PIML 96050406 / Forwarded to Patriot Information Mailing List: [I have spoken with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard; he is a U.S. based English investigative reporter of the old school.] PIML ================================================================== Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 21:57:35 -0700 (MST) To: fsnw-l@freespeechnews.com From: Free Speech Subject: [FreeSpeech-NewsWire] Bad ol' good ol' boys Bad ol' good ol' boys America's moral minority prepares to judge Clinton Clinton's lead in opinion poll cut CORRUPTION in high places quietly oiled the wheels of Arkansas until Governor Clinton made it to the White House. Now the darkest secrets of Little Rock have been exposed to the glare of world attention and members of the ruling elite are paying the price. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports IT HAD seemed such a glamorous adventure four years ago, when Bill Clinton stood in front of the Old State House and declared his candidacy for President. Who could be blamed for thinking that an Arkansas presidency would elevate a state that had always been cast in American folklore as a backwater of cross-eyed hillbillies? Instead, the Clinton triumph has brought nothing but humiliation, grief and a plague of criminal indictments. Last week Governor Jim Guy Tucker became the latest casualty of the spreading Whitewater scandal, along with Jim and Susan McDougal, the partners of the Clintons in the Whitewater Development Corp. Tucker, 52, was convicted by a federal jury on charges of conspiracy and fraud after being caught in the dragnet of a special prosecutor from Washington with unlimited funds and an army of FBI agents at his disposal. The bitterness was written all over his face when he stepped out of the courthouse into the baking heat and the glare of TV cameras from all over the world. It would not have happened if Bill Clinton had only stayed at home. It is hard to keep count of the lives that have been destroyed. Webster Hubbell, the man appointed by Clinton to help run the US Justice Department, is now serving time in a federal penitentiary for fraud. He had once been Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court and a stalwart of the Little Rock Country Club - one of the chosen few. Hubbell's old partner at the Rose Law firm, Vincent Foster, is dead, supposedly having shot himself because he could not take the strain of being Deputy Counsel in the Clinton White House. Others in the inner circle have been notified that they are "targets" of the Whitewater prosecutor. Even if they succeed in clearing their names, they will be ruined by legal fees. What a disaster it has been for every Friend of Bill. But it does not end there. A special prosecutor - yet another one - is combing through the books of Arkansas poultry king Don Tyson, who now laments that the election of Bill Clinton as President was the worst thing that ever happened to his business empire. Separately, the House Banking Committee of the US Congress has a team of investigators looking into allegations that large amounts of drug money were laundered through the state's financial system in the 1980s when Bill Clinton was governor. Sometimes it seems as if the whole state of Arkansas is on trial. And about time too, says Gene Wirgess, a small town newspaper editor who has spent the past 40 years battling the corrupt political machine of the Arkansas elite. Wirgess describes the state government as the tool of a small oligarchy of ... powerful families - much like Mexico - who rely on a supporting cast of political apparatchiks, and a docile newspaper appropriately called the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. For decades the "good ol' boys" have been left to their own devices, but all of a sudden they have been exposed to scrutiny by the spotlight of national attention; or as their enemies put it, caught scurrying like cockroaches in the kitchen. 'This group has been in power so long, and their abuses have been so callous, that finally the people have risen up' Wirgess is testament that the Democratic machine does not shrink from using raw police power and compromised judges to suppress dissent. He has several missing teeth to prove it. In the 1960s he was indicted seven times on trumped up charges, and was once sentenced to hard labour. On the surface the system works just the way it does in Iowa or Vermont. But in reality Arkansas is special. The Sunday Telegraph has been shown pictures of several judges and prosecutors photographed with naked girls - one of them pre-pubescent - that were taken by blackmailers in a surveillance sting operation at a hotel in North Little Rock. Equally telling is the story of the seventh judicial district task force appointed to investigate corruption among public officials in 1990. It was closed down when an informant, Sharlene Wilson, testified before a federal grand jury that she had witnessed Governor Bill Clinton and other key figures taking cocaine. Soon afterwards Wilson was charged with minor drug dealing and sent to prison, although the US Supreme Court has now ruled that her conviction was a clear case of entrapment. The prosecutor in charge of the task force, Jeanne Duffey, was forced into hiding, and eventually moved to Texas. "This group has been in power so long, and their abuses have been so callous, that finally the people have risen up," said Wirgess, describing the guilty verdict against Governor Tucker - by a jury of Arkansas common folk, most of them registered Democrats - as a turning point in the history of the state. "They've woken up and realised that they don't have to let the machine run roughshod over them." It was a methodical jury that worked its way through hundreds of pages of complex financial documents. "We fought for each defendant's liberty," said Tracy Pleasants, 30, a hospital employee. "But we were defeated by the evidence." The Whitewater prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, has now shown that he can win convictions from an Arkansas home team' The jury foreman was a nurse, Sandra Lynn Wood, as pure as the driven snow and dedicated to her civic duty. Despite most predictions, the verdict has proved to be a triumph of the US judicial system. It has left the "good ol' boys" in catatonic shock. Nothing will ever be the same. Lieutenant-Governor Mike Huckabee, a Republican and a Baptist Minister, is already starting to take over the executive machinery of the state. He is working quietly on a plan to cleanse the Arkansas State Police, with its rogue elements in the criminal intelligence division. As soon as he takes full power in July the axe will fall, and fall hard. Businessmen who have never given a cent to the Republican Party are now scrambling to adjust to the new political landscape, aware that the Republicans are likely to sweep the 1996 Congressional elections in Arkansas and perhaps win a Senate seat for the first time in modern history. For the Clintons it is nothing less than calamitous. The Whitewater prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, has now shown that he can win convictions from an Arkansas "home team". Those who have been refusing to co-operate with the investigation - fearing reprisals from the political machine more than they fear the indictments of Mr Starr - have a new calculus before them. The juries will not be rigged, they know that now. Glib appeals to Arkansas pride will not succeed. Convictions, followed by long prison sentences, are becoming almost certain. Their only choice is to go over to the Office of the Independent Counsel on Financial Centre Parkway, abandon loyalty to the Clintons, and try to save their own skins. The rush has already begun. ================================================================== * Patriot Information Mailing List * http://constitution.org/piml/piml.htm * A service to help inform those who have an active interest in * returning our federal and state governments to limited, * constitutional government * Send messages for consideration and possible posting to * butterb@sagenet.net (Bill Utterback). * To subscribe or unsubscribe, send message with subject line * "subscribe patriot" or "unsubscribe patriot" * Forwarded messages sent on this mailing list are NOT verified. * See World's Smallest Political Quiz: www.self-gov.org/quiz.html * Libertarian is to LIBERTY as librarian is to library (DePena) * PIML grants permission to copy and repost this message * in its entirety with headers and trailers left intact.