Throughout the evening Monday night, CNN news briefly reported that Monica Lewinsky met prosecutors from Kenneth Starr's Independent Counsel office and told them that she had a sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton, but refused to say that "Clinton told her to lie about it."

Wolf Blitzer intoned, "This is consistent with what she said in her deposition."

So, what is it that Monica Lewinsky was told by the President - now that it appears that she is going to now admit to a "sexual relationship" which Bill Clinton has denied? If, as has been reported, Monica was told by the President, as apparently other women with whom he was sexually involved have reported, "If you deny it, and I deny it, there is nothing they can do..." is that obstruction of justice? After all, he would say, and Monica would agree, he didn't TELL her to lie about it. He just suggested it.

In other news, Kenneth Starr, who has won by far the majority of the legal battles with the president, won another victory yesterday when the U.S. Appeals Court ruled, "A government attorney may not invoke the attorney-client privilege in response to grand jury questions seeking information relating to the possible commission of a federal crime."

I'm not a lawyer, but I figured that President had no way of winning the "attorney-client" ploy to avoid White House lawyers testifying before the Grand Jury. Those lawyers in question are not Bill Clinton's lawyers. They are the people's lawyers. The people pay them. It is the people, through the Grand Jury, who want to ask them some questions.

At the end of nearly every report on the subject of Clinton, Lewinsky and the Grand Jury, CNN ended the report by saying that the President is "still riding high in the polls."

Is he? CNN did not mention which poll they were referring to, or when it was taken, so I checked to see what kind of recent report on that subject the CNN Website was reporting. There was nothing on their Website about the president and polls. I did an Internet Search. Guess what? I couldn't find ANY recently taken poll showing the President's approval rating. The Gallup poll, which is the polling group that has tracked the President's approval rating for most recent presidents, was headlining the American public's view on Irish reunification. While they did frequently polls on this subject from the breaking of the story in January to March when the public's mood appeared to be changing toward the president, I could find no report of any poll taken on this subject since March.

I suspect that the satisfaction with Bill Clinton, stonewaller and enabler of China missile plans just may very well be at a record low, which is why no new polls are available.

So, here we are, six months after the Monica Lewinsky story broke, being fed old news by the president's media apologists, and the main figure has finally admitted to prosecutors that she had sex with the president. She is going to testify and, horror of horrors, White House attorneys are going to have to testify to that nefarious figure against whom Clinton advisor James Carville declared war back in February. Once quiet Republican leaders, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, are threatening impeachment if Clinton refuses to respond to the Starr subpoena.

So, does this all mean that someone has won the war and it isn't James Carville? Sure looks that way.

But wait! Is this what James Carville was trying to avoid, or is it what he was trying to achieve? Gilbert Chance, a reader, suggests in an e-mail that it might be the latter. And, he presents a strong case. He wrote: "Every time I hear James Carville, he makes me wonder what he is trying to sell. What is he really doing and to or for whom is he doing it?

"With all his attacking of Kenneth Starr, I really wonder. Look at what he has really stirred up and ask yourself if he is actually trying to get someone to go after Clinton - not trying to defend Clinton. "Look at the facts. It is James Carville who is actually responsible for what Kenneth Starr is doing. It is James Carville who is responsible for the Monica Lewinsky hearings in the first place.

"Remember Gennifer Flowers? She was not going to say anything about HER affair with Bill Clinton, then someone in Arkansas leaked information about their affair to the media."

Back in 1992 during the first Clinton Presidential campaign, the female name closely linked with Bill Clinton was Gennifer Flowers. When the news was leaked, and she was called a liar. On ABC's "Prime-Time Live" in January 1992, Sam Donaldson asked Hillary Clinton about the Gennifer Flowers transcript of audio tapes of a conversation between Clinton and Flowers in which "she signs off a conversation by saying, 'Goodbye, darling," and he says, 'Goodbye, baby.':

Hillary shot back, "Oh, that's not true! It just not true!" That set the stage for Carville and others to attack Gennifer Flowers as a liar. As Chance noted, "She had to defend herself and went public only because of James Carville." It was James Carville who headed the efforts to defuse the Gennifer Flowers situation back in 1992 and that led to a conflict with Hillary. Hillary is the left wing socialist in the Clinton family and campaign strategist James Carville, along with Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulos, knew that the only way Clinton could win was to present him as a centrist.

"Gennifer Flowers had to defend herself and went public only because of James Carville calling her a liar." Chance explained, "The same thing happened with Paula Jones. She was not going to say anything, then one of Clinton's drivers from his governor days leaked the story of Paula Jones being sexually propositioned by Governor Clinton. But, when Carville and later Clinton attorney Bob Bennett made the same accusations about her being a liar and 'trailer park trash' - another lady was just trying to protect herself and her name so she went to court."

"It was during the Paula Jones depositions that the story about Monica Lewinsky came out. Now, Carville is accusing Kenneth Starr of being responsible for all that is going on. Yet, Kenneth Starr works directly for Janet Reno, who answers only to Bill Clinton. If Kenneth Starr were really out of line, as Carville claims, he could be stopped by Janet Reno- or by Bill Clinton himself."

Interesting! Carville claims he is "at war" with Kenneth Starr, yet, it is really James Carville who has caused the hearings to be conducted in the first place! Is James Carville's "war" really merely a complex scheme to oust Clinton? Gilbert Chance thinks it may very well be. "The real reasons why these hearings are taking place is because these women are only trying to defend themselves from vicious attacks on TV and in the print media which were brought about by James Carville and Bob Bennett. They went after the women hoping that this would bring it to the public's attention. They were pretending to be on Clinton's side - whereas they really were trying to oust Clinton to save the Democrats in the November election."

Chance once served in the Navy on a submarine tender. Frankly, such a complex plot would never occur to my female mind. Sounds like a military kind of thing.

However, now that Chance mentions it, it sure would explain another aspect of the James Carville story that puzzles me. He's evidently quite happily married to Mary Matalin, an arch conservative who was George Bush's Deputy campaign director. They co-authored a book entitled, "All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President_ (Simon & Schuster, Random House, 1994).

Is James Carville being motivated in his attack on Kenneth Starr by his love of war, his love of politics or his for his loving conservative wife and baby daughter?

To comment:mmostert@originalsources.com