THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1994
April
- April:
Middle East unrest
In retaliation for Shi'ite opposition to Saddam Hussein, Hussein drains water from Iraq's southern marshlands inhabited by Shi'ite Muslims, causing tremendous ecological devastation. (FactMonster) - April: Linda Tripp, a low-level White House employee and a holdover from the Bush administration, is transferred to the Pentagon,
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
after Clinton officials develop suspicions that she is a "mole" for right-wing elements looking for dirt on the Clintons. Tripp lies to her colleagues at the Pentagon, saying she was transferred because she "knew too much about Whitewater." In reality, Tripp is suspected -- rightly -- of providing sensitive and perhaps classified administration information, on domestic and foreign affairs, to reporters and the various ad hoc conservatives digging up dirt on the Clintons. (Executive Intelligence Review) - April:
Middle East unrest
A Justice Dept. team still investigating the BNL scandal releases information that shows the Bush administration sent equipment necessary for the construction of nuclear plants to Iraq -- equipment useful in building nuclear bombs. (US/Iraq Relations Timeline) - April 4: The New Republic magazine prints a long article by journalist L.J. Davis which introduces that readership to the same wild, baseless allegations that are touted in the newly released Clinton Chronicles video (see below).
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
Unsurprisingly, the article's primary sources are Larry Nichols and Republican consultant Darrell Glascock (who will soon plead guilty to fraud and turn state's evidence that sends his co-conspirator to jail for 17 years). Davis's article paints Arkansas as a "Third World" criminal conspiracy run by Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and her former employer, the Rose Law Firm, and venerable whipping boy Stephens Inc. Davis asserts that "sinister Pakistanis" and "shadowy Indonesians" helped Clinton loot the state to the bare walls, and are now helping him do the same to the entire country. Like The Clinton Chronicles, every charge made by Davis which can be fact-checked is quickly and thoroughly debunked. Probably the most memorable charge is Davis's proclamation that he was beaten unconscious outside his Little Rock motel room, most likely by shadowy and sinister Clinton operatives, and that key documents from his notebook were stolen. Davis writes that his doctor found his head injury consistent with "a massive blow above the left ear with a blunt object." Right-wing media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh react with voluble horror about the "violence" endemic to Arkansas political life, sharing with their audiences rumors of widespread phone taps and gangs of thugs in Clinton's employ shadowing and menacing reporters. The reality of Davis's injury is less dramatic, though possibly as lurid. Instead of being unconscious in front of his hotel room for four hours, Davis was at the hotel bar soaking up at least six martinis, according to the bartender and his own bar tab. As for the missing documents, they were there the whole time, wrinkled but intact. - The executives of Stephens Inc. have had enough of being vilified as co-conspirators in Clinton's alleged criminal enterprises. The Stephens family is as staunchly Republican as anyone; they know they are being linked to Clinton because of the enmity of fellow Republican Sheffield Nelson, whose personal grudge against the Stephens family has nothing to do with Clinton and everything to do with Nelson's own stillborn political ambitions. They are particulary horrified when the Wall Street Journal echoes the charges. A personal meeting between Jack Stephens and Journal editorial page editor Robert Bartley, and a series of increasingly impatient letters from Warren Stephens to Bartley, results, not in a retraction, but in a vicious and baseless claim by Bartley that Stephens Inc. is criminally complicit in the enterprises of the internationally corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- April 22: Former president Richard Nixon dies of complications from a severe stroke.
Richard Nixon
In accordance with his wishes, he does not receive a state funeral, but his funeral is attended by President Clinton, former presidents Ford, Reagan, Carter, and Bush, Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Nixon's spiritual advisor Billy Graham, and GOP presidential hopefuls Bob Dole and Pete Wilson. Dole and Wilson almost turn the funeral into a campaign rally, with Dole's overtly tearful speech trumping the stiff remarks from Wilson; many believe that Dole nails down the GOP nomination with his emotional eulogy. (In fairness, Dole was close to Nixon for a long time, and was one of Nixon's staunchest defenders during the Watergate investigations.) "Gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who has maintained a long and unrepentant hatred of Nixon, savages Nixon in a eulogy of his own, in which he says that Nixon's body should have been launched into an open sewage canal or worse: "He was a political monster...a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. ...Even his funeral was illegal. ...His body should have been burned in a trash bin." (Wikipedia, The Liberal Avenger)
