Holy cow. The lying rapist is attacking the FBI!! He's losing it!! This is rich.
Investors Business Daily:
CLINTON DOUBTS FBI'S MOTIVES
Suggests Focus On China Gifts Hides Waco Woes
Date: 9/28/99
Author: Paul Sperry
In what's turning into an internecine feud between the White House and the FBI, President Clinton charged that the FBI is trying to turn the spotlight away from its new Waco troubles by raising doubts about the probe into White House fund-raising.
Four career FBI agents told the Senate Wednesday that the Justice
Department has thwarted their investigation of illegal foreign funds to the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election effort.
''The FBI wants you to write about that rather than write about Waco,'' a visibly angry Clinton told Investor's Business Daily Friday night at the White House.
Justice earlier this month seized from the FBI videotapes that were withheld from congressional investigators after the agency's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
Attorney General Janet Reno has turned over the case to former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., for an independent probe.
The president's statement, called ''extraordinary'' by Hill leaders, marked the first time he's criticized his own bureau in public.
Asked about it, FBI spokesman Jim Davis said, ''I'm pretty confident we have no comment,'' adding that FBI Director Louis Freeh is out of town.
Davis allowed that the FBI is aware that the ''relationship between the bureau and the president and (between the bureau and) the attorney general'' is drawing more and more negative press.
Freeh butted heads with Reno in 1997 when he argued for an independent
counsel to probe the fund-raising scandal.
Some compare the discord between Clinton and his chief law enforcement
agency to the one that developed between President Nixon and Justice as the Watergate probe crept closer to the Oval Office.
In 1973, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned after balking at Nixon's orders to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Solicitor General Robert Bork wound up axing Cox and his staff of 60 lawyers in what's known as the ''Saturday Night Massacre.''
Referring to Clinton, Brookings Institution presidential scholar Stephen Hess said: ''The idea that the president is acting as if the FBI is trying to do him in is pretty fascinating.''
Clinton also lashed out at Republicans in responding to several IBD questions about the fund-raising probe, which has turned up at least $300,000 intended for Clinton from the Chinese military:
''The GOP wants that to be the story rather than guns'' and other issues that ''people care about,'' he said, adding that ''not one person has brought up'' the Chinagate scandal on his stops around the country.
''You want to know the only person who has been linked to money from
China?'' Clinton said. ''Haley Barbour and the RNC (Republican National Committee), that's who.''
''Bob Dole had more FEC (Federal Election Commission) fines than I did,'' he said.
Asked Monday if Clinton stands by his statements, White House spokesman Richard Siewert said: ''The president does not regret making those comments.''
Republicans say the reaction is typical for Clinton.
''He always likes to attack others more than defend his own positions,'' said a senior Republican White House official.
''He has trouble with the facts and the truth,'' said House Government Reform Committee spokesman Mark Corallo. ''So it wouldn't surprise me, in this case, for the president to be ignoring the facts that his party and his re-election committee and his legal defense fund were the recipients of millions of dollars in illegal money from foreign sources -much of it coming from Communist China.''
The Democratic National Committee has had to return over $3 million in illegal or improper donations from the 1996 campaign. The RNC returned $102,400 in illegal donations from the Florida unit of a Hong Kong-based real- estate company.
The 1991-93 RNC donations are apparently the ones Clinton cited. Barbour was RNC chairman at the time, though Hong Kong was still part of Britain, not China, back then.
Barbour, now head of a Washington lobbying firm, is a target of Reno's
campaign-finance task force. IBD was unable to reach Barbour for comment.
The impromptu interview with Clinton, conducted on the South Lawn not far from the Oval Office during a dinner for the press, lasted about 10 minutes and started with a single and simple question: ''When's your next formal press conference, Mr. President?''
Clinton was testy throughout. Observers say his face turned red when
questioned about the Chinagate probe. The questions came only after Clinton asked why he should hold another formal news conference.
''He was pretty exercised, and I was surprised he'd get so exercised about the campaign finance stuff,'' said Washington-based Seattle Times reporter James Grimaldi, who overheard the exchange and filed a story Sunday. ''He actually blew up.''
Staffers for CNN and the Associated Press also witnessed the exchange.
The president's comments came just two days after three active FBI agents -Roberta Parker, Kevin Sheridan and Daniel Wehr - and one retired - 25- year veteran Ivian Smith - told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that Laura Ingersoll, the former head of Reno's task force, blocked attempts in 1997 to question Clinton fund-raisers and seize documents.
Clinton scoffed at any suggestion that Reno is covering for him, or that the White House is colluding with her probe. He brushed aside the questions as ''accusatory.''
''We've spent $4 million and gave the (campaign- finance) task force millions of records and every shred of evidence,'' Clinton said, ''and they haven't found a thing.''
But in Wednesday's explosive testimony, Wehr swore that Ingersoll told the agents they should ''not pursue any matter related to solicitation of funds for access to the president.''
Also, 14-year veteran Parker said Ingersoll turned down a warrant she wrote for possibly incriminating documents at the Little Rock, Ark., offices of Clinton fund-raiser and friend Yah Lin ''Charlie'' Trie. Trie has pleaded guilty to breaking campaign-finance laws in exchange for no jail time.
The requested warrant included a mysterious FedEx package showing that 2 pounds of documents had been sent by the White House to Trie on May 5, 1997 - just two months before the Senate's Chinagate hearings opened.
Agents also testified that the task force blocked them from getting information from an informant who claims seeing Trie toting in ''duffel bags full of cash'' for the DNC.
Parker told senators she kept a record of the FBI's disputes with the task force in a spiral notebook she uses for all cases. She turned it over to her FBI superiors. When they returned it, 27 pages were missing, she says.
On Monday, GOP Sen. Fred Thompson, who heads the Senate Governmental
Affairs panel, launched a separate probe into the missing pages. The panel plans to depose both FBI and Justice officials.
Ingersoll was replaced as task force leader in 1997 by Charles LaBella, who left last year after arguing for an independent counsel. LaBella said the American public knows ''only 1%'' of the breadth of the Chinagate scandal.
Clinton would not say when he will hold his next formal press conference. He's had fewer than any recent president.
(C) Copyright 1999 Investors Business Daily, Inc.
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