I Cogitate
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"The Hunting of the President"
Somehow I missed seeing this documentary when it initially came out. I'm still in the camp that Bill Clinton possesses more political acumen than any politician in recent history but I also remain solidly in the collective that Clinton also possesses a personal demon or two, is incredibly self-centered (but name the last president who wasn't?) and believes in his political invincibility.
Having written the above, there is no doubt that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been unwarranted pincushions, pricked by a number of individuals in the media but even more so by those to the far right of the fringe right, aka the deep-enders, those indifferent to concerns of right or wrong. This absolutely comes through while viewing "The Hunting of the President."
Like the so-called 'sins' of Al Gore during his presidential run, too many in the media pre-determined that the Clintons were not worthy of being the king and queen of D.C. The judgment on Gore was based on that ever-elusively defined term 'likeability.' The basis for the trashing of the Clintons appears to have been possessing Arkansas residential status--you know, 'they aren't like us.' In the documentary, the term 'white trash' is mentioned.
But there were also plenty of Razorbacks willing to feed this hate. The depiction of the Arkansas anti-Clinton cabal is particularly self-damning in the documentary. Out-and-out weirdos and parasites like private investigator Larry Case (who appears to always carry around a 'wish-list' like some do with a cell phone, referring to it whenever someone wants 'information' or rather 'dirt' from Case's extensive files on the Clintons), Cliff Jackson (a former pal who turned on Clinton), Larry Nichols (he and case seem unadulterated nuts), a couple of Arkansas state troopers (who were upset when not taken to D.C. when Clinton won the presidency), pathological liar David Hale...
The Arkansas Project, set up and financed by the right wing's rightest winger Richard Mellon Scaife and designed to display the litany of Clinton wrong-doing, is well-covered in the documentary. Used-to-be righty David Brock appears quite extensively confessing his journalistic wrongdoing and the conspiracy against the Clintons, regardless of the facts.
One particularly compelling segment is when independent prosecutor Robert Fiske, just prior to the imminent release of his report on the Clintons finances, one that would have cleared Bill and Hillary and ended the intrusion, is hastily replaced by Star Chamber devotee Kenneth Starr.
Starr ended up relying primarily on mentally ill Jim McDougal and also applied extreme pressure against Susan McDougal in an attempt to flip her. What Susan McDougal has to say throughout the film is particularly damning--to Starr. She says that she was told a story damaging the Clintons would be provided to her and that she just had to vouch for it. Then, believing that she was in love with Bill Clinton, Starr's underlings offered to forget about Bill and ask for something incriminating Hillary.
She refuses to budge--she says lie--and eventually heads to prison in 1996 for Whitewater fraud and conspiracy. She also served 18 months for civil comtempt after refusing to answer questions from Starr's prosecutors before a grand jury. Jim McDougal dies in prison while serving a Kenneth Starr-offered reduced sentence, based on McDougal's cooperation.
Starr was stymied in his attempt to prove any Clinton financial misconduct so he then branched out and turned his inquiry towards sexual misconduct--not a subject in alignment with the original basis for the appointment of an independent prosecutor.
To provide a vivid example of Starr's demonstrable depravity, he also re-investigated the Vincent Foster suicide. It doesn't take much to pair Kenneth Starr up with Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. Starr's leaks to the media are described in the documentary by reporter Vince Moldea as "the worst kept secret in town." Clinton's attorney David Kendall says that the media lapping up Starr's leaking was a "corrupt act of journalism"
CNN reporter John Camp, accused of being a Clinton apologist, simply says that 'we were not truth tellers, we were scandalmongers.' Another Camp quote is quite succinct: "coming up with a story was more important than coming up with the truth."
Yes, the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal did eventually blow up but Starr's five-year investigation elicited no financial improprieties. Paul Begala, obviously very partisan, equates the campaign against the Clintons as "a right wing coup d'tat."
Bill Clinton eventually was found not guilty on two articles of impeachment but it was still a right-wing victory--yet another example of the so-called party of patriotism putting politics above the country
Here's an interesting item about John Camp:
Scaife investigatorGo here to read the rest.
targeted CNN reporter
April 17, 1998
PRIVATE DETAILS ABOUT TV CORRESPONDENT JOHN CAMP'S LIFE ENDED UP IN HOUSE COMMITTEE FILES
BY MURRAY WAAS | Associates of conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife hired a private investigator to probe the personal life of a Cable News Network correspondent, after he reported on CNN that drug allegations against President Clinton were groundless.
The charges against Clinton were disseminated by the Arkansas Project, a four-year, $2.4 million campaign to investigate and discredit the president that was funded by Scaife...
And here's a little background on Vince Moldea:
Why Vincent Foster can't rest in peaceGo here for the rest.
HOW THE FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL'S SUICIDE BECAME THE ROSETTA STONE OF THE SCAIFE-FUNDED RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY INDUSTRY.
May 28, 1998
BY LORI LEIBOVICH | On July 20, 1993, Vincent Foster was found dead at Ft. Marcy Park in Northern Virginia with a .38-caliber revolver in his hand. An autopsy revealed that it was a straight-ahead suicide -- Foster had placed the gun in his mouth and fired one shot that blasted through his head. End of story? Not by a long shot. Nearly five years later, the Foster suicide lives on in the hearts and minds of right-wing Clintonphobes and conspiracy theorists who believe that Foster, a close friend and advisor of the president, was murdered because he knew too much.
A year ago, veteran crime reporter Dan Moldea was surprised by an offer from Al Regnery, the head of the conservative Regnery Publishing house, to write a book about the Foster case. Moldea, an unabashed liberal who had twice voted for Clinton, had also been scathingly critical of one of Regnery's authors, LAPD detective Mark Furhman. Regnery was so impressed with Moldea's exhaustive reporting in books such as "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means, and Opportunity" and "Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson," he wanted Moldea to write the definitive work on the Foster case. Regnery gave Moldea a $100,000 advance and seven months to complete his work.
In the resulting book, "A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm," Moldea confirms -- again -- that Foster's death was indeed a suicide and that a cabal of right-wing groups -- financed by banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife -- is responsible for keeping the case alive for years in an effort to tarnish the Clinton White House. Moldea also blasts the media -- particularly the Wall Street Journal op-ed page and reporter Christopher Ruddy -- for stoking the conspiracy fires with specious facts and inflammatory rhetoric.
In an interview with Salon, Moldea also accused Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's office of leaking confidential information to the press, a charge he made during a speech at a Washington, D.C., public library last Tuesday. Moldea says that while writing his book he spoke with Starr's chief deputy, Hickman Ewing, who said he routinely gave information to journalists sympathetic to the independent counsel's point of view...
For some background on the disgusting Arkansas Project, go here.
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