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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 20 March 2001 | Vol. II #41 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 20 March 2001 | Vol. II #41 | ||
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For good government types who believe the scourge of American politics is unregulated soft money, Hillary Clinton should be public enemy No. 1.
For the first time in history Senate Democrats have outpaced their Republican counterparts in soft money donations.
Fourteen Democratic Senate candidates used a new fund-raising technique known as joint fund-raising committees to collect more than $15 million in last year's election cycle, reported Friday's New York Times.
The leader of the pack? Why, it's none other than Hillary Clinton, who agreed to a soft money ban in her Senate race against Rick Lazio but found apparently found a myriad of ways around her promise.
She collected more than half the Senate Democrats' joint committee soft money bonanza.
Top donors to Mrs. Clinton's campaign included Pardongate stonewaller Denise Rich, insurance company executive Walter Kaye (who recommended Monica Lewinsky for a White House internship) and Loral Aerospace chief Bernard Schwartz, who's company remains under investigation for sharing missile technology with Communist China.
"The amount Sen. Clinton raised is a staggering amount," campaign finance watchdog Fred Werthheimer told the Times. "It completely violates the spirit of the campaign finance laws."
[ NewsMax ]
TCN Comment: Modern DemocRATS ( Clintonians ) who rarely feel compelled to comply with the letter of the law are certainly not going to be concerned about the spirit of the law.
Awarding a Department of Defense contract worth $26 million for Army berets to foreign manufacturers is "a terrible mistake," said Rep. Ronnie Shows, a Mississippi Republican whose district lost "several thousand apparel and manufacturing jobs" to Mexico and Canada over the past decade.
"American workers make the finest products on the planet," Shows said. "And American workers have families to nurture and raise."
Contracts for 2.5 million berets were awarded primarily to companies in Communist China, "whose leadership overtly tries to skirt U.S. efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, all the while actively conducting espionage against the U.S. to acquire our weapons and high technology," Shows said in a statement.
"In addition, they imprison and torture religious and democratic leaders, suppress all forms of free speech, and continue to threaten the use of force against neighboring countries," he said.
In a letter to President George Bush, Shows said a decision by the Defense Logistics Agency to purchase the berets from foreign companies violates the Berry Amendment, a federal law which requires the Pentagon to buy clothing made in U.S. factories of American components.
But the Army said it was entitled to waive the amendment because it needed to institute the black beret as standard headgear on June 14, the Army's birthday. American manufacturers could not supply the high volume in the tight deadline, the Army said.
Shows said the American apparel industry could fill the order for a little more than half the price if they had been given sufficient lead time. Indeed, awarding the contracts to foreign companies will wind up costing U.S. taxpayers more, by Shows estimates.
Also, "the Army's decision to purchase the black berets from companies who manufacture them overseas many undermine the very morale and unity the Army is attempting to instill in its forces," Shows said.
The Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, announced in October that the black beret worn exclusively by the elite Rangers would become standard headgear for all Army members. The Rangers vigorously opposed the decision, and protest grew after it was learned that orders for the headwear would be filled by Chinese manufacturers.
Meanwhile, in a compromise, the Rangers won approval to switch the color of their berets from black to tan. The Army's decision Thursday appeared to settle the major element of the controversy. But the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, is reviewing whether the Army made a mistake in contracting with China and other countries to supply the black beret.
[ CNS ]
** Freeh Faces Resistance To Plan To Expand Lie Detector Tests
It has been learned that FBI Director Louis Freeh is encountering stiff resistance to a plan to require widespread polygraph testing within the bureau in an effort to root out spies.
Freeh developed the plan in the wake of the arrest last month of a career agent on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia.
But faced with the prospect of having to order thousands of reluctant FBI agents to be strapped to polygraph machines, the director is apparently having second thoughts.
Internal memos have warned Freeh that "for every lie uncovered by polygraph examiners, there will be 50 to 100 false readings."
Widespread tests could "sideline or ruin" careers and "victimize employees," Freeh was told.
The internal dispute puts FBI agents in the ironic position of feeling intimidated by the same sort of tests they have often used to squeeze criminal suspects.
Freeh came under intense pressure to start randomly testing agents after it was disclosed that accused spy Richard Hanssen was never polygraphed in his 25 years as a federal agent.
Hanssen, a top counterintelligence officer, was arrested last month on charges of passing information to the Soviet Union and Russia for 15 years - data that may have cost double agents their lives and compromised expensive intelligence-gathering operations.
The FBI in the mid-1990s started giving polygraphs, but other than new agents, polygraphs were limited to "disciplinary cases" and agents working in "highly specialized programs" or on "sensitive cases." Hanssen and other long-time agents were never tested.
Now, despite his own concerns about the tests, Attorney General John Ashcroft is also pushing Freeh.
"We should elevate the use of the polygraph in certain cases as it relates to the bureau," Ashcroft said recently.
[ CBS ]
TCN Comment: Lie detectors are not reliable and should not be the basis of our national security. The same techniques used by olympic shooters to control pulse and respiration can be used to successfully rig a lie detector test. On the other hand some people get sweaty palms and hyperventilate any time they are put in the hot seat about anything.
The solution lies in background checks and periodic investigations of officers in critical positions. But of course, the police policing themselves is still strictly theory.
Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
TCN Comment: OK, with the right equipment and the right operator they sometimes work!
"New Jersey will elect a governor in November to replace Christie Todd Whitman, who resigned to accept the post of Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. ... The Republican nomination will be a two-way race between Acting Gov. Donald DeFrancesco and Jersey City Mayor Brett Schundler.
The New Jersey Education Association took the uncommon step of endorsing DeFrancesco in the GOP primary, not out of any particular love for him, but because NJEA will do virtually anything to keep Schundler out of the governor's mansion. Schundler is a long-time champion of school vouchers, and has a substantial national following.
So concerned is NJEA about Schundler that many of its large locals are already asking members to switch to the Republican Party in order to vote against him in the June primary. NJEA has approximately 170,000 members and can influence turnout immensely, especially in a primary."
"..[I]f history teaches us anything, it teaches us that any nation or society that fully embraces aberrant sexual behavior has entered its final days of existence. From the Canaanites to the Roman Empire, every culture that openly accepted homosexuality has been destroyed. The United States will not be the exception.
America will not be preserved by tax cuts or lower interest rates, but by a national recommitment to the great moral principles given by God. In the final analysis, America will be judged not by her politics or commercial enterprise, but by her faith and fidelity." - Chuck Baldwin
When independent counsel Kenneth Starr released his report on the death of former White House deputy counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. in October 1997, he refused to make public reports written by three consultants that he had hired to study the case. Accuracy in Media (AIM) sued the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC) to obtain these and other documents that should have been made public long ago. The three reports by Starr's consultants were recently given to AIM. They appear to hurt Starr's case more than they help it.
Take the report submitted by Dr. Brian Blackbourne, the San Diego County medical examiner. Its text is only 3-1/4 single-spaced typewritten pages. Dr. Blackbourne reports meeting with Dr. James Beyer, the 75-year-old Northern Virginia medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Foster. He says, among other things, "I discussed the autopsy X-rays with him."
That suggests that there were autopsy X-rays to discuss, but Dr. Beyer has testified under oath that he did not take any X-rays, even though he checked the "X-rays taken" box on the autopsy report. When asked about that discussion of the X-rays, Dr. Blackbourne admitted that it was actually about the absence of X-rays. He told me Dr. Beyer had explained their absence, saying that his X-ray machine was not working on the day he performed the autopsy. That was what he had told the FBI and the Senate Whitewater committee.
When Dr. Blackbourne was told that the first call to service this brand new machine was made over three months after Foster's death, he was shocked. He asked, "Do you mean that they couldn't take any X-rays for three months?" No, it meant that Dr. Beyer was lying about the machine not working. What is worse, Starr's investigators, and presumably Starr himself, knew that the claim that the machine was not working was false. We know that because the record of that first service call on Oct. 29 was included among the documents AIM obtained from the OIC. They had investigated Dr. Beyer's excuse and had found the proof that it was false, but they did nothing about it.
Dr. Beyer had checked off "X-rays taken" and had told a Park Police officer attending the autopsy that they showed no bullet fragments in the skull. The X-rays were undoubtedly taken. Crucial evidence had vanished, but Ken Starr and his investigators did not disclose that fact, and there is no indication that they tried to find what had become of them. They didn't even tell Dr. Blackbourne that they had evidence that exposed Dr. Beyer's lie.
It turns out that Dr. Beyer is an old friend of Dr. Blackbourne, whose faith in his honesty appears unshakeable. He didn't know that his old friend had used "Clintonspeak" to cover up his lie about the X-rays when he testified under oath before a Senate committee. When asked when the machine was repaired, he responded that he had no X-rays in his files between two dates that spanned the day of Foster's autopsy. He was allowed to get away with that evasion.
Dr. Beyer claimed to have found an exit wound about the size of a half-dollar in the back of Foster's head that no one else saw. If that were true and the shot had been fired where the body was found, there would have been a bloody mess, but the police and rescue workers and Dr. Donald Haut, the county medical examiner who examined the body at the scene, all said there was very little blood visible on the body and none on the surrounding vegetation. Park Police Sgt. John Rolla had tried to find an exit wound by feeling the back of Foster's head. All he could find was a soft spot, and he reported that the bullet did not exit.
Dr. Haut told the FBI investigators that there was very little blood and that he had seen more damage done by a .25 caliber bullet. The gun found in Foster's hand was a .38 revolver and the casing of the expended round was HV, high velocity. If that had been fired into Foster's skull through his mouth, there would have been a large exit wound and torrents of blood.
Starr stacked the deck in hiring Dr. Beyer's friend to evaluate his work. Dr. Blackbourne won't admit that the evidence indicates that his old friend has lied about the X-rays, but he should have been informed before he wrote his report. Those who concealed that evidence should be called to account no matter what positions they now hold or hope to get.
[ NewsMax ]
In a little-noticed report last month on the 11th-hour pardons Roger Clinton sought from his brother, the Washington Post revealed what may turn out to be the most explosive aspect of the clemency-for-cash scandal now swirling around the former first family.
Buried on page 7 of the Post's little-read Saturday edition, the headline seemed rather mundane: "Clinton's Brother Promised Pardons." But scattered throughout the story was a name that should have set off smoke alarms in newsrooms all across America.
"Dan R. Lasater, a Little Rock bond broker convicted in 1986 of cocaine distribution, said Roger Clinton told him late last year he would put in a good word on his behalf with the president," the Post reported.
"A millionaire entrepeneur who backed several Arkansas Democrats, including Bill Clinton's campaigns, Lasater got a conditional state pardon from then-Governor Clinton in 1990. Lasater said he lent Roger Clinton $8,000 in 1984 to pay off cocaine debts."
But there's more - much, much more to the Lasater story, information so radioactive that there's little doubt Bill and Hillary Clinton are more worried over the Bush Justice Department's decision to make Roger a target of its Pardongate probe than about any other aspect of the investigation.
The best account of Dan Lasater's world comes from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the former Washignton bureau chief of the London Sunday Telegraph whose 1997 biography, "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," was largely overlooked by the press.
"Dan Lasater's Drug Trafficking Organization" reads the key chapter heading. On the pages inside, the author quotes excerpts from law enforcement documents covering the accounts of several Lasater party girls who inhabited a world not exactly unknown to both Bill and Roger Clinton.
Here's the opening paragraph from the police statement of Patti-Anne Smith, who was only 16 years old when she met Little Rock's most notorious "bond daddy":
"I was a virgin until two months after I met Dan Lasater. He plied me with cocaine and gifts for sexual favors and I finally gave in and slept with him. ... I could get an eight ball [from Lasater] whenever I wanted it. I carried a vial of it around at school."
After a visit to a Lasater-supplied gynecologist, who put Patti-Anne on birth control pills, Lasater was making her available for the sexual entertainment of his business colleagues.
When investigators tracked her down to gain testimony against Lasater two years later, the terms they used to describe Patti-Anne were "drugged-out party girl" and "basket case."
And she was not alone. Here's the police statement of Michele Cochran - 19 years old when she met Lasater.
"He used drugs and money eventually to seduce me. As a result of the relationship I became addicted to cocaine."
Another teen-age Lasater alum told police that after a few months in his orbit, she "would sometimes get up and snort cocaine in order to start my day."
Author Evans-Pritchard managed to track Patti-Anne Smith down some 13 years later. Her account is fascinating for two reasons. First, for the pure shock value of what she endured during her days as an inhabitant of Lasater's world.
And second, because the fact that an American president pardoned a thug like Lasater once on state charges - only to have the president's brother seek a second, federal pardon - is absolutely beyond belief.
"I was the youngest of all the girls," Patti-Anne told Evans-Pritchard. "We were like hens in a roost, with the rooster. We got along in a bitchy kind of way because we didn't want to be expelled from the roost."
"I knew a lot more than I should have known. ... Chuck Berry [Lasater's enforcer/driver who was later killed himself] told me that I was one of Dan Lasater's most trusted people and knew a lot about cocaine and his personal life. If I ever betrayed his personal trust and hurt Lasater in any way I would not 'see daylight' to tell about it anymore."
Patti-Anne told Evans-Pritchard that Bill as well as Roger Clinton was a part of the Little Rock drug scene.
"I met Bill Clinton several times, he'd know my name and I thought he was a wonderful person. But I can tell you that he was never acting like a governor when I saw him."
The former Lasater good-time girl says she was present for one late-night meeting between her boss and then-Governor Clinton.
"He was doing a line," Patti-Anne said of the future president. "It was just there on the table."
Whether the current Pardongate investigation will probe deep enough to warrant revisiting any of this is anybody's guess.
But if the feds are looking for clues as to why Dan Lasater's name turned up on Roger Clinton's pardon list, they might start by asking Patti-Anne Smith.
[ NewsMax ]
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