PIML 96062608 / Forwarded to Patriot Information Mailing List: [More Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Clinton's troubles - the view from England.] PIML =================================================================== Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 09:08:20 GMT To: uwsa@shell.portal.com From: reply@remail.ecafe.org (ECafe Anonymous Remailer) Subject: Ambrose: Whitewater's Rising Tide Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater Subject: Whitewater rising tide may drown worried Democrats Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 22:07:33 International News Electronic Telegraph Monday June 24 1996 Whitewater rising tide may drown worried Democrats By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Washington THE Democrats are running out of time. Unless they take steps to install a new presidential candidate over the next few weeks they risk being chained to a ticking time-bomb - scheduled to detonate during the autumn campaign, if not before. That, at least, is how many Clinton supporters view the events of last week which saw the First Lady denounced as a liar and one of Clinton's closest aides accused of criminal conspiracy. The party will not find it easy to force Bill Clinton off the ticket once he has been nominated at the Democratic Convention in August. By then there will be no turning back. Those who know the President well predict that he will not step down even if Hillary Clinton is indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, opting instead for a counter-attack against 'Republican' prosecutors. Such an occurrence would cause a civil war in the party. Earlier this month Ted Van Dyk, a veteran Democrat consultant, warned his party in a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Whitewater May Drown Democrats" that the party could be "destroyed by a Clinton implosion". Unless action was taken soon, he foresaw a Republican tidal wave in November. Until recently he was a voice in the wilderness. But there are growing signs of dissent in the Democratic Party. "We have an abuse of power," said Democratic Senator Paul Simon on Thursday during hearings into the misuse of 408 FBI files on political opponents. "I am not suggesting it is by the president, but it is in the White House, and we should treat it very, very seriously." It has become impossible to believe the White House story that FBI file requests were the result of a "bureaucratic snafu". Craig Livingstone, the White House security chief responsible for the scandal, has worked as a nightclub bouncer and for a casino in Atlantic City between campaign stints for the Democrats. Democrats on the Senate Committee investigating Whitewater are already worried that they may have gone too far in trying to defend the Clintons He was fired from the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart for going beyond the bounds of decency in digging up dirt - and attempting to use it - on rival campaigns. A former FBI agent who spent five years in the White House has come forward to say that Livingstone knew exactly what he was doing, and that he was apparently taking instructions from Hillary Clinton. It is now up to the special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, to determine whether the First Lady was operating a dirty tricks unit at the White House. The special prosecutor knows as well as everybody else in Washington that misuse of the FBI was one of the articles of impeachment drawn up against President Nixon in 1974. Nixon's special counsel, Charles Colson, went to prison for feeding an FBI file to a reporter. The temperature is rising on Capitol Hill. Democrats on the Senate Committee investigating Whitewater are already worried that they may have gone too far in trying to defend the Clintons. Their Minority Report was a shallow, partisan brief that absolved the Clintons. In a preposterous conclusion it stated that: "the American people deserve to know, and can now take comfort in knowing, that this year-long investigation shows no misconduct or abuse of power by their President or First Lady." This could come back to haunt the Democratic Party. The Whitewater hearings of Senator Al D'Amato may have been a failure in some respects - the Senate, after all, is not an investigative body, and D'Amato is something of a clown - but it did establish beyond doubt that Hillary Clinton orchestrated a cover-up after the death of White House aide Vincent Foster, and that she has not told the truth about her activities as a lawyer in a land scam in the 1980s. Clearly the Democrats were lulled into a sense of false security by Bill Clinton's comfortable lead in the opinion polls. They gambled that the various Whitewater scandals were not gaining the sort of "traction" that could endanger the presidency. But this was a fatal mistake. In the end the fate of the Clintons is not going to be decided by opinion polls or image control; nor by Senator D'Amato and his hapless committee; nor even by the Washington press corps, that bastion of yuppie liberalism. It will be decided by the criminal justice system. Mr Starr is just a notch away from the pinnacle, with a smorgasbord of scandals to choose from Last week a White House aide, Bruce Lindsey, was named as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the latest Whitewater trial in Little Rock. Lindsey is President Clinton's closest male friend on earth. He is the guardian of the temple, keeper of the secrets. Next week he may be indicted by the special prosecutor, who appears determined to pile on the pressure until he cracks. For two years Mr Starr has been pursuing a "pyramid strategy" against the Clintons, working from the bottom up. He has been picking off the Friends of Bill one by one: the former Associate Attorney-General of the United States, Webb Hubbell; the Governor of Arkansas, Jim Guy Tucker; the Clintons' Whitewater partners, Jim and Susan McDougal; and now he has Bruce Lindsey in his sights. The process is moving inexorably upwards. Mr Starr is just a notch away from the pinnacle, with a smorgasbord of scandals to choose from: Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, the Foster death, perjury referrals, Flowerwood Farms - all now within his jurisdiction. It may be a few months before he is ready for the final act. Or he may strike suddenly, one hot afternoon on the steps of the DC federal courthouse, before the summer is out. But strike he will. 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