and on Fox, but
has otherwise been suppressed -- primarily by NBC which is sitting
on hours of interviews with the alleged victims, her family and
friends.
-- There is also the account reported by
Clinton biographer Roger Morris in which Clinton was told in
1980 by the husband of a woman assaulted by Clinton that if he
ever went near his wife again, he would kill him.
Are all these stories necessarily true?
No, but those involved have a prima facie credibility infinitely
greater than the president and members of his machine who have
lied repeatedly. Further, the media that refuses to run these
stories -- or even to declare them wrong -- is the same media
that trashed Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Linda Tripp. On
the subject of Clinton's sexual behavior the mainstream media
has been censorious, deceitful, and enabling.
Finally this from Carl Limbacher of NewsMax:
"On Dec. 18, CNBC's Chris Matthews
asked Florida Rep. Tillie Fowler about
secret evidence currently sequestered in D.C.'s Gerald Ford Building
--
evidence that is known to cover Juanita Broaddrick's allegation.
"MATTHEWS: You mean the rape accusation?
FOWLER: Those and others.
"Up to 20 House members reviewed the
confidential material on the
Broaddrick case and 'others' as they weighed Clinton's impeachment.
Though the precise nature of the Ford Building evidence on Clinton
and
other possible victims is not known, the material left House
members
stunned.
"Rep. Chris Shays told the New York
Times that the material involved
allegations of conduct that was 'horrific.' Rep. Matt Salmon
told the
Arizona Republic that what he saw left him 'nauseated.' According
to
Chris Matthews, Rep. Mike Castle was 'reduced to tears' after
his trip
to the Ford Building.
"Plainly, the American public is being
kept in the dark about evidence
against Clinton that goes far beyond anything publicly known
about
Juanita Broaddrick's case."
The irony is that while the impeachment
trial may go away in a few days, Clinton's past won't. It will
be there to rise again and still -- to haunt those who considered
solemn professions an adequate substitute for simple integrity.
NEWSMAX
http://www.newxmax.com
COME WITH US NOW THRU
THE PAGES OF HISTORY
From the Progressive Review
FEB 1992: The establishment media was working
overtime to rescue their favorite Democrat, even to extent of
not letting their readers peruse the Flowers phone tapes despite
the fact that Clinton hadn't denied that it was his voice on
the other end of the line.
FEB 1994: It is professionally hypocritical
and democratically dangerous for the media to repeatedly present
saccharine images of the private Clintons that mislead and lull
the public while concealing facts that directly contradict these
images. If we must watch loving pictures of Hillary Clinton handing
out chocolate cookies, it is only fair that we also know that
she has the mouth of a Arkansas state trooper and that she and
her husband are far from being model of the family values they
have taken to chattering so unctuously about. And if Bill Clinton
is to demand "personal responsibility" from a generation
of struggling welfare mothers, why should we expect less from
him?
UP AGAINST THE MACHINE
When Lindale TX private investigators Rick
and Beverly Lambert were hired by Paula Jones' attorneys they
got more than they bargained for. Said Rick Lambert to his home
town paper, the Lindale News & Times: "I have never
in my entire 28 years [in investigative work] seen a machine
that works like Bill Clinton's machine works."
The Lamberts talked with 209 people including
"clandestine meetings on mountain roads in Arkansas, because
some people we needed to talk to were afraid to be seen with
us. . . Tactics by [Clinton's] machine kept a lot of the truth
from coming out."
Reports the News & Times: "From
their second day in Little Rock, they were followed wherever
they went and even though not expected, when they walked into
an office, on a cold-call; the woman that greeted them said,
'You must be the Lamberts.' It was unnerving.
Said Rick Lambert: "I've never worked
a case," he said somberly, "that degenerated my view
of the system more than this case has. I've seen a machine roll
over people, like tanks in Tienamen Square. Character means nothing
anymore."
LINDALE NEWS & TIMES
http://www.lindale-tx.net/
THE RENO DIVE
Insight magazine is reporting that FBI
director Louis Freeh has begun to dismantle his 100-person campaign
fund-raising task force as a result of Janet Reno refusing to
appoint a independent prosecutor to look into either the fund
scandal or the case of Harold Ickes. The task force may still
indict one or two persons but what was once deemed a major probe
is otherwise wrapping up. One source told Insight of Reno, "She's
made it plain that there's not going to be any IC probes on fund-raising
while she's AG."
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Washington power fetishists are like microbiologists.
They get extremely excited over extremely small matters. An example
of this appeared in the Washington Post as members of the Clinton
cult went into shock over the fact that Christopher Hitchens
had done something extraordinary by current capital standards:
he had signed an honest affidavit. Some sample reactions:
Author Christopher Buckley: "This
was, for our generation, a Chambers-versus-Hiss moment. I think
it is going to be a tectonic event for our crowd. You'll have
people leaping from one plate to the other as they separate.
It is the kind of event in which one inevitably must take sides."
Joan Bingham, executive editor of Grove/Atlantic
Press: "I can't imagine why Hitch would do this, unless
he's trying to promote his book. Maybe he doesn't realize the
extent of the problems he's gotten Sidney into. Because of what
Hitch has done, Sidney is facing hundreds of thousands of dollars
more in legal expenses."
Author James Chace: "It's extremely
bizarre that someone who has been a close friend of Sidney's
should make such a statement, which may very well cause Sidney
a great deal of personal harm."
A journalist: I think it is such a pity
that I'll never be able to speak with Christopher again or have
him in my house."
FIELD NOTES
TAINTED BLOOD: It's not pleasant to read,
but the Washington Weekly has an interview with a former prisoner
who sold his blood as part of the Arkansas prison tainted blood
operation during the Clinton regime. The supply eventually made
its way to Canada where it poisoned recipients.
WASHINGTON WEEKLY
http://www.federal.com/feb08-99/Prison
TAINTED BLOOD SUIT FILED
About 1000 Canadian hemophiliacs have filed
a $660
million class action suit in Toronto saying they got
tainted blood from the Arkansas prison system during
a period when Clinton was governor.
TAKING ON THE CLINTON FAMILY
From the closing remarks
to the US Senate
of Rep. Henry Hyde
As for the House Managers, I want to tell
you and our extraordinary staff how proud I am of your service.
For myself I cannot find words of praise strong enough, so I
will rely on the inaudible language of the heart. I have gone
through it all at your side, the media condemnations, the hate
mail, the insults shouted in public, the attempts at intimidation,
the death threats and even the disapproval of our colleagues.
FRENCH OFFICIALS HIT WITH CHARGES
IN CASE ECHOING ARKANSAS BLOOD SCANDAL
In a case with strong echoes of the Arkansas
deadly blood scandal, a former French prime minister (now speaker
of the lower house) and two other former cabinet members are
on trial for manslaughter and criminal negligence. The case,
like the Arkansas one, stems from the handling of government
blood supplies in the mid-1980s, permitting HIV-tainted blood
to be used. Former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and the others
are accused of letting unsterilized blood remain in supplies
used to treat hemophiliacs for several months and negligence
in enforcing screening regulations. About 4,000 persons became
infected with virus and some 40% have since died.
The seriousness of the French action is
in stunning contrast to the blasé reaction in this country
to accounts of deadly blood being shipped out of the Arkansas
prison system during the Clinton regime in the mid-80s. Although
the story has gotten a lot of attention in Canada -- where the
blood ended up -- and while about 1,000 hemophiliacs have filed
a $660 million class action suit in Toronto over the shipments,
American corporate media have suppressed the story.
Those involved in the commercial operation
that sold deadly blood from Arkansas prisoners had close ties
to the Clinton machine.
NOW CAN WE TALK
ABOUT SOME
OTHER THINGS?
Such as. . . .
Why was Jim McDougal, while in the custody
of Clinton's Justice Department, kept locked down and medicated
in such a way as to increase significantly the likelihood that
he would die of a heart attack?
Who was responsible for the mob style slaying
of former White House intern Mary Caitrin Mahoney and other Starbucks
employees in Georgetown? Who killed the police informant in the
case?
Who put nails in the tires of Kathleen
Willey's car, stole her cat, and left an animal skull on her
porch to greet her when she came back from testifying in the
Paula Jones case? Who subsequently came up to Willey while jogging
and asked, "Don't you get the message?"
When is the Washington Post going to report
what is in its own clip-files on Nathan Landow?
Who at the White House used any of the
900 illegally obtained FBI files on Republicans and for what
reasons?
Why is the Clinton machine -- with more
than 45 associates officially felons and some 100 others refusing
to cooperate, answer questions or fleeing the country -- not
covered by the RICO anti-racketeering laws?
Why did Vince Foster die? If it was a suicide,
who moved his body to Ft. Marcy Park? If it was a murder, who
did it?
Why does no one in a public position --
Congress, the media, Kenneth Starr, or Justice Department --
want to find the truth about Mena, drug running and money laundering
in Arkansas?
Who put Foster's car keys in his pocket
following his removal from the death scene? How did Foster walked
across 700 feet of parkland without accruing any dirt of grass
stains? What happened to the bullet that killed him? What happened
to the blood that should have been there? What happened to the
X-rays that were made? Why did his glasses end up in the wrong
place? How are scores of other anomalies resolved?
Who was responsible for the death threats
and other extortion used against a series of women who had affairs
with Clinton?
When will the media show some interest
in a pattern of alleged sexual assault by Clinton going back
as far as Oxford days?
What files were taken from Vince Foster's
office following his death and who destroyed his hard disc drive?
Why did Clinton fire FBI director William
Sessions several days before the Foster death and one day before
the FBI raided key Whitewater witness David Hale's Little Rock
office?
Who killed Jerry Luther Parks, a Clinton
security aide in Arkansas known to have been keeping dossier
on Clinton -- who was gunned down mob style outside of Little
Rock two months after Foster's death?
Was Parks, as his wife has indicated, involved
with Vince Foster in money laundering operations out of Mena?
Why did Parks say, upon hearing of Foster's death, "I'm
a dead man?" Who took the files out of the dead Parks' home?
When is the media going to tell Americans
about the deadly blood shipped from Arkansas prisons to Canada
during the administration of Governor Clinton? What was Clinton's
involvement in this scandal? What was in the "tainted blood"
file at the White House that Linda Tripp tried to access but
couldn't?
How were the Clintons involved in the false
prosecution of the head of the White House travel office?
Who lost the money that Hillary Clinton
made in her cattle futures scheme?
Who in the White House was involved in
the Ron Brown/DNC extortion policy by which donors had to give
the Democrats tens of thousands of dollars for the right to fly
on government trade missions? Why is this less important in the
media's view than the Olympic scandal?
When is the death of Ron Brown going to
be reexamined in light of pathologists finding a perfectly circular
hole in his head? When are the anomalies in the crash of Ron
Brown's plane going to be reexamined?
When are major media going to report that
a top aide in the White House was formerly a key associate of
a major Arkansas drug trafficker? When is the media going to
report that this drug trafficker had a back door pass to the
Arkansas governor's mansion?
How many favors has Clinton done for Indonesian
Chinese billionaire Mochtar Riady in the 20 years that they have
been close? The Indonesia government? The Chinese?
Why did Kathy Ferguson die five days after
her ex-husband was named a co-defendant in the Paula Jones law
suit? If she did commit suicide, why were fully packed bags found
next to her body? Why was her fiancé, a state trooper,
found dead shortly afterwards, again an alleged suicide?
Why did both Janet Reno and congressional
Republicans shut down major probes as soon as they started to
get close to drug trafficking?
What happened to the $175,000 in cash Ng
Lap Seng brought into the country in 1994 two days before he
sat at Clinton's table at a fundraiser?
Will the White House propose new legislation regarding perjury,
obstruction of justice, campaign financing, sexual assault, corrupt
practices, and racketeering, to bring the law into compliance
with currently accepted standards as practiced or advocated by
President and his aides?
OUT SOURCING
The basic issue in the Hitchens/Blumenthal
flap is whether a journalist is obliged to keep secret indictable
comments made to him without reservation by a publicly salaried
presidential propagandist out for his morning spin. The media
confusion on this matter illustrates well a fatal flaw in contemporary
journalism -- namely it regards the interests of one's sources
as infinitely superior to those of the public.
The mythology of sources has become indistinguishable
from the code of a fraternity like Skull & Bones, a quasi-secret
group such as the Council on Foreign Relations, or other institutions
where one is taught that there are things the public just shouldn't
know. Fin de siecle Washington has an overbearing sense of us
vs. them and smart journalists know which side to be on, even
it means that they betray their craft and suppress the news.
I've been in this trade for over 40 years
and have never been accused of betraying a source, but should
I find myself in Hitchens' situation I would probably do as he
did simply because, absent a promise to the contrary, my covenant
is with my readers and not with whatever dissembling hack happens
to be in power at the moment. The readers, more than ever, need
to know the truth.
There is a subtext to this story of no
lasting import in the form of a nasty article by Alexander Cockburn
accusing Hitchens of being a "Judas and a snitch,"
of drinking far too much, and of doing something "utterly
despicable."
To put this in some context, it helps to
remember that the Brits have a great capacity for extreme excitement
over extremely trivial matters. Reading Cockburn's piece I was
reminded of an English apple festival I stumbled upon at which
a huge barn was filled with utterly serious Brits doing ridiculous
things with apples. There was a large display of apple coring
devices, an apple peeling contest, and -- with the biggest line
of all -- a table of somber apple experts figuring out the provenance
of pet apples brought by the visitors. The great mystery of the
British is that they can be so calm when being bombed and so
hysterical when faced with an unidentified apple.
Both Cockburn and Hitchens, albeit admirable
in many ways, are capable of similar excess as the latter illustrated
with his trashing of Mother Teresa and the former with his trashing
of Hitchens. It is in such ways that the educated of the former
empire establish a reputation for brilliance -- and we probably
shouldn't disturb them as long as they don't knock over too much
furniture. It is, however, fortunate for Marx that he didn't
have to rely on Oxbridge leftists for his revolution.
As for Hitchens' legal liability in the
affair, Rep. Lindsey Graham summed it up well: "That would
be the ultimate irony: We let the president go for perjury, don't
go after the aide who . . . lied about what he was telling reporters
about Monica Lewinsky, but take the one guy who told the truth
and throw him in jail."
That's the sort of place it is these days.