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Note that the next chapter, Murder, Inc., explores the nastiest iterations of this theme in depth.

from TPDL 1999-May-20, from Investors Business Daily:

Not-So-Secret Police?

Some of the ugliest things President Clinton's foes said about him have turned out to be basically true. But the charge last year that he dispatched ''secret police'' to bully witnesses and investigators seemed over the top. Was it?

Kathleen Willey, one of many women who have testified against the president, is filling in details to her story about a man who warned her to keep her mouth shut. She's identified him as someone in the president's circle of family and friends.

Meanwhile, a new book names several operatives who, if there is a Clinton Mafia, could qualify as agents. It also puts the first lady in the middle of such a wicked project.

The preponderance of facts suggests it exists:

Not long after the 1992 campaign, private investigator Terry Lenzner met with Clinton aide Harold Ickes in the White House. Lenzner runs Investigative Group International, a Washington- based detective agency. Soon after, IGI was doing work for the Clintons' legal defense fund.

Later, Clinton's personal lawyer, David Kendall, hired Lenzner's group to dig up dirt on Paula Jones, prosecutors on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's staff and GOP lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, among others, says author Joyce Milton in her new book, ''The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton.''

IGI agents didn't stop there, Milton says. They also reportedly snooped into the backgrounds of Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and Willey.

Estranged Clinton campaign guru Dick Morris fingers IGI as ''the White House secret police.'' That's not a stretch, Milton said, ''judging by the revolving door between IGI and the administration.''

Those who jumped from IGI to the administration include:

Raymond Kelly, who became Clinton's Secret Service chief.

Ricki Seidman, who joined the Justice Department.

Brooke Shearer, who joined Hillary's staff and ran a White House intern program before moving to a job at the Interior Department.

Even Lenzner's daughter. She became an intern to former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos.

Meantime, those who left the administration for IGI include:

Former FBI General Counsel Howard Shapiro, who has signed on as Lenzner's lawyer. Shapiro was supposed to get to the bottom of the Filegate scandal. Instead, he did damage control for the White House, sneaking officials a peek at FBI agent Gary Aldrich's manuscript to ''Unlimited Access.''

Former FBI official Larry Potts (of Ruby Ridge fame), who's now an IGI executive.

Milton, who started writing Hillary's biography as an admirer, suggests the first lady is behind the hiring of private eyes.

Before Clinton's first run at the White House, Hillary hired detective Ivan Duda to track down all his mistresses. That way, Duda told Milton, Hillary would be prepared for any charges that might come up in the campaign.

In 1992, Hillary's law partner, Vince Foster, was tasked with hiring private detective Jerry Parks to further probe Clinton's affairs, says British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in ''The Secret Life of Bill Clinton.'' (Parks was killed in 1993.)

What's more, Hillary in 1992 helped enlist a private security agency to snuff a rumor that Clinton had sex with a black prostitute, Milton says.

They weren't the only private dicks hired. The Clinton-Gore campaign had two more on retainer to smash ''bimbo eruptions.'' One was Anthony Pellicano of Los Angeles and the other was Jack Palladino of San Francisco.

More than likely, bringing Lenzner into the White House fold was also Hillary's idea.

She and Lenzner go way back. They worked on the Watergate hearings. They also served on the board of Legal Services Corp. and have a mutual friend in Mickey Kantor, another Legal Services veteran.

Asked if Hillary was a client, Lenzner refused to answer in a May 1998 deposition by Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group suing the Clinton administration on several fronts, including campaign finance irregularities and FBI files on Republicans. He cited attorney-client privilege.

But Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton points out that Lenzner had no problem naming other clients.

What's more, Hillary's friend Brooke Shearer left IGI, where she worked as one of Lenzner's operatives, to join Hillary's staff. Shearer is married to Strobe Talbott, Clinton's old Oxford roommate, an ex-Time magazine writer and now the State Department's top official dealing with Russia.

There's yet another connection. And here's where it gets spooky.

Willey claims that, on the eve of her January 1998 deposition in the Jones sexual harassment case, a strange jogger approached her near her home and asked her about her punctured car tires and her kids and lost cat - by name. ''Get the message?'' he said. She's since picked the man out of a photo with Clinton.

Despite the threat, Willey went on to testify - though without much candor - that Clinton forced himself on her in the Oval Office. Starr later gave her a lie detector test, which she passed. Clinton denied her charges before a grand jury.

Appearing last week on CNBC's ''Hardball,'' Willey would not name the jogger, saying Starr is still investigating the case. But the next night, host Chris Matthews identified him as Brooke Shearer's twin brother.

Cody Shearer worked as a subcontractor for IGI on at least one case, Milton says. In 1992, he was charged with digging up dirt on President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle. (Shearer is reportedly close to Vice President Al Gore's fund-raiser pal, Peter Knight.)

On CNBC's ''Rivera Live'' last week, Lenzner denied Shearer ever worked for him.

But under oath during his May 1998 Judicial Watch deposition, Lenzner admitted Shearer ''was a subcontractor on one job for us.''

Through his lawyer, Shearer has vehemently denied threatening Willey, and says he can prove it.

But someone did. It's hard to believe she'd fabricate such a detailed story. And someone put clusters of nails in the middle treads of three of her tires; the mechanic said it was no accident. Someone also likely stole her cat, which is a common act of revenge in the South.

Would a president sign off on such an attack against a citizen? Not likely. Now ask yourself: Would this president?

from TPDL 1999-May-14, from NewsMax:

The Lessons of Chung and Willey

When historians ponder the question of how an already impeached American president managed to stay one jump ahead of the sheriff through continuing financial scandals, questions about mysterious deaths, new rape allegations and frightening lies to cover up nuclear espionage, this is a week they'd do well to focus on.

Just ask Chinagate figure Johnny Chung and alleged Clinton sexual assault victim Kathleen Willey, whose answer to that question in accounts offered on Tuesday might be summed up in two words: witness intimidation.

In testimony before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Chung revealed that his Chinagate handlers transmitted to him the clear message, "If you keep your mouth shut, you and your family will be safe." The threat came from a man Chung identified as Robert Luu, who also suggested that attorneys' fees could be paid and even a possible presidential pardon arranged as long as Chung hung tough.

As Chung unraveled some of Chinagate for Congress, Kathleen Willey was preparing for her first television appearance in 14 months, wherein she would finger two friends of the president in a scheme to silence her about what she says is her own Oval Office sexual assault.

Speaking to CNBC's Chris Matthews, Willey said she could positively ID a person "associated with" Bill Clinton who threatened her family's safety two days before she testified in the Paula Jones case.

Based on what Willey had told him off-camera, Matthews named Cody Shearer, a longtime friend of Bill with ties to the White House's favorite secret policeman, Terry Lenzner.

Willey also charged that former Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor had pressured a key corroborating witness to her story, Julie Hiatt Steele, to change her account -- which kept independent counsel Ken Starr from including Willey's charge in his impeachment referral.

But Chung and Willey aren't the only Clinton scandal witnesses to complain about threats of physical violence. Others have gone on the record with similar stories, much to the chagrin of an American press corps that pretends not to notice:

"I want to stay alive," Chinagate's Charlie Trie explained while on the lam in 1997, when asked by an ABC News reporter why he'd fled to China after his involvement in suspicious payments to the Clinton Defense Fund and Democratic National Committee became known.

"I could sink their story quicker than they can lie about it, if I could get into a position where I wouldn't get my head beaten off," Jim McDougal revealed to an Arkansas pol in 1992 about the Clintons' Whitewater cover story. Four years later, McDougal sought refuge as a government witness, only to die under questionable circumstances after cooperating for 19 months.

"Some very scary things were going on. ... I was getting threats. I had some saying I would be beaten up. I had some saying I was going to be killed," said Gennifer Flowers in a July 1997 radio interview, explaining why she began to tape record her 1990 phone conversations with Bill Clinton. Flowers named Clinton as the person she believed responsible for the three break-ins at her apartment.

"I would not cross these people for fear of my life," Monica Lewinsky told Linda Tripp in October 1997. Tripp's tape recorder would capture Lewinsky in no fewer than four such expressions of concern for her physical safety. Tripp herself became fearful after the White House threatened to "destroy" her.

"I was told that if I didn't cooperate, that they knew I went jogging and they couldn't guarantee the safety of my pretty little legs," revealed Sally Perdue in 1994, when a British reporter questioned her about attempts to hush up a 1983 Clinton affair. Perdue identifed the person delivering the threat as Democratic operative Ron Tucker.

"I believe my father was killed to protect Bill Clinton's political career," said Gary Parks, son of onetime Clinton campaign security chief Luther "Jerry" Parks, who was gunned down while driving home from a Little Rock restaurant in 1993. The Parks quote was covered in a 1994 New York Times report on "Clinton haters," which quickly added that there was no evidence to support the younger Parks' suspicions.

No evidence? Tell it to Johnny Chung and Kathleen Willey.

from TPDL 1999-May-19, from NewsMax:

New Broaddrick Shocker:'I Was Followed'

Just a week after Kathleen Willey went public with new details about a stranger who tracked her down and warned against testifying in the Paula Jones case, Inside Cover has learned that Juanita Broaddrick says she was also followed just days before her interview with House impeachment investigators.

And, in yet another mysterious twist mirroring Willey's allegations, Broaddrick reveals that her house pets were set loose and that her phone was tampered with shortly after her first contacts with the press in early 1998.

Though second hand accounts of unwanted sexual encounters with President Clinton now number over a dozen, Broaddrick and Willey are the only women who have personally described overpowering physical assaults on the record.

Willey has given sworn testimony that she was accosted in a "very forceful" way during a 1993 Oval Office job interview. Broaddrick told NBC News last January that Clinton attacked her in a Little Rock hotel room when he was Arkansas Attorney General, biting her till she submitted to intercourse.

Broaddrick told NewsMax.com's Carl Limbacher late Tuesday, "There was a small gray car parked for about a day and a half up on the highway just outside my property and when I left I noticed it would follow me." Broaddrick said she and her husband never got close enough to read the license plate but assumed the car belonged to a reporter.

"It never really frightened me," Broaddrick quickly added. "But it's just that the person was there."

The Arkansas nursing home operator was more concerned by what happened after she began talking to NBC's Lisa Myers last year. "The only incident that frightened us was when our house was broken into while we were gone for a few days. Somebody got into the house and took the tape from my answering machine. And then they let my three cats out."

Broaddrick stresses that there was no sign of forced entry -- but neither was there any explanation for the missing phone tape and mysteriously freed pets. "The last thing I did before we left was make sure the cats were in the house. And, of course, the answering machine tape just disappeared."

She told Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's FBI agents as well as House investigators about the incident but said they didn't follow-up.

Earlier this month I. C. Smith, former head of the FBI in Arkansas who worked with Starr's Little Rock office, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that OIC prosecutors did not let his agents do their jobs and that more people would have been indicted if he had. "There was acute frustration on the part of FBI agents, " Smith told the reporter Erica Werner. "It certainly is contrary to the way we do our jobs."

In March, chief House impeachment prober David Schippers told NewsMax.com that G.O.P. leaders rushed his investigation, causing him to abandon many promising leads. In the same interview, Schippers revealed that Juanita Broaddrick had been tailed by someone prior to her interview with House investigators, a development he considered to be very serious:

"She was being followed by a guy and he was making it very obvious ... That's how they do it. They don't hide. They get right out there and look at you so that they can scare the hell out of you."

Last Tuesday Mrs. Broaddrick watched Kathleen Willey's interview on CNBC's "Hardball", during which the onetime White House volunteer described her encounter with the stranger who invoked the names of her children and cat in an attempt to scare her. Host Chris Matthews later said Willey identified the stranger to him off camera as Clinton operative Cody Shearer, who denied the charge to Matthews personally over the weekend.

Monday night Matthews apologized to Shearer, telling his audience that he found his denial "credible". Matthews added that he should have "vetted" Willey's story before he named Shearer on the air. Shearer claims to have receipts and ATM deposit slips proving he was nowhere near Willey on the day in question, according to a report in Salon Magazine Monday night.

But Broaddrick wondered why Matthews had accepted Shearer's alibi so quickly, speculating that whoever the guilty party is, "He's not going to go after Kathleen Willey without proof that he was someplace else. You can get receipts from anywhere."

from TPDL 1999-May-12, from the Associated Press:

Willey claims to know who made threats; Starr staff investigating

WASHINGTON (May 12, 1999 7:51 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Kathleen Willey says she knows who allegedly threatened her and that prosecutor Kenneth Starr's office is investigating the matter.

Appearing Tuesday night on CNBC's "Hardball" program, Willey told interviewer Chris Matthews that Starr's office had asked her not to reveal the identity of the man who she says approached her two days before she testified against President Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

"They are investigating this," Willey said of Starr's prosecutors.

Last week at the trial of one-time friend Julie Hiatt Steele, Willey said she had been frightened by an encounter in January 1998 with a stranger who knew that her cat was missing and her car tires had been slashed.

Willey said that when she asked the man how he knew these things, he made a comment leading her to believe he was referring to her imminent testimony about the president.

"It was meant to scare me," Willey said of the man's approach.

Two days after the incident, Willey testified about Clinton's allegedly unwanted sexual advance in the Oval Office.

from TPDL 1999-May-12, from NewsMax:

Kathleen Willey Links White House to Witness Intimidation

Breaking a 14 month media silence about the events surrounding her sexual assault by President Clinton, on Tuesday Kathleen Willey linked two friends of the president to separate episodes of witness intimidation.

Appearing on CNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, Willey alleged that former Commerce Secretary and longtime Clinton operative Mickey Kantor had threatened her friend Julie Hiatt Steele to get her to change her story.

Willey said that she was persuaded to go public with her own account in March 1998 only when producers for CBS's "60 Minutes" unearthed Kantor's involvement and shared the information with her:

"They told me that my friend Julie Steele had been approached by a very high ranking member of the Clinton administration questioning her about the conditions of the adoption of her child.....I decided that no woman, no person, no mother should be threatened with her child. And that was the reason I did "60 Minutes".

Willey said that "60 Minutes" producers specifically identified the administration official to her as Kantor. She told Matthews that "60 Minutes" had promised to expose the cover-up as part of the same episode where she described her assault by Clinton but instead CBS decided to withold the Kantor bombshell.

For the last year Steele has publicly claimed that it was the Office of Independent Counsel that had investigated her son's adoption to pressure her to lie. But in sworn testimony during the April trial of Susan McDougal on contempt and obstruction charges, Steele admitted that the OIC had done no such thing.

In August 1997 Steele told Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff that Willey informed her of the Clinton assault right after it happened. But later Steele claimed Willey asked her to lie. The discrepancy played a role in keeping Willey's assault charge out of the impeachment case against President Clinton.

In another shocking exchange, Ms. Willey established a separate White House link to the encounter she had with a jogger who threatened her two days before her January 1998 deposition in the Paula Jones case.

Willey told CNBC's Matthews that she was approached at dawn as she walked through her Virginia neighborhood by a total stranger who seemed to know a lot about her personal life:

"He asked me, 'Did you ever find your cat?' And I said, 'No, I haven't and we really miss him.' Then he said, 'Did you ever get those tires fixed on your car?' And I said 'No' and that's when the hair started standing up on the back of my neck."

Willey said the stranger identified her pet by name, saying, "That cat, he was a nice cat. Bullseye was his name, wasn't it?" Willey added, "He asked me about my children by name. He said, 'How are your children, Shannon and Patrick?' It was a very insidious thing and it was meant to scare me."

The former White House volunteer said she was able to identify the stranger as someone "associated with" President Clinton after being shown photos by investigators. She would not publicly reveal her tormentor's name but Matthews' questions narrowed the field down to three people:

MATTHEWS: Would I recognize the picture?

WILLEY: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Is it someone in the President's family of friends? Is it somebody related to Strobe Talbott? Is it a Shearer?

WILLEY: I can't say. I've been asked not to by the Office of Independent Counsel because they are investigating this.

Derek, Cody and Brooke Shearer are longtime friends of the Clintons who have been linked in published reports to IGI, the White House's regular private detective agency run by Terry Lenzner. Brooke Shearer is married to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

At the conclusion of the hourlong interview, Matthews asked the Virginia woman, "Would you like an apology from (President Clinton)?

Willey answered in one word, "Yes."

from TPDL 1999-Apr-16, from the Wall Street Journal, by William McGurn, a member of the Journal's editorial board:

Does Clinton Have An 'Enemies List'?

Maybe the Internal Revenue Service has learned more than we give it credit for. When congressional investigators looked into the Nixon White House 25 years ago, they found more than enough evidence to support John Dean's charges that the president had directed associates to compile an enemies list of people who were to find themselves the subject of IRS tax audits after the election. Less noted is the committee's finding that Nixon had largely been frustrated in these attempts. In other words, the IRS had resisted the Nixon effort to politicize it.

Today the situation has reversed itself. In the Nixon days, we had a president calling upon the IRS for audits that never materialized. In the Clinton days, by contrast, we already have a large number of audits of people and groups who might reasonably be described as Clinton foes, from Paula Jones, the Heritage Foundation and the Christian Coalition to Oliver North's Freedom Alliance, the National Rifle Association and five foundations associated with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. We further have an IRS desperate to prevent the release of information that would help tell us whether such audits were in fact random or taken from some new enemies list.

The latest wrinkle came late last month, when the IRS delivered 8,000 pages of material to the Landmark Legal Foundation. In January 1997, Landmark filed a Freedom of Information Act request for some simple information: the names of anyone who had requested audits or investigations of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations. Yet even after a federal district court twice ruled against it, the IRS is still playing games. Most of the names and organizations on the 8,000 pages provided have been blacked out, with no legal explanation given. Whether the IRS will be free to continue to refuse releasing the requested information or delay any real response until after Bill Clinton has left office is now up to Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., who will meet this morning with both sides' lawyers to discuss the status of the case.

Judge Kennedy has been here before. The IRS first tried to avoid coming up with the information by claiming Landmark would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the search, fees typically not charged for public-interest nonprofits. In October 1998, Judge Kennedy rightly rejected the IRS claim. But the IRS shifted, now claiming that Landmark was not entitled to the material because it was privileged tax return information. This, of course, is absurd: Landmark is after information about the accusers, not the accused. Again Judge Kennedy found against the IRS, though he put off Landmark requests for depositions of IRS officers and for an index giving a case-by-case explanation of any document withheld. That the IRS has now responded with 8,000 pages with the pertinent information mostly blacked out suggests an agency determined to abuse Judge Kennedy's patience.

Landmark's president, Mark Levin, says he needs to know two things to ensure that the IRS has complied with the request. First, he wants to know what the IRS searched. Landmark staffers have gone through most of the documents, the bulk of which consist of correspondence to and from members of Congress. There are no phone messages or logs, no e-mail, and only a handful of notes originally requested, and Mr. Levin's suspicion is that the search may have been confined to the correspondence of the IRS legislative affairs office. Indeed, his question gets to the integrity of the discovery process. Unless Landmark is permitted to depose IRS officials about where they searched and why, there is no way to verify that the IRS complied with the law.

Equally important is that the IRS be compelled to give a reason when it declines to provide a given document or name. We can all imagine a legitimate basis for withholding the name of, say, a chief financial officer for some nonprofit who has become a whistleblower. Surely, however, what's called for here is a case- by-case explanation, not a blanket dismissal. Remember, Landmark is not asking for any tax or financial information about the audited parties. It's not even asking which parties were audited. All it wants to know are the names of those who might have fingered these groups for investigation.

We don't know whether those audited were targeted in a Nixon- like quest by Clinton officials or sympathizers bent on settling scores--though it is interesting to note that the name that Landmark says comes up most frequently in the 8,000 pages is Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman. What we do know is that in America people have a right to know their accusers, especially when the accusation affects their livelihoods. In a May 1997 memo to the heads of all agencies, no less than Janet Reno reminded administrators that the principles of open government "include applying customer-service attitudes toward FOIA requesters, following the spirit as well as the letter of the Act, and applying a presumption of disclosure."

Clearly the attempt by IRS officials to keep the requested information out of Landmark's hands by dragging their feet, throwing up bogus legal objections and blacking out names is hard to reconcile with Miss Reno's "presumption of disclosure," much less her directive on "customer-service attitudes." It might all lead you to conclude that the IRS has more than demonstrated it no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. You might even begin to wonder, what's it trying to hide?

from the Arkansas Times 1999-Feb-12, by Mara Leveritt, from http://www.arktimes.com/mara/021299mara.html:

A selective passion for truth

Last week I suggested that, rather than probing ad nauseum the president's lies about his extra-marital alliance(s), Washington could do us a favor by turning its investigative lights onto a question with some genuine national significance, to wit:

Precisely what was the relationship between various branches of the government, particularly the CIA, and this country's super-cocaine kingpins, such as Arkansas's own Barry Seal, during the 1980s?

The column did not exactly provoke a stampede to pick up the gauntlet. As I had outlined, there are powerful, bipartisan reasons why the questions about Seal have languished.

Republicans don't want to touch them for fear of where the answers might lead. The trail already points to the offices of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Likewise, Democrats are not keen on kicking up a lot of dirt about Barry Seal, a major cocaine smuggler who, for reasons that remain a mystery, was allowed to base his multi-million-dollar operation in Arkansas, under the very eye of the Arkansas State Police, for four years while Bill Clinton was governor.

What did happen after that column appeared was that a reader called to remind me of the role played in the Seal saga by our own Republican Congressman Asa Hutchinson, the House manager who has been lately so aggressive in his prosecution of Clinton in the Senate.

Having listened to Hutchinson expound repeatedly on his desire only to get at "the truth" of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, I am struck (as was my caller) by how remarkably unaggressive he was -- in fact, how surprisingly hands-off he was -- back in the 1980s when, as the U.S. attorney for western Arkansas, Hutchinson had the chance to prosecute Seal, the smuggler.

We now know that during the time that Seal headquartered his operation at Mena he was being watched by U.S. Customs officials, as well as by agents for the DEA, the FBI, and the IRS. Former IRS agent William Duncan has testified that Hutchinson, who was among the first to know of Seal's arrival in Arkansas, called a meeting in early 1983, at which Duncan was assigned to investigate Seal's suspected money laundering. Duncan did, and he tried to have members of Seal's gang indicted.

But when the IRS investigator asked Hutchinson to subpoena 20 witnesses who were prepared to testify about the alleged drug-trafficking at Mena, Hutchinson balked. Only three of the 20 were called, and of those, two later complained that they had not been allowed to present their evidence to the federal grand jury. The grand jury never indicted Seal or anyone else involved with him at Mena.

In 1991, five years after Seal was murdered, Duncan testified about his experience. "Are you stating now under oath that you believe that the investigation in and around the Mena airport of money laundering was covered up by the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas," he was asked. "It was covered up," he said.

Since then, I have spoken with Paul Whitmore, a former Chief of Criminal Investigation for the IRS, who was Duncan's superior. He oversaw the Seal investigation and concurs with Duncan's assessment that presentation of Duncan's evidence was blocked by Hutchinson's office.

At the time, and to this day, however, Hutchinson has cast himself as an anti-drug crusader. In light of that, I wrote to him after his election to Congress. I explained that I have had a Freedom of Information request pertaining to Barry Seal before the FBI for several years -- a request that the FBI has acknowledged should have been filled a long time ago. In light of that, I asked Hutchinson if he would intercede on my behalf to get the records released.

I was curious as to how hard Hutchinson would work to bring to light public records about a politically sensitive investigation in which he had played a significant part. As it turned out, he was not helpful at all. He replied that he had contacted the FBI concerning my request and that when he heard back from the agency he would "be back in touch" with me. That was more than a year ago. He has not been "back in touch."

By contrast, Rep. Vic Snyder, to whom I placed the same request, has been diligent in his support of my appeal. It seems to matter to Snyder that the Justice Department can flaunt a federal law, delaying by years, if it wants, the release of public information. The agency still hasn't budged on the Seal records, but Snyder's push for their release distinguishes him in this otherwise dark affair.

As for Hutchinson: I hope that some day he is held to account, as he would hold Clinton to account, for certain events of the past -- events that even this self-proclaimed seeker of truth might prefer would never come to light.

from TPDL 1999-Feb-19, from Christopher Ruddy's NewsMax:

Clinton's "Asa" in the Hole?

Sam Smith's online newspaper the Progressive Review has some disturbing news for those now lionizing one of the House trial managers whose star shone so brightly during the impeachment trial debacle.

It's a little background on Arkansas Rep. Asa Hutchinson. And it comes on the heels of Saturday's St. Petersburg Times report, which noted that, "Hutchinson beat back attempts by (Lindsey) Graham and (James) Rogan to expand the investigation into charges of intimidation against women who had come forward with stories damaging to Clinton."

The women in question were alleged Clinton assault victims Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey.

Smith reports:

Among the 13 House impeachment trial managers was a Republican from Arkansas: Asa Hutchinson. This is not the first time that Hutchinson has showed up in W.J. Clinton's life. As mentioned here last month, he was the prosecutor who let Roger Clinton cop a plea on drug charges despite Roger's ties to the Dixie Mafia and the Medillin cartel.

Roger Clinton was 'one tentacle of cocaine distribution in Arkansas,' said US attorney Hutchinson at the time, but thanks to the deal, the case fell apart. "We had a lot more than Roger . . .' one officer told Clinton biographer Roger Morris. 'But Roger [Clinton] cops out, our narcs get taken out, and the case stops there."

Morris also noted that Hutchinson was on the scene when people began to get too nosy about what was going on at Mena: "Though the Reagan-appointed US attorneys for the region at the time, Asa Hutchinson and J. Michael Fitzhugh, repeatedly denied, as Fitzhugh put it, 'any pressure in any investigation,' [key investigators] Duncan and Welch watched the Mena inquiry systematically quashed and their own careers destroyed as the IRS and state police effectively dissolved their investigations and turned on them. 'Somebody outside ordered it shut down,' one would say, 'and the walls went up.'"

Now comes Arkansas Times columnist Mara Leveritt with another memoir of the ubiquitous Mr. Hutchinson:

[Article is included immediately above, in its entirety. -Ed.]

The Progressive Review can be found at: http://prorev.com

Read Mara Leveritt's A Selective Passion for Truth.

Thursday, February 18, 9:15 PM

White House Hit with NewsMax.com Report

Tuesday's White House press briefing started out calmly enough. And then the irrepressible Lester Kinsolving rose to pose a question to presidential press spokesman Joe Lockhart based on a Feb. 1 report in NewsMax.com's Inside Cover.

It seems Kinsolving had noticed our item on Clinton spinmeister Lanny Davis and his theory that the President could only be impeached for acts related to his official duties, which Davis shared with Nashville's morning drive radio team, WLAC's Steve Gill and Terry Hopkins.

The exchange went like this:

GILL: If the President of the United States robs a liquor store, since that is not one of his official duties, [he] would be able to stay in office, under that theory?

DAVIS: Absolutely.

Fast forward to Tuesday, and see how Joe Lockhart reacted to Kinsolving's question about Clinton's newfound executive privilege as it pertains to armed robbery:

February 16, 1999

WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING BY JOE LOCKHART 1:15 P.M. EST

EXCERPT:

KINSOLVING: Joe, does the President still have full confidence in Lanny Davis of Maryland as one of his defenders? No, I mean as his defender -- he speaks frequently for the President. Does he have full confidence in Lanny?

LOCKHART: The President appreciates some of the kind words Lanny said about him over the last year.

KINSOLVING: The reason I ask is that there was a NewsMax story that I double-checked with WLAC in Nashville, and they confirmed -- they have on tape that they asked Mr. Davis if the President would be exempt from prosecution while in office, if as in an activity not part of his official duties he were to hold up a liquor store; and Mr. Davis said, absolutely. Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Davis? (Laughter.)

LOCKHART: What station was that again?

KINSOLVING: WLAC - radio.

LOCKHART: This is radio or TV?

KINSOLVING: The senior electronic medium where active Americans can do dozens of things while they listen, instead of sitting paralyzed in front of the tube of a vast wasteland -- You can talk on the phone and do dozens of things.

They verified that they have this on tape. I'm not suggesting the President is going to hold up any liquor store -- (laughter.)

LOCKHART: Far be it for me to disagree with Lanny, but I am not a lawyer, but that sounds a little squirrely to me. (Laughter.)

KINSOLVING: So that's the official word.

LOCKHART: Yes.

from TPDL 1999-Feb-13, from Capitol Hill Blue 1999-Feb-12, by Daniel J. Harris:

Despite denials, Clinton is planning a full campaign of retribution

Despite official denials, the Clinton White House has collected new dossiers, complete with financial records, FBI investigative information and IRS reports on House impeachment managers and other perceived enemies of the administration, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

"It's payback time and payback will be a bitch," one White House aide said Thursday. "This won't be a gloat-free zone. It will be a 'get even' zone."

Some White House aides worry privately that the President's lust for revenge will be so great it will create a new scandal and charges of abuse of power.

"I've seen FBI and IRS files on members of Congress, complete dossiers on reporters and more," one worried aide admitted. "This is really scary."

As the Senate prepared to acquit Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and end four weeks of impeachment trial, the White House is prepared to launch a campaign of terror against those who tried to remove the President from office.

At the center of this campaign will be White House smearmeister Sidney J. Blumenthal, who recently got caught lying about his efforts to smear former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"There are new files from the investigators, files from the FBI and IRS financial information on Hyde, Barr, Hutchinston and others," one source confirmed Thursday night. "We will get even."

Another source said Blumenthal has been working on the campaign "at the expense of everything else. This is Sid's ballywick and he is ready to serve his President."

According to White House sources, the revenge list includes not only the 13 House managers, but Senators, journalists and others that Clinton feels need to taste revenge at the hands of the White House.

Those on the list include:

Rep. Henry Hyde and the other 12 House impeachment managers; Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, a frequent Clinton critic; Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, brother of House impeachment manager Asa Huthinson; Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff, who developed the original story on Monica Lewinsky and the Linda Tripp tapes; Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch, which has filed both legal cases and investigative material against Clinton;

"The list is long and growing," one aide said. "There will be blood on the floor before this affair is over."

A Thursday New York Times article said Clinton was prepared to put all his efforts into defeating as many of the House impeachment managers as possible in the 2000 elections and restore control of Congress to the Democrats.

The Times article infuriated Republicans, who accused the president of arrogantly seeking revenge against the 13 House ``managers'' who pressed allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice on the floor of the Senate.

The flap demonstrated that even as Clinton's impeachment trial draws toward an expected acquittal in the Senate, it is becoming a powerful theme for both parties ahead of the 2000 elections.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters Clinton would work hard to help Democrats recapture control of the U.S. House. Democrats, the minority party in the House since January 1995, need to capture seven seats to win an outright majority.

But Lockhart said there was no strategy of targeting the House Republican managers. Lockhart noted that many of them hold safe seats, adding that the prospect of Democratic control of the House was motivation enough for the president.

``I can't think of a worse, more dumb strategy than going after people based on whether they were a House manager or not,'' Lockhart said. ``We're going to go out, do the best we can at articulating a message, and do it based on where we think we can win seats.''

However, other White House aides told Capitol Hill Blue that Lockhart was lying.

"The payback has been in the planning stages for weeks," one said. "The President is not a man to take this without fighting back. There will be retribution against those who tried to take him down."

The Times cited unidentified Clinton advisers as saying the president was determined to work for a Democratic victory in the House as an affirmation of his legacy. The Times quoted the advisers as saying Clinton was particularly angry at the 13 managers, believing they needlessly prolonged the impeachment trial, which is expected to end with his acquittal Friday.

The White House has been trying hard publicly to keep expressions of vindication to a minimum and has said there would be no gloating over an acquittal.

But privately, aides say Clinton is unrepentant and angry and wants revenge for the attempts to remove him from office.

"The President doesn't feel any remorse over what has happened," one aide said, "but he is angry...very, very angry."

Lockhart said it was still unknown how Clinton would respond publicly to the Senate vote.

But Republicans leaped on the Times story as a sign that Clinton had no sense of contrition over the impeachment drama, which stemmed from his sexual affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Rep. Christopher Cannon, a Utah Republican and one of the trial managers, said any electoral vendetta by Clinton represented ``the height of arrogance.''

``What the president is doing is wrong. What happened to repentance, atonement and contrition? This is gloating,'' Cannon told reporters.

The Republican National Committee put out a news release saying, ``How does Clinton spell contrite? R-E-V-E-N-G-E.''

Lockhart sought to distance the White House from the Times article, saying Clinton has ``thousands'' of advisers who claim to speak on his behalf to the press.

He said the White House did not intend again to portray the impeachment as a partisan venture, as it did when the House passed two articles of impeachment in December.

Lockhart said that Clinton, as he appears in political events with an eye toward the 2000 races, will stress, in addition to his policy agenda, a need to put ``progress over partisanship.''

This was a theme sounded by Clinton repeatedly in the 1998 off- year elections, when Democrats scored a surprising gain of five seats in the House that was attributed to voter disgust with Republican impeachment tactics.

Republicans have heard many voices this week citing or alluding to impeachment as a reason voters should reject them.

Vice President Al Gore, in an initial fund-raising letter sent this week for the 2000 presidential campaign, cast the race as a choice pitting his agenda of social and economic issues against ``the forces of divisiveness, extremism and personal destruction that threaten to engulf Washington.''

The liberal activist group People for the American Way Wednesday said it would target for defeat 68 House Republicans who voted to impeach Clinton and who represent districts the president carried in 1996.

The Times article quoted Clinton supporter David Geffen, a Hollywood mogul, as saying many in his circle would spend ``time and money'' to defeat Rep. James Rogan of California, one of the House managers.

On the other hand, former vice president Dan Quayle, exploring a run for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, charged this week that Gore was ``attached at the hip'' to Clinton and would have to explain to voters why Clinton ``trashed the White House.''

--Reuters News Service contributed to this report

from TPDL 1999-Jan-18, from the Wall Street Journal

Abetting Blackmail

[TPDL Editors Note: Kind of like Madonna appearing on Larry King tonight to trash and smear everyone for trying to get rid of Clinton. She would never appear on his show, until now so she can do the trashing and smearing.]

"Don't tamper with this jury," Senator Robert Byrd warned the President from the Senate floor back in October. Now, as the Senate convenes as a jury, scatology king Larry Flynt has launched a blackmail campaign designed to intimidate them into giving the President a pass.

Senator Byrd's warning was directed at the White House attempt to get 34 Democratic senators to sign a pledge that they would never remove the president from office even if he were impeached. But it came just three days after Mr. Flynt took out an ad in the Washington Post offering up to $1 million for information about any illicit sexual affairs by Congressmen, that is to say, either Representatives or Senators. But of course the scalps on display all happen to be foes of the President, such as Bob Livingston and Bob Barr. Who can doubt that Senators, if they vote the wrong way, will be next?

To protect its own procedures and dignity, the Senate needs to know what's going on here, to make sure that this is properly investigated by someone with the power of subpoena, whether the Congress itself, the Justice Department or Independent Counsel Ken Starr. One Dan Moldea has appeared from almost nowhere to volunteer as the source of Mr. Flynt's dirt. In a remarkably candid interview with the Washington Times last week, he bragged, "I'm the investigator on all this -- whether it's Livingston or Barr." Mr. Moldea made clear that Mr. Flynt's marching orders were to focus on Clinton opponents. If a Republican "hasn't been shooting his mouth off, we let him go. We're not going to interfere with his life."

Put this way, what Mr. Flynt is doing is not only distasteful but unlawful. Blackmail is a crime, after all, and even public figures can collect for libel if they show "actual malice." Beyond that, Title 18, Section 1505 of the U.S. code makes it a crime when anyone "corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of Congress." Clearly this would include the impeachment managers and jurors.

GOP chairman Jim Nicholson demanded an investigation last Friday, and the Landmark Legal Foundation has formally filed a complaint with the Justice Department. Landmark president Mark Levin emphasized that Mr. Flynt has every right to say what he wants, and to print it along with his sleaze so long as it is true. He even has the right to hire private detectives who have worked for the President. But when he directs public threats to members of Congress involved in a trial, he crosses past the First Amendment into the territory Senator Byrd raised three months ago.

Justice says the complaint is under review, and surely the criminal issue needs official study. Also, of course, there is the further issue of whether Mr. Moldea dug up all this dirt himself, or whether he is being aided and abetted by agents of the President. He has, as it happens, previously worked for the President's law firm, Williams & Connolly. Presidential terrier James Carville is a friend of Mr. Flynt, and appeared in a movie celebrating him as a champion of the First Amendment. Mr. Flynt also donated money to the Clinton campaign, though he lied about it when first asked.

There is also the still-unresolved issue of the FBI files illicitly ransacked by political operative Craig Livingstone. Linda Tripp, remember, was in the White House Counsel's office at the time, before transferring to the Pentagon and meeting fellow exile Monica Lewinsky. In a deposition in the suit by Judicial Watch before Judge Royce Lamberth, she is on record as saying that she saw various FBI files around the White House on people's desks, and that she heard conversations about transferring them to the Democratic National Committee. Curiously, Mrs. Tripp also said she had not been questioned about the files by Mr. Starr's office.

Of all of Bill Clinton's hypocrisies, the most brazen is his denunciation of "the politics of personal destruction," a mainstay of his career. In her fortuitous dispatch from the White House Christmas Party, Elizabeth Shogren of the Los Angeles Times reported that the President "laughed about the fact that Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, had become the latest influence on the Washington political debate." And that he "regaled his listeners with a description of a letter that Flynt wrote to Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr -- whose investigation of Clinton 's affair with Lewinsky led to his impeachment--congratulating Starr for aiding the cause of pornography."

In recent weeks Rep. Barr and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott have been called to account for the company they've kept, and did denounce the views of racist splinter groups with which they'd met. With a proper investigation of blackmail and jury tampering, Senator Byrd and his Senate colleagues could make clear that they will not allow the President's defense to drag them, their party and their chamber down to the level of Mr. Flynt.

from TPDL 1999-Jan-29, from WorldNetDaily, by Stephan Archer:

Dolly's RICO case against Clinton Racketeering suit also represents Willey, Tripp

Dolly Kyle Browning, a witness in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against the president, is scheduled to appear before a U.S. district court on Feb. 16 in a RICO case against President Clinton.

Judicial Watch, a public-interest legal group, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Browning, who had been Clinton's friend since she was 11 years old. Other witnesses of the Paula Jones lawsuit, including Linda Tripp and Kathleen Willey, were also included as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

In the case, Browning alleges that Clinton violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by maintaining control of the presidential office through a pattern of racketeering activity. Browning contends that Clinton did this by threatening and intimidating her in an attempt to prevent her from revealing a sexual relationship to the media or through publication of her novel, "Purposes of the Heart," a fictional account of the alleged affair.

"Bill Clinton's demonstrated pattern of threatening women must come to an end," said Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch.

Another plaintiff in the case, Direct Outstanding Creations Corporation, is a company owned by Browning's husband, Robert Browning. The company has taken part in the lawsuit due to the negative publicity of Dolly Browning's book and alleged loss of sales it has suffered from actions taken by Clinton and certain members of his staff.

Co-defendants in the case include Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey, Deputy Personnel Director Marsha Scott, Clinton's lawyer Robert Bennett, reporter Jane Mayer, and Advanced Magazine Publishers, Inc., parent company of the New Yorker Magazine. According to Browning's complaint, these co- defendants aided Clinton in various racketeering activities.

Court records state that the lawsuit was filed against Clinton and the others named in the suit for "tortuous interference with business opportunities, disparagement of property, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil violations of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), violation of First Amendment rights, and civil conspiracy."

An example of such racketeering and intentional infliction of emotional distress allegedly occurred in late fall of 1993, when Lindsey is accused of threatening Mrs. Browning by telling Dorcy Kyle Corbin, Browning's sister, that "we've read your sister's book and we don't want it published." More than three years later, in an ongoing attempt to discredit Browning and prevent her from publishing her book, Mayer published an article in the May 26, 1997, edition of the New Yorker magazine that proceeded to report false, misleading, and disparaging statements about Browning's book, according to court documents.

The article, in part, said that a publisher by the name of Alfred S. Regnery had received Browning's book and said he "wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole." The article continues by saying that Regnery stated that the book "isn't particularly newsworthy" and that "it's far below our standards."

Browning, however, claims she never sent Regnery a copy of the book. In fact, Regnery never saw a copy of Browning's book, nor did he make the statements that Mayer attributed to him in her article, according to the suit.

Also in Browning's complaint, she alleged that Scott made false, misleading, and defamatory statements about her. Scott reportedly claimed that she stood by Clinton during a conversation that he had with Browning as they talked together at their high school reunion. During the conversation, Scott said that Browning had repeatedly told Clinton that her story was not true, but that she was angry and needed money. Scott also claimed that Browning would yell out an accusation and then say it was all a lie.

In a handwritten notation about the incident, Scott said, "It was this erratic behavior that made me stay so attentive to what she was doing and saying."

However, Browning said there was no way that anyone else could hear the conversation that she had with Clinton because there were several hundred other people in the ballroom dancing and listening to continuous music.

"During the conversation, our faces were close together. We were speaking in a volume that was only just loud enough to hear each other over the background noise," said Browning. "The only people within at least six feet of us during our conversation were two male Secret Service agents."

Even Bennett, Clinton's lawyer, allegedly painted Browning in a false light. Browning said that during her deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit, Bennett referred to her March 6, 1998, affidavit as "a web of deceit and distortions." Bennett also referred to them as "garbage," "vicious and false attacks," and "salacious material."

Speaking about Jones' attorneys, Bennett said, "Despite their vicious and false attacks, our filing focuses on the weakness of the plaintiff's case and her witnesses (which include Browning)...Because they dumped so much of this garbage, as I say, on the record, we felt in fairness to the President, that we had to move to strike it and to present substantial evidence gathered in discovery, depositions, and things of that kind which rebut that salacious material."

As much as Bennett may have wanted to discredit Browning, though, he never challenged the statements in her testimony about her long-standing sexual relationship with Clinton, and therefore had to know, or had reason to know, that Browning testified truthfully. Because of this, Browning's complaint said that Bennett's statements "intentionally, recklessly, maliciously, and negligently impugned Mrs. Browning's integrity, truthfulness and veracity."

Judicial Watch believes that in light of this recent RICO case, both Senate and House Republicans have failed to pursue the "clear-cut evidence" of the threats against Browning because they fear that there will be political backlash among "swing voters."

"Congress won't stop him (Clinton) because of selfish political reasons," Klayman said. "So, now it's time for Dolly Kyle Browning and other people of faith to take a stand."

WorldNetDaily attempted to contact the White House in an effort to get reactions regarding this latest RICO case, but the phone call was never returned.

from TPDL 1999-Feb-2, from NewsMax, by Carl Limbacher Jr.:

New "Secret Police" Link in Attack on Monica

House trial managers announced last week that Sidney Blumenthal has replaced Betty Currie as one of the three most likely prospective witnesses in the case against President Clinton.

While Blumenthal is almost a peripheral player compared to center-stage figures like Currie, Vernon Jordan, and Monica Lewinsky herself, House prosecutors may be able to use Blumenthal to connect the Lewinsky cover-up directly to what former presidential insider Dick Morris calls "The Clinton Secret Police".

Before the Clinton case came to trial, Rep. Lindsey Graham recounted to the House Judiciary Committee how the president enlisted Blumenthal in the cover-up.

"Ms. Lewinsky came at me and made a sexual demand on me," Clinton told Blumenthal, adding that the young intern was "a stalker."

Graham noted that immediately after Clinton imparted his own personal spin on Monica to Blumenthal, a flood of press accounts followed echoing the White House line.

But thus far, trial managers have failed to note the most egregious example of "Operation Trash Monica," with its direct links to a longtime Clinton operative who conjured up some of the most damaging dirt ever flung at the 24-year-old Clinton paramour.

Rewind to last year's State of the Union address, an event that many saw as pivotal to the president's survival. The Lewinsky scandal was just days old back then, and the shock was still so fresh that press wags were counting the days till Clinton's resignation.

But the very hour before Clinton entered the well of the House to speak to Congress and the nation, Andy Bleiler took center stage 3,000 miles away. Bleiler's account of his five-year affair with a teenage Monica, delivered from his Oregon home in a full-blown, nationally broadcast press conference, was the Clinton attack machine's boldest foray into "nuts and sluts" territory.

It was at that press conference that America learned for the first time that Monica had traveled to Washington intent on earning her "presidential kneepads." It was Bleiler's lawyer, Terry Giles, who there revealed details of how his client had desperately tried to extricate himself from his own Monica entanglement -- only to have the diabolical teen befriend Bleiler's wife.

Bleiler, we were to understand, had become the target of a fatal-attraction-type stalking, trapped in a web of deceit woven by the sinister Monica. Bill Clinton was merely the next victim on her list.

But in the aftermath of Bleiler's press conference, only the New York Post's Andrea Peyser was eagle-eyed enough to notice that Bleiler had not just appeared out of thin air. In an interview with Lucianne Goldberg, Peyser learned that, "Anthony Pellicano, the L.A.-based private investigator and O.J. defense team veteran [was] responsible for digging up Andy Bleiler." Pellicano's services, Goldberg claimed, were bought and paid for by the White House.

Peyser didn't just rely on Goldberg's word. She checked with Pellicano himself. His response: "No comment. You're a smart girl. No comment." No wonder. Pellicano has a lot not to comment about.

His name has surfaced before in the Clinton scandal wars, going back all the way to 1992. It was Monica's chief predecessor, Gennifer Flowers, who prompted his involvement back then.

In the snows of New Hampshire, Clinton's presidential candidacy lay dying, mortally wounded by Flowers' revelation of a 12-year Clinton affair. And when he and his wife went on "60 Minutes" to deny the charge, Flowers delivered the coup de grace. She had tapes. Hours of them. And they were not so much smoking-gun as they were steaming.

There was Gov. Clinton chuckling as his longtime lover complimented him on his own ability to administer oral sex. She called him "Bill." He called her "honey." And they both agreed that then-presidential contender Mario Cuomo "acted like a Mafioso."

Enter Pellicano. According to Ron Kessler's 1995 best-seller, "Inside the White House," Anthony Pellicano provided a scientific basis for the excuse Clintonites would offer for years: The tapes were doctored.

"The Clinton camp made much of the fact that Anthony J. Pellicano, an expert on audio recording analysis, had told the press that a twelve-minute portion of the tape of conversations between Flowers and Clinton had been 'selectively edited' at two points." ("Inside the White House," page 161)

It made little difference that Flowers' tapes had been authenticated by the world-renowned Truth Verification Laboratories. Pellicano offered team Clinton -- and the press -- a way out. And most of the media took it. For years to come, journalists who knew better would refer to Flowers' "alleged tapes."

Even after the Lewinsky story hit, weeks after Clinton had admitted to a sexual relationship with Flowers in his sworn Paula Jones deposition, "journalist" George Stephanopoulos, interviewed for a WABC Radio Network special report on Monicagate, still claimed that Gennifer's steaming-gun tapes were doctored.

Is it a coincidence that Anthony Pellicano, the man who created the myth of the doctored tapes, should just happen to stumble upon Andy Bleiler, who in turn proceeded to dump a wheelbarrowful of mud on Monica for Clinton's 1998 State of the Union warm-up act?

Or is Pellicano, as Dick Morris might tell you, a card-carrying member of Bill Clinton's "Secret Police"?

When and if trial managers get a chance to question Sidney Blumenthal, they ought to ask him about that.

from TPDL 1999-Jan-30, from ABC News, by Jackie Judd & Chris Vlasto:

Witness Backs Willey Claims
Starr Probes Obstruction Allegations

W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 29 - ABCNEWS has learned that a private investigator has become a key witness in the investigation of whether someone tried to scare Kathleen Willey into remaining silent about allegations President Clinton made an unwanted sexual advance.

For months, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has been trying to determine whether someone tried to intimidate Willey to prevent her from testifying that Clinton groped her outside the Oval Office. Clinton denies the allegations.

Sources now say Starr's investigation is focused on Jarrett Stern, a private investigator with ties to prominent Democratic fund-raiser Nathan Landow.

Asked whether he has been working on a project related to Willey, Stern said, "It is true. The specifics of it, I don't want to get into."

Landow Investigated Willey Sources familiar with Stern's work say he was hired by Saul Schwartzbach, a lawyer for Landow.

Willey has testified that Landow, who has brought in several hundred thousand dollars for the Clinton-Gore campaigns, pressured her to deny that Clinton made a sexual advance toward her at the White House.

The same sources say Landow had Willey investigated at a time when she was a witness in both the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and the Starr criminal investigation.

Landow himself told ABCNEWS last fall that he had asked the lawyer to draw up "a chronology" detailing Willey's story.

Project Disturbed P.I.

Sources say Stern was asked to pull Willey's phone records, to find out what medications Willey might be taking and to conduct a "noisy" investigation aimed at making sure Willey knew she was being watched.

Stern's lawyer, Edward Bouquet, said the private investigator began to feel uneasy with the Willey project.

"I think that he perceived a situation where he was being asked to do something he wasn't comfortable with," Bouquet said.

Bouquet claims Stern was so uncomfortable that he called Willey and left a message - using an alias - warning her that someone wanted to do her harm.

What investigators want to know is whether Stern has knowledge of "the jogger," a man Willey claims tried to scare her.

Willey says that two days before her deposition in the Jones case, a jogger - a stranger - approached her, asked about her children, and said, "Don't you get the message?"

Stern insists he is not the jogger but also says he believes "wholeheartedly" that Willey is telling the truth about the incident.

A spokesman for Landow says he will be "completely exonerated." Indeed, Starr has a difficult case to make as sources say Landow and Schwartzbach have refused to answer prosecutors' questions.

from TPDL 1999-Jan-18, from the Evening/Electronic Telegraph, by Hugh Davies:

Republicans urge inquiry into Flynt's sleaze hunt'

AMERICA'S Justice Department was urged yesterday to investigate pornographer Larry Flynt's pursuit of Republicans for details of their sex lives, amid suspicion that the White House or friends of Bill Clinton are behind his "scalp-hunting".

Department officials confirmed they were reviewing a request from the Landmark Legal Foundation, a Washington-based conservative organisation, to examine if Mr Flynt, 55, was violating a federal law that prohibits outsiders from influencing any Capitol Hill investigation. Offenders face up to five years imprisonment for "corruptly" interfering with an inquiry.

Jim Nicholson, the Republican National Chairman, said that the sole purpose of Mr Flynt's effort was "to intimidate and to silence members of Congress investigating the President".

Republicans point to James "the rajin' Cajun" Carville as a prime suspect in helping Mr Flynt, the publisher of Hustler. Mr Carville handled Mr Clinton's "war room" tactics in 1992.

from TPDL 1999-Jan-13, from the Republican National Committee via CNS Information Services:

Message to Joe Lockhart: "When General Carville Declared War, Private Flynt Enlisted"

News Release

WASHINGTON (January 12) - Responding to White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart's accusation this afternoon that the RNC is practicing "the politics of innuendo" for linking pornographer Larry Flynt with the White House, RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson says that "when General James Carville declared war on the President's enemies, Private Flynt enlisted."

The chairman's full statement follows:

"The White House threatened the politics of blackmail, intimidation and extortion a year ago; today, they're crying crocodile tears, now that it's come to pass. The truth is, they're laughing about it, just like the President did at his Christmas party on December 20.

"Right after his re-election, back on November 8, 1996, according to USA Today, Bill Clinton told his supporters in Arkansas that his political opponents constitute 'a cancer' and vowed to 'cut them out of American politics.' It was on February 8, 1998 that George Stephanopoulos warned of a White House 'Ellen Romesch strategy,' where, instead of resigning, the President would 'take everyone down with him.' On September 10, 1998, the web-page 'Salon' quoted an unnamed Clinton ally in promising a 'Doomsday scenario, a dreaded sexual Armageddon.' Richard Ben-Veniste threatened a 'sexual killing field,' and the President's brother echoed the threats.

"Using paid informants, ex-CIA agents and the profits from his pornography empire, Larry Flynt - the man who says he 'loves' the President - is doing exactly what the President's lieutenants promised. When General James Carville declared war on the President's enemies, Private Flynt enlisted.

"Larry Flynt won't say whether his information comes from agents associated with Terry Lenzner or Jack Palladino, the private eyes hired by the President's lawyers and campaigns. He won't say whether his material comes from the 40,000-page cache that's been gathered by James Carville's 'Education and Information Project, Inc.' on Republican Members of Congress. Nor will he say whether his material was the product of Carville's two former staffers, Tom Janenda or Glen Weiner, both of whom worked in the White House 'Opposition Research Unit' located in the Old Executive Office Building near the office of Carville's former partner, Paul Begala.

"Finally, Flynt has now admitted paying Dan Moldea. Moldea's last work on behalf of Bill Clinton was to gain interviews with Independent Counsel Ken Starr's staff under the pretense that he was an independent 'investigative reporter,' but who then blew his cover - and his journalistic ethics - when he played the tapes of those interviews for the President's lawyers. I repeat, this political genocide can and should stop in America and the President of the United States can bring this to a halt quickly by calling off Carville, Flynt and his other minions."

from TPDL 1999-Jan-13, from the Washington Times, by Bill Sammon:

Flynt sleuth dished dirt for White House

The investigator who dug up dirt on Republican Reps. Bob Barr and Robert L. Livingston for pornographer Larry Flynt is a Clinton sympathizer who has supplied the president's attorneys with evidence against independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Dan Moldea said that while he is no longer in contact with Williams & Connolly, the law firm defending President Clinton against impeachment charges, his "outing" of GOP adulterers is designed to help the president. He made it clear he has uncovered salacious material on more Republicans whose identities will remain secret as long as they refrain from speaking out against Mr. Clinton.

"I'm the investigator on all of this -- whether it's Livingston or Barr or anyone else who's coming -- and I'm also helping call the shots," Mr. Moldea told The Washington Times yesterday. "I'll tell you right now: We have a lot of these guys, dead bang, and the evidence is clear. But they haven't been going on TV, or on the floor of Congress, shooting their mouths off, trying to take the moral high ground against Clinton.

"And as a consequence, we're throwing it back in the river," Mr. Moldea said. "We're concentrating on the people who have been very visible on this."

He said Mr. Flynt made it clear that "my marching orders were to deal with hypocrisy." He emphasized that if a Republican "hasn't been shooting his mouth off, we let him go. We're not going to interfere with his life."

Mr. Moldea said he received a call last year from Max Stier, one of six Williams & Connolly lawyers now defending Mr. Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial. Mr. Stier was seeking evidence to show that Mr. Starr had improperly leaked investigative material to the media, an accusation leveled by David E. Kendall, the lead Williams & Connolly lawyer defending the president.

On June 26, Mr. Moldea met with Mr. Stier and told him Mr. Starr's office routinely gave information to "selected reporters." Mr. Moldea said he had learned of the practice from Mr. Starr's top deputies in the days before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke a year ago. At that time, Mr. Moldea was doing research for a book about the suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, which had been investigated by Mr. Starr's office.

When Mr. Moldea learned in August that Mr. Clinton would be testifying before Mr. Starr's grand jury, he "reached out" to the president's attorneys and told them he had tape-recorded his conversations with the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC).

"I felt that Starr was essentially beating a confession out of the president with a political rubber hose," Mr. Moldea said. "So I decided to throw myself on a hand grenade and reveal the fact that I had these tapes."

A week after Mr. Clinton's Aug. 17 testimony before the grand jury, Mr. Moldea turned over transcripts of the tapes, along with an affidavit explaining his knowledge of the dissemination of information by Mr. Starr's office, to a federal court investigating the accusation of leaks.

"I just felt there was this very dangerous and sinister cooperation going on between the OIC and this stable of selected reporters, and I decided to take a stand against it," Mr. Moldea said. "But that meant I had to take myself out of the game. I couldn't even try to portray myself as an objective reporter.

"But when the Flynt thing happened, I just couldn't pass that up," Mr. Moldea said. "I started in on this the day before Thanksgiving."

Mr. Moldea said he was careful not to resume contact with Williams & Connolly after taking on the new assignment. "I've had no communication with anyone at the White House about any of this," he said. "I mean, I like these guys. The last thing I was going to do was jam them up by being associated with me, who was associated with Larry Flynt."

Mr. Moldea said he regrets speculation that Mr. Flynt's quest for dirt on pro-impeachment Republicans was orchestrated by the White House or Investigative Group International (IGI), a firm headed by Terry Lenzner that has close ties to the Clinton administration. He said Mr. Flynt remained publicly ambivalent about the possibility of a White House connection in order "to give me some cover."

Mr. Flynt, while unveiling details about the personal life of Mr. Barr, Georgia Republican, Monday night, initially gave the impression he might have been indirectly in contact with the White House, but later stated there was no contact of any kind.

Mr. Clinton, who has declined to call for Mr. Flynt to cease and desist, does not feel he is being helped by the publisher of Hustler magazine, according to White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart.

"The president's been very clear the whole time he's been here that there's no place in this town for this kind of politics, and it ought to come to an end," Mr. Lockhart said yesterday.

Mr. Moldea acknowledged he and the rest of Mr. Flynt's investigative team are doing unsavory work.

"I don't think there's anybody on our team who's getting much joy out of this," he said. "When you start hurting families, that's something that makes you pause and think about what's going on. But at the same time, I just haven't seen any mercy shown towards Clinton -- I mean, none, zero."

Mr. Moldea, who once tried to link Ronald Reagan to the Mafia and sued the New York Times over a negative review of one of his books, also defended Mr. Flynt.

"Flynt isn't an evil guy," he said. "I view him as being an honorable man in a very traditional way. I mean, you can trust his word. I like him."

As to his own future after his current assignment, Mr. Moldea acknowledged: "I've got some explaining to do when this is all over."

from TPDL 1999-Jan-13, from the New York Post, by Tracy Connor:

Actress Who Claimed Sex With Bill Says IRS Is Hounding Her

An actress who says she had a long-ago fling with President Clinton came under IRS scrutiny just weeks after a warning that she could be audited if she didn't keep quiet, her lawyer says.

Elizabeth Ward Gracen, star of the "Highlander" TV series, has been deluged with dozens of letters from the tax man - claiming she didn't file returns and threatening to seize her wages and property.

Gracen, a former Miss America who says she had sex with Clinton in 1983, isn't the first woman linked to the president to interest the IRS.

Paula Jones, who settled her sex-harassment lawsuit against him last year, was audited after she rejected a deal with Clinton - and the Treasury Department is investigating why the IRS got involved.

Filming her TV show in Europe, Gracen refused to talk about her situation, but one of her lawyers contacted by The Post said the IRS is on her case for no good reason.

"She pays her taxes, she's really square," said the lawyer, Vincent Vento. "I don't think anybody wants to take on the government ... She just feels it's completely unfair."

The threat of an IRS probe came from the same anonymous caller who once warned Gracen she was about to get a subpoena and should get out of town, Vento said.

The former beauty queen has no idea who the caller was, but her lawyer said the list of people with a motive is a short one.

"The only person who would benefit would be the president of the United States, unless there's some other agenda out there," Vento said.

The first call came around Christmas 1997, when Gracen was at her parents' home in Little Rock, Ark., he said.

At the time, Jones' lawyers were trying to get Gracen to testify about her relationship with Clinton for the sex-harassment suit.

"The call was very professional and somewhat ominous," Vento said. "They said, 'Look, there's a subpoena out for you about Bill Clinton. I'd advise you not to be around.'"

Gracen wouldn't have given the call a second thought - except that the next day, after she'd left on a trip to Las Vegas, the subpoena was served in Little Rock.

Over the next few months, Gracen - who had publicly denied an affair with Clinton in 1992 - was on the road, dodging the process- servers.

In the spring, she recanted her six-year-old denial and admitted she and Clinton had once had sex. By summer, she was in Canada, filming her new show, "Highlander: The Raven."

In an interview with the Toronto Star about her show, she also talked about how her friends and family were intimidated and how she feared for her safety after the Clinton connection surfaced.

"The interview gets picked up and becomes a big story," Vento said.

Within weeks, Gracen got another phone call at an unlisted number in Canada, and she recognized the voice from the call warning her about the subpoena eight months before, Vento said.

"They say, 'You should really keep your mouth shut about Bill Clinton and go on with your life. You could be discredited. You could have an IRS investigation,'" the lawyer recounted.

A few weeks later, the letters from the IRS started coming in, sent to her parents' house, which is not listed on her tax filings, Vento said.

from the Drudge Report, 1998-Dec-21 23:59:22 UTC:

TALKSHOW GUEST SABOTAGED

**Exclusive**

A mystery woman who was set to appear for the first time on television this week to reveal fresh stories about "Clinton corruption" has been hit with an intimidation campaign, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned!

Former Arkansas state auditor [1981 to 1995], Julia Hughes Jones, was scheduled to appear on CNBC's HARDBALL with Chris Matthews on Tuesday. Jones, according to an insider, was going to use the HARDBALL appearance to tell stories that have not yet publicly been told about Gov. Bill Clinton and his Arkansas associates -- stories that Julie Hughes Jones is preparing to detail in an explosive tell-all book.

But sometime over the weekend, two files from Julia Hughes Jones' computer were mysteriously corrupted.

Files that contained information she was going to fax to HARDBALL producers!

"Someone over the weekend broke into her computer and destroyed a memo of talking points that she had typed up to Chris Matthews and his producers, ahead of her appearance," a source close to Jones revealed late Monday night.

Jones, who now lives in Florida, had just returned from Little Rock where she attend her father's funeral when she noticed the corrupted files that had contained notes of names and events she wanted to bring up on HARDBALL.

There may also be evidence that her computer was used to print out documents while she was out of town.

Ms. Jones is said to be the ultimate Arkansas insider. "Clinton doesn't know what she knows, but he knows that she knows a great deal," claims an associate who has seen an early manuscript of her book.

"She was friends with Charlie Trie for 12 years. She even went to China with him once. She knows many untold stories about Hillary Clinton."

But on Monday, HARDBALL mysteriously called-off her appearance. She has apparently been rescheduled for early 1999, a show source confirmed.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-21, from NewsMax, by Carl Limbacher (see also http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1998/12/21/45217):

Gennifer Flowers Speaks Out On Clinton Intimidation

South Carolina Rep. Lindsey Graham said it best when he told the House Judiciary Committee, "This is more like Watergate than Peyton Place." Graham went on to describe how Bill Clinton, through White House henchman Sidney Blumenthal, mounted a media attack on Monica Lewinsky, resulting in numerous press accounts painting her as a stalker, an unstable woman, a veritable nut - and Mr. Clinton as a mere victim of her "fatal attraction".

The latest target of the White House attack machine seems to be Speaker-elect Bob Livingston, whose multiple extramarital liasons were outed on the eve of the House's historic impeachment vote. Some reports suggest that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who dug up the dirt in question, had the help of several former FBI agents. The White House's favorite snoop, Terry Lenzner, now employs the likes of disgraced former G-men Howard Shapiro and Larry Potts.

ABC's Cokie Roberts reports that a White House source tried to peddle the Livingston story to her weeks ago.

But the slimy tactics used by a White House that will do anything to save its main man from impeachment can get even uglier - and they have.

Listen to NewsMax's exclusive audio of Gennfer Flowers, as she tells WABC Talk Radio's Curtis Sliwa and Penny Crone about the death threats and break-ins that came her way when word of her story threatened to leak out. It was Flowers' fears, prompted by these Gestapo-like tactics, which drove her to document her relationship with Clinton on tape, lest the threats were carried out.

Flowers offered her frightening story to Sliwa and Crone on July 3, 1997. Of course, the protective pro-Clinton press ignored it. But NewsMax has the tape. And anyone who hears it will immediately realize that her comments were never more relevant than they are today.

Tell your friends - and your Congressional representatives - to visit the NewsMax.com website and listen in, so that they too can hear a firsthand account of what the Clinton witness intimidation machine is all about:

Transcript:

Gennifer Flowers with Curtis Sliwa and Penny Crone

July 3, 1997

Threats, Break-ins and Clinton Secrets not included in NewsMax's audio.

WABC Talk Radio - July 3, 1997
Hosts: Curtis Sliwa and Penny Crone Caution: Very graphic.

CRONE: I remember the day you played the tapes as if it was yesterday.

FLOWERS: Those tapes speak for themselves, don't they.

CRONE: Do you still have them with you?

FLOWERS: Oh, sure.

CRONE: Could you play one of them or are you not prepared?

FLOWERS: I mean, I don't have them right here with me but we can arrange to do that.

CRONE: Maybe we could do that in the future. Real quick, what was one of the things that you, and you say, the president said on the phone?

FLOWERS: Let me tell you something that; well - we said a lot of things actually on the phone. And if I had the intent to set him up, as I had been accused, I could have had a library of tapes and videotapes. But one thing that Bill said on those tapes that I think has rung true throughout his presidency is that he told me that if we stick together and we continue to deny it then everything will be OK. Deny it, deny it, deny it. Which has been his M.O., so to speak, throughout his presidency with all of the "Gates" that have occured.

CRONE: But you know what, Gennifer? It hasn't hurt him at all.

FLOWERS: Well I think that remains to be seen.

CRONE: What about Paula Jones?

FLOWERS: Well, that's a good question. I think that Paula will probably get her day in court. We'll see if that continues after it goes to Susan Webber's (sic) court in Little Rock.

CRONE: Do you think President Clinton did what Paula Jones said?

FLOWERS: No, I don't think so.

CRONE: Why?

FLOWERS: What I think happened was that, you know - they made eye contact, they flirted, he thought that she was a willing participant in some type of sexual activity. She was invited to the room, she accepted. While they were there, perhaps she changed her mind. Maybe she didn't. We don't know what happened there. She even admits that he said, "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do." I don't know Bill Clinton as someone who needs to literally sexually harass a woman. I'm sure that he could have found many willing participants. But I was not in that room. And if Paula indeed has legitimate evidence to prove her case, I think she should be given the opportunity to do so.

CRONE: Gennifer Flowers, what happened to your life after you blew the whistle, so to speak, on President Clinton. He won another election. He just keeps on ticking. What about your life?

FLOWERS: Well, I didn't actually blow the whistle on him, first of all. I mean, the story came out through a lawsuit and press release that was filed by Larry Nichols. You're probably aware of that situation. And I merely corroborated a true story that was coming out anyway. So, my intent was never to blow the whistle on him. However....

CRONE: But you did play the tapes.

FLOWERS: Well, I played the tapes to prove that my story was true. I made the tapes to protect myself because some very scary things were going on.

CRONE: I got to ask you, isn't that kind of crummy to make tapes? You're having an affair with a guy....

FLOWERS: Yeah, I thought it was crummy....

CRONE: But you did it and you played it for the whole world to listen to.

FLOWERS: Well, I did it because my home had been ransacked and entered three times, because I was getting threats on the telephone. And at that particular time I didn't know that I could trust him anymore.

SLIWA: Well, now - you say "threats" Gennifer Flowers. Explain to us what those threats consisted of.

FLOWERS: Well, I was getting threats on the telephone. I was getting calls from various Republican and Democratic operatives.

CRONE: Operatives? Well, what were they saying?

FLOWERS: Well, you know - I was geting threats.

CRONE: I mean, were they saying they were going to kill you? Or were they saying....

FLOWERS: Yes. I had some saying that I was going to get beaten up. I had some saying I was going to be killed.

CRONE: Name them. Who called you?

FLOWERS: Now, when I say Democratic operatives, I'm not saying that the Democratic operatives are the people that called and said, "My name is Sam Jones and I'm going to kill you." Those are the people that intimated that there would be some problems or that I would not be in a secure situation. I had....

CRONE: Do you think that President Clinton was behind this?

FLOWERS: Well, what I thought after my home was ransacked was that he was behind that; simply because I had called to tell him about it and it was his reaction to it. I mean he acted, he was aloof. He didn't act that concerned. He said, "Well, why do you think they came in there?" And I said, "Well, why the hell do you think?" He said, "Well, do you think they were looking for something on us?" I said, "Well, yes!" And at that moment I thought, "Well, maybe you're behind this." Because he would have as much interest to know what evidence I might have as anyone else would.

CRONE: So Gennifer, let's get down to the nitty gritty. How good in bed was President Clinton?

FLOWERS: He was excellent in bed, Penny.

CRONE: He was?

FLOWERS: Yes, he was.

CRONE: Oh, my word.

FLOWERS: Honey, he was wonderful.

CRONE: Was he well endowed?

FLOWERS: No. No, the President has a small penis.

SLIWA: But with any distinguishing.....

UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Hiyoohhh! Hey now.

SLIWA: But with any distinguishing characteristics as Paula Jones says in court papers?

FLOWERS: Well, we could compare it to Arkansas, which is a small state, as I just said. But other than that I don't know what she's talking about.

CRONE: So you didn't see any distinguishing - Oh, I'm reprehensed at this conversation.

FLOWERS: Oh, doesn't it absolutely just blow you away?

CRONE: Do you remember that news conference, that guy that stuttered?

FLOWERS: Oh,"Stuttering John". Do I remember it? Of course I do. ("Stuttering John" is Howard Stern's roving newsman.)

CRONE: I was telling....Remember when he said, "D-d-d-d-did, t-t-t-the, G-G-G-G-Governor wear a C-c-c-c-condom?"

FLOWERS: And did he like group sex? That was his second question.

CRONE: And what was your answer to that?

FLOWERS: Well, I wanted to say, "No" (to the condom question) and, "Yes" (to the group sex question). But I - listen, I didn't know - obviously I had never been in any situation like that in my life. I was not prepared when "Stuttering John" stood up in a very serious situation.

CRONE: And no one knew who he was then.

FLOWERS: Right. Those questions, naturally, you know, my mind sort of went on tilt. I thought, "Oh, my God". I didn't know whether to laugh or to address him seriously or what the heck to do.

SLIWA: So, now Gennifer, just before you go - Are we talking Vienna sausage here? I mean small, eh - you got us all wondering.

FLOWERS: I'll just let you use your imagination, OK?

CRONE: Gennifer Flowers, thank you so much for joining us today.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-19, from the New York Post, by Dick Morris:

THE SECRET POLICE STRIKE AGAIN

CAN anyone seriously believe that the ''outing'' of incoming House Speaker Robert Livingston's extra-marital affairs is not the work of the White House Secret Police?

Consider the record. House Oversight Committee Chairman Dan Burton investigated the White House misuse of FBI files. Then, out came evidence that he had fathered an out-of-wedlock child. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde led the impeachment inquiry against the president. Then, out came the story of his decades-past adulterous relationship. Now, Livingston, who has refused to agree to a censure vote, has found his private life investigated.

Coincidence? Maybe, but add to this the fact that during the same time period there have been no revelations about the private lives of any supporter of the president. The contrast is jarring. And this administration's history of smearing its enemies, combined with information about administration knowledge of these stories, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the White House was responsible for all of these leaks.

Last night, after the Livingston story broke, ABC's Cokie Roberts reported that several weeks ago she had been told by a source close to the White House of a rumor about a Livingston affair. The White House attacked Roberts for the story, but she stood by her report. So, how did the Livingston information get to a source close to the White House?

Matt Drudge, whose passion for scandal has only been matched by his uncanny accuracy, reported yesterday that a White House employee, with ties to both the president and the First Lady, had ''shopped'' the Hyde story before it was published. Specifically, Drudge reports that this administration employee called Linda Douglas at ABC News to give her the details of the Hyde affair. Again, how did a White House employee get this information and why was a federal employee out to discredit a member of Congress?

The White House Secret Police - the private eyes deployed by the Clintons and their agents to dig up dirt to discredit those who get in the president's way - have performed numerous damage-control operations since the 1992 election. Delving into the sexual pasts of the president's adversaries has been a large part of their modus operandi (as is sifting through other people's garbage). Accountable to no one, these operatives work under the supervision of the president's attorneys - David Kendall and Bob Bennett. Their missions are secret, their compensation is hidden and the sources of the payments are obscured.

As Sen.-elect Chuck Schumer said in his speech on impeachment yesterday, both parties are participating in the degrading of our politics. It began when filibusters became automatic in the Senate, and the need to get 60 votes to cut off debate became routine for passage of virtually any legislation. When confirmations of Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members, and even U.S. ambassadors became forums for partisan conflict, the trend away from moderation and conciliation continued. But the GOP abuse of the impeachment process and the White House secret police tactics have each knocked our political process down yet another notch.

Each time the Secret Police strike, they use a journalistic front to publish the results of the invasions of the privacy of the Clintons' perceived enemies. On some occasions, the actual raw reports of the Secret Police have been provided to friendly editors. Salon magazine, an administration mouthpiece, published the Hyde material. And the relationship between the White House and the supermarket tabloids is surprisingly intimate. The president's unsmiling lawyer, David Kendall, is also counsel to the National Enquirer. Terry Lenzner, one of the favored private eyes who looked into Monica Lewinsky's past, has also worked for the Enquirer. So, it was not a surprise that the paper ran a story trashing Monica right before her grand-jury testimony.

The pattern is altogether too clear - the White House Secret Police have been here. It's time they are stopped.

from TPDL 1998-Oct-24, from Insight magazine, by Jamie Dettmer:

Did Clinton Hire 'Plumbers'?

In an eerie parallel to Watergate, a former adviser has testified that the Clinton White House assembled a team of private eyes to investigate 'enemies' of the president. It will get him in far more trouble than the sex ever would. The "it" in question: Political espionage and the use of gumshoes to investigate Bill Clinton's enemies -- from bimbos to Kenneth Starr's prosecutors and critical lawmakers. Is America soon to be faced with ugly disclosures about a presidential secret police run amok?

Former Clinton campaign adviser Dick Morris says yes. In testimony before the Monica Lewinsky grand jury in August, Morris was questioned about sleuths Terry Lenzner, the head of Investigative Group International, or IGI, and San Francisco-based gumshoe Jack Palladino. Morris said the Clinton use of muckraking private eyes might be this administration's Achilles' heel. "It's a pattern that I feel can consume the administration just as it consumed Nixon's administration," Morris told Starr prosecutors.

Morris, who claimed his own White House file had been misused and that details from the FBI file on GOP strategist Ed Rollins had been leaked, named longtime Clinton confidant and aide Bruce Lindsey as a central figure in an alleged operation that the White House runs to savage women whose only sin is that they said yes ... or no. Morris' testimony on what he termed the "Clinton secret police" attracted only momentary interest, even though he tracked the origins of the first family's reliance on sleuths back to Arkansas and the bimbo patrols mounted by aide Betsy Wright.

But in the weeks ahead, as the House Judiciary Committee holds impeachment hearings, Morris might be heard about private eyes as well as Filegate. Some congressmen serving on the impeachment panel already are pressing for a probe of gumshoe activities, arguing along with Morris that there might be comparisons to be drawn between Richard Nixon's Plumbers and the Clinton secret police, say Capitol Hill sources. A hint of that came during the House Judiciary Committee debate on the scope and timetable for an impeachment inquiry, when Republican Rep. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that if the president obstructed justice by having his aides secretly going after women, or anybody else who got in his way, impeachment would be merited.

Go back a generation to the Nixon White House -- a dark, paranoid bunker where the president harbored such a sense of vulnerability that he saw enemies everywhere and wanted them destroyed before they could get him. Within two months of Nixon's 1969 inauguration, aide John Ehrlichman started establishing a secret political-intelligence capability. Initially, his plan entailed former New York cop Jack Caulfield setting up a private security agency to provide investigative support for the White House. That fell through. Caulfield was put on the White House payroll instead and soon was joined by G. Gordon Liddy, Jeb Magruder and failed CIA agent E. Howard Hunt. The scope of their underground activities was broad and outrageously illegal -- reportedly everything from break-ins to wiretaps and on to prompting federal tax authorities to audit liberal think tanks.

Now fast-forward to the 1990s. Clinton aides secured more than 900 FBI background files on former Reagan and Bush staffers, coincidental tax audits were launched into conservative think tanks and details about the personal lives of sacked employees of the White House -- and the contents of Linda Tripp's Pentagon employment file -- were leaked to the press. Déjà vu? Clinton critics wonder if this White House put into effect what Ehrlichman wanted for Nixon -- a private intelligence capability to deal with political opponents.

Questions on Capitol Hill about the Clinton administration's use of private eyes break down into two areas. Were gumshoes used by the White House or Clinton loyalists to trawl for trash on lawmakers in a bid to intimidate Congress? And what was the nature of efforts to get Clinton bimbos to back off, to remain mum? Both raise the specter of lawbreaking, according to congressmen including GOP Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, who stressed these matters recently. "Just the accumulating of dirt with the intent to cause congressmen to back off impeachment well could fall within the federal statutes of obstruction of justice," Barr said. Republican ire has increased dramatically on this issue since the media revelations about decades-old sexual indiscretions of three Republicans, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde of Illinois and House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Dan Burton of Indiana. House Minority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas has called on the FBI to investigate whether the White House -- or those close to it -- played any role in divulging to the press the secrets of lawmakers heading committees investigating the president.

Congressmen aren't alone in wondering if a coordinated intimidation campaign has been run by the White House. Starr's prosecutors, too, are eager to discover exactly what professional snoops Lenzner, Palladino and Tony Pellicano were employed to do --that is, if the grand-jury questions they were asking Morris and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal are anything to go by. Their interest? Possible Clinton intimidation of women and of those probing his scandalous behavior.

The independent counsel held back from the House the grand-jury testimony of private-eye Lenzner. Congressional staffers believe that's because the head of IGI is wrapped up in a pending matter that Starr's prosecutors still are investigating, possibly a probe into claims by Kathleen Willey that she was intimidated for alleging President Clinton groped her. The grand-jury testimony of the former White House volunteer, who insists Clinton fondled her breasts when she went to the Oval Office in 1993 to ask him for a job, also was not included in the thousands of Sexgate documents sent by the independent counsel to Congress. According to Willey, this summer her car tires were punctured with nails and her cat was stolen. Then a jogger approached her near her home in Richmond, Va., and asked about her cat. "Did you get the message?" the stranger reportedly asked Willey before disappearing.

Lenzner emphatically has denied being part of any Clinton secret police and is sensitive to suggestions that he or his firm -- which has worked for Republicans as well as Democrats -- had anything to do with recent media revelations of the past sexual indiscretions of GOP lawmakers. In a statement put out shortly after Morris' grand-jury testimony was made public, he said: "After false reports linking IGI to revelations regarding Congressman Hyde, IGI hand-delivered a letter to all 37 members of the House Judiciary Committee stating categorically that IGI had no role in conducting any research into Chairman Hyde's background. The letter further stated that IGI had never been requested to inquire into -- nor had we inquired into -- the backgrounds of any member of the Committee. ... IGI was retained by the president's outside counsel to conduct relevant and legally appropriate research."

But in a recent TV interview Lenzner ducked a question about whether he ever trawled for Lewinsky trash. And asked if he was denying any role in investigating Clinton enemies, Lenzner replied: "Well, I don't want to get into the issue of what we did or didn't do, because I'm instructed by my -- the lawyers that represent the president -- not to discuss any of those kinds of activities." A spokesman for IGI, Gary Ginsburg, was more forthcoming to Insight: "We never dug for dirt on Starr or the prosecutors. We didn't look into personal-background stuff, just what was already in the public record."

In questioning White House aide Blumenthal, Starr prosecutors sought to discover whether he had any communications with shamuses Lenzner or Palladino. Blumenthal said that he had not, though he acknowledged about two dozen phone conversations with the president's private attorneys, David Kendall and Nicole Seligman. Blumenthal is not a lawyer and had no official role in the day-to-day White House handling of the media. So what were they discussing? According to Blumenthal, "Kendall expressed to me his feelings about the strangeness, [the] bizarre nature of this case." And feelings also were uppermost in the aide's conversations with the busy Seligman: "I've talked to her generally about the case and her feelings."

One of the reasons Starr's prosecutors may have focused on Blumenthal is the suspicion that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, to whom Blumenthal in many ways is closer than to the president, was far more attuned to the idea of probing the backgrounds of enemies. Morris raised this possibility in his testimony concerning a Hillary role here: "I believe there's been a pattern of attacking people who are witnesses who in some ways have implicated the president, and I think that it's Nixonian and counterproductive and I believe it stems more from Hillary Clinton than from Bill."

from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/counsel/smaltz/smaltz3.html, an interview with Donald Smaltz that appeared in the May 18th 1998 Frontline. "Smaltz was named independent counsel to investigate the Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy's alleged acceptance of illegal gratuities. His investigation began in September, 1994, and is ongoing."

[After the meeting at the Department of Justice] were you not tempted to arrive at the conclusion that perhaps at least someone in the Department of Justice was not entirely on your side in this undertaking?

I don't think anybody in the Department of Justice was on my side. I called my wife at the end of the meeting, when we got back here. She had always been concerned that I was in physical danger. I never really thought that. But I said, "You know, Lo," I said, "for the first time since I've been back here, I'm afraid."

Afraid?

Not for me. I was afraid that some organization could have that much influence with the United States government to cause the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General, the Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, the Assistant Attorney General, the head of Public Integrity and a deputy, six of them, to sit down at a meeting, all we're doing is discussing my investigation, and there are much greater forces and needs of that talent at the time than my little, old investigation.

Don Tyson was a powerful man.

That's a lot of power.

Smaltz mentions his wife's fears for his physical safety, then mentions he told her he was actually afraid. His reassurance that he did not mean it to be understood that he feared for his physical safety was plainly unconvincing (I watched the entire episode of Frontline). His face faintly twitched and the faint beginnings of lachrymation were evident.

from the Aug. 3, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)

WHITE HOUSE DEATH THREATS ...

Linda Tripp Goes Where Reporters Fear to Tread

By Carl Limbacher

OYSTER BAY -- On Wednesday, a visibly shaken Linda Tripp took to the microphones to speak out after seven long months of being portrayed in the press as a betrayer, manipulator and all around bad person. Fresh from her final appearance before Ken Starr's Washington grand jury, Tripp talked about herself, her motives and most importantly, the dirty little secret the national media has kept from the American public for six years:

"As a result of trying to earn a living, I became aware between 1993 and 1997 of actions by high government officials that may have been against the law. For that period of nearly five years, the things I witnessed concerning several different subjects made me increasingly fearful that this information was dangerous, very dangerous, to possess."

Just what kind of danger was Ms. Tripp talking about? As a political appointee, no doubt her honest testimony about "several different subjects" could be hazardous to her career. But Tripp had other reasons to be concerned - as the press has known for months. Still, journalists have refused to report on the subject in any way that might cause appropriate alarm.

During a May 26 appearance on Larry King Live, Tripp's lawyer, Anthony Zaccagnini, was asked why Tripp was sequestered in an FBI "safe house" early on in the Lewinsky investigation. Zaccagnini replied: "Linda Tripp was the subject of a lot of press scrutiny and there were some threats made against her life."

For that reason, he said, the FBI in conjunction with Starr's office "decided to move her to a secure location." Later on in the King interview, Zaccagnini said that Tripp feared losing her job and felt threatened by another "danger" that he was not at liberty to discuss.

The day after Tripp's attorney revealed the stunning news that Ken Starr's key cooperating witness had been the target of death threats, not a single American news outlet dared report the story. Only the British wire service Reuters carried the news.

Their headline, "Linda Tripp faced death threats, lawyer says" made it hard to miss this bombshell, but somehow our media managed the trick.

What's worse, this wasn't the first indication that Tripp may have been the target of a White House campaign to intimidate her through threats of physical violence. In their March 23 issue, Newsweek buried this little tidbit:

According to a source familiar with Tripp's account, the president would be "extremely upset" if Tripp were to contradict him about (Clinton gropee Kathleen) Willey, (Monica) Lewinsky told Tripp. Lewinsky said that the president expected Tripp to be a team player. "He feels you screwed him in the (previous) Newsweek article," Lewinsky allegedly said. Tripp should know, Lewinsky warned, that both Linda and her children were "in danger" if she didn't testify the right way about the Willey episode.

There's the "D" word again, this time emanating, allegedly, from the president himself via Monica Lewinsky.

In a column that began causing a stir on the internet and talk radio on Friday (though not slated to appear till Monday) Fox newsman Tony Snow reports this White House shocker under the headline "The Threat to Linda Tripp." But this bombshell only seems new because the story failed to set off media smoke alarms when they first got wind of it. Newsweek headlined their March 23 report, "What Made Linda Do it?" -- as if somehow she was the one who had issued a death threat.

The same Newsweek story said Tripp has told co-workers that her problems at the White House began because, "I knew too much about Whitewater." Whitewater for Tripp was Vincent Foster's death, and what she'd witnessed inside the White House as aides mounted a cover-up. Tripp's confidante, Lucianne Goldberg told a New York radio audience last week that Tripp knows more about the Foster case than she's told so far, because, says Goldberg, investigators "didn't ask Linda the right questions."

Rather than inquire as to just what it is that Ms. Tripp knows, and why that knowledge has put her in danger, journalists prefer to raise questions about her motives for taping Lewinsky -- an alleged sin now elevated by pundits to the status of a war crime.

But if the press really thinks the burning questions here have to do with Tripp's motivation, then they might consult another witness with her own famous tapes, who minces no words about why she made them. Gennifer Flowers was grilled by Fox newswoman Penny Crone on New York radio over a year ago. Like Newsweek, Crone was perturbed by the surreptitious recording of presidents and their paramours:

CRONE: Isn't it kind of crummy to make tapes when you're having an affair with the guy?

FLOWERS: I made the tapes to protect myself because some very scary things were going on. I was getting threats on the telephone.

CRONE: What kind of threats? Were they saying they were going to kill you?

FLOWERS: Yes, I had some saying I was going to get beaten up. I had some saying I was going to be killed.

When asked to name names, Flowers implied that these threats were anonymous. But she did reveal that "Democratic operatives intimated that there would be some problems and that I would not be in a secure situation."

CRONE: Do you think President Clinton was behind this?

FLOWERS: What I thought was -- after my home was ransacked, that he was behind that. (WABC Talk Radio, 7/3/97)

This blockbuster news received no coverage, though the New York Post did report Flowers' response to Crone's query about whether Clinton was well endowed. Though perhaps relevant at the time to Paula Jones' "distinguishing characteristic" claim, this news pales in importance next to information suggesting that someone had engineered a campaign of violence to intimidate witnesses on Clinton's behalf. Still, even when Flowers repeated her version of the threats she faced to Larry King, no one in the press reported it.

Tripp's experience mirrors that of Flowers' in another important way. Flowers, like Tripp, was urged to lie to protect Bill Clinton -- not merely to the press, but under oath. Flowers was worried about her state job. She was about to be grilled by the Arkansas State Labor Grievance Committee over a complaint filed by Charlette Perry, a qualified African American in line for a promotion, whom Clinton ordered bumped to open a slot for his unqualified girlfriend. Flowers' famous tapes catch Clinton blatantly suborning perjury:

FLOWERS: The only thing that concerns me, where I'm concerned at this point, is the state job.

CLINTON: Yeah, I never thought about that. But as long as you say you'd just been looking for one -- if they ever ask you if you talked to me about it, you can say no.

In the midst of Monica-mania, the press behaves as if they don't know about Clinton's pattern of obstructing justice -- proven six years ago by Gennifer Flowers' smoking gun tapes.

But it's Clinton's pattern of witness intimidation that should scare the daylights out of every American. And that pattern would no doubt put a severe crimp in those sky-high presidential approval ratings if the media began calling attention to the terrorist tactics employed against so many who cross this president.

Just a month before Linda Tripp went public about her own "dangerous" predicament, Kathleen Willey reported that her property had been vandalized - after which a stranger approached her, invoked the names of her children and then said, "I hope you're getting the message?" No doubt this was a bone chilling experience for the widowed Ms. Willey, especially after she had exposed the president on "60 Minutes" as a crude sexual predator.

There were a handful of reports about the threat against Willey, but the press decided it wasn't worth raising a fuss over.

The media did a similar tap dance around the case of Juanita Broaddrick, a woman uncovered by detectives working for Paula Jones. Reportedly Jones' investigators tape recorded Broaddrick as she unburdened herself about a traumatic encounter with Clinton when he was Arkansas State Attorney General, an experience that she said turned her life upside down and caused her to flee to California. Broaddrick would not go into detail, saying she did not want to "re-live" the episode. But two network news divisions, ABC and NBC, spoke to witnesses who recounted Broaddrick's story, as told to them years ago by Broaddrick herself. Back then, according to these witnesses, Broaddrick had claimed Bill Clinton had brutally raped her.

NBC's Lisa Myers actually interviewed the nurse who had treated Broaddrick's swollen lips after the attack. ABC identified that nurse as Norma Rogers, and named another witness to whom Broaddrick had confided. Broaddrick hastily issued an affidavit recanting her allegation. But questions remain as to why she changed her story.

Nevertheless, the media played dumb. Instead of running down an obviously substantial story, the press blamed attorneys for Paula Jones for leaking such a scurrilous charge. According to the London Telegraph (3/30/98), Ken Starr has subpoenaed all relevant evidence gathered by investigators on the Broaddrick case, in an effort to determine if Juanita Broaddrick has been silenced by the Clinton attack machine.

The list of Clinton scandal witnesses who claim to have been approached by operatives bearing bribes and/or threats is astonishingly long, and promises to grow longer as journalists ignore the phenomenon. Dolly Kyle Browning, a Dallas lawyer who claims a thirty year on-and-off sexual relationship with Clinton, says word was sent via her brother from Clinton consigliere Bruce Lindsey, who warned that the White House would "destroy" her if she didn't keep quiet. Columnist Snow reports in his upcoming piece that Lindsey told Linda Tripp he'd do the same thing to her.

Former Clinton girlfriend Sally Perdue says a Clinton operative threatened to break her legs if she didn't lay low during Clinton's first bid for the presidency.

Arkansas State Trooper Roger Perry has claimed that he was threatened with physical harm by Trooper Chief Raymond "Buddy" Young unless he kept quiet about what he knew. (In Dec. 1993, Young was captured on an ABC News video taking orders on Troopergate damage control from none other than Bruce Lindsey.)

The late James McDougal, who first revealed the Clintons' Whitewater shenanigans to the New York Times, was tape recorded as he told a local Arkansas politico that he could sink the Clintons on Whitewater - "if I could get into a position where I wouldn't get my head beaten off." Despite McDougal's quote, the mainstream press refuses to report allegations by eyewitnesses that suggest his death earlier this year in a federal prison was a result of mistreatment.

Like Tripp, key Whitewater witness David Hale has been threatened by state Democrats with prosecution after cooperating with Ken Starr. Hale told the Associated Press last year that attempts had been made to both bribe and threaten him into silence. And like Tripp, federal prosecutors decided that Hale needed the protection of an FBI "safe house" while preparing to testify.

Another trooper, L.D. Brown, says someone approached him during a recent business trip to England and offered $100,000 to tailor his Whitewater story.

Gennifer Flowers' onetime neighbor, Gary Johnson has alleged that he was beaten and left for dead after goons he suspected were sent by Clinton stole videotaped evidence of Clinton's relationship with Flowers. New Republic writer L. J. Davis says he was knocked unconscious in a Little Rock hotel room while researching a story on the Rose Law Firm, after which he discovered a portion of his notes were missing.

All these folks have two things in common. They are still, with the exception of McDougal, very much alive and available to be debriefed by reporters who should be desperately curious about all this. The second similarity they share is that the prestige

American press refuses to put their stories in context; to connect the dots, for fear the public will draw the obvious conclusion.

As Linda Tripp trembled before the microphones last week, she conjured up visions of another traumatized witness who testified before Starr's grand jury last winter. Betty Currie, the president's personal secretary, looked like a freight train had just hit her, as she cowered amidst a throng of reporters after emerging from her first day of testimony. And in the context of all of the above, common sense suggests that she may have been leaned on like so many witnesses trampled by the Clinton machine before her.

Currie had lost a brother in a bizarre car accident that left even local investigators puzzled. Theodore Williams had survived the intitial crash, only to dart back onto a Virginia highway on foot -- into the path of an 18 wheeler (The Richmond Times Dispatch, 12/17/97). The death came around the same time Monica Lewinsky was advised by Clinton to return the gifts he gave her (incriminating evidence of their relationship) to Mrs. Currie. Lewinsky has already informed Starr about this episode of Clinton evidence tampering. If Currie corroborates her account, the Clinton presidency is toast.

That wasn't the first time in recent months tragedy had struck the Currie family. Another brother had been severely beaten and hospitalized on the eve of Mrs. Currie's August 1997 testimony before the Thompson Committee. After the beating, White House lawyers advised Currie to postpone her testimony (The Oregonian, 1/28/98).

Neither the car accident nor the beating seems connected in any way to Currie's role as a crucial witness -- except through the incredibly coincidental timing.

But this much is clear. If there is any connection between Betty Currie's twin tragedies and testimony that the White House knows could be legally fatal for the president, America's mainstream media won't uncover it. Because, as with the death threats against Linda Tripp, our journalists are loathe to expose their own role as accomplices who stood by silently as Bill Clinton wreaked havoc on the American justice system.

from TPDL 1998-Oct-3, from the New York Post, by Marilyn Rauber and Brian Blomquist:

MOM FEARED MONICA'S MURDER

WASHINGTON - Monica Lewinsky's mom feared President Clinton would have her daughter killed to shut her up - warning Lewinsky she might end up like Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick

My mom's big fear is that he Clinton is going to send somebody out to kill me, Lewinsky confided over the phone to a horrified Linda Tripp, new transcripts revealed.

The ex-intern's distraught mother, Marcia Lewis, told the Sexgate grand jury she mentioned Kopechne, the young aide who died in a car wreck in which Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) drove off the Chappaquiddick, Mass., bridge in 1969, as an example to her daughter.

Lewis said she wanted to warn Monica of what happens to young women in politics who get involved where they shouldn't be involved.

A picture of a panicked mom and a confused Lewinsky - angry with Clinton for breaking off their secret affair but still willing to lie to protect him - emerged as 4,610 pages of grand jury testimony and transcripts of Tripp's secretly-taped phone chats with Lewinsky were released yesterday.

The tapes were released as the House Judiciary Committee prepared to expand the list of possible grounds of impeachment - and name Lewinsky as a co-conspirator in efforts to obstruct justice.

Committee investigator David Schippers will outline new counts focusing on witness tampering, obstruction of justice and making false statements under oath, the Washington Post said today.

Schippers will also propose dropping one of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's counts: abuse of power through improper claim of executive privilege.

In other revelations from the documents released yesterday:

Secret Service officer Brent Chinery testified he and other officers believed Clinton had affairs in the White House with at least six women.

Their names were blacked out of the documents, and Chinery conceded his claim was based partly on observation and partly on rumor.

Lewinsky complained to Tripp that Clinton sometimes seemed to zone out on her.

I think he's on drugs, she said, apparently peeved that he hadn't noticed her wearing a $3 hat pin he'd given her.

That's not so far-fetched, you know. I mean, nice people are on drugs, Tripp replied.

Lewinsky, describing her phone-sex games with Clinton, claimed he got aroused merely by listening to her talk about her trip to Bosnia. That prompted Tripp - who compared Lewinsky's voice to Marilyn Monroe's - to crack, Now what does that tell you? Your voice can do it.

Lewinsky branded Clinton the biggest liar I have ever met - and said he tried to hide his numerous affairs from even his closest fixers like top confidant Bruce Lindsey.

I know he didn't tell Bruce. See if he had told Bruce, Bruce would have fixed it. I'd be working for Bruce, said Lewinsky, who was desperately trying to get Clinton to find her a job.

Lindsey and presidential pal Vernon Jordan became so alarmed after Clinton was quizzed about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones suit that they began a brief but doomed effort to get Clinton to settle the suit.

At Lindsey's urging, Jordan met Clinton at the White House on Jan. 19, before the scandal became public, and offered to raise money to settle with Jones and quell the scandal.

Lewinsky said the president was a neat freak who couldn't stand to see a book mark protruding from a book.

And she mocked the way Clinton kept religious tapes and other biblical material in his office, saying, The creep is really religious.

A protective Tripp angrily threatened to kick Clinton where it hurts: I want to kick him in the nuts so that they flatten into little pancakes and he can never use them again, she declared.

Lewinsky was confident Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie - who helped arrange and conceal their meetings - would lie under oath to protect her boss.

After Clinton cut off the affair and Currie began shielding her boss, a furious Lewinsky said: I hate her.

Tripp encouraged Lewinsky to pressure Clinton to get her a job, saying such favors were done routinely and chided the ex-intern for not demanding a high-paying post: I would just say, let's not limit yourself, she said.

I think people call me a stalker ... Oh, my God, that gets me so mad. I hate that, Lewinsky told Tripp, but later joked, I have a Ph.D in stalking, you know.

In hours of often bawdy late-night girl talk, the two women sounded afraid of Clinton, his band of protective aides and his lawyers.

A desperate Lewinsky repeatedly pressured Tripp to lie - even under oath - if asked about her affair with Clinton and allegations that Clinton groped White House volunteer Kathleen Willey.

They hashed out ways to protect themselves - Lewinsky's plan was to lie, and Tripp, who didn't want to lie under oath, agonized over how to avoid becoming a witness in the first place.

It's self-preservation ... For fear of my life, I would not cross these, these people, Lewinsky told Tripp.

Lewinsky also spoke contemptuously of Willey and Paula Jones, saying she had zero respect for them because their sex allegations against Clinton had jeopardized his presidency.

They made an odd couple - the spoiled Beverly Hills rich kid and the middle-aged divorced mom: There's a lot of mother-daughter there, Tripp told the 24-year-old Lewinsky.

Lewinsky opened up to Tripp, revealing her most intimate secrets, including how many men she'd slept with - eight by Lewinsky's quick tally - excluding Clinton and other men she performed oral sex on.

Like Clinton, Lewinsky insisted their oral-sex relationship wasn't real sex, telling Tripp, Having sex is having intercourse.

Tripp scoffed: Oh, you've been around him too long.

Lewinsky described herself as a married-man magnet and pleaded with Tripp: Linda, if I ever want to have an affair with a married man again - especially if he's president - please shoot me.

Tripp laughed: I promise you - if you get out of this one alive and unharmed and sane and healthy.

Lewinsky told Tripp that her mom was as paranoid as I am ... She wants her baby out of this mess ... She keeps saying, "Mary Jo Chappaquiddick' or whatever ... her name was.

In her testimony to the grand jury, Lewis said she warned her daughter that it is dangerous for foolish young women to, to, to get involved in things that are not, not where they should be involved.

Lewis denied she was so frightened that she told her daughter to flat-out lie about the tryst, but conceded she advised her to keep her business private.

Tripp dismissed talk of murder but agreed Lewinsky was in a horrible predicament and predicted the White House would try to smear the ex-intern - That's my big fear, she said.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Shut up. Oh, my God, don't even say such an asinine thing. He's not that stupid. He's an arrogant - but he's not that stupid, Tripp said when Lewinsky related her mother's death fears.

from TPDL 1998-Oct-6, from NEWSMAX, by Carl Limbacher:

Tripp Tape 'Doctored' where Monica Speaks of Death Fears

Two weeks ago, Ken Starr reported that nine of the 27 tapes supplied by Linda Tripp to the Office of Independent Counsel were copied from the originals, according to an FBI lab analysis. The FBI said one tape may have been tampered with, based on evidence that it was stopped and started during the copying process.

Now, a transcript of Linda Tripp's tapes reveals that one such interruption in the recording process came at a crucial point in the conversation between Tripp and Monica Lewinsky. Just as Lewinsky was about to explain her mother's fears that her relationship with President Clinton could cost her her life, the official transcript notes a "tape skip," followed by another "inaudible" portion.

Prior to this passage in the Nov. 20, 1997 recording, as excerpted from page A10 of Saturday's New York Times, Lewinsky has just told Tripp that she intends to hang up on Clinton the next time he phones her:

MRS. TRIPP: Well, let me put it to you this way. By hanging up and saying you're telling your parents, and then hanging up the phone, you're saying a whole hell of a lot more than you could ever do in a 20-minute conversation.

MS. LEWINSKY: I know (tape skip) (inaudible) my mom will kill me if I don't tell him -- make it clear at some point that I'm not going to hurt him, because - see, my mom's big fear is that he's going to send somebody out to kill me.

The deleted words come literally within the same sentence where Monica speaks of her mother's worry that Clinton might have her killed. In another of Tripp's tapes, Lewinsky rebuffs Tripp's plea that she tell the truth about her affair, saying that she doesn't dare do so - - "first of all, for fear of my life. ... I would not cross these people for fear of my life."

Linda Tripp denies she copied her tapes, and lie-detector test results released last week indicate she's telling the truth. Lucianne Goldberg says that Tripp's two previous lawyers had access to the tapes and suspects that one of them, Kirby Behre, may have done the copying.

Tripp hired Behre when she became embroiled in the Whitewater scandal after Vince Foster's death -- doing so at the recommendation of her former boss, then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum.

No matter who is responsible for the "tape skip" on Linda Tripp's recording, because of it we may never know why Monica Lewinsky and her mother believed that Bill Clinton would kill to keep their relationship secret.

Clintonista antics, from www.cnn.com, 1998-Dec-20:

Arson hits office of pro-impeachment congressman

December 20, 1998
Web posted at: 7:43 p.m. EST (0043 GMT)

FARMINGTON HILLS, Michigan (CNN) -- Arsonists on Sunday struck a campaign office of a Michigan congressman who voted for all four House impeachment articles.

Republican Rep. Joseph Knollenberg's office in a Farmington Hills shopping center was damaged by smoke, Police Chief William Dwyer said.

An outside wall also was scorched in the 8:30 a.m. EST blaze, he said.

Large plywood campaign signs were set ablaze behind the rear of the office, Dwyer said.

"Under the signs, we found a rag with an unidentified accelerant," said Dwyer.

An eyewitness who evacuated from a nearby business said the flames reached 15 feet above the roof.

Knollenberg's chief of staff, Paul Welday, said he suspects the fire is linked to Knollenberg's Saturday vote on the House impeachment articles.

"Clearly, there were some folks trying to register their feelings in a very bizarre and dangerous way."

No one was injured in the blaze, but Dwyer said domestic terrorism charges would be added to the arson charge if the fire is related to the vote of the congressman.

"If this is retaliation against a congressman, there will be some federal charges," said Dwyer.

Knollenberg, a former insurance agent, was just elected to his fourth term from the mostly conservative Republican district.

Likely anyone reading this remembers the following. From http://www.kwik-link.com/cgi/Hillary_Clinton_32_chat1.cgi:

Name: Conservative Libertarian

email: reality@america.com

Message: Let's talk about persecution. Persecution in the city of unconditional brotherly love. The teamsters union showed up to support the President at today's fundraiser, in numbers that clearly indicated their presence was organized in advance. What followed is reminiscent of the brown shirts in Hitler's Germany. An excerpt of an eyewitness account follows.

The anti-Clinton protesters then went back toward City Hall. Along the way, we passed a huge, 18 wheel TEAMSTER tractor-trailer, with music blaring from speakers. I was told that the truck had a bar in it and that the TEAMSTERS where all half-lit.

We approached CITY HALL only to encounter a huge mob of TEAMSTERS walking around in a pack. There had to be 75 to 100 people, as compared to our 15-20. They were coming at us. We were coming toward them. The TEAMSTERS all had professionally made signs: TEAMSTERS FOR CLINTON.

Then it got ugly.

As a Clinton protester walked into the mob, they began to shove him. He was with his sister. Then, they tore the sign out of his hands. The anti-Clinton protester had some words. Then, the TEAMSTERS attacked him. He quickly fell to the ground, as the TEAMSTERS kicked and punched him. His sister, in an effort to help him, layed on top of him. He got up from the attack with a deep gash on his face and was completely dazed from the attack.

He was quickly shuffled about 20 feet away by the police. About 10 cameras and 15 reporters followed him and interviewed him shortly thereafter with blood still running down his face.

It's my understanding that no arrests were made. Death threats have also been made recently to some radio talk show hosts who have expressed negative opinions about the President. A few weeks ago a senior citizen standing at an intersection in Florida with an anti-Clinton sign was beaten by a motorist who stopped because he didn't like the man's point of view. It's getting to the point in this country where people are taking their lives in their hands by voicing their discontent in the vicinity of others who, for some reason, believe that the law doesn't apply to them or their agenda.

To those of us who share the sentiments of these protestors, their actions are akin to those of patriots in colonial times. It's impossible, of course, to estimate the effects such incidents will have on those who are undecided about who to vote for in November.

Here is more contemporary coverage, in the form of freebie briefs from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

10/04/98

Protester Claims Teamsters Beat Him
A Scuffle Broke Out During the President's Visit to City Hall on Friday Night

Don Adams of Cheltenham spent yesterday nursing bruises and a cut beneath his eye, the aftermath of his efforts Friday evening to demonstrate his ``deep concern'' for America and the conduct of President Clinton.

Adams, 37, said he was knocked to the ground and struck by members of the Teamsters union during a rally outside City Hall, where the President was attending a fund-raiser.

10/06/98

Free Speech Is No Joke
A Protester's Mugging Shouldn't Be Taken Lightly

It was a bad image day for the city of Philadelphia, just when it needs it least.

At a Democratic fund-raising rally in City Hall on Friday, a thug smacked around a demonstrator who carried picket signs critical of the President.

10/07/98

LETTERS

Attack on protester is more than `unfortunate' Kevin Feeley, spokesman for Mayor Rendell, considers the incident between the Teamsters and Clinton protesters ``unfortunate'' (Inquirer, Oct. 4).

He also indicated that the administration does not condone such actions. Perhaps that would have been enough to say, however, he felt it necessary to elaborate: ``The anti-Clinton groups chose to make their views known. They chose to make their views known in the faces of the Teamsters [...]"

10/15/98

LETTERS

Teamsters' view of City Hall rally and coverage I was not present at the rally in support of President Clinton at City Hall (Inquirer, Oct. 4). However, I have been watching the television news and reading the newspapers, and I have two sons - proud to be Teamsters - who were present at the rally. Their accounts of what occurred were totally different from what is being reported by the media.

10/31/98

METROPOLITAN AREA NEWS IN BRIEF

Anti-Clinton Protester Complains of D.A. Inaction

The anti-Clinton protester beaten during a Center City rally four weeks ago said yesterday that he was disappointed with the response from the office of District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham and had filed a citizen's complaint with the U.S. Attorney's Office.

11/04/98

Suspects Named in Clinton Fracas
Warrants Were Issued for Two Teamsters in Last Month's Clash Between Protesters and Supporters of the President

The District Attorney's Office has approved arrest warrants for two suspects in the fight outside City Hall last month between anti-Clinton demonstrators and pro-Clinton pickets, authorities said yesterday.

Officials identified them as Kevin McNulty, 21, and Marc Nardone, 20, both of Northeast Philadelphia, both members of the Teamsters union.