CORRUPTION AND COVERUP You Can't Have One Without The Other
Washington Weekly
Ed Zehr
CORRUPTION AND COVERUP You Can't Have One Without The Other
By Edward Zehr
Two anniversaries have come and gone once more, the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996 and the death of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster on July 20, 1993. Neither of these incidents has been provided with a satisfactory explanation, although one would never guess it from reading the mainstream press. But then, just what is so unique about that? Coverups are as much an American tradition as apple pie and the Fourth of July.
Does the public really believe the official version of Foster's death? No, but then they don't believe the official line on the death of JFK, or his brother Bobby, or Martin Luther King either. Why should they? None of these stories is particularly believable. If the truth be known there are many more such events that people just don't think much about, because they were reported sotto voce by the mainstream press before being slid under the carpet.
How many Americans know about the massive corruption of Lyndon Johnson, for example? The man was poor as a church mouse when he entered politics, yet he retired a multi-millionaire. How did he manage to do that on the salary of a public official? Strangely enough, nobody in the mainstream press -- that vaunted watchdog ocracy -- ever thought to ask. Isn't that odd? Although rumors had abounded for years of Johnson's corruption, the subject didn't surface in the press until Robert Caro's second book on Johnson was published in 1990, in which he only hinted at the full extent of LBJ's corruption -- he hadn't even gotten to the part where Johnson was accepting bribes from the Carlos Marcello organization for killing legislation that would regulate gambling, while Johnson was majority leader of the Senate. Even so, the Washington Post jumped all over him -- Caro, not Johnson -- for denigrating a public figure who had done so much to advance the cause of civil rights, declared war on poverty and performed many other good works. (Johnson's role in mismanaging the Vietnam War was hardly mentioned).
Do you begin to get the picture? The law really only applies to the lower orders (that's us folks). A public figure whose policies are considered to be "correct" by the power elite is entitled to a little graft on the side. It's only those awkward types such as Richard Nixon, who run afoul of the bureaucracy, who are humiliated, degraded and hounded out of public life -- besides, the press never liked him. No doubt Nixon was guilty of obstructing justice, a serious matter, although it is treated very lightly in the mainstream press these days. You see, perjury doesn't really count unless it involves something the press regards as "serious." A chief executive getting it on with a 20-year-old intern in the Oval Office just isn't serious enough for these enlightened times.
Let's face it, we live in a country where presidential elections can be stolen with impunity, and the mainstream press, instead of reporting the theft, turns the corrupt politician who stole it into a sort of popular icon, an object of mindless adulation to millions. The whole Kennedy image was phony from top to bottom. The press dutifully covered up his dissolute lifestyle, his drug taking, his Mafia contacts, and worst of all, his gross incompetence in the office to which he was (not really) elected. And then when he was murdered (most likely by the Mafia) they covered up the truth about that, as well.
The mainstream press also covered up the fact that JFK and his brother Bobby had both been having affairs with actress Marilyn Monroe. This would have been a bombshell of nuclear intensity had it been revealed at the time, but the mainstream press uttered not a word about it. Is it possible that they didn't know about this? Is the Pope a Presbyterian? There are no secrets about such things in Washington, except to the mind-numbed, propaganda-befogged public. Shortly after Monroe's death, a conservative columnist wrote a bitter piece about a "liberal politician" who took advantage of the actress at a time when she was clearly not playing with a full deck and may have contributed to her death. If the columnist knew about this at the time, you can be sure that everybody else in official Washington knew about it as well.
Indeed, we will probably never know the extent to which Bobby Kennedy may have contributed to Monroe's death. Neighbors have placed him at her residence on the afternoon of her demise, but a wealthy rancher in northern California swears that Kennedy was visiting him the entire day. Nevertheless, two former Los Angeles Chiefs of Police have stated publicly that RFK was in L.A. that day. They would be in a position to know since the presence of such a highly placed public official would have to be made known to local police by the Secret Service for security reasons.
All of this was revealed in a BBC documentary -- ABC also did a documentary on this story, but it was suppressed by network executive Roone Arledge, who directed the news department. Arledge was a close friend of the Kennedy family, but he assured the Associated Press that, "My longtime friendship with Ethel Kennedy had no part in that decision." He explained that the story "needed a larger context than simply whether the Kennedy brothers engaged in separate, illicit affairs with Marilyn Monroe."
Clear? Good, I guess that settles it then. Peter Brown and Patte Barham, the authors of "Marilyn, The Last Take," mention that another highly placed ABC executive speculated that the program had been canceled because "talking about the Kennedys in terms that linked them with illicit affairs and, perhaps murder," was a bit too much for the network to take on.
The BBC documentary, "Say Goodbye to the President," created a sensation when it was shown in Europe in 1986, but no major American network would carry it. An NBC executive was quoted as saying that the BBC program was "extremely dangerous." No doubt, but dangerous to whom? To a benighted public who might be expected to keel over en masse at the revelation that their popular idol had feet of clay? Or to a "free press" that might suffer a drastic loss of credibility if the public finally realized the extent to which they had been hoodwinked for decades on end? Isn't it time that we grew up enough to face a few basic facts about the way we are governed instead of feeding on a steady diet of sugary lies and cosmetic fantasy provided by the degenerate institution that is supposed to report the news?
The corruption of our government goes back a long way, all the way to the Civil War and its aftermath. Certainly Prohibition was a boon to corrupt politicians throughout the land. Still, Prohibition was small change compared to the present traffic in illegal drugs which must have spread the tentacles of corruption into government at every level. And yet, we seldom hear of this -- I wonder why? Have our public officials simply resisted the temptation to profit from such a bonanza, or does our "free press" just not know about such things? Are they too innocent to understand, or maybe too corrupt themselves to write about it? Remember all those nasty things they said about J. Edgar Hoover after his death? How he had allegedly turned a blind eye to the Mafia and all that? Why didn't they say any of those things while Hoover was alive? Assuming they are true, are we supposed to believe that the press didn't know about them? Or was it that Hoover, in his long tenure as head of the FBI had gotten the goods on too many powerful people? And what does that say about the mainstream press? Are they really anything more than lapdogs of the power elite? You would never guess it from the way they cover up the stories they are supposed to cover.
IT'S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY "The trooper lay belly down in the grass. It was a late summer afternoon in the early '60s, and sweat had soaked his clothes and made a dark, wet stain on his shirt front. . . He tightened his finger on the trigger of the rifle, practicing the feel. Pow. In his mind, he could see the editor's head in his sights. Pow."
Thus began the prologue to Gene Wirges' book, "Conflict of Interests." Wirges was, at that time, the editor of the Morrilton Democrat, a small town newspaper that had taken on the corrupt political machine that ran Conway County, Arkansas, and was a power in the state as well. The state trooper, Jack Stone, once a part of the corrupt machine, later told Wirges that he had been assigned to kill him. He had fallen out with the politicians and agreed to testify against the Sheriff of Conway County for skimming public funds in a speed-trap scam, in a suit Wirges had brought to oust the corrupt official from office. By the time the trooper had arrived at the court house, he was a nervous wreck. Wirges describes the scene:
"Inside, Stone sat in the courtroom while other state troopers were deposed. Apparently a collective amnesia had infected the troops, because beyond verifying their own signatures at the bottoms of various documents and tickets, the troopers universally 'couldn't remember' anything much beyond that."
Change the scene to a congressional hearing in Washington, DC, and the characters to Bruce Lindsey, Roger Altman, or the unfortunate young man who lied even to his own diary, and the performance seems strangely familiar. Altzheimer's would seem to be endemic among the Arkies and age does not appear to be a factor.
The corrupt sheriff was eventually removed from office, but only after years of dilatory legal maneuvers, aided and abetted by corrupt state and county officials, including judges. Was anyone surprised by the dismissal of the charges against Webster Hubbell, or the release of Susan McDougal from custody? They would not have wondered had they been familiar with the recent history of Arkansas jurisprudence.
The same goes for the charges brought against David Hale and Linda Tripp. Mr. Wirges was tried and convicted of "perjury" by a rigged jury and sentenced to three years in prison. His conviction was later overturned by the state supreme court -- the charges were obviously without foundation.
The same could be said of the charges made against Tripp. She is being "investigated" by a Maryland grand jury for tapping a phone call between her apartment in that state and Monica Lewinsky's phone in New York. Now, interstate calls fall under federal, not state law, so the Maryland grand jury has no jurisdiction in this case. And under the relevant federal statute, what Tripp did was perfectly legal.
So why bring the case before the grand jury? For the same reason perjury charges were brought against Wirges -- to smear and harass him and delay his legal actions against a corrupt political machine. Much of the press in Arkansas was complicit in the campaign against editor Wirges, and not all of the journalists involved were local. A dubious witness was found by the machine who was prepared to charge Wirges with "bribery." The judge, although a political hack, found the allegation so ridiculous he dismissed the witness. The following morning the Arkansas Gazette carried a front page story describing the testimony that had not been given. When Wirges confronted the author of the story, the local Associated Press Bureau Chief, John Starr, the latter admitted that he had been fed the fake story by Marlin Hawkins, the High Sheriff of Conway County. Apparently it hadn't occurred to the sheriff that a local judge might reject one of his hand-picked "witnesses."
And what became of the state trooper who had turned against the corrupt machine? Wirges recounts that a few months after the trial "Trooper Jack Stone was killed in a freak automobile accident on a straight stretch of road in broad daylight. No other cars were involved, and no clear-cut reason for the accident was ever uncovered."
Sound familiar? Sort of like what happened to the man who discovered that check made out to Bill Clinton in the trunk of an old auto. Or Kathy Ferguson, the former wife of a state trooper who had been tapped to testify in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Or her boyfriend, a local cop who couldn't quite believe that Kathy had committed "suicide", but wound up committing "suicide" himself shortly thereafter. (Like Alzheimer's, "suicide" is endemic in Arkansas). Of course, Arkansans do occasionally die of other causes. Like Luther "Jerry" Parks who ran a business that supplied bodyguards for Clinton during his presidential campaign. Parks was found riddled in his automobile near a posh neighborhood in Little Rock. According to British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Parks had been gathering information on Clinton's nocturnal activities at the behest of Vince Foster. The case has never been solved, although there is a rumor that a witness identified the shooter as an Arkansas state trooper. That might explain why Parks stopped his car.
If one gets a feeling of deja vu reading Wirges' book, perhaps it is because Mr. Clinton learned his craft at the same school as the Sheriff of Conway County. He seems to have done the complete course, including dilatory legal tactics, harassment of witnesses, denigration of prosecutors, cultivation of amnesia among his cronies, general obstruction of justice, and other matters concerning which one can only speculate.
Like the corrupt Arkansas political machine that spawned him, Mr. Clinton gets a favorable press. Oh, they try to pretend that they are tough on him, but with a few honorable exceptions, journalists seem quite content to lick his boots and do his bidding. It has become a convenient source of cheap entertainment to watch the presstitutes slither on their bellies each morning on C-SPAN, while dutifully spinning the latest news to Clinton's advantage. At the mere mention of Kenneth Starr they bare their fangs and hiss. It's better than the snake house at the Washington Zoo.
Of course, all of this foolishness brought about by the independent counsel is much ado about nothing. (It is almost never mentioned that Janet Reno had to approve every investigation undertaken by Starr). And whenever a caller is so awkward as to mention any Clinton scandal other than the Monica Lewinsky affair, the subject is quickly brushed aside, giving the impression that, at worst, this is a light summer sex farce. Nobody ever attempts to explain why Webster Hubbell was paid nearly a million bucks for very few services rendered after being accused of cheating his partners at the Rose Law Firm. Within the Clinton coterie, being charged with grand larceny would seem to be somewhat like winning the lottery. Mainstream pundits such as "Fat Jack" Germond give the perp high marks for obstructing justice to his best advantage, and badmouth the prosecutor for being such a spoil-sport as to go after a guy who has gotten away with it. To mention the possibility that Hubbell had been paid handsomely to keep his mouth shut about Clinton would be considered impossibly gauche in that enlightened, progressive company.
And then we have the example of St. Sue of Ark., the mainstream media's martyr of preference in the Whitewater affair. Never mind that the lady has already been convicted of multiple felonies in Arkansas and is about to go on trial for yet more felonies (unrelated to Whitewater) in California. Mainstream newsies have been weeping copious buckets of crocodile tears over Susan's cruel incarceration at the behest of the villainous prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Actually, St. Susan Martyr, who had been jailed by a judge for contempt of court, could have obtained her freedom at any time by agreeing to answer a few simple questions about her business dealings, such as whether or not Bill Clinton had pressured David Hale to authorize an illegal government loan to her on the basis that she was a disadvantaged minority person. What made the loan illegal was the fact that the only minority Susan ever belonged to was the millionaire's club. She and her husband Jim McDougal had assets well in excess of a million dollars at the time the loan was made. What could Clinton's motive have been in promoting an illegal loan? Well, about a third of the proceeds went right into Whitewater development Corp. in which he was a partner, but of course Mr. Clinton professes to know nothing about that.
Those who have followed the Clinton scandals closely will have noticed by now that the martyrs and sympathetic figures are invariably discovered by the mainstream press among the ranks of those who have remained loyal to Clinton -- Webster Hubbell, Susan McDougal, Monica Lewinsky, and the like. The mainstream newsies vie with each other providing them tea and sympathy. For "turncoats" such as Susan's erstwhile husband Jim, however, they have little more to give than the back of their hand. When, according to accounts given by some of the inmates at the "medical" facility where Jim McDougal had been incarcerated, he was hassled in a dubious "drug test," thrown into solitary confinement for being unable to urinate on demand, and denied his heart medication, the liberal minions of the mainstream press, whose warm, throbbing hearts bleed for all humanity, were all strangely looking the other way. They really weren't interested in the accounts of McDougal's fellow inmates that told of his cries for help as he lay dying on the floor of his frigid solitary cell, while the guards, seated a short distance down the hall, played cards, callously ignoring his calls for help.
Notice that it is not a question of the press investigating these allegations and finding them baseless -- they just don't give a damn whether they are true or not. Jim McDougal picked the "wrong side" in a battle involving the prerogatives of the power-elite and therefore had to pay the price. Just because Diamond Jim wasn't smart enough to survive in the cold reptilian world of corrupt Clintonian politics, is that any reason for a mainstream journalist to endanger his career prospects by betting against the house? Jim had changed his testimony to incriminate Bill Clinton in the matter of the illegal loan to his wife Susan. What did he expect? The same goes for David Hale, who was the first to accuse Clinton of promoting the illegal loan to Susan. He has been indicted on state charges, over the objection of the independent counsel, by a cynical Arkansas prosecutor named Stodola who was paid off in lavish campaign contributions to harass Hale in the interest of obstructing justice. No? Then why on earth did he do it? Whatever one may think of Mr. Clinton, it is unheard of for a local prosecutor to impede a federal criminal investigation in this way.
And yet, our glorious, heroic "free press" continue to look the other way and do nothing. And if Hale, whose state trial was delayed when he was hospitalized with a heart condition, were to drop dead before their very eyes do you believe the mainstream press would give a hoot, any more than they cared about what happened to Jim McDougal? It is largely their fault that national politics, never very clean, have been allowed to sink to the abysmal level of corruption that prevailed in Conway County, Arkansas, circa 1960. Are these journalists any less corrupt than the criminals in public life they are protecting? Granted they don't share in the spoils, but by kowtowing to the power elite who want Clinton and his pals to be protected, they protect themselves and promote their career prospects. So it isn't that they do not benefit from political corruption -- they just sell themselves more cheaply than the crooks in government they are protecting. Does this enable them to see themselves as honest, decent human beings?
continued in Part 2 Published in the July 27, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright 1998 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com) Reposting permitted with this message intact
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