A somewhat
rambling account by Julie Hiatt Steele herself.
A carefully
developed account of how the scandal was manipulated by Kenneth Starr,
Lucianne Goldberg, and Linda Tripp.
Am I paranoid? Or not. If I am right about the Clinton
impeachment, I might be right to anticipate that some kind of similar effort
will be made against Obama at some point, especially if the Republicans gain
a majority in the House (allowing them to hold inquisitions). Suppose Richard Mellon Scaife or the Koch brothers are out there right now with millions of dollars
available to bring down the president, through whatever means possible, and
without the slightest constraint of ethics or morals? How could they
do it?
Well, the myth of the Tea Party is a start. The Tea Party does not
exist, as the media would have you believe, in the sense of a powerful,
influential, successful political force. Check the real poll numbers:
the Tea Party is utterly impotent, in terms of real influence. There
is not a single Republican candidate in any district who is winning because
he or she is a "Tea Party" candidate, but there are least 16 who are losing,
for that reason.
And it is beyond nauseating when establishment Republicans like John Boehmer
now strut around claiming that they have always represented the unsullied
puritan ethos of those saintly tea party activists with their lovely racists
signs and posters.
Most Americans-- and I mean MOST, as in about 70%-- shrug them off as
inconsequential and embarrassing. Have you checked Sarah Palin's
numbers lately? The Democrats can only dream that she will be the
Republican nominee for president in 2012. John McCain must weep at
night knowing what he will now be remembered for.
In terms of fake influence, however, the Tea Party soars. In
terms of "perception", the news media, including the alleged liberal media,
give it far more prominence than it deserves. Why? Because
the Wall Street Journal and Fox News have ordained that the Tea Party is BIG
NEWS. Because they believe that if they shout it out loud and often
enough, people will actually begin to believe that America is embracing the
political ideology of these idiots. Because they are funny and scary and outrageous. I believe
their own insignificance will become apparent to them by January when Trent
Lott's dictum becomes true: "we need to co-opt them". They will not
resist, though, in some ways, I wish they would.
Anyway, Scaife and others would never do anything that would conspicuously
link them directly to any of the more insalubrious efforts against Obama,
including the pseudo-racist rumours about Islamic beliefs or Kenyan culture.
They would merely fund groups who do, researchers, investigators, people
like Linda Tripp who are willing to do the dirty work on behalf Mitch
McConnell and the like.
You can't not be wary of being accused of paranoia, of being one of "them"--
the conspiracy theorists. But you can't not be aware,
as well, of the fact that the people responsible or not for the conspiracy would be fully cognizant of the fact that people can be
persuaded to label people who understand what is going on as "paranoid".
As I have noted before, the best friend any Kennedy assassination conspirator
might have had would have been Kennedy assassination conspiracy buffs, like
David Lifton, who posited that Kennedy's body had been surreptitiously stolen
from Air Force One and surgically altered to cover up the fact that shots came
from the front (wouldn't it have been easier to just shoot him in the back?).
If I had been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, I would
not have had some stooge write a book asserting that there was no conspiracy-- I
would have a stooge write a book asserting a conspiracy, and let slip that
aliens might have abducted the brain. Far more effective at manipulating
public perception: it's not cool to believe in conspiracy. Coolness is
always more important than veracity.
And so to Clinton. Looking back, fifteen years later. To the impeachment scandal. You have to think about what happened to Julie Hiatt Steele.
Follow me:
Suppose it was a conspiracy of sorts-- and I don't mean a deep, dark,
coordinated effort master-minded by some evil genius from within his
impervious bunker. Keep the straw men out of it. I mean a
group of powerful financiers including Richard Mellon Scaife, and group of
complicit Republican politicians who probably were not fully aware of how
things were being managed for them. Why would they be? What
advantage would it be for Scaife if Asa Hutchinson or Henry Hyde knew that
this was all a plan? They didn't need know. They just needed to
know that Clinton could be harmed and they just needed to tools provided by
one means or another. Scaife probably started the process, but Kenneth
Starr his his cronies managed it quite well within their own fraudulent
agenda.
Anyway, we have Starr struggling-- unsuccessfully-- to convince America
that Clinton, like Nixon, had to go. The Republicans were not averse
to voting for impeachment without public support, but the decisive votes
would have to come from across the aisle, and the only way to get them was
to persuade the Democrats to cut Clinton loose and vote for impeachment.
It was a strange situation. Several Republicans on the impeachment
parade had themselves cheated on their wives.
Newt Gingrich carried on
an affair with a staff member while his wife was in the hospital being
treated for cancer. The public didn't think the issue was big enough
to impeach a popular president. So Kenneth Starr was struggling.
Kenneth Starr looked like a less sophisticated version of John Roberts,
current chief justice of the Supreme Court. Like Roberts, Starr was
good at pretending to examine all the facts carefully as if he actually had
an objective opinion on anything, and then, shockingly, arrive at the
conclusion he always wanted: impeachment.
So Starr is struggling. The evidence was not as strong as he had
liked. He tried to nail the Clintons for Whitewater by bullying Susan
MacDougal into corroborating the allegations but she wouldn't do it.
So here's what he did: he charged her with obstruction of justice.
The "obstruction" was her failure to bend to his will and lie about the
Clintons' involvement with a illegal or inappropriate $300,000 loan.
The other witness had really done something illegal and had agreed to
testify against Clinton in exchange for a plea bargain. That's how
American criminal justice works. Only in the movies and TV are actual
evidence and guilt involved in the equation.
So along comes Kathleen Wiley. Wiley had a history of prevarication
and wasn't a very good, credible witness, and she had openly flirted with
Clinton and tried to arrange a tryst, to no avail. Then she went to Kenneth Starr and accused Clinton of groping her. On the day her
husband, who was himself charged with misappropriating client's funds from
an investment scheme, shot himself to death in his car on a side-road
somewhere.
Wiley claimed that a woman named Julie Hiatt Steele, who does appear to
have been a sensible, rational person, also admitted to her that Clinton had
groped her, and could testify that Wiley had told her about the groping long
before the scandal broke (implying, of course, that she was jumping on a
bandwagon). Wiley also had Michael Isikoff from Newsweek in her bag,
and a book deal. The only thing she lacked, in fact, was credibility.
Yes, complicated. Let's say for a moment that Kathleen Wiley's
story was completely untrue. Does it take a genius to conceive of the
idea of her making it up? Maybe not out of whole cloth... maybe yes,
out of thin air. Julie Hiatt Steele naturally denies the story.
Kenneth Starr subpoenas her to testify. When she denies the story, as
any perfectly truthful person would do, she is charged with Obstruction of
Justice, which carries a potential sentence of 40 years.
Kenneth Starr, obviously out to prove that some tiny portion of the $50
million his investigation cost actually produced something, simply chose to
punish the witnesses who refused to bend their testimony to his will by
using his extraordinary powers to indict them for "obstruction of justice",
a term that meant whatever he wanted it to mean, Alice.
Then he leaked portions of their grand jury testimonies-- a serious
criminal offense, by the way-- to the media, knowing full well that most
news organizations wouldn't bother to either fact check, or hold the leakers
accountable for suggestive and inaccurate details.
Kind of whacky, isn't it? But if this was the actual result, it is
easily possible to imagine that someone planned this outcome, very
carefully. Steele must have been enormously tempted to give in and
corroborate Wiley-- she was threatened with all kinds of dire consequences,
her apartment searched, friends and relatives intimidated-- if she did not
cooperate, and all kinds of sweetness and light if she did.
It will be more difficult for them to employ this strategy against Obama,
but I don't doubt for a second that they will try. Wait for it.
It's coming. Remember, it will structured in such a way to permit
Republican leaders to seem uninvolved in revelations, the leaks, the rumours,
and then weep crocodile tears about doing their "duty" to investigate.
All Contents Copyright
© Bill Van Dyk
2010 All Rights Reserved
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