More than just sex

Rendezvous With Destiny
By Daniel Waldman

"I said, `Hillary, he had insomnia. He couldn't sleep so he went for a drive.' She started screaming and cussing and slammed down the phone. I got on the phone and called him, and I said, `Governor, Hillary's up.' And he said, `Oh, my God. Oh, God. Oh, God.'And he came back in the back gate probably five to 10 minutes later," former Arkansas state trooper Roger Perry said, recalling under oath a late-night call from Hillary
Clinton, LAW '73.

Pretty juicy quote. But although quotes like this demonstrate the vulgarity of President Bill Clinton, LAW '73, they prevent us from getting to the heart of the matter. Kathleen Willey's moving appearance on 60 Minutes and the nearly 700 pages of depositions released by Paula Jones's attorneys have made the mental gymnastics necessary to presume the president innocent--or to suspend judgment--nearly impossible for all but the most intellectually dishonest on the White House smear team.

At this point, if one wants to presume the president innocent, one must presume that scores of others whose testimony directly contradicts his are guilty of perjury. One would have to wonder why an amazingly disparate and growing number of people would risk up to five years in jail by lying under oath.

The emphasis on sex, however, has taken the focus away from the most serious offenses of this administration. Clinton's sexual history is relevant in certain instances of perjury, but for the most part, his actions are either not illegal, or difficult to prove as such. Rather, they serve to paint a picture of a dishonest man whose emotional development was halted at a young age. We need to return our attention to the more serious potential criminal violations of Clinton's administration, and the string of unanswered questions:

Did Clinton lie under oath? Did he encourage Monica Lewinksy to do the same?

Who wrote the "talking points" memo encouraging Linda Tripp to change her sworn testimony? Monica Lewinsky, who gave it to her, certainly didn't write it. Unless, of course, you believe that White House interns are fully versed in legal writing, as the author of the talking points clearly was. So who in the White House wrote it? Whoever it was appears to have been suborning perjury, tampering with a witness, and obstructing justice.

Why did Nathan Landow, a large contributor to the Democratic Party, send a private plane to fly Kathleen Willey to his Maryland estate?

When Webster Hubbell faced a jail term for fraud and showed signs that he was ready to talk about the president's role in the Whitewater scandal, he suddenly received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the LIPPO group, and Vernon Jordan arranged a $60,000 retainer for him from Revlon. He remained quiet. Likewise, after Monica Lewinsky received a subpoena, Vernon Jordan embarked on a furious search for a job for her, once again winding up with an offer from Revlon. Were these both instances of hush money?

Most important, did the Clinton administration engage in the most corrupt campaign financing in the history of our nation, laundering millions of dollars in illegal contributions and subverting the campaign finance laws? Judging from the way he sold access to himself, the vice president, and the White House, it certainly appears so.

Recently, the Justice Department campaign finance probe has indicted Charlie Trie (a longtime Clinton friend and one of his biggest fundraisers) and Maria Hsia (the organizer of the illegal Buddhist temple fundraiser which Vice President Al Gore attended), for their roles in fundraising and money laundering to help the 1996 Clinton-Gore ticket, and won a plea-bargain cooperation agreement from Johnny Chung for his role in fundraising for the Democratic Party.

Ironically, it is Clinton who has successfully brought the issue back to where it should be. In becoming only the second president in the history of the United States to invoke executive privilege against a subpoena from a grand jury probing possible crimes in the White House, Bill Clinton has given us a sure sign that the worst is yet to come for him and his Administration.

The White House knows that the claim of executive privilege will never hold up in court. Former President Richard Nixon learned this very point during Watergate, when, in United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an executive privilege from court subpoenas "absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic or sensitive national security interests."

There is no compelling national security interest here. This latest claim is simply a time-buying tactic. The White House knows it will lose the claim in court, but has apparently calculated that it would be more dangerous for Clinton's advisors to testify now than to risk negative publicity from the executive privilege claim and a defeat in court next year.

The decision to seek executive privilege may be politically expedient, but is in stark contrast to the national interest, which is to resolve this matter quickly. Clinton should "tell more rather than less, sooner rather than later," as he initially said he would do when Lewinsky's accusations surfaced--not resort to his usual stonewalling.

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