Lawrence Walsh's Last Battle search.nytimes.com
On the subject of special prosecutors, presidential perjury and obstruction of justice, we have this blast from the (fairly recent) past. Walsh's style was a bit different from Ken Starr's, wouldn't you say? And Reagan/Bush had lots of assistance in obstructing him. An interesting historical comparison to be made here, perhaps. An interesting article to read at this particular point in time, I wouldn't want anybody to trust my excerpts.
Indeed, at this point even many of those who longed to see the players in the Iran-contra drama dragged into court have lost patience with Judge Walsh. Questions about the nearly $40 million and seven years his office has spent in relentless pursuit of the ever-elusive truth of Iran-contra have become not only common, but routine. To his detractors, many of them former eagan-Bush officials and supporters, Walsh is worse than a free-spending, slow-going judicial pedant. He is, in their eyes, an autocratic, power-mad enemy of freedom who has played fast and loose with the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, and whose investigation has degenerated into a self-aggrandizing witch hunt.
Wow. If Walsh's investigation, into affairs that most would agree had something more to do with the President's official duties than Starr's, was an autocratic, power-mad enemy of freedom, what would that make Starr? A democratic, weakness-sane friend of slavery?
(Elliott Abrams, the convicted former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, says Walsh is an abuser of power, worse than Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi.)
Tee hee. Good old Elliot Abrams, Mr. Honesty himself. I guess smear tactics are ok as long as they come from the "right" side.
The investigation has been dragging on for almost seven years; Bill Clinton is the third President to sit in the Oval Office since the Government began this case against itself. The defendants' primary strategy -- delay, delay and delay -- has had its effect. The country was once riveted by the televised images of the Iran-contra defendants testifying before Congress -- a series of hearings that Norman Mailer once said was "more addictive than watching cartoons." Now the public has all but lost interest in the scandal, which seems to have receded into a mere historical curiosity, rather than the frontal assault on the Constitution it once represented.
Now, is somebody going to argue that Bill's evasiveness, of whatever form, ever constituted a frontal assault on the Constitution? I'm sure somebody has, Starr if nobody else.
It could be argued that the legalistic approach to the Iran-contra morass was by its very nature doomed to failure, that it was like trying to cure a madman by teaching him syllogisms. But to accept that assessment would be, for Walsh, an admission of defeat. Two of his more spectacular convictions -- Oliver North and John Poindexter -- were overturned on appeal. Then President Bush, in his last days in power, destroyed years of his work by pardoning the former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger as well as four convicted Reagan-Bush Administration officials. Even so, Lawrence Walsh resolutely believes that, once again, the law has proved itself capable of bringing to justice those who try to escape its judgment.
Well, there's obstruction of justice, and there's obstruction of justice. How could Bill Clinton defending himself in some civil suit instigated by dirt-digging right wingers compare with Reagan/Bush covering up various secret wars? It's totally different!
It's May 1986 and the contras are out of money, but they're still out in the field," Walsh says. "McFarlane has just gone into Iran with a planeload of weapons; there's a second planeload in Israel. He's supposed to get all the hostages back. He's told by Poindexter: 'Don't take anything less. We're through being jerked around by these guys.' So he goes and doesn't get his hostages. But North tells the second plane to take off from Israel and deliver the rest of the weapons anyhow."
Walsh waits for a moment, letting the facts sink in. Years of leading juries through these events have given him a sixth sense of how much information can be taken in at a gulp. He folds his hands and continues.
"McFarlane then finds out about it and countermands North's order, and the two of them go home without any hostages. They report to President Reagan --total disaster, no hostages. But North says to McFarlane, 'Well, you know, it's not a total loss; Khomeini's financing the contras.'
"Then they go back to Iran, and still have no luck getting any hostages out. But all of the sudden, the plane filled with weapons takes off from Israel and delivers the rest of the weapons. And one hostage comes out and soon after that the contras are resupplied with arms.
"In order to assume Reagan had no idea that money from this arms deal was being funneled secretly into Nicaragua, you'd have to assume the President authorized the second flight to go forward in total ignorance that he was feeding the contras, that he once again stuck his neck out, after having his head knocked off three times by three disappointments with these arms shipments and no hostages coming out. Is it believable that the President went through this embarrassing charade for a year if he didn't know he was getting money for the contras?"
That's one way to look at it. But, as Reagan said, "Facts are stupid things". Somehow, though, this puts all the outraged moral bleating about Bill Clinton lying in a different light. How unfair it would be to not nail Clinton when, what, 3 people a year go down on federal perjury charges. There's no precedent for letting him off!
Walsh had come to Washington to conduct his last great investigation. Whatever sentiments he had harbored about preserving the dignity and political viability of the Republican Party, he was now locked in battle with an Administration that had amply displayed its contempt for the law by refusing to even appear in the World Court when the United States was accused of mining the harbors of Nicaragua with deadly explosives.
This smug self-interestedness reached its painful apotheosis with George Bush's postelection pardons of Weinberger, McFarlane, Elliott Abrams and three former C.I.A. officials, Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, Alan Fiers and Clair George.
With those pardons, Walsh exploded from the careful lawyer's diction and restraints. Walsh lashed out on national television, in words that strongly implied that President Bush's motive for the pardons had nothing to do with mercy but was a craven attempt to save his own skin: "President Bush had failed to produce to investigators his own highly relevant, contemporaneous notes [about Iran-contra] despite repeated requests. . . . " Walsh argued that some of these notes would have had to be furnished to Weinberger. They could have led not only to President Bush being called as a witness but to his prosecution for perjury. "In light of President Bush's own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed an official investigation."
That night Walsh was asked on the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour to respond to the charge that his will to press ahead with the investigation was, in fact, politically motivated -- "the criminalizing of policy differences," as Bush put it. Walsh's reply was stinging. "I think that again is rubbish," he said. "This is not a policy question. . . . To lie to Congress and say it didn't happen, that is not a political question. That's an outright lie."
Well, there's lies, and then there's lies. Who cares when you lie about wars and consorting with terrorists and stuff. Now, to lie about some bimbo eruption, that's serious.
In the end, Walsh and the law were unable to satisfy the narrative expectations raised by Iran-contra. What the law could do was go after an Elliott Abrams (for perjuring himself in Congressional testimony) -- gratifying those who cringed at his snide, superior testimony to Congress. But the law did not, finally, touch Reagan or Bush, as clear as it seemed to Walsh and his supporters that both Presidents were implicated in serious constitutional crimes. Watergate might have been petty compared with Iran-contra, but its dramatic arc was complete -- climaxing with a President reduced to madness and fleeing the White House.
I don't know about that reduced to madness part, though it was no doubt a tough time for Nixon. But if Watergate was petty compared to Iran-contra, where does that put Bimbogate? Looks pretty beyond insignificance to me, but I got my own judgement on where the dirty tricks started in this particular game.
Lawrence Walsh looks like another one of those honest voices on the other side that the friends of Starr refused to give me a hand finding. And we also know, at least according to Bill "Facts" Vaughn, that George Bush did not commit perjury. I have to apologize to Mr. Vaughn in advance for this stupid, moronic rant, throwing insults and flames into this perfectly legitimate conversation that Ken Starr has started up for us. It's just all this teeming hate and ignorance inside of me. We all know that Bill Clinton's alleged perjury, which I was willing to assume but now seems a bit of a stretch in legal terms, is the only "fact" that could possible matter here.
You have done nothing but spew hate toward republicans, offering no real insight. The Bush and Thomas issues are past and not directly comparable because there was no allegation of perjury or obstruction of justice, as the IC has referred about Clinton. Even if you can't, the Congress will surely stay on topic and most will put aside petty partisan politics.
(from www2.techstocks.com )
Uh huh. As Ronald Reagan said, Facts are stupid things. I prefer the Walsh branch of the Republican party to the Starr / Newt / Abrams / Vaughn branch, but I'm stupid.
Cheers, Dan. |
