FEBRUARY 2001
THE LIST
Ties between the pardoned
and the pardoner
Linda Medlar
Jones: fraud and obstruction of justice in Cisneros case. Was
Cisneros' lover
Roger Clinton:
conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Bill's half-brother
Tom Bhakta: tax
evasion. His family gave $5,000 to Hillary's campaign Outcome:
Pardoned
Almon Glenn Braswell:
Vitamin peddler convicted of mail fraud and perjury. Hillary's
brother Hugh Rodham lobbied for pardon.
Carlos Vignali
Offense: cocaine trafficking. Hugh Rodham lobbied for him
John Bustamante:
fraudulently obtaining a loan and stealing from a woman's estate.
Former adviser to Clinton friend Jesse Jackson
Melvin Reynolds:
bank fraud and having sex with underage staffer. Jesse Jackson
asked Clinton for commutation.
Henry Cisneros:
lying in independent-counsel probe. Served in Bill Clinton's
Cabinet
Dorothy Rivers
Offense: Embezzled federal aid for homeless children. Jesse Jackson
associate.
John Deutch:
security violations. Served Bill Clinton at CIA
Robert Clinton
Fain and James Lowell Manning: tax charges. William Cunningham,
Hillary's Senate campaign treasurer, acted as their lawyer.
Susan McDougal:
fraud in Whitewater scandal; refusal to testify against Bill
Clinton. Longtime friend and Whitewater partner of the Clintons.
Edward R. Downe
Jr.: securities fraud. Hillary donor.
Alvarez Ferrouillet
laundering money to cover loan for congressional campaign of
Mike Espy's brother. Espy was Clinton's agriculture secretary;
petition was pushed by Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe Outcome.
Ronald H. Blackley:
Former Espy chief-of-staff convicted of making false statements
related to Espy probe. Espy asked for clemency 27-month sentence
commuted along with those of four others convicted of lesser
charges in Espy probe
Arnold Paul Prosperi:
Convicted in 1997 of filing false tax returns and using fake
bank records to hide embezzlement. College buddy of Clinton.
Peg Bargon: Possessing
eagle feather that her son found in a zoo. She gave feather to
Hillary Clinton.
Charles D. Ravenel:
bank-fraud conspiracy. Clinton friend since 1980.
Richard Riley
Jr.: federal drug charges. Son of Clinton's education secretary.
Stephen A. Smith
and Robert Palmer: charges related to Whitewater. Smith was former
Clinton aide; Palmer worked as appraiser on Whitewater.
Christopher V.
Wade: Whitewater bankruptcy fraud. One of the original developers
of Clintons' Whitewater.
Marc Rich: 50
felony counts, including tax evasion of $48 million. Former Clinton
counsel Jack Quinn urged Bill Clinton to grant pardon; ex-wife,
Denise, a major Clinton donor
John Fife Symington
III: false statements to obtain loans. Longtime Clinton friend;
once saved Bill's life in boating mishap.
Harvey Weinig:
Helped launder at least $19 million for drug cartel. A relative,
former White House aide David Dreyer, asked Clinton confidants
for clemency. NY
POST
CLINTON SCANDALS
1985: A RELATIVE
OF BILL CLINTON IS RAPED. Wayne Dumond is arrested and imprisoned
in the case. While awaiting sentencing, Dumond himself is sexually
assaulted and castrated by two masked men. A local sheriff, later
sentenced to 160 years for extortion and drug dealing, displays
Dumond's testicles in a jar on his desk under a sign that read,
"That's what happens to people who fool around in my county."
A parole board, upon receiving new evidence of Dumond's innocence,
will vote to release him after 4 1/2 years in prison. Governor
Clinton -- according to the managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat
Gazette -- stages a "romping, stomping fit" and blocks
the release . . . STEVE DUNLEAVY, NY POST: Both as governor of
Arkansas and president, the one pardon [Clinton] forgot about
was Wayne Dumond. In 48 years on this job on six continents,
I have never seen or heard of a miscarriage of justice in these
United States like the one visited on Wayne Dumond . . . Armed
with a semen sample off a pair of jeans worn by the victim and
which the state claimed came from Dumond, I went to Atlanta.
I presented the sample to Dr. Moses Schanfield, one of the most
respected DNA experts in the country. Dr. Schanfield told me:
"No way, zip, nada. No way Dumond was the donor of that
sperm. Not in a million years." We ambushed Clinton, who
wasn't as talkative as governor of Arkansas as he was as president.
"There is no merit to review this case, and as governor
I can't comment," he said at the time. In 1999, Wayne Dumond
was released, saying he wanted to be bitter but just couldn't
get there. Twelve years in jail for a crime he did not commit,
castrated, framed and denied any process by a Gov. Clinton and
a President Clinton and he couldn't get bitter. NY POST
ROGER
CLINTON, pardoned by his half-brother in the last hours of the
Clinton presidency for a drug conviction in 1985, came under
subsequent FBI scrutiny several times, Newsweek has learned,
including one episode in which he allegedly sought to play middleman
in the purchase of presidential pardons. No charges were ever
brought, and a Clinton spokeswoman says the former president
knew nothing of the FBI's interest in Roger. But the White House
did make a point of bypassing the FBI and processing the Roger
Clinton pardon directly through high-level Justice Department
officials, Newsweek reports in the current issue.
BRIAN BLOMQUIST
& DEVLIN BARRETT, NY POST: Manhattan US Attorney Mary Jo
White launched a probe of whether fugitive billionaire Marc Rich
bought his pardon - blocking an immunity deal to let his ex-wife,
Denise, tell all . . .
The Justice Department told congressional investigators to halt
their plan to give Denise Rich criminal immunity to compel her
to testify publicly about the pardon that has sparked a furor
. . . Denise Rich, who gave more than $1 million in campaign
contributions to the Democrats and $450,000 to the Clinton library,
has so far refused to answer questions about her ex-husband's
pardon, citing her right to avoid incriminating herself.
DRUDGE REPORT:
Time claims Clinton is dragging down Democratic fundraising.
In Florida where Democrats say they need at least $12 million
to defeat Governor Jeb Bush in 2002, a money man told Time normally
dependable givers are refusing because of the allegation that
Clinton gave pardons for campaign cash. "One problem with
the Clinton defense that he pardoned Marc Rich to please Ehud
Barak is that Israelis downplay the former prime minister's role,
saying it consisted of a brief mention during one phone call,
Time reports. Sources close to Clinton contend there were at
least three calls. DRUDGE
REPORT
BLOOMBERG: Michael
Rankowitz, the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. official
who hired former President Bill Clinton to speak and sparked
a firestorm of criticism, has resigned.
EARLY RETURNS:
The first contributions Denise Rich made in the 1990s went to
none other than Senator Arlen Specter reports the Washington
Post.
NY TIMES, MAY
16, 1998 - Moments after President Clinton gave videotaped testimony
for the criminal trial of James and Susan McDougal, his former
Whitewater partners, he privately agreed to give Mrs. McDougal
a pardon if she was convicted, a new book by James McDougal says.
"I'm willing to stick with it, but if it doesn't work out,
or whatever, can you pardon Susan?" McDougal recalled asking
Clinton shortly after the president had completed his testimony,
in the Map Room at the White House two years ago. "You can
depend on that," Clinton is said to have replied quietly
in the private conversation, apparently out of earshot of others.
McDougal then asked, "Like I say with all lawyers, I mean
promptly?" The president grinned and nodded, by McDougal's
account, and said, "If you hang with me, I'll do it."
WALL STREET JOURNAL:
For the sake of argument and good manners, let us concede the
possibility that the US Attorney for the Southern District really
will, in short order, unravel whatever paper trail and money
trail may exist between Marc and Denise Rich and the former President
of the United States. But before everyone else shuts up shop
on the Rich pardon and awaits the results from US Attorney White,
let us just say for the record: Been there, done that . . . The
last time other investigators passed through this door was in
early 1999. That year and the year before, Rep. Pete Hoekstra's
House Oversight and Investigations Committee was holding hearings
into the financial irregularities involving the Teamsters presidential
election, the AFL-CIO and campaign fund-raising by the Democratic
Party. At the request of the Department of Justice, Mr. Hoekstra
and his investigators agreed to steer clear of allegations that
money had been illegally laundered among these entities, deferring
that task to the US Attorney's office in the Southern District
under Mary Jo White . . . Ms. White in fact has been investigating
the Teamster affair since 1997, securing guilty pleas and convictions
of various small fry and just last month indicting her first
major figure, former Teamster President Ron Carey. Even with
this, the case presumably will rattle on into the indefinite
future . . . The Bush Administration keeps suggesting it wants
the pardon scandal to go away, so perhaps Ms. White's blockade
serves their purposes as well as Mr. Clinton's.
LESS WE FORGET:
Marc Rich is America's record tax evader.
o
SYMMETRY
WHILE EVERYONE
NOW KNOWS that the Clinton years ended with a dubious pardon,
few know they started much the same way . . . THE REVIEW, FEBRUARY
1993: When Clinton was inaugurated, Arkansas Governor Jim Guy
Tucker came to Washington to see his old boss sworn in. That
left the state under the control of the president pro tem of
the senate, Little Rock dentist Jerry Jewell. Jewell used his
power as acting governor to issue a number of pardons, one of
them for a convicted drug dealer, Tommy McIntosh. The pardons
were a big subject of controversy in Arkansas and not the least
of the questions was: how did McIntosh get included?
Enter Robert
"Say" McIntosh, father of Tommy, and a colorful political
activist. According to the Washington Times, many in the state
"say it was a political payoff, offered in exchange for
dirty tricks Mr. McIntosh played on Clinton political opponents
during the presidential campaign, or as a payoff for stopping
his attacks on Mr. Clinton." It seems that the elder McIntosh
had worked for Clinton in his last state campaign and, according
to McIntosh in a 1991 lawsuit, had agreed not only to pay him
$25,000 but to help him market his recipe for sweet potato pie
and to pardon his son. He also alleged that Clinton expected
McIntosh's help in covering up a trail of sexual indiscretions.
McIntosh dropped
his lawsuit a month after Clinton was elected president and,
he claims, after the president-elect agreed to get his son out
of jail . . . The younger McIntosh was released 18 years before
he was eligible for parole.
CLINTON SCANDALS
ROD DREHER, NY
POST: Overlooked so far is [Marc]Rich's role in the looting of
the disintegrating Soviet Union by Communist Party officials
and their associates in the early 1990s. You can read about it
in "Godfather of the Kremlin," an exhaustively researched
book about Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, which was published
last fall. The author is Paul Klebnikov, an expert on Russia
and a Forbes magazine senior editor. The book details the myriad
ways Berezovsky and his minions stole untold sums from the Russian
people through international financial schemes. According to
Klebnikov, Rich came into the picture around 1990, when the Soviet
Union began to open up to outsiders. "Governmental authority
began to crumble. All these local Communist Party bosses got
to strike deals on their own," the author tells me. Based
in Switzerland, with its secretive banking laws, Rich was in
a prime position to help Russia's plunderers carry out their
dirty work. Klebnikov reported that Rich dealt in oil, aluminum,
zinc and other raw commodities. "He'd strike a deal with
the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company,"
explains the author. "He'd say, 'OK, you will sell me the
[commodity] at 5 to 10 percent of the world market price. "'And
in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make by reselling
it 10 times higher on the world market, and put the kickback
in a Swiss bank account.'" For at least two years, as the
Soviet Union was in its death throes, Rich was that nation's
largest trader of aluminum and oil on a spot basis. "He
made a complete mint off of Russia," says Klebnikov. NY POST
UPI: The head
of the largest Jewish denomination in the United States Thursday
criticized Jewish leaders who lobbied in favor of a pardon for
Marc Rich calling it a "moral stain" for Jews. "Charged
with massive tax evasion and breaking an embargo on trading with
Iran, Rich is a multimillionaire fugitive from justice who lives
in luxury in Switzerland," Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president
of Reform Judaism's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, wrote
in an op-ed piece in the New York-based Jewish Week. "I
am in no position to judge Rich's legal claims, but neither are
the many Jewish leaders and luminaries who contacted President
Clinton in support of the pardon. Why their interest in a man
who appears to have traded illegally not only with Iran but with
Iraq and Libya, rogue states devoted to Israel's destruction?
The answer is simple: They were bought," added Yoffie. "Rich
contributed generously to Jewish causes and charities around
the world, and then, in a carefully orchestrated campaign, called
in favors to put pressure on the president." UPI
NEWSMAX: The
Washington Times columnist who first reported the looting of
the presidential airplane used by the Clintons for their farewell
flight home has no plans to retract the story, despite President
Bush's statement this week that the incident never took place.
"I stand by what I wrote," John McCaslin told NewsMax
. . . "All the allegations that they took stuff off Air
Force One are simply not true," [Bush] told reporters. The
White House refused to say whether Bush actually investigated
the looting incident . . . Two days after McCaslin's initial
report, the Times front paged news that a number of items bearing
the Air Force One logo had turned up on the internet auction
site eBay. "These are very hard-to-get items," one
collectables dealer told the paper. "They are not mass-marketed
and are made only for the White House." Citing that report,
McCaslin reiterated, "I'm standing by what I wrote right
down to the stolen toothpaste." NEWSMAX
HAMILTON JORDAN,
WALL STREET JOURNAL: If I'd have had the nerve to walk into the
Oval Office to discuss a pardon with Mr. Carter, I would have
been peppered with questions: "Hamilton, why on earth are
you bringing this to me? What does (Attorney General) Griffin
Bell think? Why isn't Lloyd Cutler (the White House counsel)
here? What is the case history and rationale for this pardon?
What are the extenuating circumstances that merit my overturning
the judgment of a jury and our court system? Do the former prosecutors
favor a pardon, and if so, why?" After a series of my answering
"I don't know," President Carter would have surely
given me one of his famous icy stares and admonished me, "Pardons
are serious legal business and not your business, Hamilton. Don't
ever come in here again to talk to me about a pardon." If
I had summoned the courage to say, "But Mr. President, this
pardon is for someone who contributed generously to our campaign
and has even promised to contribute to the Carter Presidential
Library," he would have thrown me out of the Oval Office
and probably fired me on the spot." . . . Grifters was a
term used in the Great Depression to describe fast-talking con
artists who roamed the countryside, profiting at the expense
of the poor and the uneducated, always one step ahead of the
law, moving on before they were held accountable for their schemes
and half-truths. No longer able to dominate the national news
with moving speeches or policy initiatives, the First Grifters
have been unable to move beyond the Marc Rich pardon, White House
gifts and other events related to their noisy and ungraceful
departure from office. Robbed of the frills of high office, we
can now examine these last-minute pardons--and the Clintons--for
what they are. WALL
STREET JOURNAL
KENNETH R. BAZINET,
NY DAILY NEWS: Controversial gifts taken by former President
Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton were specifically
solicited for them by friends of the Clintons, a top aide confirmed
for the first time. "Did friends of Mrs. Clinton not solicit
others and say, 'Would you please buy this silverware, these
gifts for Mrs. Clinton for her new houses?'" ex-White House
chief of staff John Podesta was asked on NBC's "Meet the
Press." "Yes, that happened," Podesta conceded,
adding that he thought it was a mistake . . . Up until Podesta's
comments, aides to both the senator and the former President
had denied anyone had solicited gifts for them. NY
DAILY NEWS
POLITICO: The
Associated Press reports that "President Clinton's pardon
of Carlos Vignali Jr. could prove trouble for two mayoral candidates
who interceded for the convicted cocaine dealer." US Rep.
Xavier Becerra and former California Assembly Speaker Antonio
Villaraigosa are among several candidates vying to become mayor
POLITICO
SPOOKY STUFF
Larry King Show, February 8
KING: We're going
to spend [some] minutes with Howard Safir, good friend and former
New York City Police . . . He was chief of operations for the
US Marshall Service, headed the pursuit of fugitive Marc Rich.
Why was he so hard to get?
HOWARD SAFIR,
FORMER NEW YORK CITY COMMISSIONER: He was hard to get because
he had a great deal of influence in a lot of countries, and we
were pretty much restricted to just a few countries where we
could apprehend him. He had Bolivian passport, he had a Spanish
passport. The Israelis were very clear they weren't going to
help us apprehend him. So it was very difficult to get him, plus
he had a lot of money . . .
KING: Howard,
are you hinting at or saying bribe here? Are you saying quid
pro quo? What are your feelings? We don't have facts yet.
SAFIR: We don't
have facts. What I'm saying is the appearance: the appearance
of fugitive's ex-wife contributing over $1 million to the Democratic
Party. You are talking about an individual, when I did a spy
exchange in 1986, he had a lawyer from East Germany offer $225
million for him and Pinky Green if the prosecutions were wiped
out. Well, we told them at the time: Justice is not for sale.
[As reported
by Rod Dreher of the NY Post, Rich was deeply involved with the
Russians who, at the time of the offer to Safir, included East
Germany in their empire. While we know Rich subsequently made
tens of millions helping the old regime (including members of
the KGB) loot their country in the name of capitalism, we don't
know why they, or the East German Stasi, considered Rich and
Green worth $225 million]
PHILIP SHENON,
NY TIMES: The chairman of Morgan Stanley has told clients that
the Wall Street investment company "clearly made a mistake"
by having former President Bill Clinton speak at a conference
in Florida, saying the firm understood their unhappiness in light
of "Mr. Clinton's personal behavior as president."
. . . "We should have thought twice before the speaking
invitation was extended," the e-mail message continued.
"Our failure to do so was particularly unfortunate in light
of Mr. Clinton's actions in leaving the White House." NY
TIMES
NEWSMAX recalls
that former Arkansas state trooper L.D. Brown claims he was strong-armed
by the now director of the Clinton Presidential Foundation just
as the Whitewater probe was heating up. Brown, a Clinton body
guard, says in his book, "Crossfire: Witness in the Clinton
Investigation," that Skip Rutherford called him in and asked
him about the Madison investigation and for a list of women that
the media knew about. At one point, said Brown, Rutherford said,
"L.D., you wouldn't want all your credit card receipts splashed
all over the front page of the newspapers, now would you?"
Brown said the incident led to his decision to come forth with
his story, in which he told investigators of that Clinton knew
about an illegal SBA loan for Susan McDougal and about the drug
running operations in Mena. NEWSMAX
TITLE 18, CHAPTER
12, SECTION 201, US CODE: Whoever, being a public official ...
directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts,
or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or
for any other person or entity in return for being influenced
in the performance of any official act . . . shall be fined under
this title not more than three times the monetary equivalent
of the thing of value . . . or imprisoned for not more than fifteen
years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office
of honor, trust, or profit under the United States
THE KERRY REPORT
ON BCCI, 1992: Many investigative leads remain to be explored,
but cannot be answered with devoting substantial additional resources
that to date no agency of government has been in a position to
provide. Unanswered questions include, but are not limited to,
. . . the alleged relationship between the late CIA director
William Casey and BCCI; the extent of BCCI's involvement in Pakistan's
nuclear program; BCCI's manipulation of commodities and securities
markets in Europe and Canada; . . . the use of BCCI by central
figures in the alleged "October Surprise," . . . its
involvement with foreign intelligence agencies; the financial
dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating
affiliates and front-companies, including the possibility that
BCCI related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to
move them outside the United States; BCCI's financing of commodities
and other business dealings of international criminal financier
Marc Rich KERRY
REPORT
the public about
their knowledge of and support for the operations . . . Abrams
pleaded guilty in October 1991 to two counts of withholding information
from Congress about secret Government efforts to support the
contras, and about his solicitation of $10 million to aid the
contras from the Sultan of Brunei . . . At the time President
Bush pardoned Weinberger and Clarridge, he also pardoned George,
Fiers, Abrams, and McFarlane."
Abrams is now,
believe it or not, president of something called the Ethics and
Public Policy Center, and is featured on programs like PBS' 'Think
Tank' and speaks at places such as Princeton, where a news release
gracefully side-stepped his pivotal role in Iran-Contra: "Abrams,
who served in the State Department during all eight years of
the Reagan administration, was assistant secretary of state first
for international affairs, then for human rights and humanitarian
affairs, and finally for Inter-American affairs. In 1988, he
received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award
from Secretary George P. Shultz for his work in the department."
This is the way
the American establishment works. Get on the tenure track early
and you too can deceive Congress with impunity. It will not surprise
us to learn in the near future that the noted intentional financier
Marc Rich has been given a chair at the Harvard Business School.
After all, the approved expert is never wrong for long.
RICHARD A. SERRANO
& STEPHEN BRAUN LOS ANGELES TIMES: A third of those granted
last-minute pardons or commutations by President Clinton last
month skirted the normal Justice Department review process and
instead appealed directly to the White House in the waning days
of his presidency . . . 47 people - nearly twice as many as the
two dozen originally reported - were granted presidential relief
without applications first being fully examined by the Justice
Department's pardon attorney's office. Most of them never filed
normal clemency applications with the Justice Department. Others
had been denied pardons by Clinton earlier or simply were not
qualified for a pardon under Justice Department rules.LA
TIMES
TIME: The former
wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich contributed about $400,000
to the Clinton presidential library, legal sources tell TIME.
This revelation is likely to deepen suspicions of congressional
investigators looking into the controversial pardon given to
Rich by President Clinton - that Denise Rich's financing of Clinton
political and personal projects influenced his decision to give
amnesty to her ex-husband. The sources said Denise Rich gave
money to the library after consulting with Beth Dozoretz, a close
Clinton friend and major Democratic fund-raiser who discussed
the pardon of Marc Rich with the President nine days before he
granted it. The timing of the library contribution and its proximity
to the pardon were not immediately obtainable. Denise Rich's
generosity aroused the suspicion of Republican investigators
from the moment Clinton pardoned her ex-husband of 1983 charges
that he evaded $48 million in taxes and engaged in illegal oil
sales with Iran. She gave over $1 million to Democratic campaigns
in the Clinton era and at least $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's
US Senate race as well as $10,000 to the President's legal defense
fund. TIME
GEORGE LARDNER
JR. WASHINGTON POST: Among the gifts that former president Bill
Clinton says he is keeping as personal presents he accepted last
year are $28,000 worth of furnishings that documents and interviews
indicate were given to the National Park Service in 1993 as part
of the permanent White House collection . . . Two of the furniture
makers whose donations Clinton took with him on leaving the White
House last month say they gave them to the White House as part
of a widely publicized, $396,000 redecoration of the executive
mansion and not to Clinton personally . . . Two former Internal
Revenue Service commissioners, one a Republican and the other
a Democrat, said that Clinton's taking the furnishings under
such circumstances would appear to be an improper "conversion
of government property" that could require the Clintons
to pay taxes on them. They said they were not suggesting criminal
wrongdoing by the president. "It's the intent of the giver
that counts," said Sheldon S. Cohen, who headed the IRS
under president Lyndon B. Johnson. "If it was given to him
[Clinton], it's his. But if it was given to the United States,
then it is improper for it to end up in his hands unless he buys
it." Donald C. Alexander, who was IRS commissioner under
Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, said: "If someone gave
something of value to the White House as the White House and
not to the president, that is a gift to the government of the
United States . . . a charitable contribution." The Clintons,
he said, "have no business taking it with them. That is
conversion of government property and income to them." WASH
POST
[This is not
the first time the Clintons have run into problem with conversion
of government property.]
REPORT OF THE
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT: The story
of the White House Database is one about a White House that disregarded
the difference between the official business of the United States
government and the political business of reelecting the President.
Because the line between official business and campaigning was
obliterated, this President and his White House subordinates
proceeded to spend at least $1.7 million of government funds
on a complex, centralized computer system known as the White
House Database or "WhoDB." It was used not just for
official purposes; senior White House staff planned and, in fact,
used it to advance the campaign fundraising objectives of the
Democratic National Committee. This conversion of government
property to the use of the DNC constitutes a theft of government
property under 18 USC § 641 . . .
[Incidentally,
two familiar names that have cropped up in the Clintons' post-White
House activities also appeared in the House committee report]
The committee
believes that there is substantial evidence that in September
1996 then-Associate (now-Deputy) Counsel to the President Cheryl
Mills, with the knowledge and concurrence of then-White House
Counsel Jack Quinn, knowingly and willfully obstructed the investigative
authority of this committee by withholding documents that were
plainly responsive to the committee requests for documents and
information. Moreover, when this obstruction was brought to light
in a hearing before the committee, Ms. Mills lied under oath
about the documents and the circumstances surrounding their non-production.
Ms. Mills's actions, withholding responsive documents from the
committee, delayed the committee for more than a year from obtaining
important evidence . . . Moreover, the failure to produce these
documents when they were discovered in September 1996 had the
effect of delaying the committee's investigation long enough
to allow memories of relevant witnesses to fade for more than
a year until they could plausibly testify that they could no
longer remember the meetings or conversations reflected in the
documents. The committee believes that Ms. Mills was fully aware
of these potential effects and deliberately engaged in the withholding
of documents for that purpose. In the second term, she was promoted
from Associate Counsel to the President to Deputy Counsel to
the President. HOUSE
REPORT
18 USC §
641: Whoever embezzles, steal, purloins, or knowingly converts
to his use or the use of another, or without authority . . .
conveys or disposes of any record, . . . or thing of value of
the United States or of any department or agency thereof . .
. ; or Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent
to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled,
stolen, purloined or converted - shall be fined under this title
or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both . .
NILES LATHEM,
NY POST: Billionaire Marc Rich lived a double life during his
20 years as a fugitive, funneling secret data to Israeli and
other intelligence services about some unsavory governments.
Sensational details about Rich's ultimate high-wire act as a
spy for Israel and other countries were provided to The Post
as congressional committees prepare to hold hearings into former
President Bill Clinton's controversial decision to pardon the
fugitive commodities trader. Among the issues that will be explored
by the House Oversight Committee in its probe of the hotly disputed
Rich pardon, according to congressional sources, are:
* Rich's lengthy
relationship with the Israeli Mossad.
* His numerous
contacts with federal prosecutors in New York, during which his
lawyers offered to provide intelligence to the CIA in return
for leniency.
A CIA spokesman
denied any relationship with Rich and said no one from the agency
participated in behind-the-scenes White House discussions about
his pardon. But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak repeatedly
cited Rich's contributions to Israel's "national security"
in phone calls to President Clinton last month in which he lobbied
for Rich's pardon, according to Barak spokesman Gadi Baltiansky.
And a letter from former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit to Clinton
confirming that Rich provided "assistance" to the Israeli
spy agency that produced results "beyond the expected"
was among the documents released last week by Rich's lawyer Jack
Quinn to support the Rich pardon. NY POST
JACKIE JUDD,
ABC: The investigations still dogging former President Clinton
more than three weeks after the end of his term are beginning
to make a dent in his earnings. A few days after another financial
giant acknowledged it made a "mistake" by paying Clinton
about $125,000 to speak last week, the UBS-Warburg financial
services company announced it has scrapped negotiations to have
the former president address a conference in April. UBS-Warburg,
parent company of PaineWebber, was in discussions to have Clinton
speak at conference of institutional investors. But UBS pulled
out of the talks because, according to a spokesman, "It
would not be in the best interests of the firm, because of the
likely client reaction." . . . The spokesman also acknowledged
the decision to take a pass on Clinton came after Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter faced criticism from clients for hosting Clinton
last week. After Clinton spoke to a Morgan Stanley conference
in Florida last week, some Clinton critics cut their ties to
the firm . . . In an e-mail to investors apologizing for the
Clinton appearance, Morgan Stanley CEO Philip J. Purcell said
the Clinton invite was a mistake. "We should have been far
more sensitive to the strong feelings of our clients over Mr.
Clinton's personal behavior as president," Purcell wrote.
"We should have thought twice before the speaking invitation
was extended." ABC
ORACLE: Former
President Bill Clinton to Deliver Opening Keynote at Oracle AppsWorld!
Monday, February 19 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM. Monday isn't just President's
Day ... it's opening day at Oracle AppsWorld. So who better to
kick-off the biggest event in e-business than former United States
President Bill Clinton? . . . ORACLE'S REPLY TO COMPLAINT: When
we accepted Bill's offer to speak at AppsWorld, we knew that
it would create controversy in some quarters. Be assured that
the positive comments have far outweighed the negative comments.
Love him or hate him, Bill presided over the USA at an incredible
time in US and World history - the Internet boom, the "new"
economy, the B2C revolution, the B2B boom - all of which are
very relevant to our audience. Furthermore, the announcement
of Bill's presence has dramatically increased registrations for
our event, meaning that more potential customers will attend
our premier event and hear Oracle's message - that's good for
shareholders and great for future revenue. We've taken your comments
and ensured that they are included in all the feedback we've
had. Thanks for taking the time to send us them. Best Regards,
Oracle Web Marketing
EASTERN BANK
REPLY TO COMPLAINT: For 10 years, Eastern Bank has been one of
the corporate sponsors of the Salem State College speaker series.
The college has hosted former presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald
Ford, and George Bush, and world-renowned figures such as Bishop
Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Next month, the college will host
former president Bill Clinton . . . Our sponsorship does not
reflect an endorsement of any speaker. Instead, it's a commitment
to support an educationally significant speaker series. We appreciate
your thoughts on the former president's appearance and hope you
will join us in respecting the College's right to host such events.
WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Will the torment never cease? It's been three long weeks since
Bill Clinton left the White House, and still the wails of agony,
the cries of outrage and the shouts of denunciation continue.
And that's from the former president's friends . . . We about
fell off our chair when The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne finally
mustered up enough moral outrage after eight years to quote an
equally outraged [Rep.] Barney Frank. That most fervent of all
Clinton apologists now calls the Rich pardon a 'betrayal' and
'contemptuous.' Even Joe Conason took a shot at his heroes, which
is like Boswell doubting Dr. Johnson. Who's next? Sid Blumenthal?"
ROBERT WINDREM,
NBC NEWS Newly available financial data shows that Denise Rich's
giving to the Democratic Party and the Clintons intensified dramatically
over the past two years, ending in a final rush as the Clintons
neared their White House exit. An NBC News analysis of documents
on file with various federal agencies, including the Federal
Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and government
ethics office shows that while Rich gave at least $1.5 million
to Clinton-related political, legal and charitable organizations
during the last decade, the majority of the giving - more than
$900,000 - came over the final two years of the Clinton era -
just before her ex-husband, Marc Rich, was pardoned. More than
$200,000 came in a spurt during the final six months, $140,000
of that in September, October and November, as her ex-husband's
team of lawyers, led by former White House counsel Jack Quinn,
began pressing Clinton for a pardon. NBC
YOU CAN'T ALWAYS
TELL A LIBRARY
BY ITS COVER STORY
MARA LEVERITT,
ARKANSAS TIMES, Sep. 24, 1999: I've heard about the site for
the library, the financing of the land for the library, the naming
of the street that leads to the library, the training for leadership
at the library, the architect for the library, and even the architect's
vision for the bridge outside the library - a bridge, he suggested,
that makes him imagine a rainbow with the library as its pot
of gold. What I have not heard mentioned at all is what the library
will hold. What will visitors find, after the land has been paid
for, and the library has been built, and the lid is taken off
that pot of gold? I know someone, somewhere, must be contemplating
the library's contents. Surely. But the matter of what's to go
in and what's to stay out certainly hasn't gotten public attention.
And that strikes me as unfortunate, for we might end up with
a library that, for all its elaborate trappings, is missing a
few central features. I expect that there will be a number of
biographical documents relating to the background of Bill Clinton;
records from his early years in Hope and Hot Springs and Fayetteville,
for instance. But what about the records from his years as governor?
Will they ever see the light of day?
MARA LEVERITT,
"THE BOYS ON THE TRACKS:" Reporters seeking to research
records from Clinton's administrations in Arkansas . . . found
that that was impossible. Arkansas is one of five states that
allow governors to keep their official papers out of the public
domain. [The others are Iowa, Maryland, Rhode Island, and South
Dakota.] At first Clinton had indicated he would make his official
records public. After his defeat for reelection as governor in
1980, he deposited the records from his first tow-year term in
the archives of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. They
remained there after he regained the office in 1982. However,
when Clinton launched his presidential campaign in 1991, he ordered
the records from his first term removed from the university archives.
When he left office as governor, they, along with all his office's
records from 1982 through 1991 - some four thousand boxes in
all - were placed in private storage an undisclosed location.
In 1998, even as planning was begun for the Clinton presidential
library in Little Rock, it was impossible for anyone without
a court order to see records from Clinton's administration as
governor.
RE-IMPEACHMENT
We initially
dismissed out of hand Snarlin' Arlen Specter's idea of re-impeaching
Bill Clinton. But a Nixon impeachment committee staffer has pointed
us towards some history that makes it wise to bring the matter
before the Review's committee of the whole.
The problem with
the current view of impeachment, compounded by the recent unpleasantness,
is that we tend to see it as the equivalent of ordinary indictment
and trial when, in fact, it is more like being disbarred or kicked
out of a club for offensive behavior. At stake is not so much
the punishment of the offender as the honor of the institution
and of its by-laws.
Thus it was in
1997, long before Monica Lewinsky, that the Review offered wording
for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It wasn't hard to do; with
the exception of the named impeachee and a few other words, it
came exactly from the document prepared in the case of Richard
Nixon. For example:
"He has
failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed by
failing to act when he knew or had reason to know that his close
subordinates endeavored to impede and frustrate lawful inquiries
by duly constituted executive, judicial, and legislative entities."
The later House
articles of impeachment against Clinton began in a similar vein:
"In his
conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson
Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to
execute the office of President of the United States and, to
the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional
duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has willfully
corrupted and manipulated the judicial process of the United
States for his personal gain and exoneration, impeding the administration
of justice, in that. . . ."
Now, you can't
take a president down to the precinct house and book him on charges
of failing to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed,"
but you can impeach him for it. Clinton got off in no small part
because his lawyers -- skilled defenders of white collar criminals
that they were - convinced the Senate that it was no more than
a jury hearing a case at DC Superior Court when, in fact, it
was supposed to be making a critical moral choice between politics
and honor.
The old Greeks
understood this better, and - recognizing the process as a good
way to hold their leaders in check - used impeachment trials
with a vigor that might shock us. For example, Thucydides, an
elected general, had his forces in the wrong place in the wrong
time in the winter of 424 and as a result lost the city of Amphipolis
to the Spartans. The Athenians reacted by impeaching General
Thucydides and sending him off to exile for some two decades.
He didn't waste his time, however, but used it to begin a tradition
of failed leaders in foreign affairs parading as experts in what
they had done badly - a tradition that continues to this day
with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell.
The strictures
that the Senate is allowed to impose in cases of impeachment
are limited. It can not imprison, send into exile, or hang a
president; it can, however, remove the president from office,
deny him the emoluments of same, and bar him from holding public
office in the future. Should an ex-president be found to have
raped someone or taken bribes for pardons, then it can be reasonably
argued that Congress still has the power and obligation to uphold
the honor of the state and impeachment is about the only recourse
it has.
Admittedly, the
case law on this is limited. But one fascinating incident not
only sheds some light, but intersects almost mystically with
current circumstances in a number of other ways. In July 1917,
Texas Governor Pa Ferguson was indicted on nine charges, including
the misapplication of public funds, embezzlement, and diversion
of a special fund. He was also said to have sold pardons. That
was the same year, incidentally, that Ferguson vetoed a bill
financing the teaching of foreign languages in schools, explaining,
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough
for the school children of Texas." Ferguson was also impeached
and the Senate, after three weeks of deliberation, convicted
him of ten counts, including receiving $156,500 from someone
he declined to identify. Ferguson, however, resigned the day
before the judgment and argued that it therefore did not apply
to him. The decision was eventually upheld in court.
In 1924, Ferguson's
wife ran for governor on the slogan, "Two governors for
the price of one" but lost reelection thanks in part to
news of the number of pardons she had issued: 2,000, or about
100 a month. In the mid thirties, a Board of Pardons and Paroles
was established under a law that limited the governor's pardon
authority. Today, the Texas governor - according to the AP and
contrary to the impression held by many of George Bush's critics
- "may only issue a one-time, 30-day reprieve or act on
a recommendation of the parole board to grant a stay, commute
a sentence or issue a pardon." All thanks to Ma Ferguson,
who sold pardons, and Pa Ferguson, who was convicted in an impeachment
trial after he had left office.
There remains
one other curious if distant possibility: not only could Bill
Clinton be re-impeached but his wife could be in the Senate docket
with him. This thanks to yet another impeachment uncertainty.
We do know that the House once impeached, and the Senate came
close to convicting, a member of Congress - the financially strapped
Senator William Blount of Tennessee. Blount was found to have
been plotting to have frontiersmen and Indians help the British
conquer Florida and Louisiana. He was expelled from the Senate
in 1797 for a "high misdemeanor entirely inconsistent with
his public trust and duty." In 1799, the House sent his
impeachment to the Senate, which thought better of the matter
and dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction after Blount argued
that members of Congress were not the "civil officers"
described in the Constitution, nor were they appointed by the
President. The vote to dismiss passed by only 14 to 11 and no
other member of Congress has ever been impeached, but the question
of the Senate's power has never been finally settled.
NEWSMAX: Ex-President
Clinton's fundraising team tried to get millionaire Democrat
donor Denise Rich to fork over a whopping $25 million for the
William J. Clinton Presidential Library Foundation, a report
hitting newsstands claims. "Clinton fund raisers pressed
the flamboyant singer-socialite for.... as much as $25 million
for the library fund," Rich's friends tell US News &
World Report. NEWSMAX
IS IT THAT TIME
ALREADY?
WASHINGTON TIMES:
As far as Bill Clinton's recent pardoning shenanigans, Sen. Joseph
I. Lieberman has urged everyone to forget about it. "I certainly
think that the pardon of Marc Rich was a mistake," he said.
"But it's time to move forward."
JANUARY 2001
JACQUELINE TRESCOTT,
WASHINGTON POST: In an unheard-of last-minute gambit, Ronald
I. Dozoretz resigned from the Kennedy Center board and then was
reappointed to it last month by President Clinton. The maneuver
by the outgoing president gives Dozoretz an additional four years
in a post considered one of the choicest plums of Washington
art and social circles. Dozoretz is a friend of the Clintons
and has given thousands of dollars to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's
Senate campaign and other Democratic Party organizations. WASHINGTON
POST:
JERRY SEPER,
WASHINGTON TIMES: Marc Rich, the fugitive financier pardoned
on Inauguration Day by President Clinton, personally devised
and oversaw an elaborate scheme to funnel to Swiss banks more
than $70 million in illegal profits from the resale of crude
oil. According to federal law enforcement authorities and government
records, Mr. Rich - as part of an extensive plot to evade US
taxes and federal energy regulations - successfully hid millions
of dollars in illegal profits that he and his partner, Pincus
Green, also pardoned by Mr. Clinton, accumulated in the 1980s.
The scheme, described by authorities as one of the biggest tax-fraud
cases in US history, continued over nine months while the illegal
profits were secretly being routed from the United States to
banks in Switzerland. Records show the profits had been obtained
through the purchase and later resale of $200 million of Iranian
oil after President Carter had banned trade with that country.
DAVID WASTELL,
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Former President Clinton is offering
to repay the cost of vandalism by his outgoing staff when they
left their offices on Jan. 20, once he is given a complete list
from the Bush White House of the damage reportedly done . . .
President Bush has ordered that no action be taken against officials
of Mr. Clinton and Al Gore, the former vice president, in effect
granting his first presidential "pardon." Mr. Bush's
order was an attempt to calm the massive uproar in the media
over reported theft and damage in the White House that was beginning
to overshadow the opening days of his administration and sour
relations with his predecessor. Mr. Clinton, however, has asked
for a detailed accounting of what went wrong during his staff's
departure amid suspicions that the Bush camp overplayed the charges
against his aides. The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the
former president's office contacted the White House on Friday
to request a written report. Jake Siewert, Mr. Clinton's former
press secretary, said: "We'd like a fuller explanation of
what, if anything, was amiss. I was one of the last to leave
the West Wing, and I saw nothing obviously wrong. If there was
any serious vandalism, it's something President Clinton would
like to hear about and have some way of redressing." . .
. NEWSMAX: A top Democrat's charge that aides to former President
George Bush trashed the White House before leaving in 1993, much
the same way Clinton administration staff did last Saturday,
was contradicted by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell. "I covered
the Clintons coming in," Mitchell told radioman Don Imus.
"There was a lot of bitterness because the hard drives were
missing from some of the computers." . . . But Mitchell
went on to dispel any notion that former Bush aides had deliberately
tampered with White House computers to sabotage the incoming
Clinton administration. "It turned out that the missing
hard drives were taken by special prosecutors who were looking
into a Bush campaign, a Bush White House issue," Mitchell
told Imus.
NEWSMAX o TELEGRAPH
JEWISH WEEK:
The furor over President Bill Clinton's pardon of fugitive commodities
trader Marc Rich could entangle the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
in new controversy as lawmakers probe what some say was a politically
motivated action by the outgoing president. The Jewish Week learned
that Rabbi Irving Yitzî Greenberg, chair of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Council, wrote to Clinton asking for a pardon for Rich.
More important, Rabbi Greenberg wrote his appeal on official
council stationery. A council source expressed concern that the
letter, which Rabbi Greenberg said was put on council stationery
by mistake, could further inflame congressional critics of the
successful by sometimes-controversial museum on the Mall in Washington.
THOMAS DeFRANK,
New York Daily News: Washington resident Bush makes his first
trip abroad as America's leader next month, but Gary Wright couldn't
care less - thanks, he says bitterly, to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
For 32 years, circling the globe with Presidents was Wright's
livelihood. Assigned to the White House Travel Office, he logged
millions of miles on press charters, accompanying seven Presidents
to every continent and scores of world capitals. These days,
Wright, now 58, pulls 12-hour shifts as a $22,000-a-year correction
officer at a North Carolina state prison. "It helps pay
the mortgage," says Wright, one of the seven civil servants
summarily sacked eight years ago in the first scandal of the
Clinton era. To this day, he's convinced that now-Sen. Clinton
masterminded the Travelgate firings to turn the lucrative White
House travel business over to Arkansas cronies. Dale, his deputy
Wright and their entire staff were sacked in May 1993 after charged
of financial mismanagement - charges that proved bogus. The firings
triggered a firestorm of media and congressional scrutiny implicating
Clinton and her pal Harry Thomason in the coup . . . In June,
independent counsel Robert Ray declined to file charges, but
cited "substantial evidence she had a 'role'" in the
ousters and that her concerns "ultimately influenced"
the decision.
NEWSMAX: Rare
presidential souvenirs similar to the ones taken from Air Force
One when Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton used the aircraft
for their final trip home to New York have popped up on the Internet
auction site E-Bay.com, United Press International reported.
Giving the first family the benefit of the doubt, UPI suggested
the missing items had been taken by "Clinton staffers"
and noted, "there is no indication that some of the (auction)
items.... were among items taken from the plane." But dealers
in collectibles told the wire service that it was unusual for
such a large number of presidential souvenirs to become available
so soon after the transfer of power . . . The items up for sale
included a White House guest bathrobe, current bid $305; a leather
air travel bag, with Air Force One logo ($360) and an Air Force
One humidor - item # 544207091 -- emblazoned with the president's
seal, for more than $2,000 - 48 cigars included. The presidential
souvenirs were put on sale between Jan. 17 and Jan. 21. NEWSMAX
WHITE HOUSE TRASH
AMERICAN SPECTATOR:
Facilities managers at the Old Executive Office Building and
the Government Services Administration estimate it will cost
as much as $250,000 to clean up the mess left by outgoing Clinton
and Gore staff in the Old Executive Office Building. The Washington
Post thought it funny that the outgoing crew left "pranks"
for the new Bushies: prying the "W" from computer keyboards,
shifting the signs on the Men's and Ladies' rooms. But according
to an inspector at the GSA who was called in to inspect the vandalism,
several executive desks were damaged to the point that they must
be replaced, several more offices must be repainted due to graffiti
. . . The GSA has told the Bush administration that it will seek
reimbursement for some of the expenses. That's because the GSA
and maintenance office of the OEOB still has records of who inhabited
the vandalized offices in the Clinton administration's final
days and can collect damage costs from these former government
employees . . . DRUDGE REPORT: President Bush told senior advisers
on Thursday that he would not be inclined to order any prosecution
for acts of vandalism and destruction of federal property caused
by previous tenants at the White House . . . "We are looking
at each and every computer," said a White House source.
"We have reason to believe that some computers may have
been infected with a virus." The source indicates that new
computers will likely be purchased for incoming staff. SPECTATOR
F SCOTT FITZGERALD:
They were careless people -- they smashed up things and creatures
and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness
or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people
clean up the mess they had made.
JACK QUINN isn't
just Marc Rich's lawyer. He was one of Al Gore's top aides, who
went to the White House as counsel in an extraordinary case of
a president allowing a veep capo in on his secrets. We speculated
at the time that it was part of a deal between Gore and Clinton
to keep the vice president from defecting from the scandal-ridden
president . . . JACK NEWFIELD OF THE NY POST writes "We
are just lucky that those seven escaped killer convicts from
Texas didn't have time to hire Clinton's former counsel, Jack
Quinn, the way Marc Rich did. Otherwise, Clinton might have pardoned
them mid-flight."
NOW THEY TELL
US
[It's taken
less than a week for the media power-suckers to turn on their
former heroes, the Clintons. This is pretty speedy even by Washington
standards. Some cases in point, compiled by the Wall Street Journal]
WASHINGTON POST:
The list [of house gifts] demonstrates again the Clintons' defining
characteristic: They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words
like shabby and tawdry come to mind. They don't begin to do it
justice.
MARY MCGRORY:
The liberating effect of this terminal tackiness and greed was
immediately felt.
NEW YORK TIMES:
We are particularly troubled by the numerous instances in which
Mr. Clinton granted pardons or commutations without proper consultation
with federal prosecutors, often to reward friends or political
allies or gain future political advantage."
NEWSDAY: Leave
it to Bill Clinton to close out his presidency with one last
helping of his signature dish: a pungent stew of campaign contributions,
ethical shortcuts and what-the-hell disregard for likely consequences.
WALL STREET JOURNAL:
What seems to be happening now is the liberals' realization that
in fact the Clintons don't give a damn what anyone thinks, including
them. Very hard on them, poor souls. The Clintons' latest is
not just a thumb in the eyes of the low, sloping forehead conservative
rabble; it's their blazing-in-neon sign to the world that they
now don't care what anyone says, not the New York Times (which
endorsed her for Senator), not the progressive elites, not anyone.
This fact came home hard to liberal commentators when the Clintons
finally abandoned all pretense to style, which was very important
to his enablers, for a lot of whom the most important warring
values are not those of good vs. evil, but tacky vs. stylish.
[Whatever
is involved, if you want locked box evidence that the Clinton
era is over, check this remarkable movie review in the pages
of the Style section of the Washington Post. Style serves as
daily value fix for the capital estalbishment.]
STEPHEN HUNTER,
WASHINGTON POST: "The Wedding Planner" is one of the
first big studio releases of the post-Clinton era, but it feels
like a pure Clintonian artifact. It seems written and directed
by a savvy Washington PR firm: It's mostly spin in which people
do terrible things to other people but it's never their fault,
and they never have to face any consequences. Jennifer Lopez
plays Mary, a highly talented wedding planner whom the movie
seems to admire profusely, as it introduces her talking a terrified
bride through a severe case of nerves. That characterizes Mary
as a caring, feeling, compassionate woman; only later do we learn
that her pep talk was shtick for such situations . . . The nonentity
director Adam Shankman steers the movie relentlessly toward sugary
romantic fantasy. It's as if the tone is at war with the content.
Bright and bubbly, it endlessly chronicles bad behavior spun
toward the positive. Dr. Steve, for example, is never judged
for cheating on Fran by going out with Mary, and he never even
has to 'fess up. Not even Jesse Jackson got off that easy. Twice,
brides and grooms are dumped at the altar, but the movie labors
to convince you that it's not the fault of the dumpers, who are
somehow portrayed as victims, and that it was in everybody's
best interest. A father whose $600,000 wedding investment is
trashed doesn't even get any screen time to lament his fate.
WASHINGTON
POST
CLINTONISTAS
TRASH WHITE HOUSE,
STRIP AIR FORCE ONE
DRUDGE REPORT:
The Bush Administration has quietly launched an investigation
into apparent acts of vandalism and destruction of federal property
-- after incoming Bush staffers discover widespread sabotage
of White House office equipment and lewd messages left behind
by previous tenants . . . The damage left by departing Clintonites
goes "way beyond pranks, to vandalism", said a close
Bush adviser . . . Bush's staff has been cautioned not to go
public with the extent of the damage and the worst is being closely
held among very top staffers for fear of leaks. But, according
to sources, so far Bush officials have found: Phone lines were
cut . . . Voice mail messages were changed to obscene, scatological
greetings . . . Many phone lines misdirected to other government
offices . . . Desks found turned completely upside down and trash
deliberately left everywhere . . . Computer printers that were
filled with blank paper but interspersed with pornographic pictures
and obscene slogans that would be revealed only as items were
run off the computer . . . 'W' keys weren't just pried off more
than 40 keyboards, some were glued on with Superglue; some were
turned upside down and glued on . . . Filing cabinets glued shut
. . . VP Office space in the Old Executive Office Building found
in complete shambles. Mrs. Gore had to phone Mrs. Cheney to apologize
. . . Lewd Magic Marker graffiti found on one office hallway.
DRUDGE
REPORT
JOHN MCCASLIN,
WASHINGTON TIMES: Now that Bill Clinton is gone — after
the longest goodbye anyone remembers — an Air Force steward
tells us about the former president's "official" farewell
flight to New York on Inaugural Day.
The presidential plane was "stripped bare." . . . Missing
from the plane on arrival in New York, Inside the Beltway is
told, was all the porcelain china, silverware, salt and pepper
shakers, blankets and pillow cases — most of it bearing
the presidential seal. What most astonished the military steward
was that even a cache of Colgate toothpaste, not stamped with
the presidential seal, was snatched from a compartment beneath
the presidential plane's sink. WASHINGTON
TIMES
JEANNE CUMMINGS
& DAVID CLOUD, WALL STREET JOURNAL: The pardon [of Marc Rich]
is causing considerable discomfort among overseas business executives
who plotted with US officials to capture Mr. Rich. Some of these
individuals now fear he might learn their names, and have asked
the Justice Department to move preemptively to seal US government
files related to their efforts before anyone seeks them under
the Freedom of Information Act. Justice Department officials
said they were considering the request . . . James Kallstrom,
the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation field
office in New York, said any names included in publicly released
documents "would be redacted. The question is how well it
is redacted. Some of the information in there doesn't take a
rocket scientist to figure out who it came from."
CLINTON LAWYER
David Kendell tells the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that the president's
de facto plea agreement with special prosecutor Robert Ray does
not prevent him from seeking legal fees in other investigations.
REUTERS: President
George W. Bush has lost his middle initial from many computer
keyboards at the Old Executive Office Building in the White House
complex . . . Bush aides said that the W was marked out in some
cases but often the key had been removed -- and sometimes taped
on top of doorways -- or damaged with the spring broken. The
new team was studying whether any of the keyboards could be salvaged,
but it appeared in many cases they would simply have to be replaced.
In the West Wing, the computers seemed not to have been vandalized.
"I have my W," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
said . . . Bush aides were working to repair or replace the keys.
AMERICAN SPECTATOR:
Any illusions Al Gore might have had that he could still be leader
of the Democratic Party were wiped out when he was invited by
DNC head Terry McAuliffe to the Andrews Air Force Base sendoff
of the Clintons -- and told he could not speak. "McAuliffe
didn't want him to speak, and the president didn't want him to
speak," said a DNC source. "McAuliffe really didn't
want him there, and wasn't going to encourage it. The send-off
was about good memories, success stories. And the vice president
isn't either." . . . So why go to such petty lengths to
keep Gore from addressing the administration faithful? "McAuliffe
is heading the DNC, but Clinton is going to run the party. Whoever
runs for president in 2004 is going to be Clinton's candidate,
and that isn't going to be Al Gore," said another DNC operative.
SPECTATOR
WASHINGTON POST
EDITORIAL: Hillary Rodman Clinton and her husband accepted more
than $190,000 in gifts last year, according to the financial
disclosure statement issued as they were preparing to leave the
White House . . . Under Senate rules, Mrs. Clinton could not
have accepted such expensive gifts once sworn in, absent a waiver
from the ethics committee . . . No previous president appears
to have accepted parting gifts of such magnitude, nor did the
Clintons approach their last year's total in prior years . .
. The list demonstrates again the Clintons' defining characteristic:
They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words like shabby and
tawdry come to mind. They don't begin to do it justice. WASHINGTON
POST
NY TIMES EDITORIAL:
Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of Marc Rich, the shadowy commodities
trader who fled to Switzerland in 1983 to avoid American justice,
was a shocking abuse of presidential power and a reminder of
why George W. Bush's vow to restore integrity to the Oval Office
resonates with millions of Americans who otherwise disagree with
the new president's politics. Unchecked by any other branch of
government, the president's authority under the Constitution
to pardon anyone charged with federal crimes is meant to be exercised
with great restraint to correct an injustice or to further some
societal good. Bestowing undeserved beneficence on a fugitive
accused of evading $48 million in taxes and illegally trading
with Iran in oil during the hostage crisis is hardly what the
Constitution's framers had in mind. NY
TIMES
CLINTON SCANDALS
REID IRVINE,
CHATTANOOGA TIMES: A federal judge has ordered the Office of
the Independent Counsel to release five crime scene photographs
of the late White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr.
Nearly four years ago, attorney Allan J. Favish filed a suit
under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain these and other
photos taken by US Park Police officers when they found Foster's
body in Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993. Favish presented evidence
to show that the official findings that Foster killed himself
where his body was found were wrong. He argued that the [ten]
photos should be made available to the experts who question the
official story . . . The judge ruled that five of the photos
were so "graphic and extremely upsetting" that their
release would violate the privacy of Foster's family . . . Favish,
who filed his suit in March 1997, will appeal to get all the
photos released. The one showing the right side of Foster's face
and shoulder has been reported by those who have seen it to show
evidence of trauma on Foster's neck just below the jaw line.
This is where paramedic Richard Arthur, who examined the body
at Fort Marcy Park, said he saw a small-caliber bullet wound.
Miquel Rodriguez, the prosecutor who began the grand jury investigation
initiated by Ken Starr, had this photo enhanced. He is said to
believe that the dark spot is evidence of a bullet wound. The
location is one that is favored by some professional hit men
to fire a small-caliber bullet into their victim's brain, killing
with a minimum of mess . . . The judge's claim that all the photos
showing Foster's face are graphic is disputed by Pete Simonello,
the Park Police officer who took many photos of Foster at the
park. Simonello says there is nothing graphic about them. There
was very little visible blood and no sign of an exit wound in
the back of the head. ALLAN FAVISH
WEB SITE
NEWSMAX: Disgraced
former top Justice Department official Webster Hubbell is angry
he was left off President Clinton's 11th-hour pardon list, says
reporter and Hubbell friend Ellen Ratner, who lunched with the
Whitewater convict on Monday. "I can tell you that Webb
Hubbell is not a very happy camper right now," Ratner told
WKDR Burlington, Vt., radio host Mark Johnson. "He's actually
getting somewhat angry, which I think is quite good for him,
because this is a man that never gets angry." No doubt the
Clintons owe their former friend big time for keeping his lip
buttoned through eight years of independent counsel investigations.
In one telling episode, jailhouse recordings released in 1997
show Hubbell promising White House aide Marsha Scott that he'd
"roll over one more time" in order not to implicate
Hillary in any Whitewater criminality. Ratner said the reason
Clinton didn't pardon Hubbell may have something to do with the
fact that he pleaded guilty to bilking the Rose Law Firm out
of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which meant he stole from
his law partners Vince Foster and Mrs. Clinton. Another possibility,
she said, was that a Hubbell pardon might look like the Clintons
were trying to influence the case against Indonesian billionaire
and Clinton friend James Riady, who signed a last-minute no-jail
time plea bargain two weeks ago with the Clinton Justice Department.
NEWSMAX
ROBERT RAY INSPIRES
MICROSOFT
SATIRE WIRE:
Only hours after President Clinton struck a deal to avoid prosecution
by admitting he lied in court about Monica Lewinsky, Microsoft
CEO Steve Ballmer announced the entire company will admit to
an affair with Lewinsky if the government will drop the case
against it, too. In a prepared statement, Ballmer said people
were "sick and tired" of both the Clinton proceedings
and the Microsoft trial, and noted that both defendants should
be given the same settlement, "especially since we're both
guilty of the same thing. Microsoft did have an inappropriate
relationship with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, and it was wrong
of us not to testify to that in court," the statement said.
"This has been painful to the entire Microsoft family of
products, and I hope our actions today will help bring closure
and finality to the matters."
FINAL WORDS
ROBERT RAY'S
DEAL with Clinton can be explained in part by the reality of
how a jury would react to the thought of convicting a former
president. What verges on the inexplicable, however, is the language
Ray permitted in the deal. In short, the prosecutor let the president
use evasive and misleading language in a de facto plea agreement
in which he admitted using "evasive and misleading"
testimony. In a literary sense at least, Ray thus compounded
the felony by permitting Clinton to continue to do what got him
in trouble in the first place. So weaselly was Clinton's language
that his supporters were promptly on the airwaves denying that
the president had admitted he had lied. The only conceivable
excuse was that Clinton threatened to pardon himself if Ray didn't
go along . . . NEWSMAX: NewsMax has learned exclusively that
Clinton will in fact be able to seek reimbursement for all legal
costs not related to the OIC's Monica Lewinsky probe, a sum that
could be as high as eight million dollars. "This has been
misreported a bit," Deputy Independent Counsel Keith Ausbrook
told NewsMax late Friday. "Clinton could seek reimbursement
with respect to other parts of the Whitewater investigation."
Ausbrook said that Clinton would have to submit an application
to the court, which would determine his eligibility for the recovery
of legal costs run-up during the non-Lewinsky phase of the Whitewater
investigation, as well as the Travelgate and Filegate probes.
Since Mrs. Clinton was not a target of Monicagate prosecutors,
the entire cost of legal bills incurred during the seven year
investigation of her role in the unrelated scandals could be
recovered. If the Clintons are reimbursed, it's not clear whether
they'd be required to refund the six million dollars collected
since 1994 by their legal defense fund. NEWSMAX
DAILY MAIL: Bill
Clinton bid a reluctant farewell to the White House on Saturday,
taking an unprecedented $200,000 worth of furnishings to remember
it by. The items included works of art, chinaware and rugs -
many of them gifts from the ex-president's supporters in Hollywood
- amassed during his eight years in office . . . An emotional
Mr. Clinton did not reach Chappaqua until almost 6pm on Saturday,
inauguration day for his successor George W Bush, after telling
misty-eyed supporters at Andrews Air Force Base: 'I've left the
White House but I'm still here.' . . . WASHINGTON POST: In their
financial disclosure forms, the Clintons reported a variety of
assets and receipts, including "over $1 million" in
a Citibank personal account in New York; blind trusts, insurance
policies and some common stock worth more than $1 million; and
the payment of $1.05 million in legal fees by the Clinton Legal
Expense Trust. Bill Clinton continues to owe "between $1
million and $5 million" to each of two law firms, Williams
and Connolly and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, resulting
primarily from his defense in House and Senate impeachment proceedings,
along with a number of other investigations. Many of the gifts
the Clintons are taking with them are from Hollywood figures,
Democratic donors and a wide array of friends and associates,
including his Georgetown University classmates. Most of the gifts
are artworks, flatware, furniture, china and rugs for a couple
who for nearly two decades have not had a home of their own but
now suddenly have two large houses, one in Northwest Washington,
the other in Chappaqua, NY . . . In seven previous years, the
most the Clintons had reported receiving in gifts was $23,602
in 1999. Clinton's predecessor in the White House, George Bush,
listed $52,853 in gifts in 1992. WASHINGTON
POST
FEEDBACK
BETH MAXWELL
BOYLE: Hi Sam, Get over it. You are still trying to change history
by printing bile on Bill Clinton. We really would like a little
more news about the world. Using your Progressive Review as a
Clinton bashing tool is getting very old and is damaging your
credibility. We know how you feel now can we get on with life
already? It seems against the very nature of the "Review"
to be so slanted and so obsessed. Please can we move on!
[Since this
is presumably the last such letter I'll get during the Clinton
administration, I'd like to point out an interesting anomaly.
While I have received many letters attacking my reporting of
the Clinton story, I can not recall one that challenged me on
the facts with the exception of those that accepted the basic
coverage but disagreed on some details of events. In other words,
the corrections and disputes have all come from those accepting
the notion that we have been dealing with severe corruption and
criminality. Those who have thought otherwise have typically
responded to the presentation of facts with presumptions of motivation,
perceptions of paranoia, and allegations of hatred and bile.
Although I
have written critically of nine presidents, this is the first
time anything like this has occurred. Some of this reaction is
a tribute to the skill with which the Clinton administration
has demonized its critics. Some is a product of a postmodernism
in which facts not longer matter, but only perceptions and the
repackaging of facts.
But there
has also been a stunning change in the culture, values, and ethics
of journalism. A few cases in point:
- When I started
out, more than half the reporters in this country didn't have
a college education. As a result, more than half of the reporters
in the country were closer, in a sociological sense, to the readers
than to their employers and official sources. This is no longer
true. The national journalist has become part of the elite. And,
too often, a part of the problem.
- A reporter,
like a detective, starts with the evidence, not a theory. If
you start the other way, you will find yourself constantly trying
to stuff facts into places they don't belong. The great failing
in the reporting of Clinton is that the Washington media spent
eight years justifying a theory it had developed during the 1992
campaign. When facts didn't fit, they were simply jettisoned.
- The traditional
reporter, no matter how biased, tended to put the story first.
This has gone out of fashion, and now political reporters are
often but extensions of the op ed pages, spin doctors for a cause
rather than sympathetic but still independent observers who might
at any moment defect because a few facts got in the way. It disloyalty
to one's own presumptions in the face of contrary evidence that
is the hallmark of a good reporter.
Thus, the
observant reader will find here few unified theories concerning
the Bush administration. Nor have I joined the liberal rush to
assign pernicious motivation to various appointees. Rather, I
have -- just as I did during the Clinton years -- gone about
looking for things that are amiss, a friendly or ugly fact, an
anecdote that tells infinitely more than an ad hominem attack,
unless, of course, the latter is funny or an appealing metaphor.
I don't trust
these folk, and some are up to no good. But I have not the skill,
desire, or cynicism to try - in the current journalistic manner
- to convince you of this without any evidence. And so, for the
most part, I will continue to bring you items from the scene
of the crime. With enough of them, and enough time, maybe we'll
figure out what the hell is going on.]
RENO INTO THE
TANK
ONE LAST TIME
WILLIAM SAFIRE,
NY TIMES: As he rages against the dying of the spotlight, Bill
Clinton can breathe one final sigh of relief: the man with whom
he established the illegal "Asian Connection" that
heavily financed his 1992 and 1996 campaigns has been given a
walk by Reno Justice. James Riady, the Indonesian billionaire
with close ties to Beijing's leaders, was allowed to plead guilty
to conspiring to defraud the US One of his banks will pay a fine
of $8 million, to him a painless penalty. Because no threat of
jail hangs over the Clinton money man who evaded subpoenas for
almost five years, he is not induced to tell the whole truth
about his hugely successful purchase of White House influence
. . . Consider the unprecedented scope of what even the most
ardent Clinton partisan must admit is a criminal conspiracy.
In a limousine with Clinton shortly after the 1992 nomination,
Riady - well known by Clinton to be a foreign national - stated
his intent to raise a million dollars for the campaign . . .
Riady then gave [John] Huang a million-dollar "bonus"
and ensconced him in a sensitive post at the Commerce Department.
Records show Huang had the run of the White House and kept in
close touch with Riady interests in Asia. He used his "bonus"
to fill campaign coffers of Clinton and his allies throughout
the first term. NY
TIMES
NEWSMAX: Moctar
Riady's plea bargain, reached just days before President Clinton
leaves office, was the Justice Department's way of preventing
a Republican attorney general from pursuing the Chinagate case
and exposing the president's role in that scandal, says former
Clinton adviser Dick Morris. Appearing on Paula Zahn's "The
Edge" on Fox News, Morris said that the timing of the plea
bargain, which let Riady off with nothing more than a fine and
no jail time, was deliberate and was meant to keep Riady from
spilling the beans about Clinton's involvement in the scandal
. . . Morris said that the deal could keep a future GOP attorney
general from getting to the bottom of the Clinton-Riady connection
because the Indonesian mogul could not be threatened with jail
time for the offenses covered in the plea bargain. The deal bought
Riady's continued silence, Morris charged.NEWSMAX
PAUL SPERRY, WORLD NET
DAILY: The White House is rushing to "wipe clean" the
hard drives of computers used by President Clinton's aides before
the Jan. 20 changeover, a public-interest law firm claims. Normally,
when employees leave the White House, computer workers take a
snapshot of the contents of their hard drives and store them
as part of official records, as required by law. Then they reformat
the hard drives for the next users. But according to Judicial
Watch, political aides have ordered computer workers to first
run the hard drives through a software program by the firm Jetico,
called BC, or Best Crypt, which "wipes clean the drives
so the next administration can't retrieve any files." "They're
starting with [the hard drives of] the most important people
first -- the [White House] lawyers -- and working their way down,"
said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And they're working
through the weekend." He added: "It's the equivalent
of burning records, according to our sources," who are White
House employees. WORLD
NET DAILY
ROBERT RAY INSPIRES
MICROSOFT
SATIRE WIRE:
Only hours after President Clinton struck a deal to avoid prosecution
by admitting he lied in court about Monica Lewinsky, Microsoft
CEO Steve Ballmer announced the entire company will admit to
an affair with Lewinsky if the government will drop the case
against it, too. In a prepared statement, Ballmer said people
were "sick and tired" of both the Clinton proceedings
and the Microsoft trial, and noted that both defendants should
be given the same settlement, "especially since we're both
guilty of the same thing. Microsoft did have an inappropriate
relationship with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, and it was wrong
of us not to testify to that in court," the statement said.
"This has been painful to the entire Microsoft family of
products, and I hope our actions today will help bring closure
and finality to the matters."
DECEMBER 2000
AX FALLS ON CLINTON'S
INDONESIAN CONNECTION
THE IMPORTANCE
OF THE PLEA BARGAIN described below can not be underestimated.
It establishes beyond doubt the criminal relationship between
James Riady and Bill Clinton's political machine. Almost alone
in the media, the Review pointed out that as early as May 1992
there was an unsavory connection between Riady's father, Mochtar,
and Clinton. For some 25 years, as our timeline below indicates,
Mochtar Riady, and later his son James, served as godfather figures
lurking behind the Clintons. Why, we asked, would an Indonesian
billionaire get involved in a backwater state like Arkansas in
the 1970s? Why would James Riady wish to help purchase a bank
in a tiny town of 5,000 named Mena?
In his criminal
plea agreement, Riady states that the purpose of the illegal
foreign campaign contributions was to buy influence for his Lippo
Group and LippoBank, which were huge multinational conglomerates
with ties, among other things, to BCCI. As often happens in such
matters, the plea bargain is only the tip of the iceberg. But
it establishes some of the illegal depths of the Clinton machine.
As we wrote some times back:
"Mochtar
Riady, an Indonesian billionaire closely tied to China, came
to a tiny, depressed, corrupt state called Arkansas in the late
70s and hooked up with a rising young politician named Bill Clinton.
In the mid-80s, with Clinton in the state house, Riady made a
sudden multi-million dollar investment in the Worthen bank that
some suspect was a bailout for disastrous investment by the state
pension fund. Riady would perform many other favors for Clinton.
And vice versa.
"By 1983,
Charlie Trie was running a Little Rock restaurant thanks to a
SBA loan that had used Clinton as a reference. He also tried
to contribute $640,000 to the Clinton legal defense fund but
the money was turned back after it was noticed that the checks
had signatures matching those on other checks numbered sequentially
but from separate cities.
"Riady and
Trie joined those -- such as the CIA, drug traffickers, and other
members of the Dixie Mafia -- who already understood the utility
of a rising politician without morals or shame. Someone you could
do business with -- and perhaps blackmail when you couldn't.
By the early 1980s, the story we are reading about today had
already begun."
NEWSMAX: Indonesian
billionaire James Riady has agreed to pay a record $8.6 million
criminal fine for illegally funding Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential
campaign, the Justice Department said. According to the Associated
Press and other wire services:
In a plea bargain
filed in US District Court in Los Angeles, Riady agreed to plead
guilty to one felony count of conspiracy for concealing foreign
contributions, which are illegal in the US He will not face jail
time. The government's court filing said the goal of the contributions
was to buy influence for Lippo Group and LippoBank. Riady is
to surrender and come to the US at an unspecified future date
- even though there is no extradition treaty between Indonesia
and the United States.
NEWSMAX: http://newsmax.com
ASSOCIATED PRESS:
In addition, LippoBank California, a California state-chartered
bank affiliated with Lippo Group, agreed to plead guilty to 86
misdemeanor accounts charging that its agents, Mr. Riady and
Huang, made illegal foreign campaign contributions from 1988
through 1994. The total of $8,610,000 in fines is the largest
ever imposed in a campaign finance case in U.S. history, the
department said . . . Mr. Riady is one of 26 persons and two
corporations so far charged by Justice's campaign finance task
force since it was established four years ago . . . Mr. Ray's
office has prosecuted former Justice official and Clinton friend
Webster L. Hubbell and has investigated whether payments to him,
including $100,000 from Lippo Group, after he resigned were designed
to keep him from testifying against Mr. Clinton or his wife,
Hillary. A videotape of a December 1995 White House "coffee"
also shows Mr. Gore talking with Arief Wiriadinata, an Indonesian
gardener who illegally donated $455,000 to the Democratic Party
in 1995, and records comments by the vice president to Mr. Wiriadinata
concerning Mr. Riady.
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200111223115.htm
RIADY TIMELIINE
1976
Bill Clinton
is elected attorney general of Arkansas. Two Indonesian billionaires
come to Arkansas. Mochtar Riady and Liem Sioe Liong are close
to Suharto. Riady is looking for an American bank to buy. Riady's
agent is Jackson Stephens, who also brokers the arrival of BCCI
to this country and steers BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi, to Bert
Lance. Apparently because of pressure from Indonesia, Riady withdraws
his bid to buy Lance's 30% share of the National Bank of Georgia.
Instead, a BCCI front man buys the shares and Abedi moves to
secretly take over First American Bankshares -- later the subject
of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be prosecuted in the US.
Riady's teen-age son, James, is taken on as an intern by Stephens
Inc. He later says he was "sponsored" by Bill Clinton.
1983
Mochtar Riady
forms Lippo Finance & Investment in Little Rock. A non-citizen,
Riady hires Carter's former SBA director, Vernon Weaver, to chair
the firm. The launch is accomplished with the aid of a $2 million
loan guaranteed by the SBA. Weaver uses Governor Clinton as a
character reference to help get the loan guarantee. First loan
goes to Little Rock Chinese restaurant owner Charlie Trie.
1984
Riady buys a
stake in the Worthen holding company whose assets include the
Stephens-controlled Worthen Bank. Price: $16 million. Other Worthen
co-owners will eventually include BCCI investor Abdullah Taha
Bakhish.
1985
Arkansas state
pension funds --deposited in Worthen by Governor Bill Clinton
-- suddenly lose 15% of their value because of the failure of
high risk, short-term investments and the brokerage firm that
bought them. The $52 million loss is covered by a Worthen check
written by Jack Stephens in the middle of the night, an insurance
policy, and the subsequent purchase over the next few months
of 40% of the bank by Mochtar Riady. Clinton and Worthen escape
a major scandal. Mochtar's son James comes back to Arkansas to
manage Worthen as president. He bonds with Clinton and Charlie
Trie. Lippo executive and Chinese native John Huang becomes active
in Lippo's operations in Arkansas. China Resources pays for a
Lippo-organized trip to Asia by Gov. Clinton, according to a
later FBI inteview with John Huang. Mochtar and James Riady engineer
the takeover of the First National Bank of Mena in a town of
5,000 with few major assets beyond a Contra supply base, drug
running and money-laundering operations.
1990
James Riady takes
over operations of a new branch of the Lippo Bank, working with
Hong Kong Lippo executive, John Huang.
1991
The Arkansas
Industrial Development Commission furthers the Indonesian - Arkansas
connection. Deals are worked on for Wal-Mart, Tyson's Food, and
JB Hunt. Later documents uncovered by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
will "make reference to Clinton's ideal position as president
. . . in helping to secure Arkansas-Indonesian deals." The
US ambassador in Jakarta at the time will later remark, "There
were lots of people from Arkansas who came through Indonesia."
. . . Jackson Stephens and BCCI figure Moctar Riady buy BCCI's
former Hong Kong subsidiary.
1992
An FBI report
says Democrat fund-raiser John Huang, a James Riady employee,
reported that in 1992 Riady told Clinton during a limousine ride
that he wanted to raise $1 million for his campaign..
1993
John Huang and
James Riady give $100,000 to Clinton's inaugural fund.
1995
Webster Hubbell
is convicted of tax evasion and mail fraud involving the theft
of nearly a half million dollars from his partners at the Rose
firm and failing to pay nearly $150,000 in taxes. After quitting
the Justice Department and before going to jail, Hubbell is a
busy man. He meets with Hillary Clinton, and follows up by getting
together with major scandal figures John Huang, James Riady,
and Ng Lapseng. Riady and Huang go to the White House every day
from June 21 to June 25, 1994 according to White House records.
Hubbell had breakfast and lunch with Riady on June 23. Four days
later -- and one week after Hubbell's meeting with Hillary --
the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, jointly owed by Lippo and the Chinese
intelligence services, sends $100,000 to Hubbell. Huang, incidentally,
formerly worked for the Hong Kong Chinese Bank. Hubbell also
receives $400,000 from other sources.
USA TODAY: FBI
Director Louis Freeh, whose public clashes with the White House
led to an often tense relationship with President Clinton, has
been asked to remain on the job in the new Bush administration,
officials close to the situation say . . . In a statement in
1996, Freeh said the "FBI and I were victimized" by
the White House, when the bureau mistakenly turned over confidential
personnel files that were requested by administration officials.
The episode led the FBI to place new restrictions on access to
its confidential files. In recent years, Freeh has split with
Attorney General Janet Reno by pressing for an independent investigation
of campaign finance irregularities involving Clinton and Vice
President Gore.
DAVID SHUSTER,
FOX NEWS: Senior staff working for Attorney General Janet Reno
have threatened to fire an independent counsel investigating
a possible cover-up at the Justice Department, Fox News has learned.
Independent Counsel Dave Barrett led the investigation of former
Clinton housing secretary Henry Cisneros, who admitted lying
to the FBI. According to sources, for the last 10 months Barrett
has been presenting his grand jury with new evidence alleging
that officials at the Justice Department improperly tried to
influence actions by the Internal Revenue Service. Barrett was
warned by senior Justice Department officials to halt his investigation
. . . During his investigation, Barrett uncovered evidence of
possible tax fraud by Cisneros. But Justice Department officials,
along with the IRS, said that aspect of the Cisneros record was
beyond the independent counsel's jurisdiction. After looking
at the evidence themselves, the Justice Department and IRS both
refused to pursue the matter.
According to well-placed sources, last year a top lawyer within
the IRS alleged that senior Justice Department officials were
attempting to protect Cisneros. The IRS employee, who is now
a whistleblower for the independent counsel, has reportedly testified
that justice officials pressured the IRS in other cases as well.
FOX
NEWS
STATISTICAL BREAKDOWN
OF PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS
Arkansas population
as percent of US: 1%
Arkansas pardons and commutations as percent of all presidential
pardons and commutations" 12%
REUTERS: A somber
President Clinton mourned the lawyer and friend who defended
him during his impeachment trial, saying yesterday that Charles
F.C. Ruff brought "grace and honor" to the White House
during the "craziest of times." . . . "Chuck never
lost his cool, never lost his temper, and never let me entirely
lose my sense of humor about what often was a patently absurd
situation," the president said.
NEIL TRAVIS,
NY POST: The gossip among political insiders at last night's
Kennedy Center Honors gala and at the White House reception beforehand
was that Bill and Hillary Clinton are putting their "home"
in Chappaqua on the market less than a year after their much-ballyhooed
arrival in the leafy Westchester environs. I hear that the Clintons
never even got around to having "hard-wired" security
installed because they wouldn't be there long . . . The windfall
if the Clintons do sell Chappaqua would help ease their debts,
and his first book of memoirs, with a floor price of $7 million,
would have them out of the financial woods.
CARL LIMBACHER,
NEWSMAX: Not since Bill and Hillary Clinton teamed up with Whitewater's
Jim and Susan McDougal have two public officials contemplated
pulling off such a daring land flip heist in broad daylight .
. . Here's the plan, which should sound more than a little familiar
to those who recall how Hillary turned a modest six figure investment
in Castle Grande into a $4 million bonanza for Webb Hubbell's
father-in-law: "You get yourself elected, find a place in
DC and shake the dust of Chappaqua off your sensible flat shoes,"
says Travis. "As a bonus, one of your well-heeled pals buys
the mansion at a huge premium, giving you a fat profit . . .
A source in Chappaqua tells NewsMax that Travis is right on the
money -- and that the Clintons actually put their New York "home"
up for sale just three days after Hillary won her Senate seat.
[Whitewater
Irregular High Sprunt suggests that this may be "one of
many 'indirect' ways to legally pass $$$ to a politician -- buy
something (anything) that they own from them for a higher than
market value price, especially if the item trades in a market
with a very wide (or arguably very wide) bid-ask spread . . .
This sort of thing will make substantive "campaign finance"
reforms a joke -- the most you can hope to do is to have a chance
at getting disclosure of such gifts. It would be completely naive
to think that any reforms will put an end to such gifts since
there are so many ways, direct and indirect, that they can be
accomplished.]
OXFORD SEEKS
CON ARTIST
FOR CHANCELLOR
PETER OBORNE
AND TOBY MOORE, LONDON DAILY EXPRESS: Outgoing President Bill
Clinton is favorite to become the next Chancellor of Oxford University.
There is huge support within the university for his appointment
which would be a major international coup. The move would receive
enthusiastic endorsement from Tony Blair while Mr. Clinton himself,
who leaves the White House next month, has fond memories of his
Oxford student days in the sixties and would welcome the global
prestige. Supporters of Mr. Clinton's case say he has impeccable
academic credentials and stature to do the job. They add he would
"do wonders" for university fund-raising.
NEWSMAX: On Saturday's
New York Times op-ed page, New York University Law Professor
Stephen Gillers argued that Clinton should remain president past
January 20 while Bush and Gore fight it out. "It's right
there in the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1933,"
explained Gillers. "On Jan. 6, Congress is supposed to count
the electoral votes and pick a president. But if, in the language
of the amendment, it decides that no one has yet 'qualified'
for the job, it can pass a law 'declaring who shall then act
as President....until a President or Vice President shall have
qualified.' "Surely," said Gillers, "Bill Clinton
would be willing to stay on for a few weeks."
GREAT MOMENTS IN QUOTE
RETRACTION
ASSOCIATED PRESS:
Rolling Stone now says President Clinton didn't use offensive
language to describe the military's "don't ask, don't tell"
policy for homosexuals . . . The Rolling Stone article based
on interviews with Clinton by the magazine's founder, Jann Wenner,
quoted Clinton as saying: "And it was only then that I worked
out with Colin Powell this dumbass 'don't ask, don't tell' thing
..." Robert Love, managing editor of Rolling Stone, said
it was a typo. "Due to a transcription error, the words
"don't ask" were printed as "dumb ass" in
our interview with President Clinton. We regret the error,"
Love said in a statement.
[In which
case, the President actually said, "I worked out with Colin
Powell this don't ask don't ask don't tell thing," which
is an odd thing for an Yale Law School graduate to say]
NOVEMBER 2000
NADER ON CLINTON
NEWSMAX: Green
Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, whose rising poll numbers
have Gore campaign officials begging him to drop out of the race,
called President Clinton a liar on Sunday, saying he disgraced
his office over his affair with former White House intern Monica
Lewinsky. Nader voiced his strong criticism of Clinton during
an interview on ABC's "This Week with Sam Donaldson and
Cokie Roberts":
DONALDSON: You
say that if you'd been in the Senate, you would have voted to
convict Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial. Correct?
NADER: Correct.
And I would have voted against (Robert) Bork and I fought vigorously
against (Antonin) Scalia and (Clarence) Thomas, which is more
than I can say for Vice President Gore.
DONALDSON: You
think Clinton is what -- a liar? A perjurer? I mean what....
NADER: I think
he disgraced the office. He then lied about it. A judge confirmed
that. He dragged it out and he took a year of journalism from
both of you.
DONALDSON: Well,
a lot of your supporters, according to our poll, were Clinton
supporters.
NADER: Well,
they're going to have to choose, aren't they?
NEWSMAX
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BILL SAMMON,
WASHINGTON TIMES: President Clinton yesterday complained that
his dema