Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: halfscot who wrote (15188)	5/15/1998 1:33:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

The historians who chronicle the next century's wars will look back on the Clinton era as the age of proliferation, a sort of Great Awakening of nuclear ambition, when the power to deliver mass death (whether by means nuclear, chemical or biological) was allowed to spread from the few to the many.... For years, the administration has looked the other way from increasingly blatant violations of proliferation restrictions by China, Russia, and various European companies. It has done so, as the president recently hinted in unusually candid remarks, because it does not wish to admit truths that would trigger anti-proliferation sanctions that might get in the way of trade.... Only a few weeks ago the president was grousing about how sanctions laws force him to "fudge" reality and issue waivers. But there will be no fudging and waivering this time. Of course that may be because this particular law does not allow waivers. washingtonpost.com

To: halfscot who wrote (15188)	5/15/1998 9:40:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

Former Watergate Special Prosecutor says the many Clinton Scandals parallel Watergate! ______________________________________________________________________ Watergate Comparisons Are on the Mark By HENRY RUTH President Clinton is mulling whether to appeal Judge Norma Holloway Johnson's ruling against his claims of executive privilege. Such claims have inevitably given rise to comparisons with Watergate, comparisons Mr. Clinton brushed off at a news conference last week. Yet without passing judgment on the facts of the case--like anyone under criminal investigation, the president is entitled to the presumption of innocence--we can say that there are significant parallels between Watergate and Mr. Clinton's scandals. A president's invocation of executive privilege during a grand jury investigation challenges three fundamental principles. First, that no one is above the law. Second, that the public has a right to every man's evidence. And third, as the Constitution proclaims in the wonderful thrift of Article II, that the president has a duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." The threat to these fundamental principles of federal criminal law is the first important similarity between Watergate and the allegations Kenneth Starr is investigating. The public can have faith in the integrity of the presidency only if it believes that the chief law-enforcement officer is faithfully executing the law. When he seeks to thwart a federal prosecution of himself, the public faith is necessarily challenged. This inherent threat to basic principles increases when the law allows the chief law-enforcement officer to withhold evidence in order to protect another societal goal. After all, the law commands all executive-branch employees to report to the attorney general any evidence of criminal wrongdoing by any other federal employee. In President Nixon's executive privilege case, the Supreme Court faced a White House attempt to construct an absolute presidential privilege that would be unchallengeable for any reason in any judicial forum. The court resolved this clash between law enforcement and presidential leadership by recognizing a broad presidential privilege aimed at protecting the president's ability to secure unfettered advice, but allowing the invasion of that privilege when a prosecutor shows that it is necessary in order to gather evidence essential to a criminal trial. A second similarity centers on the types of crimes being investigated: Both Watergate and the Starr investigation involve federal prosecutors' attempts to uncover a possible obstruction of justice by the president and others close to him. Nothing is more basic to the integrity of our justice system than that system's ability to prevent, and if necessary to discover, attempts to corruptly obstruct its normal workings. Some of Mr. Clinton's defenders argue that his alleged perjury and obstruction can be overlooked because they involve a civil case. But if a president obstructs justice, it threatens the justice system whether the case is civil or criminal. It is preposterous to argue that a president should be free to perjure himself and induce others to commit perjury in a civil case. Mr. Clinton is also a subject of a criminal investigation as to hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged "hush money" that Webster Hubbell received, in the form of both extensive payments from White House friends to Mr. Hubbell and a federal job given to his wife, who continues to work for the president despite her recent indictment for tax evasion. This matter has obvious surface similarities to Nixon's taped conversations with counsel John Dean on March 21, 1973, in which Nixon expressed to Mr. Dean the ready availability of $1 million to satisfy the Watergate burglars' family support needs. Mr. Starr has stated that he also sees possible obstruction of justice in the White House's self-declared war on his office, his aides and his witnesses. This matter is similar to Charles Colson's guilty plea to obstruction of justice in Watergate: Mr. Colson admitted to leading the White House-orchestrated effort to discredit Daniel Ellsberg and thereby influence potential jurors in Mr. Ellsberg's criminal trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Clinton's invocation of executive privilege represents perhaps the most obvious parallel to Watergate, raising once again the appearance that the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States seeks to hide evidence from a federal prosecutor, from a federal grand jury and ultimately from the American people. It is no accident that millions of Americans, even a high percentage of those who approve of his job performance, no more trust Mr. Clinton to tell the truth than they trusted Nixon 25 years ago. The invocation of executive privilege can only feed public cynicism about politics and government. We should hope that Mr. Clinton's exercise of executive privilege is limited to conversations that directly bear on national security. But as with Judge John Sirica in Watergate, Judge Johnson should be able to screen out from public disclosure any testimony of presidential conversations about Iraq or similar topics and yet allow Mr. Starr to investigate conversations that bear upon the grand jury's inquiry. Beyond executive privilege, another imperative links Watergate and the Starr investigation. Possible obstruction of justice and perjury by a chief executive deserve full investigation. Whatever the final result, the public must believe that no man is above the law and that the grand jury was able fully to exercise its right to every man's evidence. Mr. Ruth is a retired lawyer living in Tucson, Ariz. He served as Watergate special prosecutor and as deputy to his predecessors, Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski. interactive.wsj.com