Corrupt Clinton is being abandoned by fellow rats - that is, those not totally devoid of conscience:
Clinton aides defect, complain of betrayal
WASHINGTON, March 9 (AFP) - White House aides are jumping ship as President Bill Clinton's former trusted lieutenants raise a chorus of discontent about the man who once so inspired them.
"If I knew everything then that I know now, of course I wouldn't have worked for him," ex-Clinton spokesman and former ardent loyalist George Stephanopoulos, writes in a new tell-all book.
Dee Dee Myers, another former White House spokeswoman, stopped defending Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky affair after he confessed to the tryst last August and she said on CNN Monday she was alarmed by the new rape charges against the president.
Juanita Broaddrick's recent claim Clinton sexually assaulted her in 1978 has been the last straw for many at the White House who endured a grim year battling the Lewinsky scandal.
Clinton's former media consultant, David Gergen, is insisting the charges be taken seriously and demands the president speak to them himself instead of hiding behind his lawyers' denials.
Myers' replacement, Mike McCurry, who left the White House in October, is now blasting Clinton's behavior as "exasperatingly stupid" and the betrayal of his aides as "flabbergasting."
"Frankly, the president misled me ... so I came here and misled you too on occasion," he told the White House press corps upon his departure.
McCurry also told George Magazine this month he knows of "no one who is blindly loyal to Bill Clinton."
Indeed, Stephanopoulos predicts in his book, "All Too Human, A Political Education," there will be more departures by disgruntled aides now that Clinton has been acquitted by the Senate.
"In some ways, the battle against impeachment was the glue that was holding a lot of the White House together, people will now leave," he said.
Stephanopoulos, who has been criticized by his former colleagues for taking a job as a news analyst with ABC television, added that the man he helped win the presidency will not allow his name to be spoken in his presence.
The latest defection came last week, when Clinton's longtime political advisor Paul Begala left for a teaching post, following the recent resignation of White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles.
Dick Morris, who was credited with Clinton's comeback after the 1994 Republican congressional takeover, wrote an expose of intimate details about the president and -- perhaps worse -- his reliance on polls to determine every policy move.
As with Stephanopoulos, current White House aides have denounced Morris, who was forced to resign over his own sex scandal at the height of the 1996 elections.
Indeed, Clinton is the most analyzed president in US history and has had more books written about him than any of this predecessors. The latest penned by none other than Lewinsky herself leaves little to the imagination about Clinton's most private inclinations.
But political analyst Stephen Hess says given the extent of his troubles, Clinton has managed to keep his entourage relatively under control.
"Given that this is a president of the United States who has admitted lying to the American people and having an extramarital affair in the Oval Office, I would say the record of loyalty to him is really quite remarkable," he said.
Aides say Clinton is too busy governing to read the books or watch the interviews by his erstwhile intimates
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