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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (7546)	10/1/1998 11:42:00 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

BILL'S SEXGATE RX MIGHT KILL HIM BY DICK MORRIS THERE comes a time in the life of a presidential scandal when the cure becomes more potentially lethal to the president than the disease ever was. In legal terms, the cover-up becomes more of an issue than the misdeed it is covering up. As in Watergate, the Clinton scandals are entering this critical phase. First, there was the sex itself. People have always been willing to forgive that. Then there was the perjury, encouraging others to lie, the deceiving of a nation. Two-thirds of the American people clearly do not want to see the president removed even for these crimes. But now the scandal enters a new phase as evidence emerges of a systematic campaign to intimidate, frighten, threaten, discredit and punish innocent Americans whose only misdeed is their desire to tell the truth in public. Increasingly, it will be only these actions and these activities which pose a genuine threat to the ability of President Clinton to remain in office. He has survived the disease. Can he now survive the cure? Beginning as early as 1990, Clinton surrounded himself with detectives and negative-research specialists who collectively have become a kind of secret police force to protect his interests. Consider the public evidence of their possible activities: Kathleen Willey reports her cat was stolen and her tires were slashed on her car. Shortly thereafter, while jogging in the park, a man ran up alongside her, asked about her cat - calling it by name. He said that if she wasn't careful, her children would be next. Former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen says she was offered acting jobs through the Hollywood-connected Clinton operative Mickey Kantor in return for denying a sexual encounter with Clinton when she was Miss Arkansas. She also reports that her hotel room was ransacked - and $2,000 left untouched - in what she suspects was an effort to find incriminating tapes. Linda Tripp's confidential personnel file winds up in The New Yorker magazine in an attempt to discredit her. Dolly Kyle Browning, who claims a former longtime relationship with Clinton, relates the details of a long attempt to intimidate her and shut her up. The Washington Post reports in 1992 that the Clinton presidential campaign maintained a staff of detectives to dig up dirt on women to cow them into silence. In a telephone conversation that same year, Betsy Wright, head of the Bimbo Patrol told me much the same thing. Data from my confidential personnel file ends up in the National Enquirer - for which Clinton lawyer David Kendall is the attorney - and in Newsweek magazine in the first two weeks of September 1996. Republican consultant Ed Rollins confides to me that White House staffer Sidney Blumenthal wrote a negative story about him when Blumenthal worked for The New Yorker, using material that, Rollins said, could only have come from my FBI file. I kept Rollins' secret until I was asked a direct question in my grand-jury appearance. Data smearing House Government Operations Committee Chairman Dan Burton and Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde is released just as possible impeachment proceedings open. Paula Jones' husband is dismissed from his decades-long job with Northwest Airlines just as the CEO of the airline seeks the Democratic nomination for governor of California. The Washington Post reports detectives in Clinton's employ have spent months digging up dirt on Monica Lewinsky to discredit her. For months, I have been warning the Clinton administration the activities of their secret police force will get out of hand and might bring this presidency down. Now the process appears to be under way. What the sex scandal will never accomplish, the backlash against Clinton's efforts to contain the scandal may well accomplish: his removal from office. The chief of the secret police is Terry Lenzner, whose past employment included working for big tobacco companies to discredit whistle-blowers who sought to reveal secret company documents showing how the cigarette companies deliberately targeted young children in their advertising. His other clients include the National Enquirer, where so much of this dirt has landed. It is essential the congressional impeachment hearings probe how Lenzner is paid, what tasks he performed, and who ordered him to perform them. Since Lenzner was awarded a no-bid contract to train Haitian police at U.S. government expense, how can we be sure public money is not being used to subsidize his dirty little war against America's innocents? Congress should also probe The Washington Post's allegation that Detective Jack Palladino was paid with federal funds during the 1992 campaign to investigate the background of women who were sexual and political threats to Clinton. The hearings should also focus on who is paying for the secret police. To say that Clinton's lawyers are paying is to dodge the question. Clinton's lawyers have basically never been paid. The president and the First Lady have yet to pay them a dime, and the legal-defense fund has largely been consumed by administrative and legal expenses. If the Clinton lawyers are running on empty, you can bet that Lenzner is not. So who is footing the bill? As the answers to these questions pile up, the chances that Clinton survives this scandal will begin to drop quickly.

To: Zoltan! who wrote (7546)	10/1/1998 12:49:00 PM
From: cool	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 13994

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by Ralph Nader: Memorandum Representative Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives Senator Trent Lott, Majority Leader, U.S. Senate Senator Thomas A. Daschle, Minority Leader, U.S. Senate Representative Richard A. Gephardt, Minority Leader, House of Representatives FROM: Ralph Nader P.O. Box 19312 Washington, DC 20036 202-387-8034 RE: National Advisory Referendum DATE: October 1, 1998 There is growing consternation throughout our country that the prolonged impeachment inquiry/hearings/trial process will divide, deplete and demoralize the nation no matter which way it turns out. Both sides on this Clinton/Lewinsky matter are repeatedly referring to the opinions of the people to justify their courses of action. The Democratic partisans cite the polls as supporting no impeachment process with the President remaining in office. But there are polls for the Republican partisans as well, showing damage to the Democrats running for election because of this scandal. There is a way out of the inevitable incriminations, opportunity costs and other unintended consequences that are harmful to the body politic and to many important decisions that our government must make in the coming months. The way is for the Congress and the White House to enact legislation that provides for an advisory national referendum on election day in November, when the polls are to be open for regular elections, to decide the matter. The legislation would provide that the two branches of government would agree to abide by the decision -- an up or down vote on President Clinton staying in office to settle the controversy over the Lewinsky affair and the Starr Report's allegations. The advantages of the advisory referendum are (1) The subject matter is not complicated and raises issues that the people are quite as qualified as their representatives to decide. (This is not a matter of complicated finance, technology or foreign relations; it affects the most fundamental of ethical judgments on matters of human behavior that are not unique and quite familiar to the millions of voters.) (2) The materials are widely available to read, view and digest at no expense to the electorate. (3) An advisory referendum will provide the citizens of this country with a sense of participation in an age when so many of them believe they are shut out or excluded from any voice or impact on public issues. Finally, there is an accepted decisiveness to a referendum that may limit the recriminations and bitterness that will accompany a contested deliberation stemming from personally-based misbehavior by the President. This proposal need not be viewed as any precedent, first because the legislation would just provide for one such referendum pursuant to an agreement by the parties to abide by the results and, second, because of the uniquely personal kind of behavior that is to be judged. Were this proposal to be adopted, we can be assured of a date certain to "put this matter behind us" on the evening of November 3, 1998. For the people, informed as never before, will have spoken in numbers that will surely reverse the lower and lower turnouts at the polls in recent decades. A reversal of that trend can only be healthy for our democracy. Please see the attached draft legislation. ------ National Advisory Referendum Act Procedures are established under this Act for the establishment of a National Advisory Referendum. (a) Statement of Purpose. Congress finds that: (1) citizens are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the extended inquiry into the Clinton/Lewinsky matter, and the allegations contained in the report of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, which is crowding out other issues of national import; (2) the availability of a non-binding National Advisory Referendum to appear on the national ballot on November 3, 1998 would allow citizens to express their will and make elected representatives more responsive to their wishes. (b) Procedures: (1) Congress shall direct any state, commonwealth or territory receiving federal funds to place a non-binding referendum on the ballot for the national elections to be held in November of 1998. (2) The referendum shall pose to the electorate the following question which shall be answered with a "Yes" or a "No": Should President William Jefferson Clinton remain in office? (3) The states, commonwealth and territories shall tabulate the results of the National Advisory Referendum as soon as practicable and transmit such results to the Speaker of the House of Representatives no later than 7 days after Election Day. The Speaker shall, within 10 days after Election Day, compile, total and publish the results. (4) The National Advisory Referendum shall not be binding on any branch or agency of government or any other person or entity. However, it shall stand as a statement of the will of the people, and Government officials and elected representatives should act to implement the National Advisory Referendum results in exercising their duties. * end of story *