Good morning Christine! Glad to know you are well.
>>I found some residual affection for Lyndon Johnson
I too must admit he had a commanding presence and gave a great speech, but:
exchange2000.com
exchange2000.com
exchange2000.com
exchange2000.com
Didn't Oliver Stone say the key question was Look who benefits?
As for Nixon, I refer you to One of Us by Tom Wicker.
search.nytimes.com
RMN was not one of my favs - another one of those who wanted to be something, rather than wanted to do something.
As for Vernon Jordon, Bill Safire targets that scenario in his op-ed today:
February 23, 1998
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Closing In on Clinton
WASHINGTON -- Ten lawyers in the coordinated Clinton defense
marched into a grand jury room threatening to throw a cloak of
"executive privilege" over the suspected plotting of Bruce Lindsey to keep
Monica Lewinsky quiet.
Missing from this motley minyan was the lawyer for Vernon Jordan. The First
Friend may have done for deposition-bound Monica what he did for the
jail-bound Webster Hubbell, and now wants it known he's not taking the fall for
witness-tampering. Bill Clinton, who has regularly abandoned loyalists, should
not be surprised that Vernon's for Vernon.
The White House dread that the law is closing in was deepened by the guilty
plea to fraud entered in a Little Rock courtroom by Jim Guy Tucker, who was
Clinton's Lieutenant Governor and successor in Arkansas. That felon copped a
plea with a promise to tell a Whitewater grand jury the truth, presumably about
a five-year conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Even in the scandal that a handful of us view as most serious -- penetration of
the money-hungry White House by Chinese espionage agents -- the scales are
falling from Justice's eyes. Now both Charlie Trie and Maria Hsia (pronounced
shaw) have at long last been indicted for money-laundering to help
Clinton-Gore.
In this case, the Clinton strategy -- "deny, deny, deny" -- seems to have been
adopted by the Democratic Party. Such partisan posturing in a national security
affair is a mistake because the Democratic state of denial will affect U.S. politics
long after Clinton and Gore have departed the scene.
The party's head-in-the-sand stand is expressed in the minority objections to the
report drafted by the Thompson committee investigating violations of the
campaign finance laws.
Senator Fred Thompson's majority, drawing on F.B.I. and C.I.A. intelligence,
concluded that Ms. Hsia was "an agent of the Chinese government" and that this
Los Angeles resident "worked in direct support of a PRC diplomatic post in the
U.S."
But see-no-evil John Glenn and fellow Democrats (though they had to admit
they saw evidence "connecting some activities she undertook . . . to Chinese
government officials") insist that no proof had been offered that those activities
were connected to her money-laundering through a Buddhist temple.
Simple logic won't do, nor is evidence to be treated as evidence unless it can be
presented in court.
Throughout its draft rebuttal, the Democratic minority acts as defense counsel to
the Riady ring and its Beijing spymasters.
Although admitting that the Riadys are in business with China Resources
(identified in this space a year ago as a notorious front for PRC spying), our
defensive Democrats state as fact that the Riadys' dealings do not "consist of
foreign spy or similar intelligence activities."
That misinterpretation of data presented in secret to the committee comes as a
shock to the counterintelligence agencies that submitted it to Congress. The
senators were told that the Riadys, longtime Clinton supporters -- in the majority
report's words -- "have had a longterm relationship with a Chinese intelligence
agency." That means the military intelligence arm of the Chinese Army or
the Ministry of State Security.
Why does a U.S. political party close its eyes to the obvious connection
between (a) the China Plan to covertly influence U.S. policy, probably
overheard by our electronic and human intelligence and (b) the illegal pouring of
millions of dollars into our campaigns from Chinese banks through cutouts like
the Riady ring? Because members of that ring met with the President in the Oval
Office to raise that money, and it's embarrassing.
Why has the Clinton Department of Justice dragged its foot for over a year, and
finally -- when indictments were shamed out -- eschewed espionage and limited
the charges to illegal fund-raising? One reason would be to protect our sources
that intercepted the planning of Chinese leaders; but the politically compelling
reason was to avert finding a connection here to a "covered person" that would
mandate independent counsel.
One hot pursuit heats up another. The Monica firestorm is already scorching
Whitewater witnesses, and the ensuing meltdown will expose the Riady ring.
Democrats cannot be faulted for grimly presuming their leader's personal
innocence, but must they also associate their party with a national-security
disgrace?
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