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

To: DMaA who wrote (17551)	7/27/1998 3:12:00 PM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

CURIOUS TIMING FOR CLINTON BOMBSHELL By STEVE DUNLEAVY I TRY to avoid cynicism like a great white shark, but I feel an attack coming on. What I'm about to say approaches a very serious moral question, and for the sake of this presidency and this country, I hope I am wrong. Cynicism grabbed me by the heart over the weekend when I recognized that independent counsel Kenneth Starr had hit President Clinton with a subpoena 11 days ago. And yet it wasn't revealed, the very fact that the first sitting president in history had been hit with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury, until the early hours of Saturday morning. That was when newspapers were filled with the tragedy of two brave officers being shot dead on Capitol Hill. It was also the second day of a news frenzy about White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry resigning. I don't know, but it is indeed for inquiring minds to ask why the White House chose to drop this Hiroshima-sized bomb at a time when the nation was overwhelmed by tragedy on Capitol Hill and devout interest in Mike McCurry calling it quits? The master of the media game was a wise old owl called Joe Kennedy who knew edition times of newspapers as well as most editors. He would tell his sons, and believe me they took notice of him: "Break bad news on a Friday, because the edition times are earlier and the newspapers are smaller." I have seen the Kennedys, for the last 30 years' worth of scandals, do exactly that. I even co-authored a book with my colleague Peter Brennan about just how the wild, wild Kennedy boys played all of us reporters like violins. Bill Clinton is an unabashed admirer of the late John F. Kennedy, even to the point of trying to match his conquests and notches on his gun. So this subpoena drops on the front door of the White House 11 days ago and we don't know about it. I repeat, I hope I am wrong in my cynicism, but did Clinton's advisers hope for nuclear attack to distract the nation from knowing full well that Billy Boy's feet are about to be held to the fire? Before the world canonizes Mike McCurry, the press secretary who has quit, let us remember that right up until Friday night, everyone in the White House was denying that Clinton had been subpoenaed. Clinton's legal honcho, David Kendall, apparently has been huddling with Starr over the terms under which Clinton will give testimony in the greatest public secret that even Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of the world knows - and that is that he was playing doctor and nurse with Monica Lewinsky. White House lawyer David Kendall wants Starr to write out questions for Clinton. David Kendall wants questioning to be limited. The last time I, a taxpayer, went before a grand jury, I was not given that luxury, and nor should I have been. Let's hear from James Carville, the odious apologist for Bill Clinton's wicked, wicked ways, talk about Clinton taking the Fifth Amendment. That's what Al Capone and Frank Costello did. Oh, that would be terrific, the president taking a page from a mobster's book. "The invocation of the Fifth Amendment or any limit on the investigation would be publicly intolerable," former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh said yesterday. While Mike McCurry leaves his office to the applause of the wimpish, liberal White House press corps, we now know that he made a virtue of ignorance. "I'm out of the loop," he would often say when asked about Monica Lewinsky. "It's not worth my time to check," he once told my colleague Deborah Orin, who asked a pointed question. A great magician? The whole White House is a magic castle. They have been conning us rotten since the very first day Clinton took the oath before the Supreme Court. He would say how he never broke an American law. Aha. He smoked grass in London. He broke the United Kingdom law. He said he never had an affair with Gennifer Flowers for 12 years. Aha. Eleven years, 11 months and 29 days? Well, nobody asked that question. Of course, he has now admitted sharing a bed with the beautiful Gennifer. We've all misjudged this boy from Arkansas. He's sharper than a needle, and he's got a mind like a steel trap. And so I do, with some regret, reflect on the tragedy of two brave officers giving their lives and the curious timing of the White House's admission 11 days after the fact, that they had been hit with a subpoena for Billy Boy to finally fess up. As former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said: "It is judgment day." The very fact that Clinton has been subpoenaed to give evidence before Monica Lewinsky appears before the grand jury is a masterful stroke. This is one time when political chess won't work because he doesn't know what the wacko Monica will say. And so much for leaks. How come Kenneth Starr didn't leak this one, the fact he had subpoenaed Bill Clinton? Doggone it, this week is going to be a nirvana of speculation. But of course, Clinton will stonewall, the American people will be screwed again, and the families of two brave officers who died on Capitol Hill will always wonder whether their personal loss was made a foil to bury the subpoenaed Clinton under an avalanche of tragedy. nypost.com Let's hope Slick doesn't start a war in an effort to save himself. Nothing is beneath him.