Whitewater and Clinton Scandal Clips from The Progressive Review 1992-1997 Part 3: March-September 1996  In May 1992, the Review became the first publication in America to present a comprehensive report on what has now come to be known as the Clinton scandals. Outside of conservative media no other publication has so consistently told this story Index of Clips Clips Feb '92 - Feb '94 Whitewater Clips Vol. 1 Clips Mar '94 - Feb '96 Whitewater Clips Vol. 2 Clips Mar - Sep '96 Whitewater Clips Vol. 3 Clips Oct 96- Mar 97 - Whitewater Clips Vol. 4 Clips Mar 97-July 97 - Whitewater Clips Vol 5 Clips Aug 97 - Whitewater Clips Vol 6 Back to the Review's home page SEPTEMBER 1996 The Democratic Party continues to march blithely into a trap of its own making. The hubris-engorged party has long assumed that it could out-spin any bad news about corruption in the Clinton administration. Up to now it's worked. With a gullible media, comatose liberals, wise-ass comments on TV by Ann Lewis, skeptics decried as conspiracy theorists and yet another ex-pal or associate condemned as a liar, each crisis has passed swiftly. But now what was once clever is starting to seem bizarre. On the one hand, we have the normal joyous preparations for a second term re-anointment and, on the other hand, New York Times columnist William Safire is speculating on the possible indictment of the first lady. We have the president raising millions at a dinner party while the New York Post's John Crudele prepares a column saying that "The Post has learned that independent counsel Kenneth Starr is moving steadily ahead in his investigation of both the President and Hillary Clinton, with the ultimate major charges likely to be racketeering, tax evasion, fraud, obstruction of justice and various conspiracies. Sources in Arkansas tell me that Starr is essentially making the case that Gov. Bill Clinton ran Arkansas as a criminal enterprise for his own benefit and there's evidence to prove it." The joke around town, on the other hand, is that if we don't elect him, we can't impeach him. The latter course is looking more and more likely. Even before Kenneth Starr says a mumbling word, there are potential counts including the improper use of FBI files and the obstruction of justice involved in various inquiries such as that into Vince Foster's death. Further Bill Clinton has announced that he would either pay or raise the legal fees necessary for individuals called to testify in the various scandals while not reimbursing the costs of those "who've admitted wrongdoing." In other words, if you hang tough, we'll bail you out; confess and you're on your own. This is seen by some as a clear violation of Section 201(b) of Title 18 of the US Code that prohibits giving anything of value to someone with intent to influence the testimony of that person. The punishment for ordinary mortals who do this sort of thing is up to fifteen years in prison. The Secret Service is keeping people from protesting at the President's appearances. In one case, about hundred farmers were barred from a park in Ashland KY on the grounds that they were a security threat. The farmers were planning to protest the president's plan to have the FDA regulate tobacco as a drug. One of the mysteries floating around Washington these days is what Bill Clinton is hiding in his medical records. The White House has refused to release the full records, which has caused considerable and far ranging speculation. WH flack McCurry's curious reference to results that were embarrassing didn't dampen curiosity any. The matter was first raised in January 1993 when the president fired his physician for refusing to give Clinton an allergy shot without first examining the president or finding out what was in the shot. Defending Bill and Hillary Clinton is costing the taxpayer more than $1.3 million a year in White House staff salaries. An internal White House document lists nearly 40 tasks before the team of lawyers and support staff. For example, among items on the agenda are short, cryptic phrases such as "Truthfulness of White House and other Administration Witnesses (referral of testimony to Starr -- Ickes, Stephanopoulus)" followed by sub-tasks is "identify areas of vulnerability" and "research re perjury." The Tampa Tribune has been telling its readers about another ex-Mena CIA operative who backs up stories concerning the Arkansas drug/Contra trade in the 1980s. The ex-agent reports flying into Mena and Little Rock in 1983 and 1984 with larger coolers marked "medical supplies." Who was on hand to pick up these "medical supplies?" According to the ex-agent, none other than several people quite close to then Governor Bill Clinton. The agent, now in jail, claims he bailed out of black ops after ex-CIA chief William Colby asked him to "neutralize" an American citizen. The Tribune's reporters have seen documents that support the agents' claims. The increasingly curious WH operative Craig Livingstone, according to one report, got in tight with Ms. Clinton by doing an especially obsequious baby-sitting job on her parents around the time of the inauguration. ~ Livingstone, it turns out, also went to Angola in 1992 to help train soldiers in "democratic campaign techniques." The beneficiaries of his wisdom were members of the CIA-backed UNITA. He returned from Africa in time to help the Clinton crowd at the convention with their own campaign techniques. In his aggressive effort to prevent and influence possible Whitewater testimony, Clinton has started publicly hinting at presidential pardons for those involved. This follows his previous offer to raise money for witnesses that don't plead guilty i.e. those who hang tough. As we have pointed out, all this could be considering witness tampering, a federal offense. Some two hundred members of Congress (all Republicans except for three southern Democrats) wrote Clinton asking that he cease and desist from talk of pardons. A resolution to this effect was about to be introduced in the House, but according to its sponsor, GOP Representative Spencer Bachus, House Democrats indicated they "were prepared to shut down the government over the issue" by creating a last minute budget crisis. Said another Republican congressmember, Curt Weldon, the Democrats "went ballistic" at the thought of having to vote on the pardon issue. Meanwhile, the Washington Times has uncovered the fact that Clinton has pardoned the gambling pal of his mother. The pardon of Jack Pakis came in 1995 without fanfare. Pakis was convicted under the Organized Crime Control Act, sentenced to two years in prison, but the sentence was suspended. He was fined and put on probation. Pakis, a friend of Clinton's mother Virginia Kelley, was arrested as part of an FBI sting operation against illegal gambling in Hot Springs. According to the Washington Times, "his trial judge described Mr. Pakis as a professional gambler, part owner of an illegal casino and an illegal bookmaker for football and horse-racing bets." US District Judge Oren Harris, said the FBI had "reached into Hot Springs to put a stop to gambling that has existed here since the 1920s." But he suspended the sentence, saying that since local acceptance of gambling was so widespread it would be unfair to send Pakis and his co-defendants to jail. Pakis once owned a piece of the Southern Club -- Al Capone's favorite -- in the mob resort of Hot Springs where, as Kelly put it in her autobiography, "gangsters were cool and the rules were meant to be bent." Despite the media's downplaying of Whitewater, a top advisor to the White House and congressional Democrats admitted to the Washington Times that "we're talking about that all the time." The Times also reported: "Other party officials said they would meet a potential post-election indictment of the president or first lady by asking top congressional Democrats to seek a resignation of the president. 'We're already talking about that, and we'd be ready if it explodes,' said one prominent Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity." Just below the surface of this campaign lurks a question familiar to those who have covered Marion Barry: what has been the extent of drug use among those now in the White House? Although the GOP has not raised the issue directly, Dole's emphasis on the drug problem and his ad attacking Clinton's MTV comments on marijuana may be laying the groundwork for future exposes. Further, the Wall Street Journal has raised the question editorially and the matter has been discussed on conservative talk shows. While the press had no problem asking such questions about Barry (or Dan Quayle for that matter), it has not, for example, told the public about the existence of a police tape of Roger Clinton describing his own cocaine trafficking and saying of his brother, "Got to get some for my brother; he's got a nose like a vacuum cleaner." And a former informant for a drug task force in Arkansas has told Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph that she supplied Bill with cocaine during his first terms as governor. On one occasion, according to the woman, "He was so messed up that night, he slid down the wall into a garbage can." Evans-Pritchard writes that he has received a number of calls "from bashful operatives on the deniable fringes of the Republican Party" wanting to know where to find the woman. In fact, she is currently in jail on drug charges because, she claims, she was set up to eliminate her as a political liability. Her appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court. Writes Evans-Pritchard: "Finding a violation of her constitutional rights, the court ordered the state of Arkansas to give [her] a new trial or set her free. Her release date is now set for November." At the beginning of his administration Clinton called on the then White House physician, Dr. Burton Lee, to give him an allergy shot. Lee refused to do so without knowing the president's medical history or what was in the serum he was being asked to inject. Within hours of his refusal, Lee was fired and told to pack and leave immediately. MARCH 1996 As Democrats and much of the media remain in denial over Whitewater, these developments have quietly occurred: It was recently learned that special prosecutor Starr was given permission last summer by Attorney General Reno and the US Court of Appeals to greatly expand his inquiry. Not only can he look into campaign contributions made during Clinton's presidential campaign but into obstruction of justice, perjury, destruction of evidence, intimidation of witnesses or conspiracies among them. Even more important, perhaps, Starr received permission to look into matters that were described in seven paragraphs that remain under court seal. One of the key figures in the Whitewater case -- and a potentially important witness against the Clintons -- is David Hale, who has been under protective custody -- presumably because Starr thinks someone wants to shut him up. Hale comes up for sentencing on March 25. The significance of this is that the judge in his order said he had delayed the date to allow Starr time to complete his investigation and the Whitewater grand jury to issue any indictments stemming from Hale's evidence. Beware the ides of March. Whitewater stats: There have now been sixteen people charged in the Whitewater scandal -- of whom nine have pled guilty. Without exception, these figures are friends, political allies, appointees or business associates of Bill and Hillary Clinton or have in some way been involved in their business dealings. Rep. Jim Leach is trying to look into the Mena drug and gun running side of the story but is running into resistance from federal investigative agencies and the IRS. The IRS has turned over three boxes of material on the late CIA informer and drug pusher Barry Seale but won't release another 21. Leach says that "various security agencies" also say their Mena documents are not available: "You'd be astonished at how little they claim to know." Leach insists: "We have more than sufficient documentation that improprieties occurred at Mena. This isn't a made-up issue. There are grounds to pursue it very seriously." Meanwhile Leach's House banking committee has heard testimony that organized crime in the banking industry is now moving as much as a half a trillion dollars through the country's money system. One of the key questions about Mena is how the hundreds of millions of dollars in drug flowing through Arkansas were laundered. The New York Post's John Crudelle reports evidence that the White House learned about Vince Foster's death between 7:15 and 7:30 on the night of his death and not at 8:30 as it claims. This ties in with evidence from Secret Service logs as reported by the London Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard as well as other accounts that the Clinton's nanny, Helen Dickey, called Arkansas at 7:30 to report the death. Dickey disputes the timing, but state trooper Roger Perry has said in an affidavit that he received the call around 7:30 PM. Why is the time difference so important? What was going on at the WH during this period? Crudelle also reports that the special prosecutor is looking into windfall futures market profits by Hillary Clinton other than the notorious cattle option deal. Christopher Ruddy of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes that the FBI has gone out of its way to cast doubt on a witness who claims agents lied in preparing his interview statement about what he saw at Fort Marcey Park. Patrick Knowlton claims he spotted an Hispanic-looking man standing next to Foster's Honda . The FBI had reported that Knowlton couldn't identify him. Senator Bob Kerrey, who had Clinton sized up a long time ago, was quoted in the January Esquire as calling the President an "unusually good liar." The remark took weeks to make it into the mainstream press even though Kerrey is chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and even though similar remarks by William Safire about Mrs. Clinton got swift and widespread attention. When the establishment media decides to distance itself from one of its former heroes, an early sign are the articles pondering errors of judgment, style and management. Substance rarely enters these discussions, for to do so would raise questions about the media's own judgment. A classic example of this technique appeared on the front page of the February 9 Washington Post, which went on for several jumps about Hillary Clinton's difficulties in adjusting to the Washington style and values with nary a hint that part of her current problems may stem from having served as a lawyer for the unsavory of Arkansas. The Republicans have their own Whitewater problem. Many of the leads -- such as those involving BCCI, Iran-Contra and the drug trade -- have a bipartisan tenor. The GOP wants to get Clinton out without revealing its own part in the Arkansas story. Consider this, for example: Senator D'Amato is Robert Dole's NY campaign manager. One key figure in the Arkansas story is financier Jackson Stephens. Stephens, who supported Clinton last time, is now a major backer of Dole. The publication of Blood Sport has allowed the Washington establishment to begin the convoluted and disingenuous business of extricating itself from the Clintons. What is new about the book is not its contents but the response of the powerful -- who for the first time are starting to admit that something might have been slightly amiss in Arkansas. The book's sociological function is that of a plea bargain -- sort of like going for insanity in a mass murder case. Behind all the backing and filling is a strong desire by the elite to limit the damage done by having spent a number of years sucking up to the Clintons. The way this sort of disentanglement is traditionally done is by rhetorically turning crimes into mismanagement, greed into bad judgment, cover-ups into sloppiness and lies into failures of communications. The tip-off is when columnists start shaking their head sadly and declaring, much as the Washington Post's Richard Cohen did on March 19, that "Whitewater is not a scandal, but, in human costs, something even worse: a tragedy." Calling it all a tragedy means never having to say you're sorry. Cohen, like other mainstream journalists, continues to overlook a few items, such as: A large, illegal and unconstitutional Contra arms-running operation conducted out of Mena Arkansas that then Governor Clinton refused to look into. The use of Arkansas as a major drug importation center during the years that Clinton was governor and his rejection of requests to investigate it. . The probable use of Arkansas financial institutions, both public and private, to launder drug money including the state finance agency Clinton set up as a piggy bank for his friends and supporters. Futures market profits by Ms. Clinton that were insupportable by any personal skill or the law of probabilities. Alleged pressure by Bill Clinton to secure for a business partner a major SBA loan to which she was not entitled. Possible significant and repeated tax evasion, particularly the failure to report gains achieved through the forgiveness of loans. Repeated obstruction of the inquiry into the death of Vincent Foster and other Whitewater matters. Possible witness tampering in the McDougal-Tucker trial Cover-up by investigators in the Foster case. Probable bribery in various forms including forgiveness of loans and grants of equity without payment. And, of course, the various other shady real estate and bank transactions that gave this scandal it's name. APRIL 1996 Second probe widened: A federal court has approved widening the investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy to include an alleged "pattern of conduct involving payments or gifts to Espy and his close associates in return for favorable treatment by the Department of Agriculture." The ruling, unnoted by major media, is significant because it indicates that special prosecutor Donald Smaltz's probe -- although far less prominent than the major Whitewater inquiry of Kenneth Starr -- is continuing to hit pay dirt. Sworn testimony involves Clinton in Mena: The London Telegraph has obtained some of the first depositions in ex-CIA contract flyer Terry Reed's suit against Clinton's ex-security chief -- and now a high-paid FEMA director -- Buddy Young. According to the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Larry Patterson, an Arkansas state trooper, testified under oath this month that there were 'large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns.' The subject was discussed repeatedly in Clinton's presence by state troopers working on his security detail, he alleged. Patterson said the governor "had very little comment to make; he was just listening to what was being said." Evans-Pritchard also reports that Bill Duncan, an ex-IRS investigator, who has a 7,000-page computer file on Mena, had his computer broken into in January 1995. His files were tampered with but he doesn't know how badly. News fit to hide: In one of the more remarkable examples of the mainstream media's censorship of Whitewater news, the New York Times today ran the story about David Hale linking Clinton to an illegal loan on page D17 -- buried in the business section six pages from the absolute back of the paper. The Times also ran a picture of Clinton at the Orioles' season opener but forgot to mention how many fans booed him. Major developments in the Vincent Foster death investigation. A prosecutor with extensive homicide case experience has been named by Starr to assist in the Foster investigation. Starr's assistant, Hickman Ewing, told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that "there remains questions about Foster's death. Was it murder? Was it suicide? Either way, why?" Ewing's statement is remarkable because, as far as we know, it is the only time that the possibility of murder has been openly raised by the prosecutor's office. In any case, it now appears that the White House may have known about Foster's death an hour and a half earlier than it admits, which raises serious questions as to what was going on during that 90 minutes. Arkansas Amnesia: Columnist Tony Snow counts 50 times in HRC's 42 paragraph sworn statement to the House committee investigating the travel office scandal that she said "I don't recall" or its equivalent. Terry Reed case hamstrung by judge: Ex-CIA pilot Terry Reed's civil case that threatened to expose details of the Mena arms and drug running operation has been placed under extreme strictures by an Arkansas judge. Judge George Howard says that no evidence can be submitted concerning Mena, the CIA, Dan Lasater, the Arkansas Development Finance Agency, and the Clintons. The ruling will likely be appealed. Given the scope of the Arkansas scandals, it is probably time to take another deep look into the Clintons' abortive health care bill. Many of the same players involved in Whitewater took part in the cover-ups and manipulations associated with the health legislation. The GAO, for example, found that the Clinton administration spent at least a half million dollars just to keep information from the public during the development of the measure. White House officials then lied, withheld information and otherwise obstructed a court case involving the bill. The judge in the case has yet to rule on sanctions for administration officials but has promised to do so because of "the defendants misconduct during the course of this litigation." . . . Of course, the worst thing about the health care measure was the signal the White House sent that it would do nothing to oppose the monopolization and industrialization of health care that subsequently occurred. Whitewater trap sprung for Democrats: Clinton and his supporters in the Democratic Party and the media have been effective in counter-spinning the Whitewater story, but it appears that this damage control will have been in vain. What Clinton loyalists have failed to understand is that the Republicans have wanted Clinton to be the Democratic candidate. There are now reports of a multi-million dollar anti-Clinton TV campaign funded by the right being prepared to destroy the president's credibility over Whitewater. This will be far easier to do over TV than in a court of law. And you won't see any of this stuff until after the Democratic convention. Further, none of this money will have to be reported to federal election officials as it will be done by non-profits in the name of education. And it will probably make the Willie Horton ads look like the Partridge Family. You have been warned. Unnoted by major media outlets, a federal judge has approved the selection of a new Whitewater grand jury in Little Rock to replace the one that expired recently. In arguing for the new grand jury, the special prosecutor's office noted that they had interviewed 2,000 witnesses and reviewed 5 million documents in their efforts to unravel the Whitewater scandal. The special prosecutor has refused to describe Bill Clinton's status in the Whitewater case. The issue came up when the defense in the McDougal trial challenged questions about a conversation Hale allegedly had with Clinton. Since Clinton was not on trial and has not been named an unindicted coconspirator, the line of inquiry was blocked by the judge. Questioned on the matter, the prosecutors refused to clarify Clinton's status. In other words, the prosecutor is refusing to say he won't indict Clinton or name him as an unindicted coconspirator. Unlike the Unabomber or the Freeman, the fact that the special prosecutor, even at this late date, declines to clear the president should be news but isn't. In fact, the media has taken what is for it a virtually unique position: namely that the testimony of a federal prosecutor's key witness in a major criminal trial is not to be taken seriously. The press is saying, in effect, that the federal prosecutor is all wet. We'd be interested in any precedents for the media handling a trial in this strange fashion. We don't know of any. Americans are getting a highly skewed view of what is really happening with Whitewater. Papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have become extensions of the White House spin machine, particularly in its attempt to kill the messenger bringing the bad news about the Clintons -- special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. While these papers conceal damaging facts about the Clintons, they run perception pieces such as the Times' front page hatchet job headlined: Whitewater Case at Crossroads, Prosecutor Faces Wider Attack. Yet even this story had to admit that "both supporters and most critics say that Mr. Starr has not violated any ethics rules." In other words, there's no story in our story but that won't stop us. A few days later the Times' story on the Whitewater hearings included the palpably false pull-out quote referring to "a palpable sense that the problems of Whitewater are dissipating." It is not easy to understand the Washington establishment's ethical code. The same media that tells us that Starr should resign, also implies that any corruption in which the Clintons might have been involved is too trivial to worry about. Clinton leads the capital elite in deep mourning for Ron Brown but can't interrupt his golf game to go to Ed Muskie's funeral. Clark Clifford and Robert Strauss, who built their lives on blurring the line between public and private functions, are revered here while Starr -- following similar if less than admirable legal practice -- is excoriated. The Post gives the front page lead over to $20,000 in public funds being used on Mayor Barry's house but can't find room for decent coverage of Whitewater. And so forth. It's hard to cite the most egregious of the Clinton groupies in the media. Mary McGrory, Frank Rich, Richard Cohen, Lars-Erik Nelson, Diane Rehm, Anthony Lewis and Molly Ivins are all in the running. But for sheer post-modern amoral chutzpah it's hard to beat Michael Kinsley's recent piece in Time in which the centrists' favorite cyberpunk asked: "Why is Clinton's 'character' such a liability to him, when by any reasonable reckoning his professional and personal failings average out to a level of moral compromise so typical among presidents and presidential candidate that it almost amounts to a job qualification? " Meanwhile, behind the media spin and censorship, the story continues. Here are a few things you probably haven't read in your morning paper: Starr has hired Roger M. Adelman to be senior counsel. Adelman was with the Justice Department for eighteen years and directed the famous Abscam prosecutions. He also prosecuted John Hinckley, Jr. Unlike much of the media, Adelman apparently believes there is something to the Whitewater matter. Largely unquoted by the pro-Clinton press was the defense of Starr by his former chief deputy -- Democrat and Carter administration official, Mark H. Tuohey III. Said Tuohey, there is "absolutely no evidence" that Starr has done anything "but park his politics at the front door." Tuohey continued, "Any decision that was made with respect to any of the investigations that has been completed or those being completed was made after a careful review by people with a lot of experience . . . If that had not been the case and if politics had played a role, I would have changed it. No one in that office would have tolerated it." The media keeps giving the false impression that the so-called Pillsbury report on Madison S&L cleared the Clintons of wrong doing. For example, the April 25 Times dutifully quotes without clarification the president's statement that "even the RTC says it [Whitewater] was never anything to start with, which is what I tried to tell people all along." In fact, the report said, among other things that "when all factors are taken into consideration, litigation . . . may only be marginally cost-effective. If vigorously defended, [the cases] could be expensive to litigate, and, given the likelihood of a hometown jury there is no certainty as to the outcome -- despite a factual pattern which would amply support claims for fraud, conversion and abetting." According to Chistopher Ruddy, one of the few reporters really digging into the Foster death, Susan Thomases says that her official statement concerning the incident prepared by the staff of former special prosecutor Robert Fiske is wrong. Thomases statement came in the wake of inconsistencies between this statement and quotes from her in Blood Sport. A major new book on Clinton is due out in early June. The book, Partners in Power, written by Nixon biographer Roger Morris -- a former LBJ administration official -- promises not only major revelations about Whitewater but about the Clinton's seedy rise to power. An article in the New York Observer describes the book as "much bigger in scope than Blood Sport and far more devastating." Morris spent three and a half years working the book, which is being rushed into print long before its original fall launching. According to the Observer, Morris said he was "was not quite ready for the vitriol and ad hominen attacks" in the response to copies of the text sent out with confidentiality agreements to the usual Washington-New York outlets." The Wall Street Journal on April 18 gave major space to one of numerous grim stories lurking on the edges of the Whitewater scandal. This tale, featured in a British TV documentary but virtually unknown to Americans, involves the mysterious deaths of two young boys in Arkansas and the dubious investigation that followed. There is a strong suspicion that the boys died because they happened upon a air drop connected to the Mena drug-running operation. Serious questions have been raised about the veracity of official statements concerning the crash of the plane carrying Ron Brown and others -- particularly the alleged weather conditions. Aviation Week and others have reported that the weather was far better than the White House claims. So what's really going on in Washington these days? There are all sorts of rumors. There is no doubt that the current trial is only the tip of the prosecutorial iceberg. Starr has been adding highly skilled assistance even as the White House tries to spin the story away. He has said there will be at least two more trials -- one involving the 1992 presidential campaign. A Tucker-McDougal acquittal would be trumpeted as highly damaging to Starr, yet the investigative teams -- including scores of FBI agents -- have so much invested that it is unlikely that they will cave just because of public or press perceptions. There does seem an increasing likelihood that Clinton will resign. If he does so, it raises the unpleasant possibility that much of what Starr and company sought to uncover may be permanently buried in the manner of the BCCI and October Surprise investigations. This could be accomplished by the new president, Al Gore, pardoning both the Clintons, thus bringing the formal inquiries to a close. Since parts of the scandal -- particularly the drug running at Mena -- deeply implicate the GOP and intelligence agencies, a lot of people in Washington might be very happy to see the story end this way. WHITE HOUSE STEPS UP ATTACK ON STARR As a sign of how close the special prosecutor may be coming to unraveling the extent of Arkansas corruption, the White House has been stepping up its attack on Kenneth Starr and successfully manipulating a compliant press corps. Today's New York Times had a lead editorial calling on Starr to resign. Starr is accused of no illegality. Rather the Times and others complain that the prosecutor shouldn't be representing private clients while investigating the president. Fair enough. But, as the Times admits, most of the 16 other special prosecutors have done precisely the same thing. What's the difference? Well, Starr is investigating the president. But wait a minute. For years we've been told there was nothing to Whitewater. If there was nothing to it, then clearly it didn't require that much effort on the part of the prosecutor. Now, suddenly, it's very important. Why? Because Starr is getting close. In the best of all worlds, Starr would devote full time to Whitewater. Unfortunately there is a long provenance of big-time lawyers mixing government and business. The Clinton's health care task force was a cesspool of conflicts. Clinton's economic summit in Little Rock shortly after his election was hallmarked by scores of corporate jets parked at local landing fields. Most of the cabinet members have deep corporation connections that papers like the Times studiously avoid telling their readers about. How to make $100,000 in the futures market Say you want to turn a penny ante investment in the futures market into $100,000 for a political friend. How would you do it? According to a Chicago futures broker, here's how: The corrupt broker simultaneously opens off-setting positions in the cattle futures market -- one long and one short. If the market moves up, the bribee is assigned the long position at the end of the day and the bribe payer gets the short position for his account. If the market moves down, the contracts are assigned in the reverse order. So a prosecutor only needs to look for someone who lost $100,000 on the same day that the politician gained it. More Arkansas news Kenneth Starr has indicated to a west coast reporter that there will soon be two new trials involving Whitewater. At issue: Clinton's 1990 and 1992 campaigns. Ex CIA-contract pilot Terry Reed, who flew out of Mena, writes in his book that he was approached through a third party in March 1992 by then DNC chair Ron Brown to settle -- for an undisclosed sum -- his legal complaint against Clinton security chief Buddy Young. The alleged offer came at a time when the first attention was being paid to the Whitewater affair. JUNE 1996 In a break from its long practice of running interference for the Clintons, the Washington Post on Sunday June 2 ran a highly critical story on Hillary Clinton. As the leading voice of the capital city's establishment and frequent conduit of what is called here -- with a remarkable lack of irony -- the "intelligence community," the Post's break with Hillary is roughly akin to Pravda, say, attacking Mrs. Gorbachev during the last days of the Soviet Union. Sometimes the smallest of items can be revealing. For example, on the Jim Lehrer-Archer Daniels Midland Newshour, HRC was asked if she kept a diary. Her response: "Heavens, no! It could get subpoenaed. I can't write anything." She added that her comments would be used to "go after and persecute every friend of mine, everybody I've ever talked with, everyone I've had a conversation with. ~ It's very sad." The publication of Roger Morris's Partners in Power is just about a week off and the mainstream press is still trying to pretend it isn't coming out. Morris's book is expected to the most hard-hitting critique of the Clintons yet published. Morris was the award-winning author of a biography of Richard Nixon and has spent three and a half years writing the Clinton book. He was the co-author (with Sally Denton) of an article on drug dealing out of Mena, Arkansas, that Washington Post high-ups spiked at the last minute. The Media Research Center studied TV coverage from Feb. 29 to May 20 and found only 23 reporter-based stories about Whitewater on all four major networks' evening news shows. NBC aired only one reporter-based story in the eleven weeks and CNN carried 43% of all the Whitewater stories that were run. A well-connected reporter explained the Washington media's handling of Clinton to us this way: "They want him to win." The irony is that the cover-up and denial by liberals and the media have simply made it far more likely that the Clinton crisis will come to a head at the worst possible time for the Democrats. The media -- with a few exceptions such as Jon Greenberg of NPR -- couldn't even get the Tucker-McDougal trial straight. In the end, the jury did a far better job of understanding the story than the professional journalists who insisted on oversimplifying the issue as a battle between the veracity of Clinton and Hale. For example, noted Clinton toady Lars-Erik Nelson wrote on April 11 in the LA Times: After all the right wing's huffing and puffing, the Whitewater 'scandal' is dying out in wisps of smoke. President Clinton's main accuser, David Hale, is currently tangled up in his own lies at a Whitewater trial in Little Rock. Hale has had two years in the witness program to practice his story, and it didn't survive two days of cross examination. Just as in the Vince Foster case, the media has been studiously disinterested in the anomalies surrounding the deaths of Ron Brown and Admiral Boorda. Serious questions have been raised as to how bad the weather was at the time of the Brown plane's attempted landing. According to an article in Aviation Week, visibility was actually 8 kilometers in light to moderate rain. In the case of Boorda, we not only have no non-military evidence on the cause of death but the Navy has not even released a suicide note Boorda addressed to the Navy's sailors. Meanwhile, the British press -- which knows a scandal when it sees one -- has been dishing out reality on a regular basis. This from a piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph: "The New York Times and the Washington Post, the two newspapers that set the political agenda for most of the American media, have systematically ignored critical stories. They have not reported -- in a serious fashion -- that the lead prosecutor investigating the death of White House aide Vincent Foster ~ resigned in disgust last year after being prevented from raising serious evidence of foul play. "They have not printed a word about astonishing allegations in sworn testimony from a court case in Little Rock suggesting that Bill Clinton had ties to a drug trafficking organization when he was governor of Arkansas. They have never reported on Jerry Parks, the head of security for the Clinton-Gore campaign, who was murdered in Little Rock in 1993. And although they have touched on the Troopergate scandal, they have never given readers an inkling of the sheer scale and character of Bill Clinton's philandering exploits. 'Marital infidelity," as they delicately put it, is hardly the same thing as compulsive one-night stands with scores of women. " In another article Evans-Pritchard tells the story of the seventh judicial district task force appointed to investigate corruption among public officials in 1990: "It was closed down when an informant, Sharlene Wilson, testified before a federal grand jury that she had witnessed Governor Bill Clinton and other key figures taking cocaine. Soon afterwards Wilson was charged with minor drug dealing and sent to prison, although the US Supreme Court has now ruled that her conviction was a clear case of entrapment. The prosecutor in charge of the task force, Jeanne Duffey, was forced into hiding, and eventually moved to Texas." An Indiana GOP congress member claims to have evidence of an electronic transfer of $50 million from the Arkansas Development Financial Authority to a bank in the Cayman Islands. Grand Cayman has a population of 18,000, 570 commercial banks, one bank regulator and a bank secrecy law. It is a favorite destination spot for laundered drug money. [We were real wrong on this one but at least we're not covering up --ed] Our best bet continues to be that Clinton will not be the candidate in November. We believe that there are efforts to get Clinton to pull out --especially by those around Al Gore and among those in the Washington establishment and intelligence agencies. The latter are especially anxious that the Clinton debacle not unravel so far as to expose bipartisan and intelligence participation in other scandals such as those involving drugs and BCCI and possibly including the covert arming of Iraq and secret banks accounts held by top Washington officials. If Clinton goes, it is likely that pardons will soon be handed out to make sure the American public never gets the full story. MAY 1996 The Washington Times says the National Security Agency has uncovered a large number of documents relating to Vincent Foster, although less than the 700 claimed by the newsletter Strategic Investment. SI previously reported that the NSA had turned down a freedom of information request for the documents on national security grounds. This, the newsletter indicated, suggested that Foster's death was linked to "highly sensitive national security." The NSA says many of the documents are just news clippings about Foster that it has collected. In either case, however, the news suggests that the agency is maintaining intelligence files on American citizens -- something it has no business doing. SI incidentally included among its editorial resources the late William Colby. Thanks to the AP, the mysteries of the Foster case have received rare straight-forward corporatist media attention. A story by Pete Yost lists numerous anomalies concerning Foster's death and bluntly states in its lead that "Foster's whereabouts in the hours before he died remain a mystery. The time of death is unknown." Among the remaining questions and problems: The police scene photos were underexposed and mostly useless. Two county rescue workers recalled seeing bullet wounds on Foster's neck and face but the official report cites only a wound in the back of the head. There is no evidence the gun allegedly used was ever in Foster's possession. The so-called suicide note was declared a forgery by several handwriting experts -- although others have challenged this conclusion. In any event, it appears certain that the White House knew about Foster's death considerably earlier than it has admitted. A rose by any other name: A Little Rock loan officer has told the Senate Whitewater committee that he provided an unsecured $20,000 loan to Bill Clinton in 1978 because he was an "up and coming" politician. "Emissaries" from the bank's owner asked him to grant the loan. Don Denton admitted that the loan was not "an acceptable banking practice." Further the loan was not paid off in a timely fashion but that nothing was done about it because it was a "policy" loan. The loan was finally paid off in the mid-eighties. MAY 1996 We have previously noted the lack of attention given to the Senate testimony of Clinton friend and convicted cocaine distributor Dan Lasater. Now Insight magazine points out that the New York Times failed even to cover the hearing and that Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post accused the Republicans of "pursuing one of the remotest tangents of the Whitewater inquiry." This about a man who not only paid off Roger Clinton's drug debt but whose firm earned about $1.6 million in fees from the state's notorious development agency. Social distributing in Arkansas: The candy man, Dan Lasater, came to Washington recently but the media was too busy writing about Clinton's umpteenth modification and spin of national drug policy to take much notice. Lasater is one of the more interesting characters in the whole affair -- a successful businessman who, among other things, started the Ponderosa Steakhouse chain and the second largest securities brokerage firm in the state. He also raised race horses and was a track buddy of Virginia Kelly, through whom he met her son Bill. When Lasater started a bonding company, Bill Clinton recommended to him highway commissioner Patsy Thomasson, who became vice president of the Lasater firm.. Thomasson hired half-brother Roger as a limo driver. Roger was also employed as a stable hand at his Florida farm at the request of either Bill or Virginia Kelly -- Lasater says he can't remember which. When Roger's drug debts got too high, Lasater gave him $8,000 to clear them up. Lasater began running into trouble in he mid-eighties. There was a big investigation of a major bond issue for state police radios that was thrown Lasater's way. And the feds got on his case for the possession and distribution of cocaine. Lasater was convicted but spent less than half of his 2 1/2 year sentence in jail. While he was in jail, Thomasson took over as head of the firm. In his trial, and in testimony before the Senate Whitewater committee, Lasater admitted to being free with the coke, including ashtrays full of it on his corporate jet. He also admits to having given coke to employees and to minors. But he took umbrage at being called a drug dealer. In a bizarre exchange with the GOP's counsel, Michael Chertoff, Lasater described his crime as the "social distribution" of cocaine. At one point, Chertoff said, I just want to get -- make -- sure we have kinda your moral compass right, that giving drugs away to your employees and to people you are entertaining even if they are underage, that's better than selling. There's a difference of distinction -- that's your position before this committee? Lasater agreed. Now this is the man who, according to some witnesses, also had a back door pass to the governor's mansion. One state trooper has reported taking Clinton to Lasater's office regularly and waiting forty-five minutes or an hour for him to come out. Bear in mind that Arkansas functioned as a sort of domestic narco-republic during the years that Clinton was in the governor's mansion. Clinton claims to know virtually nothing about all this and while there is good reason for him to play dumb, but that doesn't mean the Washington media has to follow suit. The big story of Whitewater has always been drugs and so when one of the candy men came to town to testify, it should have been news. JUNE 1996 There has been a sudden spate of press speculation on the possibility of Hillary Clinton being indicted. Following the Washington Post's long take on HRC's inconsistencies (as we like to call them in Washington), William Safire, Newsweek, The New York Post and the Times of London have all made direct or oblique references to Hillary and/or Bill's potential for serious legal trouble. The conventional wisdom column of Newsweek had this comment on Bill Clinton: "'I am not a crook--my friends are' defense may not hold water through November." And for HRC: "You're next. Memo to Allenwood warden:'Dust off the Jolly Jumper'" Remember: this is Newsweek and not The Progressive Review saying this. Clinton and the CIA: Roger Morris's important new book, Partners in Power, describes how Clinton was recruited by the CIA to keep tabs on other overseas students while at Oxford. A CIA operative who worked in the Stockholm station confirmed that Clinton had submitted a report on American peace activists who had taken refuge in Scandinavia to avoid the draft. Whether anyone else reported on Clinton taking refuge at Oxford to avoid the draft is not known. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph of London reported recently that: "Rhodes scholars such as Mr. Clinton were favorite targets for recruitment. This caused serious friction with Britain's MI5 because it violated a US-UK agreement that neither country would conduct covert operations or recruit on each other's home territory. Because of the sensitivity of the UK, these kids were treated in some ways like high-level agents.' " Assets like Clinton were part of a major attempt to break student resistance to the war and the draft known as Operation Chaos. The files of Operation Chaos were shredded by the agency in the mid-1970s but one official told Morris that Clinton "was there in the records, with a special designation." The Morris book confirms something we have long suspected -- that the story of Bill Clinton is the story a politician nurtured by the CIA, just as George Bush was. The 1992 election was an extraordinary one: the first contest between two men in no small part the creatures of the CIA. In other words, since 1988 this country has been run by politicians deeply beholden to the agency. The FBI files: Let's see. As we understand it we are meant to believe that an Army operative looking through the White House-obtained files on James Baker wouldn't have noticed that Baker was something of a Republican. Some gum shoe. ~ ~ ~ ~ But don't put all the blame on the FBI for collecting the stuff. The FBI increasingly is relying on Pentagon and NSA files. Less and less material comes from agents chatting with the neighbors, more and more from monitored phone calls. Although wire tapping is theoretically under court control and the NSA theoretically has no role in domestic law enforcement, the agency gets around this little problem by monitoring long distance phone calls downloaded in England and Australia. Let's say you're on the NSA watch list. The agency will electronically listen for certain key words, transcribe any messages dealing with these key words and pass them on to whatever other agencies might be interested. This helps to explain how the agency ended up with hundreds of documents on Vince Foster that it's refusing to release. The Reed Case: After a federal judge placed egregiously restrictive rules on evidence, former Mena contract pilot Terry Reed dropped his law suit against the Arkansas officials he says framed him in a case that was later thrown out of federal court. But Reed notes that he is being sued for libel by a minor figure in the Mena affair because of comments in his book and that this case will permit another opportunity to lay out what he knows about Mena. From a police videotape of Roger Clinton during a 1984 cocaine sale, as reported in the just out Partners in Power by Roger Morris: "Got to get some for my brother's. He's got a nose like a vacuum cleaner." Back to the Review's home page The Volante Emporium