By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, www.originalsources.com
If you smile while telling a lie, does that make lying not a lie? It appears that the defenders of Bill Clinton believe that and think the American people believe it too. Yesterday, in the last major Press Conference that Mike McCurry will hold before leaving the White House, he was asked:
Q Congressman Conyers, about an hour ago, had a news conference on the Hill, and he had a lot of complaints the way the Judiciary Committee majority is handling this whole investigation. He felt that it really is not nonpartisan. He didn't like the way the rules are being played. Does the White House share his complaints?
As I pointed out in a column only 6 days ago, in which I asked,
MR. MCCURRY: We're well aware of the concerns expressed by Mr. Conyers and we have been concerned about some of the debate on the Hill. There have been in the last day or so discussion about modeling some of this work on the kind of work that was done by Chairman Peter Rodino's committee back in 1974. Remember that that effort was bipartisan, it was dignified, information was gathered and carefully assessed before it was released publicly, and the nature and seriousness of the offenses that were eventually voted as articles of impeachment required a process that was as careful and deliberate as the one they had.
This matter has now been investigated for eight months by an independent counsel created by an act of Congress. The facts, in abundant detail, have been made available to the American people. And the notion that the process should be somewhat different reflecting that reality is a concern of Democrats on the Hill and obviously a concern shared here at the White House.
Six days ago the Democrats were scurrying about trying to convince the American people that the Congress should wrap up its investigation in thirty days - so it would all be over before the election and, therefore presumably, not create problems for the Democrats on election day November 3rd. This ploy bombed. The American people are well aware that they can't couldn't adjudicate a traffic ticket in 30 days, much less an impeachment. McCurry was asked by a reporter:
Q Mike, one of the articles of impeachment against Nixon was lying to the American people. Do you not see a parallel there?
And McCurry offered the following bald-faced denial of parallel:
MR. MCCURRY: What Richard Nixon did, as the House Judiciary Committee looked at it, was he used the powers of his office to delay, impede, obstruct the investigation of an unlawful entry into the opposition party's political headquarters. He covered up and concealed the scope of the unlawful entry by those who did it. He misused government agencies to conceal the extent of the crimes that had been committed. He obstructed the investigations that were then undertaken to determine what the facts were. He abused his authority by obtaining confidential information from the Internal Revenue Service, which he then misused in violation of the constitutional rights of American citizens. He misused the FBI, the Secret Service to conduct unlawful wiretapping of American citizens. He maintained a secret unit in the White House to violate the constitutional rights of citizens and refused to provide information in a timely way to Congress, in contempt of Congress. So there's no parallel whatsoever.
The reporter queried:
Q Would you say this White House did not delay, impede and obstruct the Starr investigation?
And McCurry responded:
MR. MCCURRY: I would not -- in the fashion that was done by the Nixon administration, in subordination of the Constitution, absolutely not. Little history lesson. (Laughter.)
The smiling McCurry, well liked by the Washington press corps for his jokes, nimbly set them up with a denial of facts, in other words, a plain bald-faced lie, that Clinton did NOT subordinate the Constitution, whereas he knows perfectly well that Clinton is charged with the exact same crimes Nixon was accused of - lying, obstruction of Justice and abuse of power. They are all subordination of the Constitution. The next question he was asked was:
Q Mike, do you know of any secret police operation in this White House?
This question referred to a story which said Dick Morris, the political advisor who engineered both Clinton's re-election as governor after his defeat in 1980 and his re-election as president after the Democrat defeat in the 1994 mid-term elections. Morris apparently testified before the Grand Jury that there was a secret "police" that kept women who had sex with Clinton from telling their stories to the media. McMurry responded:
MR. MCCURRY: I do not. And let me -- here's the danger of grand jury testimony that is just sort of dumped unedited into the public domain. This arises, as you well know, from testimony that Mr. Dick Morris gave in front of the grand jury. He has been saying exactly that same thing, writing exactly that same thing for weeks and weeks now, and it got all the attention it deserved, which is to say it got zero attention, because, as he admitted to those of you who contacted him yesterday, he has no factual information to support that allegation. He just kind of made it up.
But when he made it up in front of the grand jury and suddenly some people treated it as news, I'm not sure I understand why it's news. It doesn't have any more merit or value dumped in the raw and unedited form on the streets now by the committee than it did when he put it in whatever venue he had for punditry. You know, punditry doesn't automatically make grand jury testimony more enlightening.
Morris "just kind of made it up?" Out of the blue he just decided to commit perjury before the Grand Jury - and McCurry is unperturbed? Mike McCurry knows full well that controlling the "bimbo eruptions" has been a required part of Clinton handling for twenty years. On the July 17, 1992 "Sally Jesse Raphael Show;" the former Miss Arkansas Sally Perdue discussed her sexual affair with Bill Clinton. The show was largely censored by the national news media - so Americans did not know detail of these matters which were front page news in England, South Africa and other nations.
In 1992 the Clinton campaign hired one of America's more colorful private investigators, Jack Palladino. The Washington Post reported: "The Clinton campaignis conducting a wide-ranging effort to deflect allegations about the Democratic nominee's private life and has retained a San Francisco private investigator and lawyer to discredit stories about women claiming to have had relationships with the Arkansas governor..."
Mike McCurry knows that very well. However, he believes most Americans have forgotten it and comes up with the preposterous comment that "he made it up in front of the grand jury." A reporter asked:
Q So you're saying this former top aide to Mr. Clinton perjured himself in front of the grand jury?
Obviously that is exactly what McCurry was saying. However, he promptly denied it:
MR. MCCURRY: No, I don't -- haven't seen his testimony, so I don't know the nature of it. Normally, grand jury testimony is secret. I haven't seen the transcript of what he said, it hasn't been released -- it's been seen by some and it's been reported on by some of you, but we haven't seen the nature of his testimony. So there's no way we can know.
This is a story that isn't new. And, it is a story in which the Washington press corps is intimately implicated. When Gennifer Flowers came forward with her story in 1992, it was well publicized overseas, but not in America. There was a massive media censorship of the Gennifer Flowers tapes, for example. When Accuracy in Media asked, "Why the media censorship?" Eleanor Clift in Newsweek wrote, "The Truth is the press is willing to cut Clinton some slack because they like him - and what he has to say." Steven Stark of the Boston Globe agreed saying, "The question is whether the coverage, as a whole, has become so one-sided that the mainstream press is not giving the public the whole truth. That has clearly happened. Why have so many baby-boom reporters boosted Clinton? In part, it's because they identify strongly with a liberal, semi-hip contemporary who seems to share their values."
To be accurate Stark should have said "who seems to share their lack of values." There is absolutely no way that a free and moral people could be enticed to vote for a man they KNEW was a liar and an adulterer. People vote for those who they believe are like themselves and share their own views and values. The American people now know, if they have been conscious for the past six weeks and have access to TV, radio or newspapers, that the President of the United States has admitted to perverted sex with an intern in the Oval Office. He has lied to his wife, to his daughter, to his best friends and supporters, to the American people and to the Grand Jury.
On the one hand we have a population that claims to be incensed that Linda Tripp taped her "friend" Monica Lewinsky, after being pressured by Lewinsky to commit a felony by lying to the Grand Jury. That, the talks shows and the spin-doctors tried to sell to the American people, was lying to and betrayal of a friend.
Yet, when Clinton actually lies to and betrays his friends, that's OK. On Crossfire yesterday Jbob Novak asked James Carville, "The president lied to you. You went on National television and repeated his lies." Did that bother Carville? He said it didn't. In fact he went on to say,
"The president is a good man who did a bad thing. He's been a suburb president. He's my dear friend. I am going to defend him. I am going to defend him against unfair and unjust attacks. I'm going to defend him against unfair and unjust ways of investigating him and I'm going to defend his record.
"He did lie to me about the deficit. He said he would cut the deficit in half and he eliminated it. He said he's create jobs, and he created 16 million jobs. He did lie to me about sex, but I'm open and when I see the injustice that is being heaped on this president, and I see what this independent counsel has done with $50 million dollars of investigation that is nothing but sex and when I see how Newt Gingrich is orchestrating this entire thing to try to overturn an American election, I am going to be in the middle of that and I am going to fight."
This is a man who has made millions of dollars lying to the American people for Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has denied responsibility for every problem -Waco, a plummeting stock market, Filegate, Travelgate, Monica Lewinsky - while claiming he is responsible for the economy - as long as it's booming, of course. Don't expect him to take any blame for the plummeting stock market.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com