Tuesday, February 9, 1999 -- St. Paul, Minnesota -- We've all been here before, ladies and gentlemen.

Whenever the Confederate GOP's anti-Clinton crusade hits a sticky spot, they get desperate.

And when they get desperate, they pull out the pettiness.

And the favorite target for their pettiness, aside from Bill Clinton, is usually Sidney Blumenthal.

Seems that the House Mange-Carriers -- er, I meant "Managers" -- still smarting over the remarkable series of boneheaded moves made by Starr's OIC and James Rogan over the past few days, is trying a move so petty in its desperateness (or is it desperate in its pettiness?) that it makes OIC gunsel Jackie Bennett's browbeating of Monica at the mall look positively responsible.

The goal: They know they can't get Clinton, so they'll settle for Sid.

The method: Create a perjury trap a la Paula Jones.

The weapon: British free-lancer Christopher Hitchens.

The execution is as follows:

Last Wednesday, the House Managers arranged for Sid to be asked whether he told any members of the media that Monica Lewinsky was a stalker, or if Sid had any knowledge of how those comments came to be circulated in the media. Blumenthal denied knowing if the "stalker" comments could have come from the White House.

Having gotten this under oath, the HMs then play their trump card: Hitchens' sworn statement that, during a friendly meal last March -- Hitchens and Blumenthal are friends, or at least were up until yesterday -- Blumenthal made comments to the effect that Monica was a "stalker".

The Managers claimed to have "acted on a tip" when they got hold of Hitchens. Yeah, right: more like someone alerted them to the fact of Sid and Chris' friendship, and they decided to put the squeeze on Hitchens somehow by threatening legal action (see Dave Gonzo's piece "Setting Up Sid" for the sordid details). I wonder what kind of hold they had over Hitchens: Pictures of him with underaged goats? His passport held over an open flame? Proof that he voted for Maggie Thatcher?

Or was it simply the power the House Managers hold to subpoena a ham sandwich, no matter how frivolously immaterial?

Does all this mean that Sid perjured himself on the stand?

Not according to Hitchens -- or anyone with brains.

As Hitchens took great pains to point out before the TV cameras on Meet the Press, he did not think that Blumenthal committed perjury during his deposition in front of the House Managers. In addition, Hitchens stated that he would refuse to testify to Congress that Blumenthal committed perjury, and has since come forward to say that he just might withdraw his affidavit and risk the wrath of the House Managers in doing so.

Now why would Hitchens, having just sworn that Blumenthal called Monica a stalker, then turn around and say Sid didn't commit perjury when he said Wednesday that he didn't know of any White House staffers who were spreading stalker tales about Ms. Lewinsky?

Look at the context.

First off, the stories concerning Monica had already been in play for months. Journalist and Blumenthal friend Joe Conason's own web search turned up 430 media references to Monica-as-stalker prior to the alleged March 19 luncheon conversation...

...or is it March 18 or 17? Hitchens isn't sure anymore. How typically sloppy of him to file an affidavit before getting his facts straight.

Assuming that Blumenthal did actually mention Monica that day (whichever one it was) in March, he wouldn't have been bringing up anything Hitchens hadn't heard elsewhere in the news, unless Hitchens had been in a cave since early January of 1998.

Even if the stalker story wasn't already part of the public domain, the idea that Sid Blumenthal would use such a rabidly anti-Clinton personality as Hitchens to spread the word is ridiculous. When Blumenthal allegedly made those statements to Hitchens and his wife, he was doing it in a social setting, off-the-record, not in his official capacity.

If Sid was truly in Tale Spreader Mode that evening, and wanted to ensure that a tale ostensibly unflattering to Monica (and helpful to Bill Clinton) was given the widest possible media play, Christopher Hitchens -- who hates Bill Clinton more than anyone this side of Dick Scaife -- would have been the LAST person to whom that tale would be going.

I can immediately think of several folks who would have been much more sympathetic to Sid's aims, were tale-bearing truly one of them: Robert Parry, Mollie Dickenson, Joe Conason, Murray Waas, Jonathan Broder, Lars-Erik Nelson, Gene Lyons. That list took me longer to type than it did to create, and is by no means complete.

And guess what? As of this writing, at least three of the journalists on that list -- Conason, Lyons and Nelson -- have come forward to say that, even after the "stalker" tales became part of the media landscape (and therefore OK for someone like Sid to comment on), they were unable to get Sid to talk Word One about them.

And it wasn't for lack of trying, either.

But then, if Sid isn't guilty of perjury, why did the House Managers pull off that stupid stunt?

I suspect the real reason is to intimidate the restive press.

For years now, Big Media, with the New York Times and the Washington Post in the lead, have been big boosters of Ken Starr's GOP-partisan efforts to conduct a coup d'etat. It has only been within the last few weeks that the media's united pro-Starr front has shown any signs of cracking -- and just within the last week that the media in general, and the New York Times in particular, found out that Ken Starr would toss them to the wolves to save his own skin.

Going after journalists like Blumenthal and Hitchens is an excellent way for Starr and the House Managers to flex their muscles at the newly-uppity media. It's not as if intimidation is a totally new tactic for these gents: Remember Monica's mom? Remember the subpoenas of Vanity Fair and Salon?

The 98-odd members of Kenneth Starr's OIC have spent years -- and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, in addition to the hundreds of millions, in cash and in kind, of support they get from Rupert Murdoch, Reverends Moon, Robertson and Falwell, and Dickie Scaife -- going after anyone with even the most tenuous connection with either Bill or Hillary Clinton.

Dozens of people, journalists, politicians and private figures, many of them not even personally acquainted with the Clintons, have been forced into lengthy and expensive legal maneuvers to defend themselves from the ridiculous and groundless actions of Starr and his allies. The Nation, in July of last year, put the total legal bill for all of the OIC's targets at close to $30 million and climbing; God only knows what it is now. The OIC members and their GOP masters are effectively trying to silence anyone, layman or press member, who dares defend Clinton -- or even dare to point out the many blots on the OIC's own escutcheon.

Let's hope that if this is what Kenny and the House Boyz intended, that it backfires on them big-time.

-- Tamara Baker