Suck it Clinton lovers 
Bottom line:
Clinton, sleazy guy, decent president
Bush, dangerously deluded, completely without any integrity, throughly dishonest, reckless, and a worst ever performance as president.
Is that what you are trying to say?
Or are you saying that it is okay for Gonzo to lie his ass off to Congress because some of Clinton's people did it too?
At least Clinton didn't take away our constitutional rights.
Those are the only two Bush scandals? Holy S#&t was I misinformed!!!!
See when a president announces on a regular basis that he has not intention of following a particular law that the Congress has passed, as Bush does frequently, that isn't a scandal, that is just a government that has transcended its Constitution.
A scandal would be if he was trying to hide the fact that he doesn't feel obligated to follow the laws.
BILL CLINTON
(1) Used State Police for personal purposes.
(2) Directed State Police to fabricate incriminating evidence
against a political opponent: Terry Reed.
(3) Conspired with David Hale and Jim McDougal to defraud the
Small Business Administration.
(4) Was complicit in the shipment of drugs through Arkansas.
(5) Allowed laudering of drug money through ADFA.
(6) Appointed and protected Arkansas Medical Examiner Fahmy Malak
who repeatedly obstructed justice by declaring murders as
"suicides" or "accidents."
(7) Has never accounted for his actions during 40 days behind the
Iron Curtain during the Vietnam War.
(8) Tipped off Governor Tucker about upcoming criminal referral.
(9) Violated Arkansas campaign finance laws.
(10) Violated his oath ofoffice to uphold the Constitution by
signing into law an ex post facto law, a retroactive tax
increase.
(11) Fired RTC chiefAlbert Casey to allow his friend Roger
Altman to monitor and block Whitewater investigations.
(12) Fired FBI director William Sessions to prevent an
autonomous FBI from investigating the Foster suicide and from
resisting cooperation in the Filegate operation.
(13) Fired all U.S. Attorneys to appoint Paula Casey to prevent
Judge David Hale from testifying against Clinton.
(14) Offered State Troopers federal jobs in return for their
silence about Clinton's crimes.
(15) Blocked Justice Department indictments after Inspector
General Sherman Funk found "criminal violations of the Privacy
Act provable beyond reasonable doubt" when former Bush employee
files were searched and leaked to the press.
(16) Appointed friend and now-convicted felon Webster Hubbell to
number 3 position in Justice Department in order to be able to
block Whitewater criminal referrals.
(17) Blocked the criminal trial of Representative Ford, a
Tennessee Democrat.
(18) Appointed a campaign activist to head the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission, without the mandated "advice and consent" of
the Senate, to derail a probe of his and Hillary's financial
dealings.
Bill Clinton is under investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
HILLARY CLINTON
(1) Took a $100,000 bribe, camouflaged as futures trades,
from Tyson Foods Inc.
(2) Speculated in Health Care industry futures while overseeing
legislative reform of same.
(3) Failed to correct false testimony by co-defendant Ira
Magaziner in Health Care trial.
(4) Obstructed justice by ordering the shredding of Vince
Foster's documents in the Rose Law Firm.
(5) Ordered members of the Health Care Task Force to shred
documents that were the target of a court probe.
(6) Ordered the removal of documents from Vince Foster's office.
(7) Told aides to lie about their removal of documents from
Foster's office
(8) Obstructed justice by keeping her billing records, a document
sought under subpoena, in the White House residence.
(9) Lied to investigators about her knowledge about billing
records.
(10) Lied to investigators about her involvement in the Castle
Grande land flip con.
(11) Ordered the use of the FBI to discredit Travel Office
employees.
(12) Lied to investigators about her involvement in the firing of
Travel Office Employees.
IRA MAGAZINER, Hillary Clinton Senior Advisor
(1) Violated federal law when he held Health Care Task Force
Meetings in secret and refused to release documents
(2) Lied in court about the composition of the Health Care
Task Force.
U.S. Attorney Eric Holder found insufficient evidence for indictment of Ira Magaziner.
BERNARD NUSSBAUM, Former White House Counsel
(1) Obstructed justice in the Foster suicide investigation by
blocking access, removing documents, lying about his removal of
documents, and by retrieving Foster's pager from Park Police.
(2) Attempted to quash a Whitewater investigation at the RTC
through White House liaisons.
Nussbaum has resigned and is under investigation for lying to Congress.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, Senior Advisor
(1) Took a $600,000 loan below market interest and with
insufficient collateral from Nations Bank, a bank having business
before the Clinton Administration.
(2) Lied to Congress during Whitewater hearings.
(3) Attempted to have Whitewater investigator Jay Stephens at the
RTC fired.
MIKE ESPY, Former Agriculture Secretary
(1) Took bribes from Tyson Foods Inc., which was under regulatory
control of his Agriculture Department.
Espy has resigned and is under investigation by a Special Counsel
ROGER ALTMAN, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury
(1) Lied to Congress during Whitewater hearings. (2) Lied to Congress about having lied to Congress. (3) Instructed Ellen Kulka and Jack Ryan at the RTC to block the Whitewater investigation by L. Jean Lewis. Roger Altman was forced to resign.
RON BROWN, Former Commerce Secretary
(1) Has taken bribes from almost everybody. Says it is part of
the way Washington works. The allegations are too numerous
and complicated to be detailed here.
Ron Brown was still under investigation by an Independent Counsel when he died in a plane crash in 1996. The investigation continues.
LES ASPIN, Former Secretary of Defense
(1) Through criminal negligence was responsible for the death
of Army Rangers in Somalia. Has never been held accountable
in public hearings.
Les Aspin has resigned and is deceased.
WILLIAM KENNEDY, DAVID WATKINS, PATSY THOMASSON:
(1) Fabricated charges against White House Travel Office
personnel to have the business taken over by Clinton friends.
(2) Coerced FBI and IRS agents into complicity with this
scheme.
Kennedy and Watkins have resigned.
CATHERINE CORNELIUS, Travel Office employee
(1) Removed documents from White House Travel Office.
Because those documents later became the subject ofa trial
against Office Director Billy Dale, that could amount to
obstruction ofjustice.
PATSY THOMASSON, Director of White House Administration
(1) Lied to Congress about the composition of the Health Care Task Force and the size of its budget. (2) Obstructed justice when she removed documents from the office of Vince Foster.
MARGARET WILLIAMS, Chief of Staff to the First Lady
(1) Obstructed justice when she removed documents from the office
of Vince Foster.
(2) Lied to Congress about removing those documents.
Maggy Williams is under investigation by Independent Counsel.
JOSHUA STEINER, Treasury Department Employee.
(1) Lied to Congress about conversations with White House
personnel about the RTC. (He also lied to his diary, but that is
not a crime.)
Joshua Steiner has resigned.
LLOYD CUTLER, Former White House Counsel
(1) Lied to Congress about the contents of redacted documents.
(2) Attempted to withhold vital information from Congress, a
felony.
(3) Obtained a confidential Treasury report and showed it to
witnesses before they testified before Congress in the Whitewater
in 1970. Has never been indicted for this crime which was similar to what the
Watergate Plumbers spent time in jail for.
BRUCE LINDSEY, Senior Advisor
(1) As treasurer for the Clinton gubernatorial campaign in
1990, he signed withdrawals from Peny County Bank, the president
of which has pled guilty to conspiring to conceal these
withdrawals from the IRS and FEC.
Bruce Lindsey is an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the owners of Perry County Bank.
MARIAN BENETT, USIA Inspector General
(1) Covered up credit-card fraud by USIA Inspector General staff.
FEDERICO PENA, Secretary of Transportation
(1) State and federal contracts were awarded to companies in
which he had a financial interest.
The Justice Department found insufficient evidence to appoint
a Special Counsel.
HENRY CISNEROS, Secretary of HUD
(1) Lied to the FBI about payments to former lover.
Under investigation by Special Counsel.
JANET RENO, Attorney General
(1) Fabricated charges of child molestation against the Branch
Davidians in Waco, Texas.
(2) Ordered the use of military equipment against citizens of
the United States
(3) Ordered the use of chemical agents against citizens of the
United States.
ROBERT REICH, Secretary of Labor
(1) Lied to Congress when he wrote that there were no memos
circulating in the Labor Department instructing staffto gather
political material against the Contract with America. Such memos
were later published. Under investigation by Congress.
DONNA SHALALA, Secretary of Health and Human Services
(1) As Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison
instituted speech codes which were found to be unconstitutional
in federal court. Instituted thought police star chamber proceed
-ings to drive politically incorrect people off campus.
CAROL BROWNER, EPA Administrator
(1) Used the EPA to campaign against Republicans running on
the Contract with America, an illegal use of the executive
branch for political campaigning.
Carol Browner is under investigation by Congress.
ROBERTA ACHTENBERG, Former Assitant Secretary of HUD
(1) Violated the First Amendment when she ordered HUD
lawyers to silence citizens who spoke out against planned
housing projects.
(2) Exceeded her authority when she had HUD staff threaten
Allentown County to withdraw an "Use of English language
encouraged" ordinance.
Roberta Achtenberg resigned to run for Mayor of San Francisco, a
race which she lost.
DEVAL PATRICK, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
(1) Used extortion to force banks to give preferential
treatment to minorities.
Congress is investigating the possibility of impeachment based on
abuse of power.
BRUCE BABBIT, Secretary of the Interior
(1) Paid a penalty for violating campaign finance laws during his
1988 presidential campaign.
HAZEL O'LEARY, Energy Secretary
(1) Abused taxpayer money for extravagant travels around the
world.
Hazel O'Leary is under investigation by Congress.
WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense
(1) Intervened in a Chinese trade deal on behalf of a business
partner.
CRAIG LIVINGSTONE, Chief of White House Security
(1) Was seen carrying a box from Foster's office the morning
after Vince Foster died.
(2) Ordered confidential FBI background files on Hillary
Clinton's political enemies, a violation of the privacy act.
Craig Livingstone is currently on paid leave and has been unable to
pass FBI criminal background checks, and the White House has
admitted that 11 unnamed White House staffers have had recent
drug use. Unsubstantiated allegations of murder, treason,
and conspiracy have been omitted from the above list.
In light of this record, it is appropriate to mention those Clinton Cabinet Secretaries who are not under investigation and have never had criminal allegations raised against them:
RICHARD RILEY, Secretary of Education
WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State
In this administration these secretaries must be considered beacons of morality.
Compared to the current Administration, ABSOLUTELY
Not that the Clintonistas were good, it is just that this gang is so much worse. (Besides a lot of what is on that list is unproven allegations, not established fact. But here is the part you just can't deal with; I don't make excuses for bad behavior on anyone's part. I say if someone breaks the law, they should pay the penalty for it, no matter what the politics involved. You can't have one set of standards for one political party and a different one for the other. When the GOP ran the Congress and Clinton was president, the Congress could drag anyone it wanted before it and demand any kind of documentation. Over ONE MILLION documents were turned over during Clinton's two terms. NOW, with a republican in the White House, all of a sudden the president doesn't have to cooperate with the Congress at all. It is a serious double standard)
Just in case you were wondering just what exactly the 110th Congress has been up to.
300 executive branch investigations or inquiries
400 requests for documents, interviews, or testimony
600+ oversight hearings
The Bush Administration's response:
550 officials have testified before Congress
87,000+ man-hours spent on answering investigations and inquiries
430,000 documents handed over to Congress
I remember the Clinton years, and thinking, "Damn, would you clowns knock this bullshit off and do something that is relative to your jobs!" A decade later, same shit is going on. Ridiculous!!! They should all be fired.
I'm with Big T - vote for Ron Paul. A change of pace is sorely needed, I hope he picks Mike Gravel as his VP.
A change of pace is indeed sorely needed, but the Presidential election has little to do with that. The real power in DC lies in the Capitol Building, not the White House, and some of those people were elected when Eisenhower was President: to put that into Madville perspective, that's before Gramps was born.
I think a 3rd party would be healthy, but honestly, it's not viable. I propose a different idea: don't vote for the incumbent. It's very simple. They have an (I) next to their name. Don't vote for them. That simple.
Clinton is also a war criminal:
Clinton's crimes, after just seven years in office, are competitive with Suharto's
by Edward S. Herman
Z magazine , December 1999
I use war crimes to encompass the commission of all acts declared illegal under international rules of war as enumerated in the various Hague and Geneva agreements and conventions and pronounced in the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. Among these acts are the carrying out of wars of aggression, the use of poison gases and other inhumane weapons, deliberately killing and starving civilian populations, and the use of force beyond military necessity. War crimes can be carried out directly or through proxy forces that are funded, encouraged, and protected in their own war criminality. This means that inaction-failure to discourage or prevent the carrying out of war crimes known to be going on, planned for enlargement, and preventable-is itself a form of war criminality. Thus, if the Clinton administration knew that Indonesia was killing large numbers of East Timorese and planned to ravage East Timor on a larger scale if it lost an independence referendum, and did nothing to prevent the crimes, Clinton and associates were guilty of war crimes by inaction.
Clinton and Suharto
I put the adjective "active" in the title to this article because Indonesia's now retired president Suharto probably holds the overall top place today, as the person responsible for three genocides (Indonesia, East Timor, and West Papua). But Suharto had 33 years to carry out his crimes whereas Clinton has become competitive within 7 years. Who can doubt that if Clinton had more time to add to his mark in history he would easily top Suharto?
There are links between Suharto and Clinton. When Suharto visited Washington in 1995 a Clinton administration official was quoted in the New York Times as saying that Suharto was "our kind of guy." But it would be wrong to infer from this that the Clinton official was expressing approval of Suharto's mass murders; rather, he was saying that Suharto was easy to do business with in arranging trade deals and joint public relations statements. Still, it was quite clear that Suharto's murders and dictatorial rule were of little consequence to the Clinton leadership, not detracting significantly enough to make Suharto a "bad guy."
This brings us to the deeper connection between Clinton and the U.S. economic and political establishment to Suharto's crimes: because Suharto has been "our kind of guy" since 1965 when he took power during his first genocidal outburst, he has been protected and given positive support by the U.S. establishment, which therefore has a shared responsibility for his crimes. This was clearly evident in the U.S. provision of arms and diplomatic support during the first round of Indonesian genocide in East Timor, and has now been followed up with U.S. support for the second round where this country, with the closest links to the Indonesian military, took no action to curb its client's behavior.
This form of war crime-by the provision of military support and follow-up inaction as the proxy army kills-is a longstanding U.S. mode of operation. These U.S.-organized and/or supported proxy armies have mainly killed people the U . S. wants killed, although sometimes they have "gone too far" and their excesses may be deplored, though not stopped. This purposefulness was most obvious and notorious in the rise of the National Security State in Latin America in the 1950s and thereafter. Internal documents make clear the official worry over Castroism, the hostility to popular movements seeking "an immediate improvement in the low living standard of the masses" (NSC, 1954), and the determination to combat them. This was done through U. S. military aid, training, arms supply, and the anti-populist politicization of the Latin military, who served as U. S. gendarmes. The triumph of these U.S. proxies was closely correlated with the ending of democracy-11 constitutional regimes were overthrown by our Latin American gendarmes in the 1960s-along with the rise of death squads, disappearances, and systems of torture.
With the help and genius of the U.S. media, however, the U.S. connection to and responsibility for this continent wide regression was not acknowledged-it was all a remarkable happenstance that we regretted but apparently couldn't do anything about. On the other hand, in the phony campaign of the 1980s to blame the Soviet Union for the world's terrorism, it was enough to find any link of the terrorists to the Soviets for the latter to be responsible. As the London Economist said, "The Soviet Union, as it were, merely puts the gun on the table and leaves others to wage a global war by proxy." But although the United States did far more than "leave guns on the table," the actions of its proxies were never its responsibility.
Power, Arrogance, and Criminality
Clinton follows in a great tradition, although the special characteristics of the man and his Administration, along with the end of the limited Soviet containment of U. S. anti-populist interventionism, have helped make a long-standing global rogue into a super-rogue. The U.S. has long considered that it has the right to intervene at will among the "savages" occupying its own backyard in Latin America, but especially after World War II when its predominance was overwhelming and its global interests were growing rapidly its managers felt it could straighten things out everywhere. Because of U.S. power and the longstanding racist arrogance of its leaders, they have never felt that laws apply to themselves-they only apply to others. And what for the Soviet Union would be described as "aggression" or "subversion" was felt to be perfectly reasonable when done by us. The Soviet Union was declared to be engaging in subversion and even aggression in Central America when Czechoslovakia shipped one boatload of arms to Guatemala in May 1954 as that virtually disarmed country, under relentless U. S. subversive attack, was within a month of being subjected to a U.S.-organized proxy invasion. The U.S. could deliberately subvert a dozen countries in Latin America via arms, military training, and support of coups (most notably Brazil and Chile) and not be guilty of any misbehavior at all.
It could also invade and bomb other countries at its discretion and be free from international sanction. In the case of Indochina, the U.S. and its supportive media accomplished another propaganda miracle. It committed blatant aggression, overturned the Geneva Accords of 1954, installed its puppet in "South Vietnam," and in the process of trying to keep that puppet in power, killed as many as 4 million people and virtually destroyed all of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It did this using the most fearsome technology-including the largest quantity of chemical weapons ever employed-against virtually defenseless peasant societies. The racism underpinning this mass killing was strong: "In Vietnam racism became a patriotic virtue. All Vietnamese became 'dinks,' 'slopes,' 'slants,' or 'gooks' and the only good one was a dead one." And there was great enthusiasm for "skunk hunts" and "turkey shoots" that killed innumerable farmers and their wives and children. (Philip Knightley, The First Casualty).
But the only "crimes" the world now recognizes in connection with this holocaust are those of Pol Pot, whose criminality was real, but less far reaching than that of the U.S., in an important sense a derivative of the larger U.S. assault, disruption, and mass killing. In the United States, however, this country is seen as having "lost" the war because of an adversarial media and the insufficient use of force (the conservative view); or as a result of a "tragic error" carried out with the "best intentions" (the liberal view); or in a noble failed effort that was a "necessary" part of the struggle of good against evil (the latest revisionism, harking back to old Cold War and neocon ideology).
The propaganda system allows the U.S. Ieadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers. The loyal U. S. allies neither contest this vision of criminality nor seriously impede the global rogue's behavior.
From Truman to Bush
Because of its power and global interests U.S. leaders have committed crimes as a matter of course and structural necessity. A strict application of international law would,( I believe,) have given every U.S. president of the past 50 years Nuremberg treatment. The sainted Harry Truman, for example, not only dropped atom bombs on two Japanese cities, in clear violation of the rules against the use of inhumane weapons and targeting civilians, he was also the engineer of the vicious U.S. counterinsurgency war in Greece in 1947-1949 that reestablished the rule of fascists who had sided with the Nazis. In Korea also, although others too were guilty of serious crimes, Truman's ferocious use of air power in which "we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too" (General Curtis LeMay), made him principally responsible for the devastation of Korea, the killing of perhaps four million Koreans, and the firming up of the power of the murderous dictator Syngman Rhee. In its heavy use of napalm in all these victim countries, the sponsorship of torture and concentration camps in Greece during that war, the ruthless use of air-power against civilian targets and a food deprivation strategy in Korea, the Truman administration gave advance notice of the kind of merciless anti-people war the U.S. would bring to its culmination in Indochina.
Jumping to Clinton's immediate predecessor George Bush, war crimes were committed in his invasion of Panama in 1989, arguably a war of aggression in clear violation of the OAS agreement and the UN Charter. It was done to capture a leader who was involved in the drug trade, although the U.S. had backed him for many years with full knowledge of and no objection to his drug connections-until he ceased to be cooperative in support of the U.S. war on Nicaragua. Several thousand Panamanian civilians were killed and scores of thousands injured in the U.S. invasion, many in bombing raids on civilian areas in Panama City.
Bush's criminality escalated in his war against Iraq. Although the U.S. was able to obtain Security Council agreement to this assault, it evaded efforts at a peaceable settlement in violation of the UN Charter, so that even this UN sanctioned war can be called a war of aggression. The war was also fought with the use of weapons that would be condemned in a hypothetical Bush-Iraq War Crimes Tribunal, including enhanced uranium shells and fuel air bombs. Thousands of helpless Iraqi conscripts and fleeing refugees were butchered in cold blood in the "turkey shoot" on the "Highway of Death," and hundreds of Iraqis were deliberately buried alive in the sand and large numbers were dumped in unmarked burial sites in violation of the rules of war. The civil society infrastructure of Iraq was shattered far beyond any military justification. In the aftermath, Bush insisted on the continuation of sanctions that prevented recovery of the civil society and was responsible for many thousands of civilian deaths from disease and starvation. This was first class criminality.
Clinton: Postmodern War Criminality
This brings us to Bill Clinton, who has gone beyond the Bush record of criminality, and has brought to the commission of war crimes a new eclectic reach and postmodern style. A skilled public relations person, he has refined the rhetoric of humanistic and ethical concern and can apologize with seeming great sincerity for our earlier regrettable sponsorship and support of mass murder in Guatemala while carrying out similar or even more vicious policies in Colombia and Iraq at the same moment.
Clinton's military and other aggressive forays abroad have been partly a result of his political weakness, the need to divert attention from his domestic policy failures, and the longstanding need of Democrats to prove their anti-Communist and militaristic credentials. It will be recalled that Truman could not end the Korean War; its termination had to await the arrival of the Republican Eisenhower. Kennedy and Johnson could not get us out of the Vietnam War; it took Nixon, although with a horrendous time lag.
Clinton's crimes range from ad hoc bombings to boycotts and sanctions designed to starve into submission, to support of ethnic cleansing in brutal counterinsurgency warfare, and to aggression and devastation by bombing designed to return rogues to the stone age and keep them there.
On June 26, 1993, Clinton bombed Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged but unproven Iraq plot to assassinate former President George Bush. Eight Iraqi civilians, including the distinguished Iraqi artist Layla al-Attar were killed in the raid, and 12 more were wounded. This kind of unilateral action in response to an unproven charge is a violation of international law. The legal excuse given by U.S. officials, which they relied on in justification of the bombing of Libya in 1986, is the right to self defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. But that Article requires that the response be to an immediate threat to the retaliating party, clearly not the case, and therefore a legal fraud. This was a crime-petty by the usual U.S. standard-but still a crime. And it had the further repellent feature that it was done almost surely for purely internal political reasons-to show Clinton's toughness, despite his Vietnam War record, and to countervail right-wing attacks on his lack of militancy.
The same point can be made as regards his 1998 bombing of Afghanistan and the Sudan. Unknown numbers were killed in Afghanistan (and by the missiles that accidentally landed in Pakistan), and the pharmaceutical factory destroyed in the Sudan was the major source of medical drugs in that poor country. All evidence points to the fact that the Sudan factory destroyed had no connection whatever to chemical weapons or Bin Laden, and was bombed on the basis of insufficient and poorly evaluated data. But following the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, Clinton felt compelled to act for internal political reasons once again, and there are no international constraints or costs to him or his country if he chooses to bomb small and weak countries to score political points at home. This was rogue and criminal behavior.
Clinton has given unstinting support to Turkey in its war against its indigenous Kurds. He has also escalated his aid to Colombia. In both of these countries the civilian casualties from counterinsurgency warfare and death squad operations during the Clinton years has exceeded the pre-NATO bombing deaths in Kosovo by a large factor.
In the Clinton years these recurrent U.S. policies have impacted heavily on Cuba and most dramatically on Iraq. The tightening of the embargo on Cuba under the Toricelli-Helms bill, signed into law and enforced by Clinton, which banned the sale of U.S. food and curtailed access to water treatment chemicals and medicines, took a heavy toll. According to a 1997 report of the American Association of World Health, the food sale ban "has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993." The decisive offsetting consideration, however, was that Clinton was able to preserve some of his political support from the powerful Cuban lobby in Florida.
The most monumental of Clinton's war crimes, however, has been his policy of sanctions on Iraq, supplemented by the maintenance of intense satellite surveillance and regular bombing attacks that have often resulted in civilian casualties. UNICEF reports that in 1999 more than 1 million Iraqi children under 5 were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and some 4,000-5,000 children are dying per month beyond normal death rates from the combination of malnutrition and disease. Death from disease was greatly increased by the shortage of potable water and medicines, that has led to a 20-fold increase in malaria (among other ailments). This vicious sanctions system, causing a creeping extermination of a people, has already caused more than a million excess deaths, and it is claimed by John and Karl Mueller that Clinton's "sanctions of mass destruction" have caused "the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction [nuclear and chemical] throughout all history" (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999). U.S. mainstream reporters, who have so eagerly followed the distress of the Kosovo Albanians, somehow never get to Iraq for pictures of the thousands of malnourished children.
One of the notable features of the NATO-U. S. war against Yugoslavia was the gradual extension of targeting to civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities-therefore civilians who would be in houses, hospitals, schools, trains, factories, power stations, and broadcasting facilities. Two months after the war was over, the BBC "revealed" that the attack on Yugoslav television on April 23 was part of an escalation of NATO bombing whereby the target list was extended to non-military objectives; NATO was "taking off the gloves." According to Yugoslav authorities, 60 percent of NATO targets were civilian, including 33 hospitals and 344 schools, as well as 144 major industrial plants and a large petro-chemical plant whose bombing caused a pollution catastrophe. John Pilger noted that the list of civilian targets included "housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centres, theatres, museums, churches and 14th century monasteries on the World Heritage list. Farms have been bombed and their crops set afire."
This NATO targeting was in open violation of the laws of war, although this was certainly neither publicized nor condemned in the mainstream media; U.S. pundits like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times frequently called for a more aggressive bombing of Serb civilian targets and the commission of more war crimes (Rachel Coen, "Lessons of War: Leading papers call for more attacks on civilian targets next time," EXTRA! Update, August 1999). There can be little doubt that Yugoslavia finally agreed to a military exit from Kosovo mainly because they recognized that, although their forces had not been defeated on the battlefield, the NATO strategy of attacking civilian targets in violation of international law, was subject to no limits.
On May 27, in the midst of this criminal operation by NATO, Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, issued an indictment of Milosevic for war crimes, thereby implicitly exonerating and facilitating the NATO commission of war crimes. By allowing her Tribunal to be so mobilized in NATO propaganda service, Arbour and her colleagues were arguably guilty of war crimes themselves.
The U.S. played an important role in the "international community's" failure in Rwanda, as it worked hard to prevent any international action to interfere with the gigantic 1994 massacres (Omaar and de Waal, "Genocide in Rwanda: U.S. Complicity By Silence," CovertAction, Spring 1995). Bill Clinton has apologized for this, suggesting that his recognition of the earlier failure spurred him on to his Kosovo policy, which involved his commission of further war crimes under the guise of a "humanitarian intervention" that was devoid of humanitarian intent or effect.
Furthermore, in 1998-1999 Clinton was once more put to the test in East Timor, where he and his Administration knew of the Indonesian plans to interfere with the referendum and eventually to take revenge for any ensuing defeat, but did nothing whatsoever to prevent this criminal performance. This was worse than Rwanda in that Clinton had long advance knowledge of Indonesian intentions and easy access and close links to Indonesian leaders that made prevention relatively easy. But prevention would have been at the cost of disturbing the long and warm relationship of Clinton and his associates with the killers. Clinton once again easily failed the moral test, and is guilty of criminal behavior by inaction.
Conclusion
U.S. Ieaders commit war crimes as a matter of institutional necessity, as their imperial role calls for keeping subordinate peoples in their proper place and assuring a "favorable climate of investment" everywhere. They do this by using their economic power, but also (by means of "bombs bursting in the air" and) by supporting Diem, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Savimbi, Marcos, Fujimori, Salinas, and scores of similar leaders. War crimes also come easily because U.S. Ieaders consider themselves to be the vehicles of a higher morality and truth and can operate in violation of law without cost. It is also immensely helpful that their mainstream media agree that their country is above the law and will support and rationalize each and every venture and the commission of war crimes.
Thus, Clinton's civilian extermination policy in Iraq, which the Muellers contend has killed more people that all the chemical and nuclear weapons throughout history, is completely normalized in the U.S. and brings no discredit to this country via the elite-dominated global system. The defeat of Milosevic, not on the battlefield, but by an expanding attack on the civil society of Serbia in direct violation of the rules of war, also raises few eyebrows in the West and is not seen as incompatible with the new "humanitarian" foreign policy of this country and NATO. While hostage taking is viewed as a form of terrorism, treating the entire populations of Iraq and Serbia as hostages, and imposing mass suffering and death on them to achieve a political end, is acceptable in the West.
But whatever the success of doublethink in making the commission of war crimes feasible, Clinton has broken new ground as a war criminal, and people with any concern for human rights should recognize him as the true world leader in this sphere.
Clinton's worst crimes:
The people of Serbia, Kosovo, the Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are not the only or most obvious victims of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. The day before the House impeachment vote, Clinton bombed Iraq, delaying the impeachment vote. He continued the bombing throughout all the days of the impeachment vote. Only an hour or two after the House impeachment vote ended, Clinton ended the bombing, saying, "We have achieved our objectives." Of course, because the objective was to delay and distract from the impeachment vote! In all other respects, the bombing hurt U.S. and international interests.
Clinton gave several excuses for bombing Iraq on the eve of the impeachment vote, especially the (bogus, but unquestioned) claim that Iraq had stopped cooperating with UNSCOM inspectors. In reality, Iraqs cooperation with UNSCOM inspectors had actually been increasing, despite U.S. attempts to provoke a confrontation. However, knowing the impeachment schedule, Clinton had directed UNSCOM chief Richard Butler to write a report that Iraq was not cooperating. Even Scott Ritter, the former chief UNSCOM weapons inspector who quit because he thought the weapons inspectors were not tough enough, said that the White House had been on the phone with UNSCOM "shaping" the report to make sure it would justify bombing Iraq during the impeachment trial.
Clinton actually used the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as an excuse for the timing of the bombing. This may have fooled the American media, but didn't fool Muslims, as Clinton continued the bombing even after Ramadan had started (but halted the bombing as soon as the impeachment vote ended).
Sure, Clinton said he had unanimous agreement from his national security advisers to bomb Iraq. So what? No matter what day he asked his national security advisers, they would always agree to bomb Iraq, so why ask on that particular day, a day before the impeachment vote?
Fact: the UNSCOM inspectors were not kicked out of Iraq in December 1998 by Saddam -- President Clinton had UNSCOM chief Richard Butler pull out the UN inspectors so he could bomb. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was understandably angry that Clinton ordered out not just the U.S. inspectors, but all United Nations inspectors (which he had no authority to do).
Fact: ever since Bill Clinton ordered the UNSCOM inspectors out of Iraq so he could bomb (the day before the impeachment vote), there have been no UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. So when Clinton said (as soon as the impeachment vote ended), "We have achieved our objectives," was one of those objectives to permanently remove weapons inspectors from Iraq?
Fact: days before the UNSCOM report came out, Clinton was in Israel, already telling Prime Minister Netanyahu that he was expecting a negative UNSCOM report, and that he would soon be bombing Iraq. Clinton knew the contents ahead of time because he was "shaping" that report.
Fact: because of Clinton's December 1998 bombing, Iraq began challenging the U.S. and British "no-fly zones," which they had not been doing before. The risk to U.S. pilots is negligible (no U.S. plane has ever been hit), but it has given the U.S. and Britain an excuse for nearly daily bombing of Iraq (not just radar sites, but cities, towns, shepherd's camps, etc.). Since December 1998, this illegal bombing has killed about two hundred Iraqis, including shepherds with their flocks, families in their houses, and small children, and injured many more. It helps to put faces on the victims. I saw a photo of a cute, smiling little girl named Isra, from the Abu-Khasib neighborhood of Basra, who lost her right arm when a U.S. IGM-130 missile hit her neighborhood at 10:10 AM, January 25, 1999 (for a picture of her, see http://www.vitw.org/airwar.html). This ongoing bombing would not be happening except for Clintons attempt to distract from the impeachment vote.
Maybe Americans don't care about the hundreds of Iraqis Clinton killed during the impeachment trial bombings of Iraq, and the scores of Iraqi civilians (and sheep) killed during the almost daily bombings of Iraq in the two years since then. Most Americans, incredibly enough, don't even know we're still at war, that we've been bombing Iraq every other day for the last two years!
Okay, for the sake of argument, say we can forgive Clinton for killing a few hundred or thousand Iraqis with bombs.
Bombs are merciful compared to what Clinton has done to the innocent children of Iraq, the most vulnerable of all, by maintaining ten years of the harshest sanctions in the history of mankind, begun on August 6, 1990, and kept in place at the insistence of the United States. On May 12, 1996, televisions "Sixty Minutes" interviewed Madeleine Albright (then U.S. ambassador to the UN, now Secretary of State). Leslie Stahl asked Albright, "We have heard half a million children have died [from economic sanctions in Iraq]. That's more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?"
Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice. But the price, we think, is worth it."
I believe there is a special place in hell reserved for Madeleine Albright.
Yes, even four and a half years ago, 500,000 Iraqi children had already died as a direct result of economic sanctions. Over one million Iraqi civilians have died from the sanctions, mostly children under age five. Those are not Iraqi figures -- those figures come from Unicef, the World Health Organization, the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UNs Department of Humanitarian Affairs, and other international sources. The "oil-for-food" program is so ineffectual that two consecutive UN directors of that program (Denis Haliday and Hans Von Sponeck) resigned, out of protest that they were presiding over a humanitarian disaster which can only be called genocide. They were UN Assistant Secretaries General, the highest ranking UN personnel ever to resign for reasons of conscience. Now Denis Haliday and Hans Von Sponeck are touring America and other countries, pleading for an end to the sanctions on Iraq.
Embargoes during peacetime are tough enough, but after a devastating war, they are disastrous. During the Gulf War, U.S. forces deliberately targeted Iraqi water treatment plants, dams, and electric generating facilities (in violation of the Geneva Convention), later admitting they did it in order to cause disease (which was biological warfare by the United States). Iraq has not been allowed to rebuild its water treatment plants since then. Chlorine, and water chlorinators, are prohibited under sanctions. Disease is at epidemic levels, especially among babies and children under five. Nobel Peace prize winners have visited Iraq and described the sanctions as genocide. Iraqi children are dying from starvation, malnutrition, tainted water, lack of basic medicines, and diseases that were once rare but now epidemic.
Iraqis are also suffering horrible birth defects and cancers caused by the 350 tons of depleted uranium (DU) fired into Iraq by U.S. forces during the 1991 Gulf War. DU, used for armor-piercing shells, becomes on impact an dust that drifts on the desert winds until inhaled. DU is not only toxic, but has a radioactive half-life in the billions of years.
U.S. sanctions law is so tough that even shipping food or medicine to Iraq is punishable by a one million dollar fine and 12 years in prison. I have personally tried to send baby formula, but the U.S. post office refuses, due to sanctions. Many items are specifically banned (pencils, books including medical textbooks, chlorine, etc.), while all other items are prohibited without a U.S. Treasury Department license that is almost impossible to obtain.
Fifty-five years ago, people asked, "Where were the good Germans? Why didn't they act to prevent the Holocaust?" History will judge America the same way over the current genocide against Iraqi civilians, the genocide by sanctions. My conscience cannot let me keep silent about this. People are people, and children are children. Even if one hates Muslims (which is hardly a Christian attitude), one million Christians also live in Iraq.
Most major religious groups have condemned the sanctions, including Baptists, Catholics, Churches of Christ, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Unitarians, the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, etc. Leaders of 24 Christian denominations, including those mentioned above, signed a September 27, 1999 letter to President Clinton urging him to end the economic sanctions on Iraq.* Conspicuously absent from the list, unfortunately, is the church that OSC and I belong to, the Mormons (my branch president told me the issue is too political -- as if genocide isn't always political).
Contrary to Clinton Administration propaganda, the small amount of food and medicines that are allowed into Iraq under the "oil-for-food" program (UN Res. 986) are distributed extremely efficiently by the Iraqi government. The U.S. constantly places long holds on shipments of food and medicine, or refusing to allow shipment of essential items altogether. Food and medicines spoil because of lack of refrigeration, or rot in warehouses because the forklifts and trucks to transport them are banned by sanctions. An American who visited an Iraqi hospital that lacked basic medicines and equipment due to sanctions said, "I know what this place is now. It's a death row for children." The doctors try their best, but there is little they can do without medicine, equipment, electricity, or even medical textbooks.
Those who agree with sanctions on Iraq act as if only one person lives there, Saddam Hussein. Yes, Saddam is a cruel dictator who does not allow freedom of speech and has executed hundreds of his political opponents, but that number pales compared to the million or more the Clinton administration has killed through sanctions. Admittedly, Saddam is a brutal and cruel dictator (although he was just as brutal and cruel when the U.S. was arming him and supporting him, under Reagan and Bush, while he gassed his people with U.S. support). But if he is as brutal a dictator as everyone agrees, does it make any sense to starve his people to try to influence him? If (as the Clinton Administration says) Saddam does not care about his people, how will our starving them influence him?
When I spoke about Iraq in my church, tears came to my eyes telling of the father who had to hold his young daughter while her leg was sawed off without anesthesia, because of sanctions. Thinking of my own young son, I also cried describing the mother who, unable to sufficiently breastfeed her baby due to her own malnourishment (the meager food ration under sanctions has no fruits, vegetables, meat, or dairy), gave him sugar water, but the water was polluted. The baby developed diarrhea, and for lack of a five dollar medicine, he died. I know my own young son and unborn baby could never survive in Iraq under UN sanctions, which have been kept in place for over ten years at the insistence of the U.S. We are killing an entire generation, body and soul, destroying a civilization.
Saddam is not the only person who lives in Iraq, any more than Clinton is the only person in America! Over one million innocent Iraqis, mostly children under five, have died miserable deaths simply because Clinton and Albright refuse to admit that sanctions are a mistake, especially sanctions applied after a country's infrastructure has been destroyed through the most destructive bombing in history.
"What about weapons of mass destruction?" some may ask. Ex-weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote in the Boston Globe (3/9/00) that, "...from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has in fact been disarmed... The chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range ballistic missile programs that were a real threat in 1991 had, by 1998, been destroyed or rendered harmless." The true weapons of mass destruction are the sanctions themselves. It is ironic that sanctions began on August 6, 1990, the 45th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, because it would be more humane for the U.S. to drop a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb on Iraq every year than to continue the sanctions. In fact, as an article in the May/June 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs shows, the sanctions against Iraq have killed more people than all "weapons of mass destruction" in history, combined! The same UN resolution used to justify sanctions on Iraq also declared the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Israel is in blatant violation of that same resolution, yet we do not starve the Israeli people to coerce their leader (nor should we).
There is no doubt that sanctions actually strengthen Saddam Hussein politically. Sanctions strengthen Saddam's grip on Iraq and weaken all opposition, as the struggle to survive, to keep one's children alive, supercedes all thought of rebellion. Sanctions also cause anti-Americanism, as the Arab world knows what we are doing to Iraq, killing over a million innocent people to get revenge on their leader.
The United States used international law to justify the 1991 Gulf War. However, the U.S. and British "no-fly zones" and the continuing bombing of Iraq violate international law. The sanctions themselves violate international law as enshrined in the Genocide Convention (Article II, "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring its physical destruction, in whole or in part"), the Geneva Conventions (Geneva Protocol 1, Article 54 outlaws "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare"), the World Declaration on Nutrition ("food must not be used as a tool for political pressure"), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Unfortunately, the incoming Bush administration plans to continue the Clinton administrations genocidal Iraq policy. Both George W. Bush and his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, have said they think the sanctions should actually be tightened.
I knew I had to speak out against sanctions when I read about Bert Sacks, an American Jew. Sacks was returning from a trip to deliver medicine to Iraqis (in violation of U.S. law), when he took a side trip to visit Auschwitz, a place of special importance to him as a Jew. More than one million Jews died at Auschwitz, comparable to the number of Iraqi civilians killed by sanctions. Sacks calls the sanctions an Auschwitz in progress. Like Sacks, I do not want to emulate the "good Germans," who stayed silent during the Holocaust.
You guys are great!
You can rap Clinton for not being tough enough with Saddam, not tough enough with bin Laden, and so on with one breath, and go ahead and accuse him of war crimes for the occasions when he did use force.
Even though conservatives still scream WAG THE DOG for those occasions when military force was used by Clinton, the facts don't seem to bear that out at all. In some cases, operations were put into motion over a long period of time and a strike was ordered when the conditions on the ground were met. It hardly matters because if the attack was the next day, or the previous day or the following week, you would find a way to work that timing into your wag the dog story.
A lot of this came out at the 911 commission hearings. Wag the dog just doesn't hold up under serious study. It is all part of the famous HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOUR LOSE thinking the pollutes the conservative thought process.
Bill Clinton has surrounded himself with criminals
Bill Clinton and Al Gore met with known criminals who either gave large amounts of money to the Democrats or were brought in by those giving huge sums of money to the Democrats. These people included convicted drug dealer Jorge Cabrera; a Chinese arms dealer named Wang Jun; and Grigory Lutchansky, whose company, Nordex, was on Clinton's CIA watch list and who was denied entry into Canada because he failed a background check.
There was also the appearance of foreign policy quid pro quos involving Indonesia, Paraguay, Guam, Vietnam and China. Even more disturbing are allegations of economic espionage, communist Chinese involvement in U.S. elections, and compromising U.S. national security - all in the name of helping the Democrats and securing Bill Clinton's reelection.
There were about 70 Congressional witnesses who have pled the Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate (or chosen to flee the country) in the Clinton-Gore dollars for political influence scam. In a round of testimony by FBI Director Louis Freeh before Congress, Rep. Dan Burton asked:
Mr. Freeh, over 65 people have invoked the 5th Amendment or fled the country in the course of the Committee s investigation. Have you ever experienced so many unavailable witnesses in any matter in which you ve prosecuted or in which you ve been involved?
Freeh responded: Actually, I have.
Burton asked: You have? Give me, give me a rundown on that real quickly.
Freeh: I spent about 16 years doing organized crime cases in New York City...
Bill Clinton and Al Gore have conspired with known criminals
Jorge Cabrera, a convicted felon from Florida, gave the DNC $20,000 and then attended a political reception in Miami at which Cabrera got his picture taken with Al Gore. Cabrera was soon invited to a December 1995 pre-Christmas event at the White House and was photographed with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. The next month in January 1996, undercover agents arrested Cabrera with three tons of Colombian cocaine. Prior to Cabrera's January arrest, he had been arrested twice on drug charges, and pleaded guilty to non-drug-related charges in both cases. Cabrera is serving a 19-year prison sentence. (The Detroit News, 2/16/97; Miami Herald, 1/19/97; The Washington Post, 10/20/96)
Charlie TrieYah Lin "Charlie" Trie, President Clinton's longtime friend and a Democratic fund-raiser, pleaded guilty to two charges in his Arkansas trial (May 21, 1999). Trie plead guilty to a felony charge of causing false statements and a misdemeanor count of making political contributions in the names of others.
It was Charlie Trie who arranged for Wang Jun, chairman of Poly Technologies Inc., an international Chinese weapons dealer, to meet with Mr. Clinton at a Democrat Party event at the White House on Feb. 6, 1996. At the time Clinton met with Wang, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Customs Service were wrapping up an investigation which caught Wang's company smuggling at least $4 million worth of 2,000 illegal AK-47 assault weapons destined for gang members in California. (The New Republic, 1/20/97; Chicago Tribune, 1/5/97; The New York Times, 12/27/96)
* Grigory Loutchansky, linked by Interpol to the Russian mafia, money laundering, drug trafficking, nuclear smuggling across the Baltics, and international arms trading, attended a Democrat Party White House dinner in October of 1993. Loutchansky got a private two-minute meeting and a picture with Mr. Clinton. (The Washington Times, 2/11/97; The Detroit News, 2/16/97; New York Post, 11/1/96; Time, 7/8/96) Loutchansky was invited back to a second DNC dinner in July 1995. A year before, Canada had blocked Loutchansky from entering Canada because he had failed a background check. Canadian officials also had questions about the source of Loutchansky's Nordex company's assets. (The Washington Times, 3/1/97) Both of Clinton's CIA Directors James Woolsey and John Deutch described Loutchansky's Nordex company as an "organization associated with Russian criminal activity."
* Eric Wynn, a twice-convicted securities promoter who pleaded guilty to stock manipulation that benefited a member of the Bonanno organized crime family and who served two years in prison for theft and tax charges, attended a December 1995 White House coffee with Clinton. In 1996, Wynn attended four other DNC fund-raising events involving Clinton. Wynn has been arrested five times during the last six months while out on bail for aggravated assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, aggravated assault with a motor vehicle, violation of a restraining order, terroristic threats and driving while intoxicated. At least one of the arrests occurred between DNC fund-raisers Wynn attended in 1996 with Clinton. (The Detroit News, 2/16/97; The Washington Post, 2/20/97; The Star-Ledger, 2/20/97)
* Roger Tamraz, an international fugitive from Interpol, donated $177,000 to Democrats and the DNC through his companies and attended several White House dinners and coffees in 1995-1996. Tamraz is a former financier wanted, according to a 1989 Interpol warrant, in Lebanon for embezzling $200 million from his failed bank. On June 2, 1995, Tamraz was briefed by a National Security Council (NSC) expert on Russia at the same time he was negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal to build a pipeline from oil reserves from the Caspian Sea to Turkey through Azerbaijan and Armenia. On July 26, Tamraz contributed $20,000 to the DNC. After the meeting occurred, then-DNC Party Chairman Don Fowler called an NSC official to try to overturn a recommendation that Tamraz not attend high-level White House meetings. Tamraz went on to attend four more White House events with Clinton which included receptions, dinners and the premiere of the movie "Independence Day." Tamraz, through his New York-based oil company, gave $50,000 to the DNC after going to a DNC sponsored White House reception on Sept. 11, 1995, and a dinner four days later. In October, Tamraz contributed another $100,000 at the direction of the DNC to the Virginia Democrat Party using his Tamoil Inc., company. Tamraz also had coffee with Gore on Oct. 5, 1995, and with Clinton on April 1, 1996.
* Russ Barakat, a south Florida Democrat Party official, was indicted on criminal charges just five days after his coffee meeting at the White House in April 1995. Ultimately, Barakat was convicted for tax evasion. A Florida newspaper was full of stories about Barakat's problems with the law before his White House visit, but he was asked in for coffee anyway.
* Chung Lo contributed $10,300 to the DNC. The bulk of the money was given in July 1996, the same month Ms. Lo was arrested on 14 counts of bank and mortgage fraud. Lo's arrest came four days before she was to host a $400,000 Asian American fund-raiser featuring Clinton. The event was abruptly canceled. Lo was convicted of tax evasion in the 1980s under the name of Esther Chu. Lo had attended a White House coffee and a fund-raising event involving First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Gore.
Kim Weissman writes in a Congress Action update on July 13, 1997,
"One of the many troubling aspects of this affair is how the cesspool of corruption which the Clintons brought to Washington can cause even the most honorable men to prostitute their principles, attempting to defend the indefensible.
John Glenn was an honorable man, a true American hero. A Marine, one of America's first astronauts, the first American to ride a rocket into earth orbit at a time when our rockets had the nasty habit of routinely blowing up in people's faces. His bravery, his patriotism, his honor were above reproach and beyond question. Until Bill Clinton came to town. And in a few short years this bona fide hero has transformed himself into nothing more than a party hack, in service to monumental presidential corruption. Once a man throws his honor on the trash heap, it can never be reclaimed. And Glenn is not alone among democrats compromising their integrity to protect Bill Clinton. As for the media, which has instituted a virtual news blackout in which live coverage is nonexistent and then whines that nobody cares, which ignores crimes, espionage, and possible treason, and shamelessly peddles the democrat line that "the system is broken", their ethics and principles in this matter are beneath contempt. As usual. The media see these hearings as their chance to enact "reform" which will enhance their power even further, and subversion of our government and treason in high office is of no interest. The integrity of our government and safety of the nation ranks below their self-aggrandizement."
Clinton's Criminal Appointees
Janet RenoAttorney General Janet Reno fabricated charges of child molestation against the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, ordering the use of military equipment and the use of chemical agents against citizens of the United States. Eighty-six men, women, and children died after FBI agents used grenade launchers to mount a CS gas attack on their compound. Larry Pottswho coordinated the Waco raid and was censured for his role in the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, shoot-out -- was promoted to deputy director of the FBI by Reno.
With the apparent approval of President Fidel Castro, in a pre-dawn raid of the Gonzalez home in Miami, Janet Reno ordered heavily armed INS agents to storm the house and snatch the young Elian Gonzalez from his relatives there. Outside, more armed thugs fired pepper spray into the angry crowd as they took away the crying and screaming 6-year-old boy.
Snatching ElianMore than 20 federal agents arrived at the home shortly before 5 a.m., using rams on the home's chain-link fence and front door to force their way in. Inside, hiding in a closet, Elian's great-aunt and one of the fishermen who rescued Elian, Donato Dalrymple held Elian in his arms as the federal thugs told him, "give me the boy or I'll shoot you." A short time later, a woman and man brought Elian out of the home as he was screaming, "Help me! Help me! Don't take me away!" in Spanish.
This unconstitutional federal raid on a private and lawful home, seizing a person accused of nothing has been perhaps Clinton's most tyrannical acts of despotism.
Vernon JordanWashington lawyer, Clinton confidant and golfing partner, Vernon Jordan, was deposed by Ken Starr for his role in obtaining $50,000 in consulting fees for Webster Hubbell, between the time Hubbell left the Justice Department and entered federal prison. Starr was trying to determine if those fees were hush money. That money came from Revlon Corporation, where Mr. Jordan sits on the board of directors.
Jordan, at the request of Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, had also helped Monica Lewinsky search for a new job and a lawyer after she left the White House.
Vernon Jordan's relationship with Bill Clinton goes back to a 1991 Bilderberger meeting where Clinton was introduced to the group by Jordan. The Bilderbergers arrogantly plot the subversion and silent takeover of constitutional governments everywhere. Their goal is a World Government run exclusively by their hand-picked puppets. It was shortly after attending the 1991 Bilderberger meeting, Governor Bill Clinton was selected to be the next President of the United States.
President Clinton has done a masterful job of placing "fall-guys" between himself and his administrations indigenous corruption scandals. Independent Counsels have indicted and jailed senior administration officials for corruption, but Mr. Clinton has always maintained arms-length plausible deniability. Clintons defensive modus operandi: admit nothing, deny everything and make counterallegations.
* It was alleged George Stephanopoulos, Senior Advisor, took a $600,000 loan below market interest and with insufficient collateral from NationsBank, a bank having business before the Clinton Administration, lied to Congress during Whitewater hearings, and attempted to have Whitewater investigator Jay Stephens at the RTC fired.
* Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich lied to Congress when he wrote that there were no memos circulating in the Labor Department instructing staff to gather political material against the Contract with America. Such memos were later published.
* Former Assitant Secretary of HUD, Roberta Achtenberg violated the First Amendment when she ordered HUD lawyers to silence citizens who spoke out against planned housing projects. She also exceeded her authority when she had HUD staff threaten Allentown County to withdraw an "Use of English language encouraged" ordinance.
* On Feb. 12, 1995, the Los Angeles Times reveals Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown made 20 trips at taxpayers' expense to his hometown of Chicagorarely attending any official events.
* Former Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, through criminal negligence was responsible for the death of Army Rangers in Somalia. He has never been held accountable in public hearings. He subseqently resigned and is now deceased.
* The Los Angeles Times revealed on June 25, '95, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, at taxpayers' expense, routinely upgrades her airline flights to business and first class and stays at expensive hotelsseeking reimbursement from the government at as much as 150 percent of the maximum level allowed. In Jan. '96, the General Accounting Office audit finds $255,000 in undocumented expenses from Hazel O'Leary's trips abroad. In April, '96, a General Accounting Office audit showed that the 14 overseas trips Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary took in 1994 and 1995 netted only about $448 million worth of business -- not the $2 billion her administration claimed -- and that some of the deals concluded on the trips benefitted foreign firms more than U.S. companies. An Energy Department inspector general report stated that part of the $4.6 million Secretary Hazel O'Leary spent on overseas trips may have been spent illegally.
* Chief of Staff to the First Lady, Margaret Williams obstructed justice when she removed documents from the office of Vince Foster. She lied to Congress about removing those documents.
* Treasury Department Employee, Joshua Steiner, lied to Congress about conversations with White House personnel about the RTC and has resigned.
* Former Chief of Staff, Mack McLarty conspired with Democratic Congressional Leadership to block access to vital documents in a Congressional hearing.
* USIA Inspector General, Marian Benett, covered up credit-card fraud by USIA Inspector General staff.
* Federico Pena, Secretary of Transportation has been accused of awarding State and federal contracts to companies in which he had a financial interest.
* Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Deval Patrick was accused of using extortion to force banks to give preferential treatment to minorities.
Clinton administration officials indicted
Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development became the second Clinton administration official to be indicted.
The Justice Department probe began on Sept. 22, 1994, it's investigating whether Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI about payments he made to his former mistress, Linda Jones. In March '95 Attorney General Janet Reno concluded HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros made yearly payments to Jones of between $42,000 and $60,000contradicting Cisneros' claim to the FBI that his yearly payments totaled no more than $10,000. In May 1995, an independent counsel was named to investigate if the lies HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros told to the FBI constitute a felony.
On Dec. 11, 1997 a federal grand jury in Washington handed down a 21-count indictment, charging Cisneros and Jones variously with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, fraud and perjury. Evidence including 40 hours of secretly recorded telephone calls, IRS records and canceled checks suggests to prosecutors that Cisneros committed perjury and conspired with his ex-mistress and others to lie about the hush money. Those records indicate Cisneros paid Jones about $250,000 and continued to pay her after he came to Washington, including payments totaling some $40,000 prior to his interview with the FBI.
Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was indicted on charges he accepted illegal gifts and lied to investigators. In August, 1994 Attorney General Janet Reno asked for an independent counsel to investigate Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy for accepting gifts from companies regulated by his department. On Oct. 3, 1994, Mike Espy resigns amid charges he accepted gifts and perks barred by federal ethics laws and rules.
In Dec. 1997, Tyson Foods Inc., the nation's largest poultry processor, pleaded guilty to giving former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy more than $12,000 in illegal gifts, and agreed to pay $6 million in fines and investigative expenses.
Ultimately, Independent Counsel Smaltz s investigation of Agriculture Secretary Espy, has resulted in 14 indictments yielding 2 convictions, 3 guilty pleas, 4 acquittals, 3 companies paying enormous fines, and 3 defendants awaiting trial or retrial.
In the tenth major probe into high level Clinton appointees, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether or not Labor Secretary Alexis Herman was involved in a scheme of influence peddling during 94-96 when she was a White House aide. The seventh independent counsel of the Clinton era will investigate influence peddling and corrupt campaign fundraising allegations against Labor Secretary Alexis Herman. In response to these allegations, President Clinton remarked, "I don t believe that for a minute."
Under investigation for overbilling clients, mail fraud and tax evasion, Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell resigned on March 14, 1994. On Dec. 6, '94 Hubbell pleads guilty and on Aug. 7, 1995 he began serving 21-month sentence for defrauding the federal government and tax evasion. A June 24, 1997 Los Angeles Times story revealed a City of Los Angeles audit found Webster Hubbell cheated Los Angeles out of almost $25,000 by lying about the consulting work he did for them.
The Justice Department began investigating Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on Feb. 19, 1995 for violation of tax and financial disclosure laws and whether he took money from people seeking to influence him. Apparently, he took bribes from almost everybody saying it is part of the way Washington works. Ron Brown was still under investigation by an Independent Counsel when he died mysteriously in a plane crash in 1996. Former Brown business associate and lover Nolanda Hill revealed on the June 18, 1997 ABC Prime time Live that deceased Cabinet Secretary Ron Brown was set to accept a $700,000 cash payoff from Vietnam in return for pushing normalized trade relations with the communist country.
Whitewater
On Jan. 20, 1994, an independent counsel is named to investigate the Clintons' personal, political and business finances in the 1980s, including their role in the Whitewater Development Corporation. As a result, Clinton's cronies begin to fall around him.
Former Arkansas Municipal Court Judge David Hale was indicted for defrauding the federal government by misrepresenting Capital Management's paid-in capital. David Hale pleads guilty on Mar. 22, 1994 to conspiracy and mail fraud.
Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was indicted on three felony charges of making false statements and conspiracy to defraud the United States in the Whitewater venture. Later, 11 new counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, making false statements and misapplying funds are added. When Clinton loyalist Judge Henry Woods dismisses the original three-count indictment against Gov. Tucker, independent counsel Kenneth Starr files an immediate appeal. Tucker is eventually found guilty of fraud in connection with the failed savings and loan institution and faces 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. After Tucker's resignation as Governor, Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee replaced him.
Susan McDougalJim McDougalClinton's partner in the Whitewater venture, Jim McDougal, was indicted on 19 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, making false statements and false bank reports, and misapplying funds. McDougal was found guilty of fraud in connection with the failed savings and loan institution. Jim McDougal was serving his 3 year sentence for bank fraud at the Fort Worth Federal Medical Center in Texas, a facility operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons for inmates who need medical attention. Just prior to another round of testimony before Kenneth Starr's grand jury, Jim McDougal suffered a heart attack while in solitary confinement, which may have been brought on by the diuretics forced on him.
Susan McDougal was indicted on eight counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and making false statements.
* On Feb. 6, 1996, President Bill Clinton is subpoenaed in the bank fraud and conspiracy trial of James and Susan McDougal, his partners in the failed Whitewater development project and on Mar. 26th, the White House agrees to have Clinton videotape his testimony.
* The White House releases on Feb 20, more than 100 pages of "mistakenly overlooked" Whitewater records subpoenaed in 1994.
* On May 16, 1996, the Senate Whitewater committee votes to subpoena FBI reports showing that Hillary Clinton's fingerprints were found on hundreds of pages of Rose law Firm documents found in the White House residence quarters in January. The records, subpoenaed in 1994, and had been missing. In a two-page affidavit to Senate Whitewater investigators on June 17th, Hillary Clinton states that she "does not know" how her Rose Law Firm billing records ended up in the White House.
Criticized for attempting to quash a Whitewater investigation at the RTC through White House liaisons, obstructing justice in the Foster suicide investigation by blocking access, removing documents, lying about his removal of documents, and by retrieving Foster's pager from Park Police, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum resigns on Mar. 5, 1994 and is under investigation for lying to Congress.
Director of White House Administration, Patsy Thomasson, lied to Congress about the composition of the Health Care Task Force and the size of its budget and obstructed justice when she removed documents from the office of Vince Foster.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman resigned on Aug. 17, 1994 amid charges of lying to Congress in his testimony concerning Whitewater/Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) investigation.
Treasury Counsel Jean Hanson resigns on Aug. 18, 1994 amid charges that she briefed the White House on Whitewater/RTC investigation.
On Dec. 15, 1995, Former White House lawyer William Kennedy refuses to comply with Senate Whitewater Committee subpoena demanding Whitewater-related documents.
Jury selection began on June 17, 1996 in the Whitewater-related trial of Herby Branscum and Robert Hill, two Arkansas bankers indicted on charges of fraud. Prosecutors maintain Hill and Branscum funneled $7,000 to then-Gov. Bill Clinton's 1990 re-election campaign.
Deputy Chief of Staff, Harold Ickes, broke into New York Republican headquarters in 1970 but has never been indicted for this crime which was similar to what the Watergate Plumbers spent time in jail for. He also lied to Congress about his involvement in the Whitewater coverup.
Former White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler lied to Congress and attempted to withhold vital information from Congress. He obtained a confidential Treasury report and showed it to witnesses before they testified before Congress in the Whitewater hearings. He again lied to Congress when he denied having shown testimony to witnesses. Lloyd Cutler has resigned.
Campaign Finance
In October 1996, the Clinton/Gore campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Commerce Department engaged in covering up a Democrat political fund-raising scandal.
Three former Clinton administration officials have refused to give the U.S. Congress documents subpoenaed for investigations of Democrat fund-raising -- claiming a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The three are: former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, former Commerce Department political appointee John Huang and Mark Middleton, a former aide to the White House chief of staff. (Associated Press, 2/28/97)
Others have fled the country to evade indictments and answering questions.
John Huang was involved in fund-raising while he was a political appointee at the Commerce Department.
* Huang, a former U.S. representative of the Asian conglomerate Lippo Group, despite assertions of having avoided any contact with any Commerce Department matters involving Lippo, apparently violated federal conflict-of-interest laws by joining the administration's Indonesia Advocacy-Financing Working Group which dealt with projects involving Lippo. Huang aggressively argued for a new U.S. trade policy toward Vietnam only one day after joining the Commerce Department in July 1994, and pushed the issue for 17 months while the Lippo Group sought to expand its business in Vietnam. (The Washington Times, 12/12/96; 11/27/96)
* While still at the Commerce Department, Huang traveled coast to coast to raise money for the Democrat Party and brought in more than $150,000 in donations before he formally left his senior Commerce Department post, according to records obtained by House investigators. Political fund-raising by federal employees is prohibited by the Hatch Act. (The Washington Times, 2/19/97)
* John Huang expressed a particular interest in gathering secret intelligence about China, according to testimony by a CIA officer who briefed Huang 37 times. His testimony was taken as part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on whether Democratic donors were rewarded with trips on trade missions.
EPA Administrator Carol Browner used the EPA to campaign against Republicans running on the Contract with America, an illegal use of the executive branch for political campaigning.
* A bipartisan letter from the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs on March 21, 1995, charges the Environmental Protection Agency and its administrator, Carol M. Browner, with violating the federal Anti-Lobbying Act by faxing unsolicited material opposing the Republican-sponsored regulatory reform package to various corporations and public-interest groups.
Senior Advisor, Bruce Lensey, as treasurer for the Clinton gubernatorial campaign in 1990, signed withdrawals from Perry County Bank, the president of which has pled guilty to conspiring to conceal these withdrawals from the IRS and FEC.
TravelGate
William Kennedy, David Watkins, and Patsy Thomasson was accussed of fabricating charges against White House Travel Office personnel to have the business taken over by Clinton friends. They coerced FBI and IRS agents into complicity with this scheme. Kennedy and Watkins have resigned.
Travel Office employee, Catherine Cornelius removed documents from White House Travel Office. Because those documents later became the subject of a trial against Office Director Billy Dale, that could amount to obstruction of justice.
Filegate
On June 6, 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported that the White House sought confidential FBI background documents on fired White House Travel Office chief Billy Dale. The next day, the White House admits it ordered FBI files of more than 330 people, including dozens of Republican leaders, saying it was working off an "outdated list" of people who had applied for access to the White House. Eventually it is discovered that about 1,000 people's FBI files were obtained by Clinton officials.
Linda TrippOne of those people whose FBI file was obtained by the White House was Linda Tripp, who blazed onto the national scene when she released to Independent Council, Ken Starr, secretly taped conversations she had with Monica Lewinsky about the sexual conduct of the President. Tripp's connection to FBI files also include her witnessing fellow employees copying FBI files onto White House computers when she worked in the Clinton White House. (The Washington Times, 9/4/98) Tripp is also at the center of conspiracy theories involving Vince Fosters suicide. Tripp had worked in the early Clinton administration in 1992 as executive assistant to Bernie Nussbaum, then the White House counsel. Tripp first surfaced in the original report on Fosters death by former independent counsel Robert Fiske. Fiske said in his report, that Tripp was the last person to speak to Foster before he committed suicide. It was also Tripp who provided testimony on what happened inside Fosters office after word of his death surfaced, again leading to questions of impropriety.
Tripp also is the original source of information regarding Kathryn Willeys reported claim that Clinton had kissed and fondled her, claiming to be the first person to talk to Willey after she left the Oval Office.
* On the 9th, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta offers a public apology for the White House's obtaining the FBI files: "Mistakes were made. It is inexcusable."
* President Clinton later offered a direct apology and calls the FBI files controversy a "completely honest bureaucratic snafu."
* FBI Director Louis Freeh said on June 14, that he and his agency were "victimized." He also says that the White House acquisition of the files represented "egregious violations of privacy."
* The Washington Post reports on the 16th, Secret Service officials say the tracking system they used for White House passholders could not have generated the supposedly outdated list that the White House claimed it used to request FBI files on the now more than 400 former passholders.
* White House places personnel security office director Craig Livingstone, directly responsible for obtaining the FBI files, on administrative leave.
* House Government Reform and Oversight Committee begins hearings on FBI file affair on June 19th. Livingstone tells officials that the office holding the files was often left unsecured and that people with the lowest level security clearance were allowed access to the room. ABC News reports that Livingstone himself did not get proper security clearance until more than a year after he began his job as head of security.
* Attorney General Janet Reno calls on FBI to expand its probe to determine how and why White House obtained files on former Reagan and Bush administration staff members - later she reverses her earlier call for the FBI to lead the inquiry, and announces that Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr should investigate how the White House acquired the FBI files in an improper manner.
* New documents on June 25th, show that a total of more than 700 FBI background files were improperly obtained by the White House.
* Craig Livingstone resigns from the White House staff on June 26th.
* Anthony Marceca informs the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 28th, that he is taking the Fifth Amendment and will not answer any more questions concerning the White House acquisition of FBI background files.
* The diaries of the Dick Morris' call girl, Sherry Rowlands, noted that Mr Morris described Mrs Clinton as the prime mover in the scandal when confidential FBI personnel files on leading Republicans were taken to the White House and scrutinised by political fixers. "It was Hillary," Mr Morris replied when Miss Rowlands asked who was to blame for the scandal. "She ordered them. She's a paranoid lady; she did it."
Co-President, Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton became the first first lady to testify before a grand jury when she was subpeonaed by the Whitewater grand jury.
* Took a $100,000 bribe, camouflaged as futures trades, from Tyson Foods Inc.
* Speculated in Health Care industry futures while overseeing legislative reform of same.
* Failed to correct false testimony by co-defendant Ira Magaziner in Health Care trial.
* Obstructed justice by ordering the shredding of Vince Foster's documents in the Rose Law Firm.
* Ordered members of the Health Care Task Force to shred documents that were the target of a court probe.
* Ordered the removal of documents from Vince Foster's office and told aides to lie about their removal of documents.
* Obstructed justice by keeping her billing records, a document sought under subpoena, in the White House residence.
* Lied to investigators about her knowledge about billing records.
* Lied to investigators about her involvement in the Castle Grande land flip con.
* Ordered the use of the FBI to discredit Travel Office employees.
* Lied to investigators about her involvement in the firing of Travel Office Employees.
* A Federal judge orders a trial on July 25, 1994 to determine if Hillary Clinton's heath care task force illegally operated in secret.
* The White House finally releases more than 2,000 documents on June 25, 1996, relating to the travel office firings, originally requested two years prior by congressional investigators.
Look, this is enough.
There is no point trying to have a conversation with someone who takes any allegation of lying as proof of lying if a person has a (D) after their name, but excuses the same behavior as unfounded when the person has an (R) after their name, even when, in the case of Gonzales, his own testimony is in factual conflict with itself. He couldn't have briefed and not brief the same people on the same day on the same subject.
Besides, nothing here rises to the level about lying about who our enemy is, and which country we should attack, and for what reasons. Those lies have cost us thousands of lives and may end up costing a trillion dollars. Nobody can compete with that level of dishonesty, whether you are willing to acknowledge it or not.
Dood, I'm so so glad you finally figured out how to cut and paste. But tell me, have you ever had an original thought? 
Wow! I thought this was MV, I didn't realize I had logged onto the RNC website.
ahhh to go through life with one sided blinders...
Cuthalion
Let's go to the scoreboard:
Bush scandals:
1. Scooter remembered things differently than other people.
2. Dems make up false evidence on Gonzales
Clinton scandals:
- The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
- Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates*
- Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
- Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
- Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
- First president sued for sexual harassment.
- First president accused of rape.
- First first lady to come under criminal investigation
- Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
- First president to establish a legal defense fund.
- First president to be held in contempt of court
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad
- First president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court
* According to our best information, 40 government officials were indicted or convicted in the wake of Watergate. A reader computes that there was a total of 31 Reagan era convictions, including 14 because of Iran-Contra and 16 in the Department of Housing & Urban Development scandal. 47 individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring during the Clinton administration itself. There were in addition 61 indictments or misdemeanor charges. 14 persons were imprisoned. A key difference between the Clinton story and earlier ones was the number of criminals with whom he was associated before entering the White House.
Using a far looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but with a different standard in "Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years: "By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever."
STARR-RAY INVESTIGATION
- Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions or guilty pleas (including one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners): 14
- Number of Clinton Cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5
- Number of Reagan cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4
- Number of top officials jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3
CRIME STATS
- Number of individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47
- Number of these convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33
- Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61
- Number of congressional witnesses who have pleaded the Fifth Amendment, fled the country to avoid testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed: 122
SMALTZ INVESTIGATION
- Guilty pleas and convictions obtained by Donald Smaltz in cases involving charges of bribery and fraud against former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and associated individuals and businesses: 15
- Acquitted or overturned cases (including Espy): 6
- Fines and penalties assessed: $11.5 million
- Amount Tyson Food paid in fines and court costs: $6 million
CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATION
- As of June 2000, the Justice Department listed 25 people indicted and 19 convicted because of the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising scandals.
- According to the House Committee on Government Reform in September 2000, 79 House and Senate witnesses asserted the Fifth Amendment in the course of investigations into Gore's last fundraising campaign.
-James Riady entered a plea agreement to pay an $8.5 million fine for campaign finance crimes. This was a record under campaign finance laws.
CLINTON MACHINE CRIMES FOR WHICH CONVICTIONS WERE OBTAINED
Drug trafficking (3), racketeering, extortion, bribery (4), tax evasion, kickbacks, embezzlement (2), fraud (12), conspiracy (5), fraudulent loans, illegal gifts (1), illegal campaign contributions (5), money laundering (6), perjury, obstruction of justice.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
- Number of independent counsel inquiries since the 1978 law was passed: 19
- Number that have produced indictments: 7
- Number that produced more convictions than the Starr investigation: 1
- Median length of investigations that led to convictions: 44 months
- Length of Starr-Ray investigation: 69 months.
- Total cost of the Starr investigation (3/00) $52 million
- Total cost of the Iran-Contra investigation: $48.5 million
- Total cost to taxpayers of the Madison Guarantee failure: $73 million
OTHER MATTERS INVESTIGATED BY SPECIAL PROSECUTORS AND CONGRESS, OR REPORTED IN THE MEDIA
Bank and mail fraud, violations of campaign finance laws, illegal foreign campaign funding, improper exports of sensitive technology, physical violence and threats of violence, solicitation of perjury, intimidation of witnesses, bribery of witnesses, attempted intimidation of prosecutors, perjury before congressional committees, lying in statements to federal investigators and regulatory officials, flight of witnesses, obstruction of justice, bribery of cabinet members, real estate fraud, tax fraud, drug trafficking, failure to investigate drug trafficking, bribery of state officials, use of state police for personal purposes, exchange of promotions or benefits for sexual favors, using state police to provide false court testimony, laundering of drug money through a state agency, false reports by medical examiners and others investigating suspicious deaths, the firing of the RTC and FBI director when these agencies were investigating Clinton and his associates, failure to conduct autopsies in suspicious deaths, providing jobs in return for silence by witnesses, drug abuse, improper acquisition and use of 900 FBI files, improper futures trading, murder, sexual abuse of employees, false testimony before a federal judge, shredding of documents, withholding and concealment of subpoenaed documents, fabricated charges against (and improper firing of) White House employees, inviting drug traffickers, foreign agents and participants in organized crime to the White House.
ARKANSAS ALTZHEIMER'S
Number of times that Clinton figures who testified in court or before Congress said that they didn't remember, didn't know, or something similar.
Bill Kennedy 116
Harold Ickes 148
Ricki Seidman 160
Bruce Lindsey 161
Bill Burton 191
Mark Gearan 221
Mack McLarty 233
Neil Egglseston 250
Hillary Clinton 250
John Podesta 264
Jennifer O'Connor 343
Dwight Holton 348
Patsy Thomasson 420
Jeff Eller 697
FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES: In the portions of President Clinton's Jan. 17 deposition that have been made public in the Paula Jones case, his memory failed him 267 times.
- Number of persons in the Clinton machine orbit who are alleged to have committed suicide: 9
- Number known to have been murdered: 12
- Number who died in plane crashes: 6
- Number who died in single car automobile accidents: 3
- Number of one-person sking fatalities: 1
- Number of key witnesses who have died of heart attacks while in federal custody under questionable circumstances: 1
- Number of unexplained deaths: 4
- Total suspicious deaths: 46
- Number of northern Mafia killings during peak years of 1968-78: 30
- Number of Dixie Mafia killings during same period: 156
It is important in considering these fatal incidents to bear in mind the following:
* The fact that anomalies need to be investigated further carries no presumption of how a death actually occurred, only that there remain serious questions that require answers.
* The possibility of foul play must be taken seriously in a major criminal conspiracy in which over two score individuals and firms have been convicted and over 100 witnesses have pled the Fifth Amendment or fled the country.
* If foul play did occur in any of these cases, that fact by itself does not carry the presumption that the the Clinton machine was involved. Given the footprints of organized crime, drug trade, foreign espionage, and intelligence agencies on the trail of the Clinton story, such a assumption would not be warranted. It is also well to keep in mind the classic prohibition era movie in which the corrupt poitician's job was not to engage in illegal acts but to avoid noticing them.
ARKANSAS MONEY MANAGEMENT
- Amount of an alleged electronic transfer from the Arkansas Development Financial Authority to a bank in the Cayman Islands during 1980s: $50 million
- Grand Cayman's population: 18,000
- Number of commercial banks: 570
- Number of bank regulators: 1
- Amount Arkansas state pension fund invested in high-risk repos in the mid-80s in one purchase in April 1985: $52 million through the Worthen Bank.
- Number of days thereafter that the state's brokerage firm went belly up: 3
- Amount Arkansas pension fund dropped overnight as a result: 15%
- Percent of Worthen bank that Mochtar Riady bought over the next four months to bail out the bank and the then governor, Bill Clinton: 40%.
- Percent of purchasers from the Clintons and McDougals of resort lots who lost the land because of the sleazy financing provisions: over 50%
THE MEDIA
- Number of journalists covering Whitewater who have been fired, transferred off the beat, resigned or otherwise gotten into trouble because of their work on the scandals (Doug Frantz, Jim Wooten, Richard Behar, Christopher Ruddy, Michael Isikoff, David Eisenstadt, Yinh Chan, Jonathan Broder, James R. Norman, Zoh Hieronimus): 10
FRIENDS OF BILL
- Number of times John Huang took the 5th Amendment in answer to questions during a Judicial Watch deposition: 1,000
- Visits made to the White House by investigation subjects Johnny Chung, James Riady, John Huang, and Charlie Trie. 160
- Number of campaign contributors who got overnights at the White House in the two years before the 1996 election: 577
- Number of members of Thomas Boggs's law firm who have held top positions in the Clinton administration. 18
- Number of times John Huang was briefed by CIA: 37
- Number of calls Huang made from Commerce Department to Lippo banks: 261
- Number of intelligence reports Huang read while at Commerce Department: 500
UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA
- FBI files misappropriated by the White House: c. 900
- Estimated number of witnesses quoted in FBI files misappropriated by the White House: 18,000
- Number of witnesses who developed medical problems at critical points in Clinton scandals investigation (Tucker, Hale, both McDougals, Lindsey): 5
- Problem areas listed in a memo by Clinton's own lawyer in preparation for the president's defense: 40
- Number of witnesses and critics of Clinton subjected to IRS audit: 45
- Number of names placed in a White House secret database without the knowledge of those named: c. 200,000
- Number of women involved with Clinton who claim to have been physically threatened (Sally Perdue, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Juantia Broaddrick): 6
- Number of men involved in the Clinton scandals who have been beaten up or claimed to have been intimidated: 10
THE CLINTON LEGACY: LONELY VOICES
Here are some of the all too rare public officials, reporters, and others who spoke truth to the dismally corrupt power of Bill and Hill Clinton's political machine -- some at risk to their careers, others at risk to their lives. A few points to note:
- Those corporatist media reporters who attempted to report the story often found themselves muzzled; some even lost their jobs. The only major dailies that consistently handled the story well were the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times.
- Nobody on this list has gotten rich and many you may not have even heard of. Taking on the Clintons typically has not been a happy or rewarding experience. At least ten reporters were fired, transferred off their beats, resigned, or otherwise got into trouble because of their work on the scandals.
- Contrary to the popular impression, the politics of those listed ranges from the left to the right, and from the ideological to the independent.
PUBLIC OFFICIALS
MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ was a prosecutor on the staff of Kenneth Starr. His attempts to uncover the truth in the Vincent Foster death case were repeatedly foiled and he was the subject of planted stories undermining his credibility and implying that he was unstable. Rodriguez eventually resigned.
JEAN DUFFEY: Head of a joint federal-county drug task force in Arkansas. Her first instructions from her boss: "Jean, you are not to use the drug task force to investigate any public official." Duffey's work, however, led deep into the heart of the Dixie Mafia, including members of the Clinton machine and the investigation of the so-called "train deaths." Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports that when she produced a star witness who could testify to Clinton's involvement with cocaine, the local prosecuting attorney, Dan Harmon issued a subpoena for all the task force records, including "the incriminating files on his own activities. If Duffey had complied it would have exposed 30 witnesses and her confidential informants to violent retributions. She refused." Harmon issued a warrant for her arrest and friendly cops told her that there was a $50,000 price on her head. She eventually fled to Texas. The once-untouchable Harmon was later convicted of racketeering, extortion and drug dealing.
BILL DUNCAN: An IRS investigator in Arkansas who drafted some 30 federal indictments of Arkansas figures on money laundering and other charges. Clinton biographer Roger Morris quotes a source who reviewed the evidence: "Those indictments were a real slam dunk if there ever was one." The cases were suppressed, many in the name of "national security." Duncan was never called to testify. Other IRS agents and state police disavowed Duncan and turned on him. Said one source, "Somebody outside ordered it shut down and the walls went up."
RUSSELL WELCH: An Arkansas state police detective working with Duncan. Welch developed a 35-volume, 3,000 page archive on drug and money laundering operations at Mena. His investigation was so compromised that a high state police official even let one of the targets of the probe look through the file. At one point, Welch was sprayed in the face with poison, later identified by the Center for Disease Control as anthrax. He would write in his diary, "I feel like I live in Russia, waiting for the secret police to pounce down. A government has gotten out of control. Men find themselves in positions of power and suddenly crimes become legal." Welch is no longer with the state police.
DAN SMALTZ: Smaltz did an outstanding job investigating and prosecuting charges involving illegal payoffs to Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, yet was treated with disparaging and highly inaccurate reporting by the likes of the David Broder and the NY Times. Espy was acquitted under a law that made it necessary to not only prove that he accepted gratuities but that he did something specific in return. On the other hand, Tyson Foods copped a plea in the same case, paying $6 million in fines and serving four years' probation. The charge: that Tyson had illegally offered Espy $12,000 in airplane rides, football tickets and other payoffs. In the Espy investigation, Smaltz obtained 15 convictions and collected over $11 million in fines and civil penalties. Offenses for which convictions were obtained included false statements, concealing money from prohibited sources, illegal gratuities, illegal contributions, falsifying records, interstate transportation of stolen property, money laundering, and illegal receipt of USDA subsidies. In addition, Janet Reno blocked Smaltz from pursuing leads aimed at allegations of major drug trafficking in Arkansas and payoffs to the then governor of the state, WJ Clinton. Espy had become Ag secretary only after being flown to Arkansas to get the approval of chicken king Don Tyson.
DAVID SCHIPPERS was House impeachment counsel and a Chicago Democrat. He did a highly creditable job but since he didn't fit the right-wing conspiracy theory, the Clintonista media downplayed his work. Thus most Americans don't know that he told Newsmax, "Let me tell you, if we had a chance to put on a case, I would have put live witnesses before the committee. But the House leadership, and I'm not talking about Henry Hyde, they just killed us as far as time was concerned. I begged them to let me take it into this year. Then I screamed for witnesses before the Senate. But there was nothing anybody could do to get those Senators to show any courage. They told us essentially, you're not going to get 67 votes so why are you wasting our time." Schippers also said that while a number of representatives had looked at additional evidence kept under seal in a nearby House building, not a single senator did.
JOHN CLARKE: When Patrick Knowlton stopped to relieve himself in Ft. Marcy Park 70 minutes before the discovery of Vince Foster's body, he saw things that got him into deep trouble. His interview statements were falsified and prior to testifying he claims he was overtly harassed by more than a score of men in a classic witness intimidation technique. In some cases there were witnesses. John Clarke was his dogged lawyer in the witness intimidation case that was largely ignored by the media, even when the three-judge panel overseeing the Starr investigation permitted Knowlton to append a 20 page addendum to the Starr Report.