The Washington Times
February 27, 1998 Wesley Pruden
Bill Clinton's pigstickers at the White House --Sidney Blumenthal,
James Carville, Paul Begala and the scurvy gang -- are having the
thrills of desperate men with their smear of Ken Starr, but the
president himself knows better.
Monica Lewinsky, suited up in kneepads or not, big hair and all, is
a mere diversion. The real game is in Little Rock, and nobody knows
this better than our president.
Jim Guy Tucker, the former governor, is singing like a mockingbird
(the official state bird of Arkansas) to the U.S. grand jury in
Little Rock, and Mr. Clinton is painfully aware that Jim Guy knows all four verses of "Amazing Grace (How Sweet the Sound, That Saved a Wretch Like Me)."
All roads eventually lead back home to Whitewater, familiar territory
to Jim Guy, who can fill in the blanks in what Ken Starr and his
prosecutors already know, which is a lot. This is not about old
stuff, the 20-year-old bank heist that makes so many people's teeth itch when they try to think about it. This is about a cover-up of dirty dealings after Mr. Clinton and his gang arrived at the White House. John Gotti could take notes.
We can guess what the Starr prosecutors want to talk to Jim Guy
about. The president and the governor met twice -- at least twice -- in 1993 after the White House received confidential information about the U.S. investigation into whether both Jim Guy and the Clinton
gubernatorial campaign conspired to loot Madison Savings and Loan, the infamous Arkansas thrift.
They met the first time on Oct. 6, 1993, two days after the White
House learned the identities of targets and witnesses in the investigation by the Resolution Trust Corp. This was two days after Bruce Lindsey, the president's alter ego, told the president about the investigation. They met the second time six weeks later, on Nov. 18 in Seattle, where Mr. Clinton was host at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, two days after the White House received details of another investigation, this one by the Small Business
Administration, into a loan scam at Capital-Management Services Inc., a lending agency in which Jim Guy was involved.
Jim Guy was a busy fellow on that October 6. He also called on Mack
McLarty, then the president's chief of staff, and Webb Hubbell, who
was then associate attorney general and, we know now, assigned to keep
an eye out for prospective troubles at the Justice Department. Janet
Reno was not likely to step out of line, but one never knows, does one?
There's a connection between Monica and Whitewater. Monica, you
might say, is the bridge over Whitewater to the 21st century. Both
episodes were born of arrogance, low-life behavior and the
recklessness of a man who imagined --and no doubt still imagines --
that the rules are for others, not him. Sex being the show stopper
it is, it's the Monica Lewinsky caper that captures the public imagination, and that will lead a big enough piece of the public to pay attention when Whitewater returns front and center.
Ken Starr should keep this in mind when he is tempted to take the
bait thrown down by Mr. Clinton's pigstickers. He's thin of skin, which is a disability but not a crime, and suffers an excess of high-
mindedness, a handicap but not necessarily a fatal flaw. Loyalty to friends and associates is a fundamental trait in a decent man, but Mr. Starr should keep his eye on his job and not worry about protecting the reputations of his lawyers. They're only lawyers, after all; it's not as if they were used-car salesmen or newspaper editors. If the cost of defending his lawyers is the restoration of the reputation of Sidney Blumenthal, a figure of universal ridicule and an embarrassment to his friends, Mr. Starr should reckon the cost much too dear.
The people who know the president best -- and not just in Little
Rock -- think Jim Guy, not Monica, stands where the cotton grows tallest. "A plea agreement like that is not worked out in half an hour over a cup of coffee," says Dick Morris. "It's worked out months in advance with hundreds of hours of debriefing and the most extensive kind of sharing of information. Now, I do not know the facts of Whitewater. I do know that there are five key questions which, if they're decided against Bill Clinton, will likely be grounds for impeachment whether the Republicans want to throw him out or not."
John Robert Starr, the acerbic columnist for the president's
hometown newspaper who has followed him longer than almost anyone else, has a similar take: "Jim Guy came away from U.S. District Court wearing his trademark jackass grin ... the fellow who should have been wearing a jackass grin was Starr, still the victor in all but two of the prosecutions he has taken to court. Completion of the latest Tucker case makes me smugly confident that Starr will win the war Clinton and his cronies have declared on him." |
