From the Times of London:
September 7 1998
From Little Rock to the Oval Office, Clinton trails a
stench of depravity and corruption
On every count, a moral bankrupt
It is not a good idea to make a charismatic sociopath the
leader of one's party, or the President of one's country.
When the Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey says that
President Clinton's conduct is "immoral", he is entitled to
say that. He lost a leg in Vietnam when Bill Clinton was
dodging the draft in Oxford; he ran against Clinton for the
nomination in 1992 and in 1996 observed that Clinton
was "an unusually good liar".
When Senator Joseph Lieberman says that the President
has "compromised his moral authority", he should add an
apology of his own. Senator Lieberman should say "sorry"
to the American people for helping to persuade them to
elect and re-elect a morally defective President.
The psychological truth about Bill Clinton is relatively
simple. He is not wholly a madman; he does not hate his
fellow human beings, as Hitler did, nor does he wish them
ill; he is obsessed with power and with women; he is a
brilliant emotional campaigner, but there is a piece missing.
He has no moral compass; he does not know right from
wrong. This was always apparent in the way he acted as
Governor of Arkansas, but the Democrats, the American
press and, worst of all, the American public, chose to
overlook that. It was equally apparent in his behaviour to
hundreds of women. He had a standard operating
technique, and had a staff to handle it. The women were
called "bimbo eruptions"; the technique was called
"rub-a-dub".
The "rub-a-dub" involved telling the women to lie about
the affair; if there was still a risk that she would talk, she
was offered the choice between a good job, if necessary
on the federal payroll, or having her character blackened.
Sometimes this was accompanied by physical threats,
given at second-hand; one woman has testified that an
emissary of the Democrats threatened to "break her pretty
legs". The Arkansas police say that they had to cover
assignations with more than 100 women. Apparently
President Clinton told Monica Lewinsky that he had
connected with "some hundreds" of other women since he
was first married. It is addictive conduct; it is also a
destructive abuse of women.
Yet this is the less important part of the President's moral
blindness. In the Arkansas years, he helped in the
cover-up of the mass importation of cocaine into Mena
airport, of which there is evidence that he had knowledge.
He set up the $700 million Arkansas Development
Finance Agency (ADFA), which made crony loans in
return for kickbacks to the Governor's political funds. The
ADFA records have disappeared. His wife had corrupt
partners in the Rose Law Firm whose records were
shredded shortly after the death of Vince Foster, the
former White House counsel.
Clinton was the associate of Arkansas criminals, including
his bond-dealing friend Dan Lasater, convicted for a
cocaine felony and pardoned by Clinton. Lasater's
executive partner, Patsy Thomasson, is still in the White
House, and was one of those who went into Foster's
office to clear up after his death.
Clinton failed to seek proper investigation of the
suspicious deaths connected to these scandals. The
numbers are high: four Clinton associates died in doubtful
circumstances; eight people investigating allegations also
died; nine witnesses died. Of these 21 deaths eight were
found to be suicides, including those of Vince Foster
himself, of Kathy Ferguson, the former wife of the trooper
who allegedly solicited Paula Jones, and of Ed Willey, the
former manager of Clinton's campaign finance committee.
Five of the suspicious deaths occurred in plane crashes.
The pattern of abuse of public office continued in the
White House, in raising funds for campaign finance, in the
transfer of FBI files on political opponents, in the false
prosecution of the White House travel staff. Some of the
deaths occurred after Clinton became President. Jerry
Parks, a private detective in Little Rock, was shot two
months after Vince Foster's death. He had compiled a
dossier on Clinton's sexual conduct, apparently at Foster's
request. When Foster's death was announced on
television, Parks turned to his wife and said: "I'm a dead
man."
Mrs Parks alleges that the Clinton dossier was stolen
shortly before her husband's murder and that she had
been unable to secure a satisfactory Arkansas police
investigation. Arkansas politics have long been a violent
and corrupt affair, and neither as Governor nor as
President did Bill Clinton help to reform it.
The Republicans, Kenneth Starr and now the Democrats
have concentrated on the sexual scandals. There are a
number of reasons for this. The corrupt maladministration
and fundraising are very difficult to prove. Heaven knows
who did the Arkansas murders, or how many of the
suspicious deaths were murders. They belong to the
hinterland of corrupt Arkansas politics in which Bill
Clinton operated. The American people do not want to
recognise that their President is not only a sex addict but a
deeply corrupt politician.
Yet this is far more than a sex scandal. Democratic
congressmen running in the mid-term elections are
distancing themselves from him and after the elections he
will no longer have much power to reward or punish. The
loaves and fishes will be provided, if at all, by the
publishers. Monica Lewinsky's book is being offered for
$10 million.
After Watergate many of the participants, some of whom
had gone to prison, wrote their accounts of the Nixon
White House. What will Patsy Thomasson's memoirs be
worth? She knows what went on between Dan Lasater
and Clinton in the old days; she knows what she found in
Vince Foster's office; she knows the reality of Bill and
Hillary's relationship.
The next two years will see more and more of the truth
coming out. Some of it may even exonerate Clinton from
particular allegations. Unfortunately, much of it will be like
the evidence of Monica Lewinsky or Gennifer Flowers, at
first denied and then proved to be true. Once Clinton
admitted that he had lied about Lewinsky, all the other lies
he has told have ceased to work.
Clinton's position is therefore likely to get worse and
worse, as the Starr report is published, as the evidence
continues to flood out, and his party rejects him. The
American people will begin to understand how defective
he always was, how willing to abuse his power.
On The Frost Programme yesterday Chris Patten said
he thought the best thing to happen would be for the
American people to turn over the Clinton leaf and let him
finish his term of office. If it were all only about Monica
Lewinsky that might be possible, but there are too many
other scandals. Miss Lewinsky was the norm, not the
exception. There cannot be a clear-cut resolution of the
Clinton scandals so long as he remains in the White
House.
The authority of the President of the United States
depends on public confidence in his moral character.
Clinton now has no more moral authority in politics than
Robert Maxwell, another charismatic sociopath, had in
business.
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