- WASHINGTON (AFP) - Bill Clinton's
post-presidential woes took a turn for the worse Tuesday as key Republicans
who led the impeachment charge against him two years ago subpoenaed detailed
records regarding a controversial last-minute presidential pardon.
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- The move comes on top of a series of scandals dogging
the former leader since he left office January 20, including suggestions
the Clintons took with them some White House furniture, and a media outcry
over his choice of pricey office space which tax-payers pay for.
-
- Clinton on Tuesday was calm in the aftermath of the controversy,
after abandoning his plan for the expensive mid-town New York space he
first considered, for a building in the less expensive neighborhood of
Harlem.
-
- "I have decided to locate my offices in this building
-- if we can work it out," Clinton told reporters, flashing a broad
smile, before approaching a thick crowd of well-wishers and vigorously
shaking hands.
-
- President George W. Bush, who campaigned on the promise
of uniting the country, kept himself above the fray.
-
- "I think it's time to move on," he told reporters
aboard Air Force One on Tuesday. But, he added, "the Congress is going
to do what they are going to do."
-
- At the heart of the furor is Clinton's last-minute pardon
of Marc Rich, a multimillionaire businessman accused of massive US tax
fraud who fled to Switzerland in 1983 in the face of 48-million-dollar
tax evasion charges.
-
- His ex-wife, Denise Rich has been a generous contributor
to Democratic causes, including a 450,000 dollar donation for Clinton's
presidential library fund.
-
- Chaired by Republican Dan Burton, the House Government
Reform Committee on Tuesday demanded that Denise Rich's bank records be
subpoenaed to check if the funds had actually been illegally channeled
by Rich.
-
- Two other subpoenas were sent out Tuesday morning to
the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Presidential Library
foundation for information on all financial pledges and transactions.
-
- Democrats on the committee, while not overtly defending
Clinton, were looking into the action.
-
- "We are in the process of evaluating to see if the
subpoenas were appropriate. Some of them seen overly broad," said
committee ranking democrat Henry Waxman's spokesman Phil Scahliro. "(Last
week's) hearing did not produce any wrongdoing."
-
- The House Committee also sent out letters to the US Secret
Service, National Archives, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA
requesting by February 20 records of "all telephone records, telephone
logs, or telephone operator records from June 1, 1999 to January 20, 2001,
relating to calls between President Clinton," members of his staff
and Denise Rich and Jack Quinn, the former White House lawyer who represented
Rich in his campaign for a presidential pardon.
-
- The pardon, one of 140 signed by Clinton, surprised even
some of his allies.
-
- "The Rich pardon is a bad precedent. It appears
to set a double standard for the wealthy and powerful and it is an end-run
around the judicial process," Waxman said last week.
-
- On Wednesday the US Senate will be holding its own hearing
into the case, and has called upon Roger Adams, pardon attorney with the
US Department of Justice, former deputy attorney general Eric Holder and
Quinn, to testify.
-
- Although presidential pardons are absolute, the eventual
high level of negative publicity around the Rich case could damage Clinton's
credibility.
-
- Philip Purcell, chairman of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter,
which paid Clinton more than 100,000 dollars for his first post-presidency
speech last week, reportedly told clients that the investment house "clearly
made a mistake" by inviting the former leader to speak.
-
- Clinton was impeached by the Republican-led House in
1998 following his testimony regarding his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
He was acquitted by the US Senate in early 1999.
-
From: jr@rense.com X-Sender: sightings@mindspring.com Date: Thu, 15 Feb
2001 22:10:17 -0800 To: jneff@arkansas.net, webmaster@sightings.com, nde@ipa.net,
jr@rense.com Subject: COMMENTAn article for Rense.com
-
- pls be sure this ftps...the guy has been screaming about
anti-clinton bias and stretched himself thin to write this...not good for
a story but I'll stick it on this story as a comment...lemme know when
it is up.
-
-
-
- Comment
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- Who Pulls The Strings Of The Puppet Press?
- By Morgan Moalleman
4-16-1
-
-
- The national press, in recent weeks, siezed one last
opportunity to salute outgoing President Bill Clinton and his most "undignified
exit." In yet another example of the mass demonization of President
Clinton, the press squeezed just a little more blood from the Clinton stone.
In a decade long quest to discredit and shame the last legally-elected
president, the press was anxious to add a few more items to their laundry
list of "Clinton Scandals."
-
- They bring up the charges, the charges are disproved,
but the word "scandal" seems to just hang around - unfounded,
yet perpetuated by the media. How many times have you heard the press
refer to the Clinton "scandals"? What "scandals" are
they alluding to? Murdering Vince Foster? Fathering a child with a black
prostitute? Whitewater? Travelgate? The FBI filegate? - All of these allegations
have been painstakingly investigated and here's the clincher - NOT ONE
of these charges was substantiated in any legal process. The lone, credible
scandal, confirmed by the 11th hour plea bargain with Independent Council
Robert Ray, was the fact that Clinton gave a misleading deposition in a
civil lawsuit that was later dismissed by the presiding judge for lacking
substance. Volumes could be written as to the reasons a partisan hawk like
former Independent Council Ken Starr was even allowed to expand his investigation
of Whitewater into Clinton's sex life. With what is now a matter of public
record, score one for "scandal".
-
- Considering that President Clinton is the most investigated
man in history, one would think that there would be a bit more meat to
the media argument that President Clinton is a scandalous wretch. But it
now appears that the press is not yet satisfied. More "scandal"
is required to feed their insatiable addiction for bashing all that is
Clinton.
-
- The bias displayed in the reporting of Clinton's alleged
misdeeds would be laughable if it weren't so meticulously orchestrated.
How many times have you heard them talk about his undignified exit without
EVEN MENTIONING that the charges of "vandalism" were yet another
bogus, trumped up, smear campaign. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer,
when pressed to give details about the alleged "vandalism", declined
to mention specifics or provide photographic evidence. Fleischer only stated
that the Bush administration has "declined to open a formal investigation"
on the matter and would like to "move on". But that was all the
press needed to write their scathing editorials and provide fodder for
talk radio and television pundits. No consequences whatsoever for the
perpetrators who spread the lies - the un-named "high level"
Republican sources. Not one follow up article to find out who these sources
were and why they lied in order to taint the Clinton exit from the White
House.
-
- The Marc Rich pardon caused another hailstorm of criticism.
Clinton has stated that the reason he granted the pardon was because he
was presented with a convincing argument that Rich was tried in a criminal
court when he should've been tried in a civil court. That is the President's
prerogative. He is entitled, under the constitution, to pardon any individual
"unless they have been impeached". A 400 page report, outlining
Rich's legal case for a pardon, was never quoted or scrutinized by anyone
in the media, indicating that the news organizations did not research the
legal merits of the case. In stating this, I am not defending the Rich
pardon, rather, I am pointing out the inept journalism on display by the
mainstream news outlets. A more interesting aspect of this particular "scandal"
involves Vice President Dick Cheney. According to New Yorker magazine,
vice President Cheney's own chief of staff argued vehemently for clemency
on behalf of Marc Rich for many years as a member of his legal team. So
it's no surprise that the Bush administration wants nothing to do with
the criticism surrounding this pardon. But the mainstream media has ignored
this nasty little tidbit in their reporting. Big surprise.
-
- And then we have the "theft of items on Air force
One" which was revealed as pure fabrication by an Air Force press
release. According to the Air Force Press Office, the only things missing
from Air Force One was a few glasses and a couple hand towels. If you read
mainstream media coverage, you'd think that Clinton stripped the plane
of anything of value - oh yes, then sold it on Ebay to make a few bucks.
And it only took Resident Bush two months to acknowledge this fabrication
for what it was - a lie. Once again, no consequences for the un-named sources
spreading bold faced lies, just more Clinton bashing by the press corps.
-
- Furthermore, we have the uproar over the Presidential
"gifts".... oh, I get it. It's ok for Republican presidents to
receive gifts but an abomination for the Clintons to do likewise. The press
consistently distorted the fact that the gifts were given to the Clintons
throughout the 8 year span of the Clinton administration and ONLY ACCEPTED
recently. But the right wing truth distortion machine was hard at work
convincing the public that the evil Clintons were accepting gifts in the
waning days of the administration to beat some Senate gift rule deadline.
The first George Bush administration walked away with approximately $140,000
worth of personal gifts upon vacating the White House. That is in one 4
year term. The Clinton's gifts were valued at $190,000 - that's over an
8 year term. Not to mention the 2.5 million dollar BelAir mansion that
was bought for the Reagans upon their entry into private life. And isn't
it amusing that we have heard NOTHING in regards to other Reagan gifts
- what were the rest of their gifts worth? Not surprisingly, the press
is not interested in digging up that bit of information. That would interfere
with the institutional deification of former president Reagan.
-
- It doesn't stop there. The Clintons were also accused
of "stealing" gifts that were meant to remain in the White House.
Never mind that the office of the White House curator has acknowledged
that cataloging errors were responsible for certain items being delivered
to the Clintons. And that the Clintons pledged to return the items after
learning of the error. But the press would have you believe that Clinton
himself carried them out the back door of the White House and into the
moving van!
-
- Does the biased press make an issue of these distortions
and lies as is their job? They do not.
-
- The Republicans cook up delicious little lies and the
press laps it up and regurgitates it for mass public consumption. The Republicans
have honed their craft to perfection during the Clinton administration.
Accuse and retreat. No accountability on any front. One can't help wondering
if anyone in the press corps has a shred of credibility left. And they
accuse the Clinton's of being shameless...
-
- What IS shameless is the glaring media bias against the
Clintons. A symphony of lies and misinformation to further tear down a
man who has done an admirable and effective job as the president of this
great nation - in spite of unprecedented resistance from a hostile Republican
congress. There was a time in America when we believed in a concept of
journalistic integrity. There was a time that investigative journalism
actually got to the bottom of things - revealed the truth. Sadly, the Watergate
press corps of the 70's has devolved into the Monica Lewinsky press corps
of the 90's. God help us all.
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