Hillary is Not Going To Jail. AGAIN.
Friday, March 17, 2000
Independent Counsel Robert Ray has sent a report to the three-judge panel which says Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham will not be going to jail for "Filegate." According to the Associated Press, the report finds "there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official, or first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was involved in seeking confidential FBI background reports of former White House staff from the prior administrations of President Bush and President Reagan."
This one is an easy call: Either there is evidence that Mrs. Clinton had a hand in getting those files sent to the White House or there isn't. Ray is the successor to Kenneth Starr and is not known in Your Nation's Capital as a Democratic foot soldier. He decided there is no such evidence "So," as Emperor Joseph II of Austria says to Mozart in the movie Amadeus, "There it is."
--- BEGIN RANT ---
Almost one thousand personal files of people who worked in the White House during the Reagan and Bush administrations were pawed over by a second-rate military investigator, a former bar bouncer, and temporary interns in the employ of the Clinton-Gore Administration.
These files were the output of interviews Reagan and Bush employees had to submit to in the process of getting their White House clearances. These interviews were given with the absolute understanding they would never be used for any other purpose and would never be seen by anyone who did not have an official reason for looking at them.
I have never been an employee of the White House, but I did have a pretty high security clearance when I was Senator Dan Quayle's press secretary to help with his work on the Senate Armed Services Committee. I had not only FBI investigators tracking me back to my childhood, but military investigators as well.
I don't know what was - or is - in those reports and I don't particularly care. But here's what I DO know: The contents of those reports are as personal as anything an American citizen allows our government to collect and store. They certainly are not to be used as pieces in a White House parlor game of "Gotcha" against Republicans.
A White House which encouraged an environment in which people who should have been considered colleagues with a shared experience - White House tenure - to be treated as enemies whose personal lives were available for browsing by anyone who cared to drop by, is something Al Gore should speak to, and answer for.
--- END RANT ---
We missed the opportunity, the other day, to point out the irony of the joint statement by Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the results of the mapping of human genetic patterns - the Human Genome Project - should be shared freely among scientists worldwide. The irony occurs because had there been no advancements in DNA identification, Mr. Clinton would still be denying he ever did you-know-what with you-know-who in the you-know-where.
Unless Chappaqua, New York is aiming to be known as "Hollywood East" we just got a strong signal regarding which coast Bill Clinton is planning to call home after his term ends next January. Consider the following item from the Reuters financial wire: "The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, is getting into the movie business, agreeing to guarantee loans to independent filmmakers in a new program [which] will provide at least $100 million a year in U.S.-government loan guarantees for American independent film production whose financing is secured primarily by contracts with independent overseas distributors."
Bill, Bay-bee! Lookin' GOOD! Hey, I have a project I KNOW you'll be interested in. I'll just have my people call your people about the loan guarantee.
-- END --
Home | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?
Copyright �2000 Richard A. Galen | Site design by Campaign Solutions.
|
