Copyright © 1994 The Telegraph plc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission.
The Electronic Telegraph   Sunday 2 January 1994   World News
[World News]

FOCUS: CLINTON'S FIRST YEAR: An easy ride through scandal
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Other presidents have had a tougher time over lesser matters. Is there a liberal conspiracy?

THOSE who have actu ally read the 11,000 word article by David Brock in the American Spectator will never be able to think of the President and the First Lady in quite the same way again. Whether or not every detail is strictly accurate, the cumulative testimony of the four Arkansas state troopers who served as bodyguards at the Governor's Mansion from 1987 to 1993 is hard to dismiss as pure invention.

The little asides are so telling: the claims that the governor travelled economy on flights in and out of Little Rock, then bumped himself up to first class as soon as the coast was clear; the drafting of free prison labour to tend the garden of Hillary Clinton's parents; Bill Clinton comforting himself that fellatio outside marriage is not adultery because nothing in the Bible proscribes it.

The central charge is that Clinton used the troopers to facilitate trysts with six concurrent mistresses, to keep "Hillary Watch" with cellular telephones and to solicit countless women for casual sex in hotels. If this is true, and if, as alleged, it continued after Clinton was elected President, it betrays a recklessness and deformation of character that would disqualify him from the presidency in the eyes of a great many Americans.

But very few people have actually read the article. The American public has learnt of the allegations at one remove, through diluted accounts that are far less shocking. They probably know less detail than the British public at this stage, for the mainstream US media have played down the scandal. The Los Angeles Times published its own extensive interviews with the troopers, but only after the American Spectator revealed that the newspaper had been sitting on the story for some time.

Other opinion leaders have held their noses. The New York Times buried the charges deep inside the paper, sniffily announcing that it was not a "supermarket tabloid". This from a paper that once published a front page story giving credence to Kitty Kelly's unsourced gossip about sex in Reagan's White House.

Clearly a double standard is at work. The Washington Post set off the downfall of the Nixon presidency with a single anonymous source. Yet the American Spectator's story is deemed "uncorroborated" even though it has four sources, two identified by name. In addition, the Los Angeles Times has phone logs showing that Clinton made calls to Jo Jenkins, one of the alleged mistresses in the middle of the night, including one that began at 1.23am and lasted for 94 minutes; calls to Hillary were fewer and lasted three minutes or less. Another of the women, Gennifer Flowers, has already come forward with tape-recordings to corroborate her tale. How many pieces of the puzzle are needed?

It looks as if the scandal will subside. One of the state troopers has issued an affidavit stating that he was not offered a federal job in exchange for helping to hush up the story, clearing away the one potentially criminal charge against President Clinton, although he has since claimed that the gist of the charge was indeed true. But this has excited remarkably little media curiosity.

The focus now shifts to the more serious matter of Madison Savings and Loan, an Arkansas financial institution once owned by a friend and business partner of the Clintons. Before it went bankrupt, costing taxpayers $47 million, it made extensive loans to people within the Clinton coterie. Some of the money, it seems, passed by circuitous routes to the Clinton campaign chest.

When federal regulators tried to close the institution, the Clintons intervened to keep it open. The White House Deputy Counsel, Vincent Foster, who committed suicide last year, was the Clintons' private lawyer handling most of these affairs.

Separately, it is alleged that a $300,000 loan from the Small Business Administration, intended for minorites and the handicapped, was paid to a Clinton friend at the behest of the governor. According to Representative Jim Leach, vice-chairman of the House Banking Committee, $110,000 of this money ended up in the account of Whitewater Development, a property company until recently half owned by the Clintons.

The Justice Department is currently investigating this complex web of financial dealings. Whether an agency under the executive control of President Clinton can be expected to pursue the case with zeal is an open question. Congress could ensure a more independent inquiry by holding its own committee hearings, with powers to call witnesses and subpoena documents. But Congress, of course, is controlled by the Democrats.

If Clinton were a Republican President there is no doubt that he would be in grave trouble by now. But Washington is a Democratic city. The experience of Watergate and Iran-Contra suggests that the machinery for driving scandals - a televised congressional hearing working in synergy with a press corps eager for the kill - can be activated only by the liberal establishment.


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