Time: Mon Jul 07 04:02:50 1997
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Date: Mon, 07 Jul 1997 04:00:19 -0700
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: STARR WARS II (fwd)
<snip>
>
> STARR WARS II
> The Imperial Presidency Strikes Back
>
>By Edward Zehr
>
>The recent accretion of bad news for Mr. Clinton in the form of
>Supreme Court decisions and new revelations of scandal in his
>administration, some of which involve the president directly, has
>called forth the predictable response -- an orchestrated attack
>upon Mr. Clinton's potential nemesis, independent counsel Kenneth
>Starr.
>
>In recent weeks Mr. Clinton has been bedeviled by revelations
>that his ace fund raiser, John Huang, was observed making lengthy
>long distance calls to the Far East right after receiving
>classified briefings in the Commerce Department (Mr. Huang's
>connections within the Chinese government have been the subject
>of much discussion lately) and that records show Mr. Clinton
>himself solicited campaign funds from the White House (which is
>illegal). Add to that the fact that Mr. Clinton's former close
>associate Webster Hubbell, who is suspected of obstructing the
>Whitewater investigation in return for hush money, is facing a
>new indictment, a judge has just refused to release Susan
>McDougal from jail where she has been sent for contempt of court
>after refusing to tell a grand jury whether or not Mr. Clinton
>promoted an illegal $300,000 government loan to her, Paula Jones
>is proceeding with her lawsuit against him, thanks to a recent
>Supreme Court decision, and Mr. Starr is rumored to be ready to
>announce a new series of indictments at the end of summer, and
>it's easy to see why the president has been feeling none too
>perky of late.
>
>Riding to the rescue, the mainstream media unleached a withering
>propaganda blitz against Mr. Starr, alleging that he has
>overstepped the bounds of propriety by allowing his investigators
>to delve too deeply into the intimate details of Mr. Clinton's
>private life.
>
>
>THE MEDIA CAMPAIGN AGAINST STARR
>
>The kickoff of the media campaign was signaled by an article that
>appeared in the Washington Post under the byline of Bob Woodward
>and Susan Schmidt. Actually, Whitewater is Schmidt's beat.
>Woodward's participation was apparently intended to call
>attention to the fact that the story should be considered
>significant by the rest of the mainstream press. It could use a
>bit of puffery -- the "news" contained in the article is four
>months old. As revealed in last week's Washington Weekly, the
>article is a rehash of a story that appeared in the Arkansas
>Democrat Gazette in mid-February and was later disavowed for its
>inaccuracies.
>
>The gist of it is that two Arkansas state troopers, Roger Perry
>and Ronald Anderson, said a new line of questioning that began in
>the spring, "asked about 12 to 15 women by name, including Paula
>Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who has filed a
>civil lawsuit against Clinton alleging he sexually harassed her
>in 1991."
>
>According to the Post article, "sources said a total of eight
>troopers, who, like Perry and Anderson, served on Gov. Clinton's
>personal security detail, had been questioned so far."
>
>"In the past, I thought they were trying to get to the bottom of
>Whitewater," Perry, a good ol'boy who knows how to work both
>sides of the street, told The Washington Post. "This last time, I
>was left with the impression that they wanted to show he was a
>womanizer... All they wanted to talk about was women."
>
>Perry's implied moral indignation was placed in question -- or as
>the Post delicately put it, "Perry's apparent surprise at some of
>the questions -- offered a certain amount of irony" -- when,
>many paragraphs later, it was mentioned that "Perry was one of
>four members of the security detail whose allegations that they
>had facilitated clandestine meetings between the governor and
>some women formed the basis of explosive stories published in
>December 1993 in the American Spectator magazine and the Los
>Angeles Times."
>
>The Post was not much interested in this story in December of
>1993 and paid scant attention to the troopers. Their appraisal of
>Perry's credibility seems to wax and wane on the basis of whose
>ox is being gored by his testimony. For example, they paid no
>attention whatever to his allegation that White House employee
>Helen Dickey had called the Arkansas governor's mansion with news
>of Vincent Foster's death before the White House is supposed to
>have been notified.
>
>Even so, the Woodward/Schmidt story is fairly well balanced
>compared to some of the hit pieces it inspired in the mainstream
>press. It quotes deputy Whitewater counsel John Bates'
>explanation: "We are continuing to gather relevant facts from
>whatever witnesses, male or female, who may be available. Our
>obligation is to acquire information from friends, business
>associates or other acquaintances or confidants."
>
>Bates elaborates that it is "perfectly appropriate to establish
>the circumstances of the contact for a potential witness,
>including whether Clinton had an intimate relationship or affair
>with the person."
>
>The Post article also made the point that the investigators were
>attempting to locate people that Clinton was close to during the
>1980s "to ask them what Clinton might have told them about the
>Whitewater investment, the McDougals or Madison Guaranty -- the
>Arkansas savings and loan owned by James McDougal..."
>
>The article even mentioned Susan McDougal's refusal to answer
>questions about the illegal $300,000 loan that Clinton is alleged
>to have promoted for her.
>
>
>A LACK OF OBJECTIVITY
>
>Such balance was utterly lacking in the media blitz that used the
>Post article as its point of departure. The Media Research Center
>reported that, "On the weekend talk shows some top reporters were
>more concerned about the scope of Kenneth Starr's probe, urging
>him to wrap it up immediately, than in White House delays and
>obfuscation. These reporters seem more interested in discrediting
>the investigator than in learning what misdeeds Clinton may have
>committed."
>
>The report noted that, "Gwen Ifill, Gloria Borger, Linda
>Greenhouse, Margaret Carlson and Al Hunt all launched attacks on
>Ken Starr." Several examples were provided to illustrate the
>point, for example:
>
>Time magazine's Margaret Carlson on CNN's June 28 Capital Gang:
>
> "It looks like he's on a fishing expedition, and a prurient
> fishing expedition at that, x-rated. Since this is a family
> show, I won't go into it. But there were many questions asked
> that didn't have anything to do with Madison Savings and
> Loan. And I don't know any pillow talk that involves land
> transactions and closing costs and sewer hook-ups and other
> things like that."
>
>The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt on the same program:
>
> "One is tempted to say that if he really is going to delve
> into everyone that Clinton supposedly slept with, this is
> going to be an awfully long investigation... It's time to
> finish this investigation. And the point of an independent
> counsel is to give credibility to a very sensitive inquiry.
> Ken Starr has flunked that test."
>
>New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse chimed in:
>
> "I think what Starr is doing here, he's got his prosecutors'
> explanations and so on, but what he's really doing is playing
> with the long-term credibility of the institution of special
> prosecutors."
>
>According to another MRC report, "NBC portrayed Starr as the bad
>guy, reporting the story as the tale of improper personal probing
>of Clinton's sex life instead of as a story of an independent
>counsel trying to locate potential witnesses with key
>information."
>
>Time magazine was even more tendentious in its determination to
>smear Starr while being careful to keep the relevant facts of the
>investigation safely out of focus. In a July 7 article Michael
>Duffy and Viveca Novak misrepresent the Post article as a one-
>sided diatribe against Starr, saying "the Washington Post
>reported that Starr investigators seemed to have strayed from the
>probe's central mission by questioning Arkansas state troopers
>about women with whom Clinton may have had extramarital affairs
>when he was Governor."
>
>In fact, that is not the conclusion of the Post article at all --
>it is merely an inference drawn by one of the troopers. The Time
>article briefly mentions Starr's side of the argument, but only
>for the purpose of shooting it down:
>
> "Starr immediately denied that he was probing Clinton's
> personal life and defended his use of "well-accepted law-
> enforcement methods" to identify witnesses who may have been
> close enough to Clinton to know whether he's been truthful in
> his sworn accounts to Starr. But it was hard to square that
> rationale with some of the questions the troopers say Starr's
> agents were asking, such as whether one woman had borne
> Clinton's child--and whether the child resembled Clinton."
>
>The authors summarily dismiss as "Clintonesque damage control"
>the statement of "a source close to Starr" to the effect that the
>interview notes "contain no reference" to such questions and that
>the agents "have no recollection" of asking them.
>
>Notice how the word of a state trooper to whom Time magazine
>would not give the time of day back in 1993, when he was
>spreading stories about Clinton's womanizing, has been suddenly,
>magically transformed into Revealed Truth. As hidden agendas go,
>Time's is not very well hidden. So long as this man said things
>that were damaging to Clinton, he was considered to be a liar and
>a scoundrel, in the pay of sinister right wing forces determined
>to destroy their hero. But he only has to say something that can
>be used against the independent counsel in order for his words to
>acquire instantaneous verisimilitude in the opinion of these Time
>writers.
>
>But wait -- several paragraphs later the authors of the article
>reverse their previous judgment:
>
> "There's ample reason to doubt the officers. Two of the
> troopers admitted lying about a car accident. And in an
> affidavit obtained by TIME, trooper Ronald Anderson says
> three of his colleagues were given a contract by Arkansas
> lawyer Cliff Jackson guaranteeing them jobs paying $100,000
> annually for seven years in return for making allegations in
> December 1993 that they arranged and covered up Clinton
> dalliances. Jackson, a longtime Clinton opponent, denies the
> story."
>
>The authors might have mentioned that the other three troopers
>deny the story as well, leaving trooper Ronald Anderson the only
>one who asserts the veracity of this unverified allegation. So
>what are we to conclude from all this -- the troopers are
>sufficiently credible to impeach the integrity of Starr's
>investigation, but will readily make up lies about Clinton for
>$100,000 per year? Or perhaps the two authors of this article did
>not have time to read each other's copy before it went to press?
>
>Newsweek's take on this story, presented in an article by Michael
>Isikoff and Howard Fineman, was a bit less rabid if somewhat more
>ambivalent. After running through the repertoire of obligatory
>insults, e.g. "Starr's gumshoes say they were looking for loose
>talk, pillow talk, late-night slip-ups or soulful confessions to
>an intimate..." or "The Trooper Project, which ended in
>February, was apparently a dud," the article conceded that, "In
>white-collar criminal work you follow the man, not just the
>money. If Clinton had spent his spare time playing poker, Starr's
>men say, card sharks would have been high on their interview
>list."
>
>But then, almost as an afterthought, the authors added: "Still,
>The Trooper Project made Starr look seedy, grasping and lost."
>How's that for having it both ways? Even while conceding that his
>investigative methods were perfectly legitimate, Isikoff and
>Fineman conclude that Starr was nevertheless wrong. Why? Because
>-- well, because the conventional Washington wisdom demands at
>this point that he be "wrong."
>
>Reading this article is somewhat like watching a tennis match.
>After trashing Starr the authors are quick to concede that:
>
> "...in some respects the Post story was overstated. In all,
> the FBI asked about more men than women. In a later interview
> with NEWSWEEK, Perry acknowledged that he had volunteered
> much of the information about alleged liaisons. Sources say
> the FBI reports--"Form 302s"--show that little of what Perry
> says he discussed was passed on to higher-ups and that the
> agents asked for specifics only to test his credibility."
>
>In other words, Newsweek appears to confirm what Time
>contemptuously dismissed as "damage control." After reading this
>paragraph wouldn't any reasonable person conclude that there is
>really nothing to this story but a bit of White House spin,
>amplified by Clinton's boot-licking lapdogs in the mainstream
>press? Never mind -- reason has nothing to do with it. This
>article was written for people who still believe that they are
>getting the news when they read Newsweek.
>
>Now get this -- notwithstanding their pious putdown of Starr, the
>authors, quivering with prurience, leeringly disclose their take
>on Susan McDougal's obstinate reticence regarding Bill Clinton's
>alleged role in obtaining that illegal loan for her:
>
> "Her husband, James, also in jail, told investigators he
> knows one reason: she and Clinton, McDougal alleges, were
> lovers. Sources close to Starr's inquiry tell NEWSWEEK that
> Susan has privately talked to friends about her relationship
> with Clinton--and her discomfort at the idea of having to
> testify about it."
>
>Enough of their "do as I say, not as I do" principles -- any
>attempt to make sense of the "principled" position taken by the
>mainstream press on this issue is clearly a frivolous
>undertaking. After all, these are the same people who hounded
>Gary Hart out of contention for the presidency for having just
>one extramarital affair and touted a none too credible rumor of a
>geriatric affair between Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra that was
>apparently invented by Kitty Kelly -- a writer whose previous
>work had been of interest mainly to the supermarket literati.
>
>As if that were not enough, Matt Drudge, who has recently been
>acting as Isikoff's herald and chief bell ringer, reported
>recently in his newsletter that, "Reports have surfaced that
>Isikoff has been in contact with a former White House staffer who
>may offer 'pattern' evidence of improper sexual conduct on the
>part of the President." The lofty principles of these paragons
>of propriety might be a little more palatable if they did not
>wallow so ostentatiously in the "seedy, grasping" practices which
>they so freely impute to others.
>
>
>ANOTHER ITERATION OF THE FOSTER REPORT RUMOR
>
>Isikoff and Fineman conclude their article with yet another
>iteration of the shopworn story predicting the release of Starr's
>long overdue Foster report, saying, "he will release a final
>report on Vince Foster's death, which had been delayed by
>questions about procedures in the FBI crime labs where the Foster
>evidence was examined. Starr will repeat the conclusion he was
>set to make months ago: that Foster committed suicide."
>
>Yes, well -- seeing is believing and we haven't seen anything
>yet. As reported elsewhere in this issue, Starr's spokesperson
>Deborah Gershman said: "Yeah, every couple of months these guys
>write the same story and hope by chance they will eventually have
>a scoop."
>
>She then categorically denied that any such information had come
>from Starr's office. What is actually going on here? Have the
>mainstream press really been playing the Charlie
>Brown/Lucy/football game with Starr's office? Joseph Farah of the
>Western Journalism Center believes that they have indeed been
>doing so:
>
> "For two years now, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has
> been leaking to select members of the press that his
> investigation into the death of White House Deputy Counsel
> Vincent Foster is closed and that his office is about to
> issue a final report concluding that it was a case of simple
> suicide."
>
>But why? Farah seems to think that Starr is just testing the
>water to get some indication of how the report would be received.
>I think there would have to be more to the story than that.
>Surely, after the second round or so, nobody in the mainstream
>press (with the possible exception of Charlie Brown) would be
>very keen on playing this game. Some of us are cynical enough to
>suppose that certain reporters are not above acting in concert
>with the White House to create the impression that the matter has
>already been settled. If they announce often enough that the
>report is about to be issued the less attentive members of the
>public will assume at some point that it has, in fact, been
>issued and that it supports the position stated in the bogus news
>stories. What's in it for the reporters? What they lost in
>credibility with the public by making all those false
>announcements might be more than made up through increased
>accessibility to White House insiders.
>
>A story that appeared in the Evans-Novak Political Report, dated
>May 28, had quite a different slant:
>
> "...word has leaked out directly from Independent Counsel
> Kenneth Starr that he is seriously investigating a cover-up
> in the Vince Foster death and what provoked his suicide."
>
>Wishful thinking? Perhaps -- but Evans and Novak have an
>impressive reputation for accuracy. In any event this rumor is
>not incompatible with that reported by Isikoff (which was also
>mentioned in the Time article).
>
>The truth about Starr is that he has tried so hard to avoid being
>partisan that some observers believe this has blunted his
>effectiveness. Many who have closely followed the Foster case
>fault Starr for failing to pursue the matter seriously -- for
>political reasons. Mr. Farah says of Starr, "this is the guy who
>forced the resignation of prosecutor Miquel Rodriguez because he
>wanted to question U.S. Park Police officers aggressively during
>the grand jury phase of the investigation."
>
>Was giving the Clinton administration a pass on the Foster
>investigation the price Starr had to pay for cooperation from the
>Democrats? Is that why every time criticism of Starr wells up in
>the media, the rumor surfaces that he is about to release a
>report declaring Foster's death to be a suicide? If this is the
>carrot he is offering Clinton's apologists in the media might it
>also be the stick with which to threaten them for not living up
>to their end of the bargain? Surely his failure to issue this
>report after almost three years must be a source of concern to
>Clinton partisans and reports such as the one put out by Evans
>and Novak would not do much to allay their anxiety.
>
>
>WOULD THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH LIE TO US?
>
>Certainly Starr is open to criticism in his role as independent
>counsel, but the complaint that his investigation is proceeding
>too slowly seems quite unfair in view of the fact that most of
>the delay has been caused by the dilatory tactics of the Clinton
>administration. And the criticism that he has not accomplished
>anything in his investigation seems completely off the wall.
>
>Try to imagine how the mainstream press would have reacted if
>Ronald Reagan's two closest business associates had been sent to
>prison (not to mention his top man in the Justice Dept.) and his
>successor as Governor of California had been convicted of
>criminal fraud. And then imagine their reaction if two of his
>former business associates had accused him of soliciting an
>illegal government loan to an alleged former paramour who
>subsequently went to jail rather than confirm or deny the
>allegations about the loan. The resulting media feeding frenzy
>would have made Watergate seem a pink tea. Nor would there have
>been any squeamishness about the veracity of the accusers.
>
>The frenetic posturing of the mainstream press in this dismal
>episode makes them appear tendentious and absurd. The pretext for
>their mock display of moral indignation is a months old story,
>long since discredited and disavowed, based upon conflicting
>statements by sources whom they have treated with disdain in the
>past. Furthermore, many of the mainstream journalists involved
>with this story have engaged in the very practice which they
>presume to castigate with such high-minded righteousness.
>
>Surely their motives are transparently obvious to any but the
>most naive consumers of their product. Nine out of ten of them
>supported Clinton in his first run for the presidency and now
>they are attempting to help him by smearing the independent
>counsel with the phony allegation that the methods used by his
>investigators are improper. This story lacks internal consistency
>-- the careful reader cannot help but notice that the allegations
>made with such vehemence at the outset have collapsed in a sodden
>heap by the end of the piece.
>
>The clock is running for the mainstream press. This sort of
>cynical, intellectually dishonest propaganda may continue to work
>for a while, but modern communications technology is enabling a
>growing number of people to compare notes and understand where
>the media are coming from. Ultimately, the "Ministry of Truth"
>will find itself in the predicament where most compulsive liars
>wind up eventually -- they will be the last to realize that
>nobody any longer believes a single word they say.
>
>
>
>
> Published in the Jul. 7, 1997 issue of The Washington Weekly
> Copyright 1997 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
> Reposting permitted with this message intact
>
>
>-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
>-> Posted by: kalliste@aci.net (J. Orlin Grabbe)
>
>
>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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