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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DD™ who wrote (8339)	2/25/1998 10:34:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 20981

Maureen's latest: LIBERTIES / By MAUREEND DOWD February 25, 1998 D.C. Confidential WASHINGTON -- I'm worried about my garbage. It is not louche enough. Any minute someone from the White House might be pawing through my Hefty bags, looking for something to smear me with, and I hate to disappoint. I'm tempted to plant a few juicy items, some lipstick-stained cocktail napkins from the Budgetel Motel, a Victoria's Secret receipt signed by Michael Isikoff, a message from a Mr. Jordan. The town is crawling with snoops. The town is dripping with sinuendo. Slick Willie has morphed into Tricky Dick. Kenneth Starr has morphed into the "X-Files" Cigarette Man. This week the scandal got spooky. In 1992 Mr. Clinton professed his innocence about Gennifer Flowers and a gaggle of erupting "bimbos." But to be on the safe side, his campaign hired a private investigator to intimidate any women who might be thinking of coming forward with stories about dalliances, by threatening to reveal dirt about their pasts. Pasts are prologue. The President who professes his innocence about Monica Lewinsky now has private detectives slithering around looking for dirt on those who might harm him. Does that include Kenneth Starr and his team? That would mean the President was investigating the investigators that his own Administration had authorized. How Dada is that? The White House may be telling the truth slowly, as Mike McCurry said, but it is throwing the mud as fast as it can. Clintonites, including Sidney Blumenthal and Harry Thomason, have peddled tips about Ken Starr and his team to reporters. And George Stephanopoulos evoked a chilling scenario when he said some White House allies were threatening to go public with the sex lives of Clinton critics. When the accusation was leveled on the Sunday talk shows that the President had unleashed private investigators, the White House huffily denied that it "or any of President Clinton's private attorneys has hired or authorized any private investigator to look into the background of . . . investigators, prosecutors or reporters." But in the grand Clinton tradition of telling the truth slowly, the denial became inoperative on Monday when Terry Lenzner, an investigator with ties to the Democratic Party, said he was working for Williams & Connolly, the law firm defending the President in the Lewinsky case. It was another surreal Watergate role reversal. The founder of the law firm, Edward Bennett Williams, had represented the righteously indignant D.N.C., the victim of Richard Nixon's break-in. Mr. Lenzner served as the assistant chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, while Hillary Rodham was working for its House counterpart. The acid flashback intensifies. (Remember executive privilege?) Mr. Blumenthal supposedly has his own enemies list, with reporters vying for one of the six coveted slots. Because he is awash in conspiracy theories, his nickname around the White House is G.K., as in Grassy Knoll. K.S. responded to the news of P.I.'s by subpoenaing G.K. He also hauled in Mr. Lenzner. Mr. Starr has gotten so megalomaniacal that he thinks gossiping about him is a Federal crime. Next, he'll have G.K. in manacles. Mr. Starr and Mr. Blumenthal deserve each other -- the conservative conspiracy zealot who will do anything to get Bill Clinton and the liberal conspiracy zealot who will do anything to save Bill Clinton. (And Bill Clinton deserves them both.) It was inevitable that Mr. Blumenthal, the promoter of the First Lady's right-wing conspiracy charge, would end up in direct combat with the Conspirator in Chief. As gratifying as it is to think of supercilious Sid sweating under a naked light bulb in the Starr Chamber, he was right to cloak himself in the First Amendment. He worried that he would be forced to name names and finger the reporters with whom he had discussed Mr. Starr. This raised the specter of Mr. Starr calling reporters to testify, and using the grand jury to intimidate his own critics. It's bad enough for a politician to hire gumshoes to suppress embarrassing disclosures. But it is chilling to have government lawyers with subpoena power prying into communications between reporters and the officials they cover. We don't want America's newsrooms wired like Linda Tripp. headlines.yahoo.com