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
March
- March 11:
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
CNBC's Roger Ailes declares that the Clinton administration of "a cover-up with regard to Whitewater that includes...possible land fraud, illegal contributions, abuse of power...suicide cover-up -- possible murder." Ailes is a well-established Republican campaign operative who began working with Richard Nixon, and created the infamous "Willie Horton" ad of the 1988 Presidential campaign. He will later go on to head Fox News. (WSWS/Rense, H.R. Clinton) - Mid-March: Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell resigns from the Justice Department.
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
Hubbell is charged by the Rose Law Firm of questionable billing practices. In December 1994, Hubbell will eventually plead guilty to charges of fraud and serve 18 months in prison. Even though Hubbell's connection with Whitewater is virtually nil, the forces behind the investigation treat Hubbell's conviction as a tremendous victory and vow to use it as a springboard for further prosecutions. (Washington Post, H.R. Clinton)
"What we don't want to see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." -- Rudolph Giuliani, March 16, 1994
- March 18: New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth, who wrote a factually inaccurate but influential "expose" of Whitewater in March 1992, writes an article based on a lead provided by Arkansas real estate entrepeneur Jim McDougal concerning profitable trading of futures commodities by Hillary Clinton.
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
Supposedly Clinton received insider information about her commodities, whose trading netted $100,000 on an initial $1000 investment, in 1978. The Times asserts, incorrectly, that Tyson received $9 million in state government loans, possibly in return for help provided to the Clintons in their investments. Like so much of Gerth's other writing about the Clintons, this assertion proves to be false. Tyson never received any loan from Arkansas. In a published correction, the Times corrects the initial falsehood about Tyson, but now asserts that Tyson improperly received $7 million in state income tax credits, another falsehood. Hillary Clinton, angered by the allegations, overreacts: she instructs her spokesperson to tell the press that while Tyson attorney James Blair did indeed give her tips, she did most of the trading herself, basing her decisions upon her perusal of the Wall Street Journal. Reporters quickly find out that Clinton is exaggerating. Blair had done most of the trading himself at Clinton's behest. For her part, she had briefly managed a second commodities trading account on her own, but never gleaned much profit from it. Caught in an exaggeration which is at least somewhat a lie, Clinton withdraws her claim weeks later, but the damage is done, permanently damaging her credibility and adding fuel to the fire that rages around the Clintons and their so-called criminal enterprises. - The New York Times Magazine prints a long article by Michael Kelly filled with baseless allegations about the Clintons' connection with Tyson Foods. The Clintons, writes Kelly, are owned and operated by a consortium of corrupt corporate entities, spearheaded by Tyson. In return, then-Governor Clinton did a number of favors for Tyson. Again, the assertions are easily disproven, but Kelly's story focuses on the melodrama and not the facts. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- March 19: Rachel Abrams, wife of Iran-Contra conspirator Elliot Abrams, says of the investigation into the Clintons:
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
"I know something about Bill and Hillary Clinton right now. I know how their stomachs churn, their anxiety mounts, how their worry over their defenseless child increases. I know their inability to sleep at night and their reluctance to rise in the morning. I know every new incursion of doubt, every heartbreak over bailing-out friends...every jaw-clenching look at front pages. I know all this, and the thought of it makes me happy." In January 1987, during the Iran-Contra investigation, she told a Washington Post reporter that she wanted to take a machine gun and "mow down [investigative reporter] Anthony Lewis." Her husband replied, grinning, that she should instead send the bullets to the Contras: "They would use them to more effect." (Washington Times/Washington Post/Mark Crispin Miller) - March 24: In Arkansas, former federal judge David Hale pleads guilty to two felony counts of defrauding the Small Business Association;
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
as part of a plea deal negotiated in part with Whitewater independent counsel Robert Fiske, admits to "deceit, craft, trickery and dishonest means to defraud the United States" by falsely inflating the assets of his Capital Management Services firm in order to secure federal matching funds, and lying to the government about a number of loans. Hale testifies that $900,000 in missing federal funds loaned to his firm were made to disappear by being "loaned" to a number of his own firms, in essence "laundered" out of sight and into his own pocket. Even now, Hale lies to the court, saying he doesn't know what happened to the money. Hale, who has made a proffer of information to Fiske concerning his knowledge of financial crimes committed by Bill Clinton, Jim Guy Tucker, and Jim McDougal, is allowed to get away with his calumny because Fiske and his assistants can't be sure if Hale is lying or not. Hale demands FBI protection, claiming that his life is in danger because of his knowledge. Fiske, in a decision that he will come to regret, offers Hale immunity from further charges of both financial impropriety and sexual misconduct if he will testify against the Clintons. As the Whitewater case winds on, Hale will become the star witness against the Clintons in the Whitewater investigation; all of Hale's allegations and charges are later proven to be false. - Because of Fiske's deal with Hale, Hale becomes a virtual ward of the federal government, receiving an annual tax-free stipend of $60,000 for his services as a federal witness. He claims to have lost or misspent all of the millions he had fraudulently gained in his criminal doings as an Arkansas businessman, and at one point claims that he and his wife were forced to sell their furniture to buy food. Asked how he is able to pay his high-powered legal counsel, Theodore Olson, however, he boasts that he pays cash.
- The federal support for Hale is diminished by new independent counsel Kenneth Starr, and after that, Hale spends most of his time living in a cottage near Parker Dozhier's Hot Springs bait shop. Although his deal with the Justice Department prohibits Hale from speaking to the press, he conducts numerous sessions with reporters from the American Spectator, many of them overseen by Arkansas Project manager Stephen Boynton, and other reporters, notably the London Sunday Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page's investigative columnist Micah Morrison. Until Hale enters a federal prison in 1996, Dozhier loans him and Mrs. Hale a car as well. In 1995, Hale will crash the car in Shreveport, Louisiana, near a safe house maintained by Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel; Hale will identify himself to the police as Dozhier. Dozhier also gives Hale frequent small cash gifts. The source of this money is either Dozhier's shoestring enterprises as a bait shop owner, or funds from the Arkansas Project. (In 1998, Dozhier, Henderson, and Hale will deny that Hale received any support from anyone.)
- One source of information about Hale and Dozhier is Caryn Mann. She is a divorcee who began dating Dozhier, and for a time lived in a trailer on Dozhier's land with her teenaged son. It doesn't take long for Mann's enamourment of Dozhier to begin wearing thin. She is disturbed by Dozhier's overt racism, his fascination with guns, and his connections to extremist right-wing political groups. She finds his obsession with Bill Clinton troubling, and though at first she believes Dozhier's diatribes against Clinton, as time goes on, she finds him less and less convincing. Watching Dozhier and his buddies strut around their property armed to the teeth and proclaiming that their lives are in constant danger provides Mann with sour amusement. Journal columnist Morrison's public condemnations of Clinton in Little Rock restaurants leads her to question his integrity. And Mann wonders why Hale is constantly bringing stacks of documents to Dozhier to be copied in his office. "Once Kenneth Starr started dealing with Hale, he was dealing with P.D. whether he know it or not," Mann says in 1998. "I don't think they were sure of Starr until after Hale and Dozhier went to Washington to talk with Ted Olson. After they came back, there was a whole new level of confidence in what was going to happen." Mann continues, "Did Starr's people know [of Dozhier's connection to Hale]? They called there for him. The independent counsel's office would call and ask for David Hale. How could they not know?" Mann says that one night in the summer of 1995, she watches Dozhier and Hale make copies of a stack of documents from Starr's OIC. Afterward, Dozhier brags that "they had what they needed to bring Hillary down." Soon afterwards, stories begin appearing in the national press predicting that Hillary Clinton would be indicted by Starr. During the 1999 trial of Susan McDougal, evidence is presented showing that Deputy Prosecutor Hickman Ewing drafted an indictment of Mrs. Clinton in the summer of 1995, an indictment that was never presented. By this point, the relationship between Dozhier and Mann is rapidly deteriorating. She cannot tolerate Dozhier's bullying of her son Josh, and by the time she decides that she and her son have to leave, she says she is badly frightened, not only for herself and her son, but because of Dozhier's political activities: what he is doing, Mann believes, is tantamount to "treason." (CNN, H.R. Clinton, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
