Bob Tyrrell: I surely do and I don't understand why she got in trouble for it. [laughs] It's the kind of thing that liberals BELIEVE in.
Jim Quinn: Well, of course they do. And the reason I say this is because, you see, the news media never referred to her as a fortune teller or a psychic. They referred to her as a PSYCHIC RESEARCHER. Well, now it turns out that the gardener, the Indonesian gardener with the green card who donated $425,000 to the Democratic National Committee and then fled the country --
Bob Tyrrell: Yes.
Jim Quinn: The media is now referring to him as a LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. [laughs]
Bob Tyrrell: Not a bagman?
Jim Quinn: Yeah, it's a BAGMAN, is what it is. So look, anyway, this Mochtar Riady character and the Indonesian connection to the Clintons -- and I'll tell you what, what really rang my bell was about a year ago when Michael Chertoff started talking about the Lippo Group with Webster Hubbell in front of the Whitewater investigating committee and it really hit the fan there, ah --
Bob Tyrrell: Well, as I recall, Hubbell began blubbering and tears rolling down his face, and he said something to Chertoff to the effect, "How COULD you sink so low [laughs] as to reveal the name of the group who is paying me to keep my large, fatuous mouth shut?" If I recall correctly, that was $250,000 he was getting for three months of inactivity.
Jim Quinn: Yeah, three months of sitting there and not telling Kenneth Starr anything, and being paid off by a close friend of Bill Clinton not to testify about Bill Clinton. Gee, I don't know about you, but that sure sounds like a crime to me.
Bob Tyrrell: Well, I don't know. There's actually so many [laughs] matters one has to look into, it could very well be a crime, Jim. I don't know.
Jim Quinn: Well, let me ask you this. Now that Mochtar Riady and the Lippo Group have finally surfaced in the mainstream media so that at least some concerned Americans understand something about this, these ties between Clinton and the Lippo Group and Mochtar Riady and his son, James Riady, who ran the Worthen Bank for the Stephens people down in Arkansas, goes way back to the middle-80s, I believe --
Bob Tyrrell: Yes, that's correct.
Jim Quinn: And the one circumstance that I wanted to discuss with you is, well, it's a very troubling link between the President and Mochtar Riady because this would definitely put the President in Mochtar Riady's back pocket -- would be the situation where apparently Bill Clinton diverted funds or did something with the Arkansas Teachers' Retirement Account or Retirement Fund, which I believe had $40 million in it?
Bob Tyrrell: Yes, Jim, you amaze me, I must tell you. First of all, there's a couple points I want to make. The L.A. Times has established a precedent of always following The American Spectator. Back in "Troopergate" in December of '93, as you will recall, both of us had the stories of Arkansas state troopers admitting they've been turned into pimps, party boys, and intelligence operators for Bill Clinton. But the L.A. Times wouldn't publish their piece until we published ours. We published our piece and within a few days they came forward and published theirs.
Now, on the Lippo Group's financial support from abroad, from Indonesia, that lovely, despotic paradise of Indonesia, comes perhaps millions of dollars from the Lippos to Bill Clinton. And we, of course, reported this in September of 1995. Now comes the L.A. Times report -- now, again, they're following The American Spectator -- you'll not see in any of the papers or in any of the columnists proper attribution of this story originating in The American Spectator by Jim Adams, but it did, long ago.
Jim Quinn: That's right. It was James Ring Adams who originally brought this to the fore.
Bob Tyrrell: And the reason you amaze me, Jim, is we're bringing the whole thing up to speed with regard to the teachers' funding in our next issue due out next week.
Jim Quinn: Is that right?
Bob Tyrrell: Yeah, you're once again ahead of me, Jim.
Jim Quinn: Well, thanks, Bob.
Bob Tyrrell: The piece isn't out until next week. I can tell you this, just generally stated. Of course it's based in part on the work I've done in my biography of Bill, Boy Clinton, that Clinton back in Arkansas and Clinton's people used, in the case of ADFA, the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, they would set up bureaucracies to bring in money and use any way they wanted. And there's evidence that ADFA brought in drug money and that it was laundering money. In the case of the Arkansas Teachers' Union, the money was already there. It was the money of middle class teachers that have saved all their lives for it. And in that case they took the money and invested, if you'll recall, in some very shaky enterprises, and according to Jim Adams, would have gone under -- well, WERE under -- except for a last minute support from, I believe, the Stephens family, or that whole thing would have come crashing down. Bill Clinton's people would have been revealed as grafters and bunglers, and Bill Clinton wouldn't be even Governor of Arkansas any longer.
Jim Quinn: Bob, as I understand the story, maybe I'm wrong, but it was Mochtar Riady who, literally in the middle of the night, flew in and it was Stephens and Riady together who wrote the checks to put the money back into the Arkansas Teachers' Retirement Fund so that it would not be discovered that Clinton was responsible for this huge shortfall.
Bob Tyrrell: That's correct.
Jim Quinn: And so you really do have to ask the question, what does Bill Clinton owe Mochtar Riady for literally saving his political life with millions of dollars?
Bob Tyrrell: That's right, and you know that hasn't been written up any place except back in Jim Adams' piece. He's going to do more on that. But the way you just put it, rather pithily, is exactly on the money. Bill Safire hasn't picked it up yet. I sent Safire and the Wall Street Journal people the piece you're talking about so they'd be up to speed on this. But I haven't gotten any acknowledgement from them yet.
Jim Quinn: I've been waiting for the fuse to burn back to this story because, now that Safire's on it and now that it has acceptability in the mainstream media, I would suggest to you that if anyone's doing their homework, and in this day and age I wonder if we have any journalists left in the mainstream media, but if anybody's doing their homework, they've got to follow this back to this deal with the Arkansas Teachers' Union Fund.
Bob Tyrrell: Right. And the fundamental of the deal is, they looted the pension, Clinton's people looted the pension, and the bills came due and Riady and Stephens came forward and bailed them out. But actually I think that Riady was even bailing Stephens out. I had gotten it backwards earlier. Riady was bailing Stephens out. So the question to be asked is, what is it that the President owes Riady and how's he going to pay him off?
Jim Quinn: Listen, as long as you're on the phone, and again, just a reminder to those who tuned in late, Bob Tyrrell from The American Spectator is on the phone with us, the author of Boy Clinton, and we have been posing the question here for about the past week or so, what about this situation in Arkansas where Mochtar Riady bailed Bill Clinton out of a terrible mistake that he made with millions and millions of dollars? And apparently The American Spectator, this is the upcoming edition?
Bob Tyrrell: Yes.
Jim Quinn: We're going to revisit this and elaborate on this story, which is why you need to subscribe, you know [laughs], to The American Spectator. We'll give you that 800-number before the show's over. Now on the subject of money laundering, there's another question I want to ask you. Can you hold? Because we've got to take a break here.
Bob Tyrrell: Sure, Jim.
Jim Quinn: All right, Bob, hold on. We'll be back after the commercials. This is Quinn in the Morning....
Jim Quinn: On the phone with us this morning is Bob Tyrrell from The American Spectator magazine, author of the book, Boy Clinton. Good morning again, Robert.
Bob Tyrrell: Good morning, Jim.
Jim Quinn: I want to give you a little heads-up here. A friend of ours out in California, John Williams, who does the logging for our show and listens every morning, in the middle of the night out there in California, listens to our show on the Internet in RealTime Audio on www.warroom.com. He is an accountant and he's gotten hold of this 200-page study, or this -- what's the word I'm looking for -- this 200-page report that's been issued by the state of Delaware. And I guess whoever is in charge of investigating banking stuff in Delaware has released this report, and their report is about a company called Coral Reassurance. Look, John's looking over it right now and he's going to try to give us a condensed version of it sometime in the coming weeks. You know, it's one of those things where, if you talk to people about this, their eyes glaze over and they don't know what you're talking about. But let me give it to you real quick. Apparently hundreds of millions of dollars went from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority to the Coral Reassurance Company in the Cayman Islands. And Coral Reassurance apparently never employed one person, it existed for, I think, about three days as a company and then disappeared after all this money went through it. Just keep your ear to the ground in case you hear anything about that, O.K.?
Bob Tyrrell: No, Jim, I DO know a little about that and, I don't know, I haven't read that report and, if you don't mind, I probably won't unless I suffer some insomnia in weeks ahead. [they both laugh] I believe you might look in that report for any signs that any of that money went into the purchase of AIRCRAFT --
Jim Quinn: Oh, really?
Bob Tyrrell: For instance, the kind of aircraft that might at some time have been used at Mena Airport.
Jim Quinn: Oh, that's interesting. THAT'S interesting.
Bob Tyrrell: Yeah. Keep your eyes open.
Jim Quinn: Yes, well apparently the conclusion of the report, though, is that Coral Reassurance was a drug money laundry.
Bob Tyrrell: Yeah.
Jim Quinn: And here it is tied directly to the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, which is the agency that Bill Clinton created right after Madison went down so they'd have some place to write checks out of to his friends. Well anyway, you wanted to talk about another issue here this morning before we let you go, so go ahead.
Bob Tyrrell: Well, Jim, as you want to know how badly -- I'm sure you already know how badly Bob Dole did in that debate the other night -- all he did was slightly better than the bad performance he had done in the debate before. But here's how badly that debate was. The morning of that debate, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in its lead editorial published a blueprint for how Bob Dole could have sent Bill Clinton packing. We got the editorial from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette to Bob Dole and, of course, Dole never used it.
It begins this way. This is Bill Clinton's hometown paper addressing Bob Dole on the morning of the debate. The editorial begins:
Character, Bob Dole, gotta bring it up. Maybe whatever polls say, don't do it, can't decide, but, Bob, do it. Address the character issue tonight with President Bill Clinton. It's only the most important qualification for the job. Ask Richard Nixon.It then goes on to list all of the character lapses of this administration. And it goes on to say,
This new Bob Dole would be doing the American people a favor if he started talking about character and asking questions about the President's record, for example...And it lists more examples. It ends with this,
And think of how Ronald Reagan used great lines that were given to him. And finally, Bob Dole...Says the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the morning of that debate,
...finally, Bob Dole, the war hero, the man from Russell, Kansas, the Majority Leader whom both sides of the aisle could trust, ask the American people a question.And this strikes me as the question that would blow Bill Clinton's toupee.
Ask the American people a question, "Are you proud of this administration?"Can you imagine -- and if Dole had cited this editorial throughout that debate, because it's the editorial from Bill Clinton's hometown paper, a paper that's been pretty steadfast, well at any rate, from time to time, in supporting Bob Dole and being very critical of the likes of Jim Quinn and The American Spectator for being too anti-Clinton. Now that's what they said the morning of that debate. Ask the American people, "Are you proud of this administration?"
Jim Quinn: Well, I would have another question, as well. I would ask the American people this question. Do you think that, at any time in the next eight years, there will be a Bob Dole Legal Defense Fund?
Bob Tyrrell: [long laugh] Yes, Jim, I'm doubtless you'd have a few more questions after that!
Jim Quinn: [with great irony] Yeah. Well, there's been a lot of good advice out there. But it seems as though the Republicans, or at least the Dole campaign, has been very good at accepting advice from Democrats. "You know, this could really backfire on Mr. Dole if he does this! And we wouldn't want to see Mr. Dole bring up the character issue because this could hurt Mr. Dole." So dutifully we take the advice of DEMOCRATS!
Bob Tyrrell: Well, unfortunately, the moderate Republicans are more attentive to Democrats than they are to Republicans and that's why, starting with George Bush, they get retired so easily.
Jim Quinn: Of course.
Bob Tyrrell: You know, I'm out here, you're on one side of the coast* and I'm here in Washington. [*NOTE: Jim Quinn was broadcasting his show live from San Diego that week so he could be there for the Clinton/Dole debate.] And it's amazing how the political atmosphere here in Washington is besmogged, shaped and besmogged by liberals. Almost wholly by liberals. We have our Washington Times, we have The American Spectator, we don't have the Tribune-Review of Pittsburgh, which I wish we had out here, too, but those are about the only organs pumping a little fresh air into this fetid atmosphere.
Jim Quinn: Yes, Kultursmog, I think was the word you once used.
Bob Tyrrell: That's the term we use in Boy Clinton and that's the term I'm going to stick with. Wherever you go out here, it stultifies free speech. You know interestingly, by the way, with the exception of, I believe, G. Gordon Liddy, we don't have much good talk radio out here in Washington.
Jim Quinn: Is Limbaugh on there?
Bob Tyrrell: Yeah, Limbaugh's on, but Gordon Liddy originates here. But there's nothing else that originates here.
Jim Quinn: Well, Bob, you need to get working on this for us.
Bob Tyrrell: Quinn in the Morning?
Jim Quinn: Yeah, as long as you're inside the Beltway, start talking to your friends at radio stations. I assume you have some.
Bob Tyrrell: [laughs] Well, what I'm trying to tell you is that Kultursmog so dominates out here that I don't.
Jim Quinn: Well, that could be.
Bob Tyrrell: But, Jim, you know in my book tour, I've been touring the country with this book -- and it's now on the best seller list of the New York Times for two weeks in a row -- the thing that does it and the American people you want to talk to are talk radio in every city in this country. No wonder the liberals hate talk radio.
Jim Quinn: Yeah, and you can count on the fact that they're going to try and put the Fairness Doctrine back in again, which will effectively make it so difficult for radio station owners to deal with talk radio that they'll just give it up altogether.
Bob Tyrrell: Well, that would be shameful because it's -- I mean, I speak as a writer and as an editor -- it's a major cultural phenomena for the good. Any liberal who believes in tolerance and free speech ought to be proud of talk radio because it's unbridled free speech. It's, contrary to what the propagandists say, it's an intelligent audience and it's a cheerful audience.
Jim Quinn: Yeah, but you know as well as I do that the groundwork is being laid here for the eventual dismantling of talk radio. These Democrats know what happened to them in 1994, even if the Republicans don't know why they won, the Democrats know why the Republicans won. And they know that talk radio did it and they're going to make sure that this never happens again. They want another forty years of total control, of total irresponsibility and unaccountability to the American public. Their little fiefdom and gravy train has been shoved right off the rails and, man, they're as mad as hornets about it.
Bob Tyrrell: Yes, and one of the reasons they're so mad though, Jim, they know they're a dying breed. They're finished. They can't -- they may win the presidency this time around, but they're finished as a public philosophy because the American people recognize that, if you want to do something for the poor, if you want to do something for all the liberal causes that are legitimate, you will join the conservatives because they're the only people with any solutions for the poor, the downtrodden, the blacks, the disabled. It's the truth, you know.
Jim Quinn: Well, in America you've got to understand, Bob, and I know you do understand, that the liberals don't BELIEVE that America works. They don't believe in the Constitution. Look at Bill Clinton. We've been talking about this for the past couple of days. Clinton answered a question from the Wall Street Journal, right after he was elected. Some reporter said, "Well, Mr. Clinton, what is it that America did before the year 1900 that has shaped your ideas about the future of this country?" And do you know what his answer was? [Tyrrell laughs] His answer was, NOTHING!
Bob Tyrrell: You know, I thought it was raise the level of women's skirts.
Jim Quinn: [laughs] Well, that too. But his answer was nothing. He said that nothing this country did before 1900 really had much to do with his vision in "our global role in the future." And I would suggest to you that -- and the other night in Portland, Oregon at the end of a speech he said, let's see if I can remember what he said exactly, he said, "In America it doesn't matter if you believe in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. As long as you show up and be a good citizen, there will be a place for you in America." The last time I checked, I thought, at least this is what they taught me in school, that believing in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is what constituted a good citizen. So the question becomes, well, what kind of citizen are YOU, Mr. Clinton?
Bob Tyrrell: He's situational morality gone amuck, isn't he? This, by the way, is interesting. It comes right out of his 1960s experience. It's that coat-and-tie radical moral ambivalence. And the loyalty to kind of the "world order", but loyalty to America? Forget about it.
Jim Quinn: Yeah [sarcastically], there's no loyalty because America is basically unfair, we use too many resources, we pollute too much, we're imperialists, we're all -- these people came out of the '60s believing all the stuff that Marxist radicals on campus were handing out! And now, liberalism is no longer about tolerance, free speech. Even Nat Hentoff knew it back in the '60s. Free speech isn't what these people are about. It's only free speech when THEY agree with it.
Bob Tyrrell: That's correct.
Jim Quinn: And that's what's frightening.
Bob Tyrrell: And Nat Hentoff was on their side and still is on many issues, but he understands freedom.
Jim Quinn: That's exactly right, and he understands tyrants when he sees one, as well. And so do you, Bob. And I want to thank you for joining us this morning. I know that you've got to get running, but we'll be looking forward to The American Spectator's next issue where you're going to cover this deal with Mochtar Riady and Clinton and the Teachers' Union.
Bob Tyrrell: Well, the Teachers' Union, for sure. Once again, Jim, you're ahead of the curve. Do you have spies in my editorial offices?
Jim Quinn: I cannot tell you that. I have a number of "Deep Throats" and they're scattered in, let's say, strategic positions around the country.
Bob Tyrrell: All right, [laughs] I'm going to check to see if there's any antennas on my editorial department's heads.
Jim Quinn: [laughs] Ah, you won't find one there, but we've pretty much got our ear to the ground here. Bob, thanks for joining us this morning. Continued good luck with the book and continued good luck with The American Spectator.
Bob Tyrrell: Thanks, Jim. It's always a pleasure talking with you.
Jim Quinn: Thanks and good bye. That's Bob Tyrrell, Editor of The American Spectator and author of Boy Clinton.