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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (60805)	9/27/1999 5:01:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Well, it makes sense that they would deny vigorously a "sweetheart deal". And, as you know, it takes time for things like this to be investigated. It may be that they are not even liable, but only the maker and receivers of the gift. Still, one does wonder, it should not depend on Klayman.....

To: jlallen who wrote (60805)	9/28/1999 9:58:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

BILL'S NEXT BIG BLUNDER By DICK MORRIS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WITH friends like Bill, Hillary doesn't need enemies. First he decided to release the FALN terrorists. Now he's made another dumb mistake that will cost his wife's candidacy dearly: appointing James Lyons, who misled the public about the true facts of the Whitewater affair in the 1992 election, as a federal circuit court judge. By inviting the Senate to question Lyons under oath in confirmation hearings, Clinton will give his critics a field day and his wife a stomach ache. Bill Clinton should not want anyone questioning Lyons in public and under oath. It was this same James Lyons who first hired private detective Jack Palladino in the '92 campaign (for $28,000) to assist with the Whitewater whitewash. Later, Palladino received almost $100,000 more from the campaign. It has been widely reported that Palladino's work in 1992 involved threatening and intimidating women not to go public with their stories about Clinton. Since Palladino was paid with public money (federal campaign matching funds) it would seem to be appropriate to ask him what he did to shut the women up. The elusive Palladino has been hard to pin down. This is the ideal opportunity. Now that Clinton has served Lyons up to Congress on a silver platter, the GOP can question the would-be jurist about what Palladino did, as his employee, for the $28,000 he paid him. If there is a trail of cover-up, blackmail and intimidation by paid White House operatives - the bunch I've been calling the "White House secret police" - it should become clearer after Lyons testifies. In fact, Congress should prohibit the use of federal campaign matching funds for detectives or other invasions of personal privacy. All candidates for federal office - Gore, Bush, Bradley, and especially Hillary - should pledge not to hire operatives to snoop on innocent people. Lyons testimony about the secret police will just be the hors d'oeuvre. He has even more to tell Congress about Hillary's involvement in Whitewater. During the '92 campaign, the Clintons hired Lyons to write a report exonerating them. As columnist Paul Gigot reported last week in the Wall Street Journal, "the Lyons report was financial Swiss cheese." While its conclusion that the Clintons had lost money on the Whitewater deal gave them a fig leaf to wear through the election, the report, according to Gigot, "overstated the Clintons' investment in Whitewater by more than $22,000, thus making it appear as if the Clintons were as much at risk as Jim McDougal." Lyons also claimed that the Clintons were passive investors "when," Gigot points out, "Hillary in particular played a more active role." In 1992, Lyons refused to release parts of the report which contained the real facts of the Whitewater deal, even though federal taxpayer matching funds paid for it. Now, when he wants to be confirmed, he will come under new pressure to let the public know what he and Clinton did not want them to know in 1992 and what role Hillary played in the cover-up. Did she help Lyons cook the books to show the Clintons' innocence? If Republicans enjoy asking Lyons about the secret police and Whitewater, they'll have even more fun asking him about his role in the Travel Office firings scandal. It seems Lyons stayed overnight at the White House on July 2, 1993, as the scandal was brewing. As reported in The American Spectator, the affair "had preoccupied the first lady for weeks, not to mention the late Vince Foster, who was thinking about hiring his close friend Lyons to be his own attorney in the Travelgate scandal." Lyons was apparently scheduled to fly to Washington to meet with Foster the day after his suicide. Republicans will want to know if Lyons was involved in the removal of documents from Foster's office. since the ubiquitous Lyons visited White House aide Bruce Lindsey on July 22, two days after the suicide. The GOP senators may also explore what Lyons meant when he called Webb Hubbell on Oct. 25, 1993, and left a message saying "be in town tomorrow, get together on wed or thurs to discuss/review WDC [Whitewater Development Corporation] docs." In all, the confirmation hearing on James Lyons promises to be just the sort of event neither Hillary Clinton nor Al Gore need coming up in the spring. By trying to pay back the paymaster of the secret police, Clinton has opened himself and his wife up to the kind of intense scrutiny they least want. Clinton must have been dreaming if he thought he could get Lyons confirmed with the baggage he is carrying. With Bush 20 points ahead, the GOP is not exactly eager to confirm Clinton appointees to the federal bench when leaving the post vacant could let Republicans fill these choice jobs in 2001. Normally, it is hard for Clinton to get even confirmation hearings for his nominees. But you can bet the Republicans will gladly interrogate Lyons, right before they reject him, in the middle of the 2000 election season. First the FALN, then the McAuliffe mortgage, now the Lyons nomination. What is Bill Clinton using for brains these days? nypostonline.com