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5. CLINTON'S CRIMES: WE MUST NEVER FORGET (March 2004)
Is it ancient history to you now? Are you bored at the very mention of it? It
isn't enough that criminality by an American President goes unpunished, it must
be utterly forgotten too? This Extended Political Essay, like the one preceding
it, is above all an exercise in memory, in the faith that memory preserves the
lessons we cannot forget if we are to prosper and advance.
_______________________________________________________________
As I mention in the Bio section of this website, since 1997 I have been a
Producer at WOR Radio in New York City, and in that role I have worked with the
cream of American talk talent-- Bob Grant, Jay Diamond, Joey Reynolds, Lionel,
the Dolans, John R. Gambling, Joan Hamburg and on and on. Another host I worked
with-- on an occasional basis-- was Joan Rivers, who for several years had a
two-hour evening show at WOR. Basically, I liked her, though she has an edge,
obviously, and sometimes you're the recipient of it. But fundamentally, she's a
decent person, as well as brilliant, sort of flaky and exceptionally witty. She
was, for the most part, a Clinton defender too, and, like so many commentators,
pooh-poohed the Lewinsky to-do while plumbing it for all its (endless) comic
possibilities. I enjoyed her "stand-up", but at the same time I was frustrated
and angry that she really didn't "get it", what was at stake with this man,
meaning that this one pat of mud came from a larger swamp, and to help her
understand this I went ahead on my own and researched and tried to clarify the
whole vast sordid mess of him. I typed everything up and gave it to her
Manager-- and never heard boo after, on- or off-air.
And by the way, if you
doubt what I'll be writing, all my sources are available. Just write or e-mail
me. However, I will include a few sources right in the essay, especially when
the truth seems unbelievable.
My work sat. And then
along came a website....
You need to know too; and
even if you're aware, and even if you're one of the few to whom this still is a
living subject, there are details you've forgotten or never learned. I intend to
run through my findings as rapidly as I possibly can, boil each scandal down to
its hard filthy core, and race on, so this can serve as the Essential Clinton
Scandal Primer. But before I do, be it understood that these are the "scandal
scandals", and they still can never, in their amoral depths, match the policy
scandals-- the willing impotence in the face of terrorist challenges that led to
9/11, and the impenetrable cowardice and moral deadness that led him to turn his
back on the desperate cries for help of millions in Rwanda, the Sudan, the
former Yugoslavia, North Korea and other killing fields.
_________________________________________________________________
SCANDAL 1:
WHITEWATER:
In the summer of
1978, when Clinton was running for Governor of Arkansas, a friend named Jim
McDougal recommended an investment: property along the White River (Whitewater).
The idea was to build vacation homes there. The Clintons and McDougals bought
it, going 50/50 on the mortgage. It didn't prove a good investment, and shortly
after the 1992 Presidential election the Clintons sold their interest in
Whitewater to Jim McDougal for $1,000. Where's the crime? The main charge was
that Clinton, as Governor in 1986, illegally pressured David Hale, who ran a
federally-backed lending agency, to make an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan
McDougal, who used about $50,000 to pay off Whitewater expenses. The loan was
never repaid (except by the taxpayers). Independent Counsel Robert Ray, issuing
a final report on the matter in 2000, said there wasn't sufficient evidence to
prove that, or even to prove Clinton knew about the loan or that he testified
falsely about it. (Though at his trial David Hale testified Clinton was at the
loan discussion meeting.) Left unexplained, probably never to be explained, is a
$27,600 cashier's check produced at the McDougals' trial by the FBI and made out
to Clinton by the McDougals' bank (Madison Guaranty) in 1982, though not
endorsed by him. The McDougals' bank, which Hillary Clinton did legal work for,
was closed down by the federal government in 1986 for bad loans and accounting
practices. Jim and Susan McDougal and David Hale all ended up in prison. But
nothing illegal could be pinned on the Clintons. True, Hillary's law firm's
billing records regarding the McDougals, subpoenaed in late 1993 and Spring
1994, somehow were "lost", till they were found by a staffer in the White House
family quarters in August 1995, and not offered by Mrs. Clinton till January
1996. "When the records were subpoenaed, numerous White House officials had to
know of their existence and-- possibly-- their whereabouts. Yet the subpoenas
were ignored." (N.Y. Times, 2/17/96, page 22) Shortly before leaving
office in January 2001 Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal. Her husband had
died in prison.
Innocent!
SCANDAL 2:
VINCE FOSTER:
Vince Foster was a
lawyer in Hillary's Rose Law Firm. After Bill Clinton's election he became
Deputy White House Counsel. He was involved in all sorts of stuff. He'd worked
on Whitewater matters at Rose. His scrawlings are all over those Madison
Guaranty billing records Hillary didn't produce till January 1996. According to
Webster Hubbell, another Rose lawyer, Foster might have been the one holding
them up until his death. He investigated White House Travel Office workers when
the Clintons wanted to dump them for their own people, and worked with the FBI
trying to get goods on them. (The FBI didn't, but they did discover use of
cocaine, crack and hallucinogens among the Clinton replacements. [N.Y. Post,
10/16/96, 19] ) He died of a gunshot wound to the head early in the
administration, on July 20, 1993. Barring new evidence, it should be accepted as
a suicide. No crime, correct? All we can say is that after his death White House
Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and other staffers blocked federal investigators from
Vince Foster's office. They apparently searched it themselves. "A White House
security officer later testified that he had seen Maggie Williams, Mrs.
Clinton's chief of staff, carrying files from Mr. Foster's office the night of
his death." (N.Y. Times, 2/17/96, 22) But there's
no crime, because the Clintons weren't involved. Bernard Nussbaum and the
staffers did all this on their own!
SCANDAL 3:
SEX:
Clinton's promiscuity
and unfaithfulness while President (and before and after) are a given, and not
even the staunchest Clinton supporter will risk ridicule by denying it. The only
discussion is: Did his behavior ever cease being truly private? If it did, it
weakened his ability to do the job of President, and Congress then had a right
to impeach, if it wished. And beyond that might be actual crimes, the kind you
spend time in jail for, or pay criminal or civil penalties for.
All of the following is
undisputed:
1) On January 7, 1998,
Monica Lewinsky signed an affidavit, prepared by a Vernon Jordan-referred
lawyer, falsely denying having sex with Clinton. The day before she'd discussed
the affidavit draft with Jordan, and phone records show Jordan calling Clinton
less than thirty minutes after that discussion. Lewinsky in the affidavit: "I
have never had a sexual relationship with the President..." Clinton backed up
this lie in his Paula Jones case deposition ten days later. Clinton had
suggested an affidavit to Lewinsky (but not necessarily lying on it). The day
after Lewinsky signed the affidavit, Clinton friend and Washington
lawyer-powerbroker Vernon Jordan called Ronald Perelman, a major Clinton
contributor and head of Revlon, to push Lewinsky for a job. In his twelve years
as a Revlon director Jordan had never recommended anyone for a job. And five
days later, she was hired as a $40,000-a-year PR person. (The job was later
withdrawn as the scandal blossomed.) Previously, Clinton secretary Betty Currie
worked on White House Chief Of Staff John Podesta who worked on UN Ambassador
Bill Richardson to offer her a job, which he did. (She turned it down.) Later
the chain was Currie to Podesta to Jordan. Others involved at various times
trying to get a job for this young nobody were White House Chief Of Staff
Erskine Bowles and Legislative Affairs Director John Hilley. The likes of a
Perelman, Jordan, Richardson, Currie, Podesta, Bowles or Hilley would
normally never take notice of the likes of a Lewinsky, let alone get them jobs.
(According to the Starr Report, after he got her the job Jordan called Currie
and told her: "Mission accomplished.") There can be almost no question here that
Clinton was involved in bribing Lewinsky to keep her mouth shut about he and
she. Time Magazine (9/21/98, 45) said that while working to get Lewinsky
a job Jordan was "reporting to Clinton every step of the way." Jordan was
continually on the phone to Clinton during the process. (And it was Lewinsky
herself who'd suggested Jordan to Clinton as her ideal job finder.) Clinton's
main fear was that Lewinsky would testify negatively about his character and
sexual past in the upcoming Paul Jones sexual harassment case. (Lewinsky had
been subpoenaed to testify.)
It appears the Clinton
apparatus had a way with job-bribes. Clinton insider Dick Morris reported (N.Y.
Post, 10/1/98, 6) "Former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen says she was
offered acting jobs through the Hollywood-connected Clinton operative Mickey
Kantor in return for denying a sexual encounter with Clinton when she was Miss
Arkansas." And of course Clinton gave former lover-- this one he admitted to--
Gennifer Flowers an Arkansas state job after she threatened to go public with
their thing. And then there's flight attendant Debra Schiff, who certainly got
to witness the "bad boy" side of Clinton on their campaign plane. She ended as a
White House receptionist and then with a nice job in "protocol" at the U.S.
State Department.
2) Clinton lied in public
when he said on January 26, 1998 in a news conference "I did not have sexual
relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
3) Clinton also lied in
his Paula Jones deposition on January 17, 1998 when he said "I have never had
sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky." This was perjury. (As Clinton later told
Kenneth Starr's Grand Jury: "My goal in this deposition was to be
truthful, but not particularly helpful." [N.Y. Times, 9/22/98, B4] ) But
he couldn't quite pull off the first part either.
4) All of the
Clinton/Lewinsky sex took place in the White House, on public time, when he was
supposed to be working for us. (See my Short Essay # 16: "The Starr Report-- One
Last Time".)
5) Clinton's private life
opened him to blackmail. Certainly, Gennifer Flowers successfully blackmailed
him into giving her a job, and Monica Lewinsky's request/demand for Vernon
Jordan involved blackmail. And the Starr Report states Clinton told Lewinsky "he
suspected that a foreign embassy...was tapping his telephones...", and he
instructed her to deny their affair, with whoever.
6) In December 1997 Paula
Jones' lawyers asked for letters between Clinton and Kathleen Willey, whom he
allegedly kissed, fondled and sexually harassed at a November 1993 White House
meeting. Willey was later given paid White House jobs or assignments, and top
White House fundraiser Nathan Landow admitted to "a half dozen" talks or
meetings with Willey between 1994 and 1997. (In August 1997 Willey had been
subpoenaed to testify in the Paula Jones case.) Again, a noted powerbroker
taking amazing interest in a nonentity. Clinton's lawyers denied there were such
Clinton/Willey letters. Yet in March 1998, when Willey went public on TV, the
letters were immediately produced in order to discredit her. The December
1997 refusal appears to be concealment of evidence. Of course, testifying before
the Starr Grand Jury Clinton offered his own tortuous "legal" excuse for why the
letters first weren't produced and then they were: "...we were duty-bound to
search and turn over evidence or, excuse me, documents that were in my personal
file, but not in the White House files." This is almost as good as, before the
Starr Grand Jury: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--
if he-- if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not-- that is one thing."
7) On January 14, 1998
Lewinsky delivered a document of "talking points" to Linda Tripp, who was an
eyewitness to the immediate aftermath of the November 1993 Clinton/Willey
meeting and heard an account of it from Willey, urging Tripp to testify that
Willey's account was a lie. Among the specific "talking points" Lewinsky urged
on Tripp: "You and Kathleen were friends....You did not see her go in or see her
come out....You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her
lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc." If Clinton gave Lewinsky the "talking
points" document to deliver to Tripp that crime is called witness tampering. Or
was Lewinsky, like Bernard Nussbaum and the staffers, just an amazing
self-starter?
In the end, Clinton's
only punishment was a meaningless five-year suspension of his law license
in Arkansas, plus a $25,000 fine there, for his perjury in the Paula Jones
deposition. But Bob Herbert of the N.Y. Times, a liberal
who nonetheless has a sense of what is right,
put it best in his 2/5/98 column "The Clinton M.O." : "It is about
more than Mr. Clinton's sex life. It is about a governing style that is so
reckless and so contemptuous of both the truth and the public that
potentially paralyzing scandals are all but inevitable. It is about deceit as a
way of life." As to those who still would insist that impeachment shouldn't
result from a President's sex life-- top constitutional scholar Gerald Gunther
of Stanford Law School has the truest response: "it would be justifiable grounds
for impeachment as a breach of trust". The second article of impeachment, after
all, passed by the House against Richard Nixon in 1974, charged him with no
specific crime either, simply, and powerfully, of acting "in a manner contrary
to his trust as President..." The truth is, "high crimes and misdemeanors" are
whatever Congress wants them to be. Congress is not a court of law, and
impeachment has its own rules.
Amazingly, we're just getting started. there is, for instance:
SCANDAL 4:
WEBSTER HUBBELL:
Webster Hubbell's
family had been well taken care of by the Clintons even before the Presidency.
At the Rose Law Firm Hillary Clinton had prepared a real estate document valuing
a parcel of Whitewater property at $400,000. (After Madison Guaranty failed, the
federal government got $38,000 for it.) Federal regulators concluded the bank
used Mrs. Clinton's document to deceive bank examiners about hundreds of
thousands of dollars in commissions paid to Webster Hubbell's father-in-law. (In
1996 Mrs. Clinton said-- ninety-nine times-- that she couldn't recall what she
did, nor could she recall at least fifteen conversations with the father-in-law,
though billing records prove they took place.)
In December 1994
Webster Hubbell, the number three man in the Justice Department, pleaded
guilty to stealing over $400,000 from the Rose Law Firm and its clients. This is
what Starr got him on. In July 1995 he headed for federal prison to serve a
two-year sentence. But his silence never cracked on Whitewater and the other
matters about which he had intimate knowledge. Simple loyalty? Anyone who doubts
that Bill Clinton was skilled in the buying of silence should test their doubt
against the following:
Hubbell stepped down from
his Justice Department position on March 14, 1994. Between then, and the
beginning of his sentence, he received at least $700,000 from 18 different
sources:
He was hired by old Clinton
friend Bernard Rapoport, at the instigation of another old Clinton friend Truman
Arnold, for Rapoport's insurance company.
Arnold, the top fundraiser for
the Democratic National Committee in 1995, also hired Hubbell for his own Truman
Arnold Company and immediately gave him $18,000.
Ron Perelman-- that
man again!-- hired Hubbell to work at two of his companies. Perelman paid
Hubbell $25,000 per quarter for a "public relations" job at Revlon, plus $60,000
from Perelman's MacAndrews & Forbes Holding, but Hubbell was never able to
explain what work he actually did for either.
But we know what
Hubbell did for the Los Angeles Airport Commission, which hired Hubbell on a
secret basis, possibly illegally. It paid him $24,750, in return for which
Hubbell made two five-minute phone calls to a Washington Department Of
Transportation official. Oh, and Hubbell did seven other hours of "work", which
primarily consisted of brief phone conversations with-- the Los Angeles Airport
Commission official who hired him.
The same
sort of super-highpowered job-finding team that handled Lewinsky swung into
action for Webster Hubbell. The man who called Ronald Perelman to get Hubbell
his two jobs-- was Vernon Jordan. And Mickey Kantor, the Hollywood-connected
Clinton operator who offered former Clinton tumblee-in-the-hay former Miss
America Elizabeth Ward Gracen some acting gigs, worked with White House Chief Of
Staff Thomas F. ("Mack") McClarty 3rd and future White House Chief Of Staff
Erskine Bowles to get Hubbell more "work". Time Warner, The Pacific Telesis
Group, The Mid-America Dairymen's Association, Sun America Inc. (a California
financial services company owned by close Clinton friend Eli Broad), The
Consumer Support And Education Fund ($45,000 in three months), C.W. Conn
($18,000 payment on July 28, 1994), Harper Collins ($61,667 for a manuscript
never delivered), all gave to Hubbell. There's no need to go on with this filth.
However, we haven't touched on one very special Hubbell employer:
SCANDAL 5:
THE RIADYS, THE LIPPO GROUP, JOHN HUANG & CHINAGATE:
Payment to Hubbell of
$100,000-150,000 for supposed consulting services was made by the Riady family
of Indonesia. Mochtar Riady is an Indonesian billionaire and head of the Lippo
Group. From 1991 on he and his son James Riady (who first met Clinton in Little
Rock in 1977) "steered" $1 million to Clinton and his party. The $140,000
collected by Al Gore at a Buddhist temple in California in April 1996 was
steered his way by the Riadys. Some of the donors at the temple were Buddhist
nuns and monks who had taken vows of poverty, but were able to come up with as
much as $5,000 apiece.
Then, two months
after Hubbell was put on the Riady's payroll, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown
announced approval of a joint $2 billion Chinese/American project involving
Riady businesses. One of the American corporations involved in the deal was
headed by C. Joseph Giroir Jr., former law partner of Hillary Clinton and
Webster Hubbell at Rose Law Firm.
Five days after
Clinton's election the Riadys sold a stake in their Hong Kong bank to China
Resources Holding Co., owned by the Chinese government, and, according both to
Hong Kong officials' accounts confirmed to Newsweek and the draft
of a Republican Senators' report ("But they're Republicans-- what do you
expect them to say?"), part of the Chinese government's spy apparatus.
The temple fundraiser
where Al Gore cleaned up was organized by John Huang, a long-time Lippo
executive, once an employee of a Riady bank in Little Rock, an important Clinton
fundraiser, eventually the Riadys' number one man in America-- and
appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary Of Commerce by Commerce Secretary Ron
Brown, who also waved his background check. As Deputy Assistant Secretary Of
Commerce Huang apparently had access to all Commerce Department classified
documents, received 37 CIA briefings, made over 400 phone calls to Lippo
associates, and visited the Chinese Embassy 6 times.
In March 1996 Charlie
Trie, a Little Rock restaurateur and trader connected to Huang, visited Michael
Cardozo, Director of Clinton's Legal Defense Fund, and presented a plain brown
envelope containing $460,000 in checks and money orders, many with the same
handwriting, the money orders sequentially numbered. (The money was eventually
returned.) In 1996 Trie received a series of 5- and 6-figure wire transfers from
the Chinese government's Bank Of China. He also had wired to him over $1 million
by one Wang Jung, who controlled CITIC, an investment house partially owned by
the Chinese government. At least a third of that money was given to the
Democratic National Committee. Who had 24-hour-a-day access passes to Charlie
Trie's Watergate apartment? White House aide Mark Middleton and Democratic
National Committee White House Liaison Susan Lavine. CITIC had a stake in
one of Hong Kong's largest satellite companies. Clinton signed a waiver allowing
China to launch four American satellites. In January 1998 the White House
conceded that some of these satellites could be used for military purposes. This
was against U.S. law, but the White House just said there was now nothing it
could do, and got away with it. Charlie Trie basically got away with his
criminal actions too, arranging a cozy little plea deal with Clinton's Justice
Department in 1999 and not serving any jail time (three years probation,
including four months home detention).
In December 1996,
General Chi Haotian, Chinese Minister of Defense, the man who ordered the
Tiananmen massacre, was a guest of the State Department, touring American
military installations, including nuclear. At an October 1997 dinner for
visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Clinton announced that for the first
time the U.S. government would allow the sale of nuclear materials and
information to China, despite a 1985 law prohibiting such sales to nations
involved in the illegal spread of nuclear materials and technology. China has
sold nuclear war material to Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Pakistan and other nations.
Just this month (March 2004) newly declassified documents reported "that China
has provided assistance to Pakistan's program to develop a nuclear weapon
capacity" and that the nuclear weapon design obtained by Libya from Pakistani
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and perhaps
the world's number one individual nuclear proliferator, originated in China.
American intelligence has suspected China of such activities since the 1960's.
In February 1998, against the strong opposition of the Justice Department,
Clinton approved the export, by Loral Space And Communications, of technological
knowledge to China allowing them to improve their nuclear missile reliability.
This was against U.S. law, and the Justice Department and the Customs Service
launched criminal investigations, but they of course both came to nothing.
Loral's Chairman, Bernard L. Schwartz, was the largest personal donor to the
Democratic Party in 1997. Because so much nuclear knowledge and technology,
enhanced by Clinton's actions (he also gave China Most Favored Nation status),
have been passed on to nations with terrorist ties, as American intelligence
knew and knows, perhaps one day Clinton's legacy to his country will rise as a
mushroom cloud over one or several of our cities, and the deaths will reach into
the hundreds of thousands (about comparable to the deaths in that Rwanda he
turned his back on).
In April 1998 it came
out that most of the money funneled to the Democratic National Committee by
another Democratic fundraiser, Johnny Chung, in the summer of 1996, came from
the Chinese Army. (N.Y. Times, 5/15/98, A1) Chung
was a very frequent visitor to the White House (at least 49 times from 1995 on)
When it came time for punishment, Clinton's Justice Department was as
accommodating to Chung as it was to Trie: a 1998 plea deal
resulting only in probation and community service.
SCANDALS ENDLESS:
--- Occidental
Petroleum gave about $350,000 to the Democrats. Clinton then gave
Occidental permission to negotiate an oilfield development deal with the
Sudanese government, slaughterer and enslaver of millions of blacks. (The "first
black President".) (See: N.Y. Times, 1/28/97, A20 and N.Y. Newsday,
1/27/97, A28)
--- On April 11,
1996, U.S. Trade Representative (this time he operated with an official title)
Mickey Kantor asked the World Trade Organization to take up a grievance by
Chiquita Banana and rule for it. The very next day Chiquita President Carl
Lindner and Chiquita executives began their contributions of over $500,000 to 24
Democratic state organizations. Formerly, Lindner had been known only as
a conservative and long-time G.O.P. supporter. (See: N.Y. Times, 3/26/97,
A21 and N.Y. Post, 6/5/97, 24)
--- Alan
Solomont, a Massachusetts nursing home mogul, and occasional Clinton jogging
partner, gave Democrats $160,000 and raised $1.1 million from other nursing home
owners. In May 1997 Solomont and a team of lobbyists met with Secretary Of
Health And Human Services Donna Shalala and asked for less stringent enforcement
of nursing home regulations. He got most of what he wanted. (See: Time,
2/10/97, 32)
--- On October 22,
1996, at a fundraiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Miami, Clinton was slipped
a card by a Florida exporter R. Warren Meddoff. It read: "My associate has $5
million he is prepared to donate to the DNC." Clinton replied: "Let me have
another of those cards." On October 29, 1996 Meddoff was contacted by Deputy
Chief Of Staff Harold Ickes, who asked for money. Meddoff asked for a change in
U.S. policy: He wanted the President to lift the ban on aid flights to Cuba.
Clinton lifted the ban that day. (In the end, the DNC didn't accept the money.)
See: Newsweek, 2/10/97, 34 and N.Y. Post, 2/17/97, 25 [originally
published in The New Republic] )
On and on it
goes, never ending, corruption that calls for an essay three or
four times this (even my section on Chinagate only touches highlights): the
corruption of Secretary Of Agriculture Espy, the DNC paying the salaries of 20+
White House staffers (one of whom gave it information from the White House data
base which the DNC used for fundraising, against federal law), the 900 FBI
background files the White House obtained, Sioenggate, Casinogate, Thaigate, on
and on, and finally the loathsome last-minute pardons of an army of criminals,
Clinton supporters, criminals, Clinton contributors, and criminals.
And we've barely touched
on those higher crimes which resulted in the deaths of millions overseas (and
3,000 here). But I especially can't shake Rwanda. Black Americans treat Clinton
with love, as a champion. Black Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, in 1998, called
him "America's first black President". On April 21, 1994, General Romeo Dallaire,
UN Commander in Rwanda, said he needed only 5,000 troops to bring the escalating
holocaust to a halt. The same day the Clinton administration, working through
the Security Council, succeeded in ordering Dallaire's force reduced 90%
to 270, and Clinton's Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright worked to reduce his
force further. Clinton also issued Presidential Decision Directive 25, offering
a host of reasons for avoiding U.S. involvement, refused to lend a number of
action-ready African nations 50 armored personnel carriers (in the summer of
1997 the U.S. armored personnel carrier inventory stood at 25,185), and had the
State Department refuse to label the vast slaughter-- which would take about
800,000 lives-- as genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. He was waiting
for a Rwandan businessman to wire $5 million to the Democratic National
Committee, I guess.
_______________________________________________________________
As I read this essay back, I am astounded that the main charges in the
impeachment of Bill Clinton did not involve the bribing of Monica Lewinsky,
Webster Hubbell and others to obtain their silence, other major criminal
actions, and, above all, the outright sale of his administration to China, to
such a detriment to the safety and future of his own country that surely treason
could have been fairly charged. Kenneth Starr examined many such dark trails,
yet ignored them in the end. As for the "women part" of his scandals,
perjury was clearly among his crimes, and could have alone served for his
removal, slight as it was by comparison to the other acts, if Congress had so
chosen. Rereading the Starr Report (reprinted in the N.Y. Times, 9/12/98)
I am amazed at Starr's stupidity and incompetence. It reminds me of the
stupidity and incompetence of Marcia Clark and company in losing their slam-dunk
O.J. Simpson case. It is the work of a man who shows up for a dance with two
left feet. The Starr Report is almost entirely given over to Monica Lewinsky,
with a little Paula Jones added. A considerable portion is devoted to pop-eyed,
drooling and ludicrous detail about their "affair": "....the President hugged
her....kissed her on the neck, praised her intellect and beauty....fondled her
bare breasts with his hands and mouth....unzipped his pants and exposed his
genitals....the President gave her...gifts...an Annie Lenox compact disk, and a
cigar....Ms. Lewinsky testified that she has 'always been a date-oriented
person.'....'And then I made a joke and I said, "Well, can I be Assistant to the
President for Blow Jobs?" He said "I'd like that." '....she was not
certain that the stains were semen. She had dined out after the radio address,
'so it could be spinach dip'....After the sexual encounter, she saw the
President masturbate in the bathroom near the sink....observed the President
'manually stimulating himself' in Ms. Hernreich's office....the President put
his hand over her mouth during a sexual encounter to keep her quiet...."etc.
Starr needed to
minimally establish there was sex between the President and his "ex-paramour"
(Starr's word) for the perjury charge to have credibility with Congress, that's
understood, but Starr was tone deaf to the overkill of his report, its honking
ludicrousness, which made the serious into the comic. Since, then, the vast epic
story of Clinton corruption and crime was reduced to a single sexual comedy with
some modest illegality attached, he gave an out to the Democrats and a few
Republicans in the Senate to dismiss the seriousness of Clinton's deeds,
reducing the trial to a partisan ritual whose outcome was preordained. He was
like a man in a burning room who could only focus on a stain on the rug.
Chilling things happened in the Clinton administration, things so unacceptable
to contemplate, and painfully complicated as well, it's understandable why the
American system, like the American mind, in the end blanked out. Laughter,
ignorance and denial became a refuge.
_________________________________________________________________
It has been suggested that enough monkeys given enough typewriters for enough
time will eventually write Hamlet. But in fact, they never will. Instead,
they hit the fundamental wall of their limitations. In going back over the
Clinton scandals it is horribly apparent that the entire American system and
psychology hit its limit, well short of a capacity to do justice. And, more
importantly than "doing justice" (an abstraction), tending to its own best
interests. For it is not in America's interest to have Presidents who are
criminals. They are less efficient than honest Presidents, prone to great
errors, and distracted from their primary responsibility: the well-being of (not
themselves, not their clients, not their lovers, not their bribers) their
people.
And so, in the end, he
got away with it. But make no mistake. We are less for it, and since he didn't
pay the penalties we have and we will.
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