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Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 13:52:47 -0800
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: "THE FOSTER SYNDROME" (fwd)
<snip>
>
> THE FOSTER SYNDROME
>
> Little Told Tales from the Clinton Crypt --
> and why the press ignores them
>
>By Carl Limbacher
>
> OYSTER BAY--Remember the headlines when James McDougal
>leveled an allegation against Bill Clinton worthy of instant
>impeachment - and claimed to have smoking gun evidence to back it
>up? No? Okay, how about the story which reported that Richard
>Nixon had virtually been framed - by none other than Hillary
>Rodham? Doesn't ring a bell either? Well then, what about the
>bombshell report that had our president ready to flood American
>streets with illegal guns - in direct contravention of his own
>assault weapons ban? Am I getting warmer?
>
> Surely, if any of the aforementioned stories were even
>remotely credible, it would be impossible for even the most
>oblivious American to have missed the screaming headlines.
>Unless, of course, that American was living in the America of the
>90's, i.e. Bill Clinton's America - where no such headlines would
>follow regardless of how true any of the above reports were.
>
> For the record, these developments have each been reported by
>the mainstream press. But instead of receiving the blazing front
>page coverage such news would deserve, these stories were either
>buried deep in the news section, or were relegated to the gossip
>page - or went completely unreported in east and west coast media
>markets.
>
> Last April 27, almost a year to the day after he visited the
>White House to hear his old partner's Whitewater testimony, James
>McDougal told New York Daily News reporter Thomas Galvin that
>during that visit, Clinton had promised him a Whitewater pardon.
>If true - and provable - this would be a recipe for certain and
>swift impeachment. But how would Galvin know if Arkansas' most
>famous tall tale teller was telling the truth this time? "I've
>got it on tape," McDougal told the reporter, who used this tidbit
>to open a story headlined: "McDougal: Fact or Fiction".
>
> Galvin's point was that McDougal, ever the incorrigible
>raconteur, was impossible to believe - so outlandish were so many
>of his claims. But wait. What about the tape? It would seem
>that at least this time McDougal was ready to offer ironclad
>proof. And if he wasn't - and instead was merely hallucinating
>for the sake of his audience of the moment - that would be big
>news as well. After all, how strong a Whitewater case could Ken
>Starr be building if his new star witness was given to such
>imaginings as the mirage of a smoking gun audiotape featuring an
>illegal presidential pardon? Either way, Galvin had a major
>Whitewater exclusive.
>
> Well - not quite. First, The Daily News buried Galvin's
>piece deep inside it's Sunday news section - so deep, in fact, as
>to escape the notice of even Whitewater fanatics. But worse
>still, nowhere in the story did Galvin recount McDougal's answer
>to what would be the next blatantly apparent next question - "So
>where's the tape of Clinton offering you the pardon?" A day or
>so later I found out the reason why. Galvin had never asked that
>question. In fact, in the seven subsequent months since McDougal
>dropped that bombshell, no reporter has asked him to produce his
>smoking gun tape.
>
> Why not? I believe the answer to that question transcends
>mere media bias. After all, Clinton scandal-philes can hardly
>complain that the press hasn't devoted a lot of ink to the
>various allegations swirling around what Clinton defenders
>rightly describe as the most investigated presidency in American
>history. But the media's interest does indeed seem to be guided
>by what it deems to be the "safe" Clinton scandals, i.e. -
>allegations that, even if proven true, would not seriously damage
>the man in the Oval office.
>
> Think of the tons of newsprint that has been consumed in the
>debate over whether this president or vice presidential cohort
>may have violated the Pendleton Act, which boils down to a charge
>the either or both used the wrong phone to make fund-raising
>telephone calls. If Bill Clinton confessed to that crime
>tomorrow, who thinks that the American people would suddenly rise
>up and demand that Bob Barr's impeachment inquiry be taken
>seriously?
>
> On Whitewater, a scandal that is surely nearing its
>denouement, the media is only too happy to follow Ken Starr's
>lead. They revel in the discovery of a 15 year old check in a
>long abandoned car trunk and ponder whether this would indeed be
>the smoking gun document that proves Clinton perjured himself
>when he swore he never took out a loan from Madison Guarantee.
>But again - perhaps at one time presidential perjury was a big
>deal - but after five years of the Clinton presidency - no one
>should be surprised if this charge, even if proven, fails to
>resonate with the American people. If this is what Starr's
>Whitewater investigation has come down to, I suspect he won't
>have the courage to indict a sitting president on the basis of
>what was done in the distant Arkansas past. At most, look for a
>report that names Clinton as an unindicted co-conspirator, a
>charge that carries with it no obligation of legal action. Such
>a report can easily be finessed by the White House public
>relations machine. Too little, too late to derail a presidency.
>
> On the other hand, the press never dared to devote too much
>time and effort to the event that is Whitewater's ground zero -
>the death of the Clintons' Whitewater lawyer, Vince Foster. In
>stark contrast to the mind numbing financial details of ancient
>Arkansas bank fraud, here's a story that has all the elements of
>a Shakespearean drama. Love, death, corruption and betrayal - a
>plot line easily followed and sure to engross. A story fraught
>with - not the complicated white collar criminality of Castle
>Grande - but the possibility that the leader of the free world
>may have been a party to a murder cover-up.
>
> Any government involvement in such a nefarious obstruction of
>justice would be hard to portray as distant and irrelevant - and
>would seriously impair the life expectancy of any president's
>administration. That's why, I believe, we're treated to
>interview after interview with both McDougals, Arkansas' own Lucy
>and Desi Arnaz gone bad. That is, unless Desi blurts out
>something about the lethal evidence he has that could sink the
>whole long running series. Then, suddenly, the press pretends
>not to notice. And that is also why, more than a month after it
>became a part of the official court sanctioned record on Foster's
>death, we haven't read a word about Pat Knowlton's appendix to
>Starr's Foster report in the mainstream press. To report the
>existence of the Knowlton Appendix is to call into question the
>integrity of Starr's entire Whitewater investigation. The
>Knowlton Appendix amply documents Ken Starr's own Vince Foster
>scandal and as such it is radioactive. Even the usually
>courageous Micah Morrison omitted any mention of it in his column
>on Starr's Foster report in last week's Wall Street Journal.
>
> Call it the Foster Syndrome: the unnatural phenomenon whereby
>those charged with investigating this administration, and the
>journalists who cover their efforts, do their level best not to
>veer off into dangerous territory. This abnormal behavior is, of
>course, not limited to the death of Vince Foster. We see
>evidence of it in coverage of the penetration of the Clinton
>presidency by Chinese agents, dubbed by those unwilling to sound
>the alarm: The Campaign Finance Scandal. Revelations brought
>forth by even the Washington Post's vaunted Bob Woodward, about
>evidence that one longtime Clinton fundraiser was "doing the
>bidding of Beijing" while another passed a classified document to
>the Chinese, should have stopped official Washington dead in its
>tracks. Instead, the Woodward story was regarded as merely
>further evidence that Janet Reno needs to appoint an independent
>counsel, a conclusion that even most liberal editorial writers
>had reached months ago. No - the logical reaction to this story
>would have been calls for the immediate removal of Ms. Reno - and
>Mr. Freeh for good measure - along with the cessation of all
>Washington business as usual until this matter was fully
>explored. But the Foster syndrome applies even here. Any truly
>explosive Clinton scandal must be - if not ignored - then
>minimized at all costs - if even at the risk of our national
>security.
>
> The same goes for the stunning news exposed only last week in
>pages adjacent to this one, under the headline - "The Secret Hand
>of China". Here we have a solid report about the lawfirm of
>Perkins Coie, which is simultaneously representing stateside
>business interests for the People's Republic of China while it
>defends a significant number of witnesses appearing before the
>Thompson and Burton Committees. Coming off Bob Woodward's
>aforementioned report, which also noted that the Chinese Ministry
>of State Security had boasted about "thwarting" the Thompson
>investigation; this news should be setting off smoke alarms on
>the front page of every newspaper. Yet, it's been a week since
>that Washington Weekly report and I haven't read another word
>about Perkins Coie. The Foster Syndrome strikes again.
>
> The other China-gate story that continues to haunt yours
>truly is one which appeared on the front page of The Arkansas
>Democrat Gazette almost nine months ago. They headlined it "Arms
>OK preceded U.S. visit," but the story may as well have been
>titled "Clinton Administration Gives Chinese Gun Smuggler Green
>Light." It was the story of importation permits granted by our
>government for 100,000 Chinese assault rifles and millions of
>rounds of ammunition to the arms company run by Chinese
>princeling, Wang Jun. The permits, which would have been in
>direct contravention of Clinton's own assault weapons ban, were
>granted on February 2, 1996, just four days before Wang met with
>Clinton inside the White House. Wang Jun gained access to the
>White House via the contributions of Clinton bag man, Charlie
>Trie.
>
> The press, and the Thompson Committee, has steadfastly
>refused to bring this eerie development to the American public's
>attention. I personally spoke to Newt Gingrich about it during
>his May appearance on the Larry King Show. Though the story was
>by then two months old, Gingrich professed total ignorance of it.
>He promised to look into it the very next business day. And
>that's the last I've heard of any Republican efforts to
>investigate what appears to be a massive Chinese attempt to
>subvert of our gun laws - with the complicity of an American
>president. The Foster syndrome?
>
> Oh yes, what about that other strange report; the one so
>bizarre it couldn't be true - suggesting that Hillary Clinton
>framed Richard Nixon. Yes, this story appeared only on the
>gossip page (Rush & Molloy, The Daily News - Feb. 12, 1996). And
>it was about the then unmarried Hillary Diane Rodham's work on
>the Watergate committee. According to this wacky tale, she and
>staffer John Labovitz were assigned to research the protocols for
>impeachment drawn up by our founding fathers. She couldn't find
>them, so the articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon were drawn
>up based on new research undertaken by - you guessed it - Hillary
>Rodham. Just days after Nixon resigned, Labovitz came to his
>boss heavy with guilty conscience, and confessed that he and
>Rodham had lied when they'd said they couldn't find the original
>rules. In short, it seemed Nixon was driven from office based on
>the bogus Constitutional research done by the future first lady.
>
> Of course, if this story had any credibility, it should have
>prompted an eruption of curiosity. Mrs. Clinton would have been
>besieged with media inquiries. Republicans would be demanding to
>know whether Nixon's downfall was a put up job engineered by a
>young Nixon hating lawyer fresh out of Yale law school. But
>instead nobody noticed.
>
> Yet, that's not because this "wacky tale" is lacking in
>credibility. In fact, it comes from (pardon the phrase) an
>unimpeachable source - none other than Jerome Zeifman, chief
>counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. Zeifman told
>the Daily News, "Suppose we were going to have a world series
>next week and suddenly one of the team managers says, "We want to
>change the rules to two strikes and you're out. That's basically
>what Clinton and Labovitz did."
>
> Zeifman based his recollections on the diary he kept at the
>time, which would later become the basis for his book "Without
>Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon and the Crimes of
>Camelot" But in his comments to The Daily News Zeifman went
>further than ever before, virtually accusing Rodham-Clinton of
>framing Richard Nixon.
>
> Press reaction? Zero, nada, bubkiss, zilch. After 23 years
>of cultivating Watergate as "the good scandal," they weren't
>going to spoil things by having it tarnish the already besieged
>Clintons. Besides, the allegation is so outrageous, so bizarre,
>and so heinous - it couldn't possibly be true no matter what the
>evidence suggests.
>
> That's the Foster syndrome in a nutshell.
>
>
>
>
>
> Published in the Dec. 1, 1997 issue of The Washington Weekly
> Copyright 1997 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
> Reposting permitted with this message intact
>
<snip>
===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA; M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
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