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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: combjelly who wrote (321150)1/16/2007 4:35:13 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1586025
 
I don't think Starr approved of firing Gov workers. Even the head usher quit after a month with the Clintons, but keep defending them, they are just swell people. Your typical liberal.



To: combjelly who wrote (321150)1/16/2007 4:37:44 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1586025
 
Dale was very popular with the White House press corps. He knew them all and treated them very well. The firing and trumped-up charges against Dale became a public relations nightmare, so Hillary had to distance herself. Keeping in mind that the first instinct of the Clintons is always to lie, that is exactly what she did. She claimed that he had nothing to do with the firing.

The nightmare grew worse for Dale as the FBI was brought in and he was charged with embezzling money from the Travel Office. At one point, the cost of trial would have been so prohibitively expensive that Dale tried to do a plea bargain to just make it go away. Fortunately, the government did not accept a plea bargain. When it came to trial, Dale was acquitted by the jury in under 2 hours. What they did to him was in incredible injustice. Not surprisingly, as has happened to most of the Clinton enemies, the IRS also came after him.



To: combjelly who wrote (321150)1/16/2007 4:38:25 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1586025
 
why would Starr get involve??

The Clintons had every right to simply dismiss Dale and the others and bring in their own people. Hillary, the brains behind the operation, not only had Dale fired, but also tried to send him to prison. Firing was not good enough. In May of 1993 the employees were given one hour's notice to clean out their desks, and they were escorted away in a windowless van. The replacement was made without competitive bid.



To: combjelly who wrote (321150)1/16/2007 4:38:45 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1586025
 
Most Americans do not know that during the 1992 campaign, the Clintons used an Arkansas travel agency, World Wide Travel. They worked with a Clinton cousin, Catherine Cornelius. WWT provided a million dollars in deferred travel for the Clinton campaign, freeing up much needed cash for campaigning. Employees of the firm donated to the Clinton campaign.

It gets even better. The supposed investigation against Travel Office "accounting improprieties" was headed by…..are you ready…headed by none other than Cornelius herself just as she was planning with World Wide Travel for a reorganization that would put her in charge of the department. She gets a good job and Thomasson gets a hugely profitable business.



To: combjelly who wrote (321150)1/16/2007 4:39:29 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1586025
 
Excepts from House Oversight Committee Report:

The full report can be found HERE

Report Summary:

Travelgate is a story about the failure of the Clinton White House to live up to the ethical standards expected of the highest office in the land. The wrongdoing of this administration lies not in the firings of the seven Travel Office employees. They served at the pleasure of the President. If the President chose to fire them to reward political cronies, that was his prerogative.

Rather, the wrongdoing occurred after the firings. It resulted from a desire to hide the truth about who actually fired them and why. The committee spent 3 1/2 years investigating not just who fired them and why, but the wrongdoing that followed. The resulting mosaic pieced together from the facts uncovered reveals the answers the White House refused to disclose. In the end, the actions of the Clinton administration following the firings may have a lasting and damaging impact on the Office of the Presidency.

The committee has found that the motive for the firings was political cronyism: the President sought to reward his friend, Harry Thomason, with the spoils of the White House travel business. A pretext for the firings was created, and the trigger was pulled.

When the public reacted to the firing with outrage, the roles of the President, First Lady and Thomason were minimized as the White House staff engaged in a colossal damage-control effort. First, it had to portray the victims of the firings as the wrongdoers. This was achieved by White House officials unleashing the full powers of the Federal Government against the seven former workers. The extraordinary might of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice- not to mention the prestige of the White House itself -all were brought to bear. These actions constitute a gross abuse of the rights of seven American citizens and their families. Second, an enormous and elaborate cover-up operation, housed in the White House Counsel's Office, sought to prevent numerous investigations from discovering not only the roles of who fired the workers and why, but also their efforts to persecute the victims. In the process…it obstructed and frustrated all investigations; it turned the Office of the White House Counsel into a political damage-control operation; it made frivolous claims of executive privilege; it abused its powers to smear innocent citizens; and most important, it failed to level with the American people.



To: combjelly who wrote (321150)1/16/2007 4:40:03 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1586025
 
The pursuit of Billy Dale:

…the lives of seven innocent long-time career Government employees were shattered, their reputations smeared, to make way for the ambitions and arrogance of the President's friends and family. We learned that the FBI and IRS became involved in this matter because of Harry Thomason's false allegations that Travel Office Director Billy Dale received illegal "kickbacks" from a charter airline company. The White House knew very quickly that the alleged source of the kickback charges denied ever making them. But upon learning this fact, the White House did nothing to correct the public record it had created through misinformation.

In fact, long after President Clinton's White House staff knew the allegations were false, they continued in their efforts to make a case against the beleaguered and increasingly impoverished Billy Dale. The Department of Justice (``DOJ'') case, U.S. v. Billy Ray Dale, was sorely lacking in evidence. It was compromised by missing records that had not been secured by the Clinton White House or the Justice Department.

It was obvious, even to Justice Department prosecutors, that they had no witnesses who could provide any derogatory information about Billy Dale. Finally, they were left only with the dubious claim that the notoriously frugal Mr. Dale lived a ``lavish lifestyle.'' The prosecution revealed to the jury the ``scandalous'' evidence that Mrs. Dale went to a hairdresser and purchased large quantities of groceries for the Lake Anne vacation home the two-career Dales saved many years to build and enjoy. Predictably, Dale was acquitted in less than 2 hours by a jury of his peers.

Unfortunately, Mr. Dale's speedy acquittal did not put an end to his 3-year ordeal. The IRS pursued Dale, threatening income tax audits. The IRS also was busy in Smyrna, TN auditing the company that did business with Mr. Dale at the Travel Office, UltrAir.

Only recently was Mr. Dale given a clean bill of health by the Internal Revenue Service after 3 years of intense scrutiny. UltrAir had no tax liability and an owner of UltrAir received a $5,000 refund before the IRS gave up its search for any shred of evidence to justify its harassment of this small struggling business.