Subj: A legalized coup attempt...& other hot articles for ACPWC
Date: 98-09-30 21:45:00 EDT
From: Jazzineva
BCC: Dohouse

A legalized coup attempt: Would Americans stand for it?

GENE LYONS

Rep. Henry Hyde assures the American people that the impeachment inquiry of President Clinton will demonstrate that "no person is above the law, nor beneath the law."

    In the next breath Hyde insists that there also will be "no investigation of the investigation"--no inquiry, that is, into the motives and methods of independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

    These goals are in hopeless conflict. If Clinton can't question how Starr's evidence against him was gathered, he'll have been denied what the Constitution calls "due process of law," his basic right as an American citizen.

    Yet no less an authority than The New York Times endorses the idea that the president has fewer rights than the rest of us. The "Starr report" hid Monica Lewinsky's testimony that Clinton never asked her to lie or promised her anything to keep their affair a secret. Nevertheless, "legal klutziness," we're told, ". . . does not add up to prosecutorial misconduct. The impeachment process is not governed by the rules of criminal law." Klutziness implies clumsiness. Are we to believe that Starr fuzzed Monica's denial of the central premise of his investigation by accident?

    In probing Clinton's sex life, the Times says, Starr was merely following orders "as an officer of the court, operating under Justice Department aegis and the supervision of three federal judges."

    But what if Starr's authority to investigate the Lewinsky matter was itself obtained by illegitimate means? What if corners were cut, falsehoods disseminated and laws broken in a manner decidedly more sinister than klutzy?

    Would that matter? Because the evidence is there, much of it in the Starr report itself, although it does have to be dug out by very careful reading.     As presented to the public, Starr presented four main pieces of evidence to Attorney General Janet Reno and the three-judge panel. There's something critically wrong with every one.

    1. Taking the simplest first, Starr argued that Vernon Jordan's effort to find Lewinsky a job resembled his Whitewater "hush money" investigation of Webb Hubbell. Trouble is, Starr indicted Hubbell for tax fraud (since dismissed) precisely because he never found real evidence of "hush money."     Suspicion isn't evidence. If it were, Starr's investigation would have no legal boundaries whatsoever.

    According to Brill's Content, the OIC may also have withheld exculpatory information from Reno; specifically, that Jordan's efforts began long before Lewinsky was subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case; also that Jordan was an old friend of her mother's fiance, Peter Straus.

    2. Were Linda Tripp's tapes recorded illegally? If so, they could not be used as evidence in an American court.

    Even more worrying, the Starr report clearly states that two crucial phone talks recorded by Tripp on Thursday, Jan. 15--two days after the FBI wired her and Monica's lunch meeting and one day before Starr received permission from the three-judge panel to proceed--"were made under the supervision of the Office of the Independent Counsel." Designated "Tape 22," the report says they show Lewinsky telling Tripp that she and Clinton would tell the same story under oath--a crucial bit of evidence, if true. Granted immunity by Starr on Jan. 12, Tripp was then advised by the OIC to do some more taping on Jan. 15. In brief, she was acting as the OIC's agent. Did Starr have authority for that from the judges? Does any federal prosecutor have authority to deputize a civilian to violate a state law? This is KGB territory.

    So how can Starr's team have been so reckless as to print the evidence in their report? Maybe they were gambling that the report would force Clinton to resign. Also, to put the thing together, it's necessary to read footnote 1020, then follow its cryptic reference to "T-22" into Volume II, page 262, for the date and disclaimer. (I'm indebted to Jack Gillis of the University of Southwestern Louisiana.) The issue takes on added significance in view of another footnote accusing Tripp of doctoring certain tapes and dubbing others.

    3. Then there are the "talking points." Long presented as the "smoking gun" that would prove White House malfeasance, this document was actually written by Lewinsky herself at Tripp's urging. According to Lewinsky's testimony, also discreetly edited in the Starr report, Tripp phoned Lewinsky on the morning of Jan. 14 and told her that she was meeting Kirby Behre, her attorney, later that day and asked Lewinsky for help in composing an affidavit.

    The call was a setup. Unknown to Lewinsky, Tripp had actually fired Behre on Jan. 9 and hired conservative lawyer James Moody. After sweating over a hot word processor all day, Lewinsky met Tripp after work in a Pentagon parking lot and handed her the so-called talking points. Their contents reflected Tripp's stated incredulity about Kathleen Willey's charges against Clinton.

    Also unknown to Lewinsky, Tripp then took the document directly to Starr. The OIC immediately called Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder on his cell phone at a Washington Wizards pro basketball game, setting in motion the process that gave Starr his investigative authority.

    In short, the talking points never were evidence of anything except Tripp's deviousness. Yet for months they were treated like the Rosetta Stone.

    Did Starr ask Tripp to produce better evidence? Did he ask her how she got the talking points? He had to. If she lied, that's a crime. If she told the truth, yet Starr's team encouraged the Justice Department and Reno to believe that the talking points were something they weren't, would that be prosecutorial misconduct?

    Given that Lewinsky would almost certainly have asked Tripp on Jan. 15 how the meeting with Behre went, it's going to be really interesting to see which tapes Tripp edited.

    4. In her Jan. 16 letter to the three-judge panel, Reno wrote that Lewinsky "may have filed" a false affidavit, a statement that can mean three things to a lawyer: Either said affidavit may have been filed, may be false or both.

    Why such vagueness? Because Starr appears to have been making, and losing, another calculated gamble.

    Lewinsky's attorney, Frank Carter, had sent the lawyers for Paula Jones a copy of her Jan. 7 affidavit on Monday, Jan. 12. Carter informed them that unless he heard from them by Jan. 15, he would file a motion to quash her subpoena with Judge Susan Webber Wright's court in Little Rock. On Jan. 16, he sent the Jones lawyers a copy of his motion.

    That same morning, Starr's newly empowered agents grabbed up Lewinsky, held her for 11 hours, refused to let her phone attorney Carter, threatened her with 27 years in jail for breaking federal law and tried to get her to wear a wire (she says) into the Oval Office.

    But the motion hadn't been filed. Legally, an affidavit has no legal force until it's stamped by the court. Here's what the Starr report says:

    "On January 16, 1998, Mr. Carter arranged for the overnight delivery of the motion to quash and the accompanying affidavit to Judge Susan Webber Wright's law clerk and Paula Jones' attorneys (1027)."

    Read the footnote, and there's a surprise. Starr's team may not have known it, but Little Rock courts don't accept faxed motions. The courthouse is closed weekends. Monday, Jan. 19, was a federal holiday. Thus the footnote: "Although the motion (and affidavit) reached the Judge's chambers on January 17, the file stamp date was January 20, 1998."

    In picking up Lewinsky, Starr's zealous prosecutors jumped the gun by five days, a probable cause for mistrial in any federal court in America.

    Also, follow the document reference in footnote 1027 to document number 921-DC-0000775, and what do you find? Well, no document. It's simply not there. But the documentary Table of Contents lists the source as the Campbell Law Firm, Jones' lawyers. So how does a document provided Starr by the Jones lawyers prove that Lewinsky's affidavit reached Judge Wright's chambers on Jan. 17? It doesn't.

    We know that Wright saw the Lewinsky affidavit on Jan. 17, because Clinton attorney Bob Bennett produced a copy during the president's deposition. But how on earth did Starr's prosecutors know on Friday, Jan. 16, that Carter had sent it, much less what was in it?

    On Tripp's and the FBI's tapes, Lewinsky was still saying she'd sign nothing until she had a job. (A lie, she's since testified.) That leaves only one possible source: the Jones lawyers, an unethical mixing of civil and criminal cases.

    And what was the great big hurry on Jan. 16? Why not wait until the affidavit was legally filed with the court? Simple: Starr's prosecutors had to spring their "impeachment trap" before Clinton testified and Newsweek published or lose the whole thing.

    Combine all this with Tripp's briefing of the Jones lawyers on Friday, Jan. 16, and what emerges is the disturbing impression of a legalized coup attempt.

    Are the American people prepared to countenance that?

    Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award. His column appears on Wednesdays.

    This article was published on Wednesday, September 30, 1998 RETURN to Editorial Section

Copyright © 1998, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.

Bill & Monica: It's not Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas Even before President Clinton referred to the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing in his grand jury testimony, comparisons between the Monica Lewinsky scandal and my testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee were being made. The comparisons usually come in the form of a question to Democrats: "How do the current accusations differ from those raised during the Thomas hearing"? Or more bluntly, "Why aren't women as outraged by what Bill Clinton did as they were with Clarence Thomas or Bob Packwood?" Given the difference in the facts, the thinking behind such comparisons is at best misguided, and at worst dangerous.

If impeachment hearings proceed, it is important for the House and Senate Judiciary committees to recognize the differences and avoid the circus atmosphere that surrounded the hearing on Thomas' Supreme Court nomination.

The substance of sex-related accusations against Clinton differs dramatically from those raised against Thomas or Packwood. According to their testimony, Clinton and Lewinsky viewed their relationship as consensual. While their immoral and undignified behavior no doubt had a negative effect on others in the office and in the Clinton household, it was not coerced, unwanted or illegal. In the case of Packwood and Thomas, the accusations involved sexual harassment.

To equate those allegations with an office affair is to trivialize issues of sexual predation that women face in the workplace and on the street. Nor are the situations morally equivalent. The possible violation of a woman's civil rights is not the same as the emotional pain and loss of trust that result from extramarital affairs.

Equating the two promotes a form of moral fundamentalism that devalues women and the issues they face and offers only a formulaic approach to addressing them.

In addition, many of Clinton's critics claim that his supporters -- especially women -- are guilty of political hypocrisy. On the surface, the Clinton scandal may suggest hypocrisy on the part of his supporters, but the same can be said of his detractors as well. In an interview on "Larry King Live," Robert Bork gave a sincere but altogether tortured explanation of why the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges represent a worse subversion of democracy than the charges raised in the Iran-Contra affair in the Reagan administration.

Do we learn anything from looking back at the Thomas hearing? I hope we learn how difficult and painful it is to address issues involving sex and power.

And as the House Judiciary Committee begins evaluating the evidence in this case, it should keep in mind another lesson from the Thomas hearing: The American people not only care about getting the truth, they also care about how they get it.

The Thomas hearing was inherently flawed and lacked credibility. The Senate rushed to conclude the proceeding, without thinking through its own role. It soon became apparent that the committee was simply not competent to conduct a hearing on the legal issue of whether Thomas had sexually harassed me. People may have chosen sides during the hearing, but no one believed that the hearing was fair or orderly. Unfortunately, in the current scandal, the process has already been tainted in the minds of the public.

It began with a tape that was made illegally. It has been plagued with leaks. And Kenneth Starr's report and supporting evidence were released before Clinton had a chance to respond.

Clearly the president and Lewinsky used sex for their own purposes, but are Starr and the Republicans doing the same thing? It is up to the House Judiciary Committee to restore the public's faith in the integrity of the process, and to ensure that all issues receive a fair hearing.

The panel can start by asking not how Clinton's behavior differed from that of Thomas, but how committee members can learn from the past to conduct a fair hearing.

Anita Hill, author of "Speaking Truth to Power," is a visiting professor at Brandeis University. This first appeared in the New York Times.

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MORAL TOTALITARIANISM WILL BE GOP'S DOWNFALL

KENNETH STARR AND HIS POSSE OF SEX SNOOPS INCREASINGLY ARE SEEN AS THE LEAD FORCES IN A KIND OF HOME-GROWN TALIBAN MOVEMENT, WAGING HOLY WAR ON SLACK AMERICANS.

Salim Muwakkil.

All attempts to keep this column a Monica-free zone have been abandoned in the wake of last week's broadcast of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's incredible inquisition. The sorry spectacle of the president of the United States being grilled about sex on global television vividly revealed the right wing's squinted vision of America's future and frightened many of us into supporting a man we wouldn't even trust with our daughters.

It's becoming increasingly clear that right-wing forces in this country are trying to nullify the election of 1996 and, in effect, mount a procedural coup d'etat. The "independent" prosecutor's efforts--in barely concealed collusion with GOP leadership--clearly seeks either to shame President Bill Clinton out of office or render him politically impotent by releasing reams of salacious data about his adulterous affair. The weapon of choice in this coup attempt is moral totalitarianism.

But Starr's pornography-laced report seems to have backfired. The public isn't impressed with Clinton's moral character but is even less impressed by a runaway prosecutor with unlimited powers and partisan passions. Despite the House of Representatives' reckless release of the Starr investigation and the videotape of the president's "secret" grand-jury testimony, most polls show that the American people remain supportive of Clinton.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center, for example, found that Clinton's approval ratings moved from 55 to 62 percent after the tape broadcast.

The survey also found that disapproval of GOP congressional leadership is 11 percent higher than that of the president: 44 percent to 33 percent.

Some GOP leaders and right-wing commentators accuse the American public of selfish materialism for its approval of Clinton's job performance despite his "inappropriate" moral behavior. William J. Bennett, the former education secretary and self-appointed national moralist has even churned out a new book designed to cash in on the scandal; entitled "The Death of Outrage," Bennett's screed takes the entire country to task for our lack of ire about Clinton's moral misdeeds.

It seems to me, however, that the public is instinctively reacting to threats to its liberty that are way beyond the specifics of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The specter of government-empowered "morals police" setting up stings with wired informants to catch U.S. citizens in immoral behavior evokes odious authoritarian images in the minds of most citizens.

Starr and his posse of sex snoops increasingly are seen as the lead forces in a kind of home-grown Taliban movement, waging holy war on slack Americans.

I, for one, am pleasantly surprised by this enlightened reaction and only hope that our fears of moral totalitarianism propel us to the polls this November.

For although Clinton's irresponsible behavior was disgraceful and reckless, it clearly does not rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution specifies treason and bribery as two of the kinds of crimes which do rise to that level. There seems little doubt that the Constitution's framers were targeting serious offenses involving open abuses of political power. Only those blinded by political obfuscation can compare Clinton's sordid sex romps with such high crimes. Attempts to trap him into committing perjury with trick questions about his adulterous liaison are tactical legalisms that are divorced from context. And remember the context: Clinton is being prosecuted for lying about sex in a civil suit that's been dismissed.

Luckily the public seems to see through the GOP's slick trick.

Still, the president's reprehensible behavior has offered the American Talibans an excellent opportunity to march the country backwards into the new millennium.

The real "Y2K" problem is not just the expected digital logjam but also the prospect of total GOP takeover. Such a takeover is likely if the president is "impeached or if he resigned from office prematurely," said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) in an interview on Chicago radio station WVON-AM. If Republicans did assume control, he warned, they could appoint three or more conservative Supreme Court justices and affect many other changes that would "move the country so far to the right that by the year 2002 many of us won't recognize America."

Since those Americans opposed to Starr's inquisition and the forces it represent are a majority there is still a chance to halt this corrosive coup. The president's lurid behavior makes it difficult to rally forces in opposition to the GOP assault. But when the struggle is seen as a battle against tyranny, Clinton, the alleged sex addict, becomes a mere footnote.

An international letter of protest, being circulated by Jack Lang, the former French minister of culture, and William Styron, the American author of "Sophie's Choice," provides some useful language: "Tyranny begins when one power, one church, one party introduces itself into the private lives of its citizens."

Copyright Chicago Tribune

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