FRIDAY, JUNE 5th 1998 -- NEW YORK- It's about time!
Can Mike Shaheen Uncover Right Wing Chicanery In Time?
Kenneth Starr is now officially under investigation, but the clock is ticking.
FRIDAY, JUNE 5th 1998 -- NEW YORK- It's about time!
After six years of allegations that "Cash for any Clinton Scandal" was available nationwide, the justice system has finally seen fit to look into the matter.
Former Justice Department lawyer Michael Shaheen has been named to examine allegations that a key Whitewater witness -- David Hale -- was receiving cash from Clinton-bashers in exchange for his testimony.
Shaheen was once head of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. While Starr finally recommended him to investigate Hale et al., Shaheen will eventually report to a panel of retired judges and, thank the Lord, not Ken Starr. Where, and under what laws, this "panel" of wizened judges comes from is anyone's guess. It appears that "whatever or whoever looks righteous" is the rule of the day.
The three-judge panel who will play "What's My Crime" includes Carter-era appointee Charles Renfrew, an excellent former federal judge and prosecutor, and Arlin Adams, another former independent counsel who investigated HUD corruption under the Reagan Administration.
Renfrew himself will select the third panel member.
History will be made here, although fleetingly, in that this will be the first time an outside investigator has been tapped to investigate an independent counsel -- another first for Ken Starr!
Here's what caused Shaheen and the three-judge panel to be appointed:
A backwoods scoundrel named Parker Dozhier is alleged to have been paid nearly $50,000 to uncover Clinton scandals by American Spectator magazine, now under "self-investigation" by new officials, including recently appointed "ombudsman" and CNN talking head Robert Novak.
However, the money trail also leads to chief Clinton irritator Richard Mellon Scaife, an amusing but lethal Clinton hater who funded American Spectator allegedly to push it into publishing myriad anti-Clinton stories -- most of which are filled with half-truth and innuendo.
Scaife also funds "investigative" reporter Chris Ruddy, famous for his stories on how Bill and Hillary Clinton "murdered" their best friends, Vince Foster and Ron Brown.
Hale has denied receiving payments from Dozhier -- the only problem is that there are witnesses to cash exchanged between the two!
Hale claims through his lawyer that the Shaheen investigation will clear him, and denies receiving Scaife-traceable cash. He claims the allegations are a result of Clinton supporters' efforts to discredit him. It was Hale that provided the testimony Ken Starr needed to convict Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker and Jim and Susan McDougal on charges of defrauding the SBA and a bank. Hale now claims that President Clinton pressured him to get another fraudulent loan from the SBA and that both Clintons lied about it under oath.
Of course, Starr has nothing but Hale's statements to substantiate this fantasy, and Hale himself has pled guilty to two Whitewater related felonies thus far. Hale's lawyer, Tona DeMers, told Salon Magazine "Compared to other players in this thing, [Hale's] role was relatively minor. He has the least number of felony indictments and felony convictions of anybody else who has played a part in this thing. Yet he's the one who suffered the most and served the most time. That's inherently unfair in my book."
One has to laugh out loud at those comments -- "…the least number of felony convictions." C'mon!
Mr. Dozhier, who owns a bait shop in Arkansas, admits he was paid by American Spectator but denies he paid off Hale, except for giving him free use of an automobile and a fishing cabin.
But Caryn Mann, Dozhier's former live-in girlfriend, and her 17-year-old son Josh witnessed payments from Dozhier to Hale.
Ken Starr, in his most flagrant action to freeze criticism of his office, delayed the investigation of Dozhier and Hale and set off a war of words with the Justice Department after Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder wrote Starr that the FBI had uncovered evidence that Hale may have been paid off to tarnish the Clintons. Holder made clear to Starr in his letter that because the money for Dozhier may have flowed from Scaife and been laundered through American Spectator, there was at least the suggestion of a conflict of interest -- since Starr's "Chair" as Dean of Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy was also funded by Scaife.
Suggestion?
Holder urged Starr to begin an investigation, and hinted that Starr would look ridiculous investigating himself under the Malibu U.-Scaife-Dohzier cloud.
Starr, the Mr. Rogers of Independent Counsels, is alleged to have gone ballistic over Holder's letter. Starr is already fuming at the Justice Department for supporting the Secret Service on the issue of confidentiality between the President and Secret Service agents. He is also alleged to "have doubts" about Attorney General Janet Reno's commitment to his multiple and ever-expanding $50 million probe of Clinton, although she has cooperated handsomely with everything he has asked for -- including expansion of his scope of inquiry into petty sexual matters.
In fact, Starr was so angry that he turned around and accused the Justice Department of having "not only an appearance problem but multiple actual conflicts of interest in connection to any investigation of Mr. Hale." Here Starr actually attacked the Attorney General directly, making a completely false accusation that she and her subordinates have favored the President.
If anything, Attorney General Reno has done the opposite -- appointing five independent counsels to investigate her own boss, Bill Clinton.
Starr tried to pull a fast one, proposing that an "outside" investigator be named to look into the Hale-Dohzier-Scaife matter -- but that this "outsider" would report to Starr, who would then decide how to proceed.
We can think of no better way to turn and "outsider" into an "insider" than that!
Fortunately, after falling off their chairs laughing, Justice Department chiefs rejected Starr's ridiculous scheme.
Thus, the Shaheen-Three-Judge-Panel investigation was born.
We see two problems here. First, it was Shaheen himself who convinced Starr to give up his quest to supervise an investigation of himself and his minions. This smacks of cronyism already.
Second, the Shaheen investigation will most likely take months to uncover facts relevant to Hale's veracity. Starr is already under the gun to bring a report of impeachment to the Congress before November so that Republicans -- trailing badly in the polls -- might be able to hang on to their majority in the House. If Shaheen can verify FBI information that Dozhier was laundering money for Scaife and American Spectator in order to pay off Hale for anti-Clinton testimony, the proof may come too late -- far too late to focus the American voter on the plausible truth of Hillary Clinton's allegations that a right wing conspiracy does exist to destroy Bill Clinton.
Already the press and electronic media are far too deeply invested in "getting Clinton" to allow them to regroup and defend the White House. Writers like Mike Barnacle of the Boston Globe and radio personalities like Don Imus are going for the full court press against the White House.
Starr has mentioned impeachment formally before the United States Supreme Court, and Newt Gingrich is busy "making" foreign policy in place of the President. Under this pressure, the rumors linking the Clintons to Whitewater and a shopping cart of other unproved allegations will be shortly morphed into "facts."
"Facts" which could be used to bring down this White House no matter what the real truth is.
- The Editors
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