Putting Whitewater behind us

The Clinton White House's 331-page complaint about how the right-wing media has been out to get it fails to give the Progressive Review proper credit for its role in the media conspiracy. TPR published the most comprehensive summaries of the Whitewater scandal available anywhere in May 1992 and again in February 1994. And your editor wrote the first book raising serious questions about Clinton's character and politics. But then we don't exactly fit the notion of a conservative plot.

The WH theory, of course, is ludicrous, especially given the history of Clinton-coddling by the media. In fact, Clinton is primarily a creation of the media, without whose its timely, incessant, albeit unsubstantiated fawning, Clinton would still be the minor league, corrupt Arkansas politician he is at heart.

The White House vendetta against the media is far more than just one of words, as ably summarized recently by Micah Morrison in the Wall Street Journal. Here's what's happened to some of those who have tried to pursue the story:

o Doug Frantz quit the LA Times over its handling of his story about what Arkansas state trooper bodyguards had to say about Clinton's activities.

o ABC's Jim Wooten took himself off Whitewater after the network killed one of his Troopergate pieces.

o Time's Richard Behar left the publication after getting involved in a dispute with Tyson Foods over a report "linking the company to cash payments alleged destined for then-Gov. Clinton." Behar went to work for Fortune but says that Time stood behind him.

o Whitewater investigative reporter Christopher Ruddy was fired by the New York Post.

o White House aides -- led by George Stephanopoulos -- have complained to WH reporters' bosses and lobbied to kill stories. In one case WH counsel David Kendall flew to New York to lobby against ABC running a piece on Clinton using state troopers to procure women. According to Morrison, "White House officials suggested that ABC corespondents look into reports that the main source for the story, Arkansas State Trooper LD Brown, had murdered his mother. The ugly allegation was false, but the ABC story never ran".

o Last year both CNN's 'Larry King Live' and NBC's 'Dateline' canceled plans to air interviews with WH FBI agent Gary Aldrich, after pressure from the Clintonistas.

o NY Daily News reporter David Eisenstadt was fired in November after filing a story about Clinton's Asian fundraising. The Village Voice reported that the Clinton campaign had complained to Mort Zuckerman, News co-publisher and frequent WH guest.

o Another Daily News reporter, Yinh Chan, has been charged with criminal libel in Taiwan after co-authoring a piece charging that a top Taiwanese official offered $15 million to the Clinton campaign.

Helping out in the Clinton war against the media is a group called the Back to Business Committee -- dedicated to getting the word out that there is "no smoking gun. The President and First Lady have done nothing wrong." The group, not surprisingly, was founded by Lynn Cutler and Ann Lewis, who would be happy to defend Ghengis Khan as long as he remained a registered Democrat. What is a little disturbing, however, are some of the other names on the list of Back to Business Committee advisors and spokespeople. They include Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Hodding Carter III, Father Robert Drinan, Susan Estrich, Gerald McEntee, Roslyn Carter and Letty Cottin Progrebin. If you like any of these folks, you should let them know that they are being badly used.

USA Today reports that prosecutor Starr's staff is now working six days a week towards new indictments sometime in February.

Now that the Paula Jones case is coming to the Supreme Court, the media has finally decided to pay it some mind. Evan Thomas, Washington bureau chief of Newsweek, admitted to CNN that "when the story first came out it was buried in a wave of pretty successful spin by the White House. The White House did a terrific job of portraying Paula Jones as a 'slut' and 'gold-digger' . . . and the press, for a variety of reasons, bought into that."

One reason, of course, was that the press wasn't doing its job, which includes piercing the spin of public officials. Thomas did not distinguish himself in the early stages of the story and actually described Jones on TV as a "sleazy woman with big hair who came out of a trailer park," a bare variation on James Carville's "this shows you that if you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, there's no telling what you can find." Change the words "a trailer park" to "the ghetto" and you can get some of the true implications of these remarks.

Thomas later apologized but his CNN appearance was noteworthy for his continued failure (along with most of the rest of the media) to understand that the Jones affair is not just a sex story but is about an alleged offense that, if proven, would have serious consequence for anyone less powerful than Clinton. The charge is not just that he exposed himself to Jones, but that he used his public office (including the services of an on-duty state trooper) to exercise totally improper influence over a state employee. Further, the Jones incident is only one of numerous such allegations (backed by the testimony of state troopers and others) that have been made against Clinton. It is long past time for the media to drop its boys-will-be-boys attitude towards these cases and recognize the serious abuse of power and potentially criminal behavior involved.