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MEMO: to Schmidt and Weisskopf
RE: Bill Watt
Never Libel People Who Can Defend Themselves
by Tamara Baker

Thursday, June 8, 2000 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf, two of Ken Starr's most beloved stenographers, have gotten away with so much for so long that I had begun to despair of their ever getting their just deserts.

Until now.

It seems that, in their Starr apologia, the amusingly misnamed Truth at Any Cost, Schmidt and Weisskopf (or, as many in the know call them, "Scheisskopf"), make all manner of demonstrably false charges against a certain Bill Watt, a former Arkansas traffic judge.

Gene Lyons' 6/7/00 column, originally slated for publication in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette but postponed for unknown reasons, documents -- and debunks -- the Scheisskopf charges:

...But the Arkansan given the roughest treatment in "Truth at Any Cost" is former Pulaski County Traffic Judge Bill Watt, whom the authors falsely accuse of pleading guilty to a crime. The book also alleges that Watt "testified that some of the witnesses [i.e. in Tucker vs. McDougal] had joined forces with [Clinton lawyer David] Kendall to resist Starr's investigation." Also that despite meeting with Kendall, "Watt ultimately pled guilty and cooperated with Starr's investigation." Problem is, none of it never happened. Bill Watt never pled guilty, and has never been charged with any crime. His testimony describes no meetings with Kendall. Indeed, both men told me they've never so much as spoken to one another. (Not that there would have been anything wrong if they had.)
The story of how Watt fought Starr's prosecutors to a standstill and won an immunity agreement is one we've told here before. The one we haven't told is how OIC prosecutors tried to void Watt's immunity agreement in 1998 by issuing subpoenas for seven years of his business records after IRS audits failed to find anything wrong. Watt won that skirmish too. Unlike Webb Hubbell's lawyers, he didn't have to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court...

Oh, and by the way:

Joe Conason, who with Gene Lyons co-authored the excellent The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, has let it be known, via the "Table Talk" message board forum on Salon that Mr. Watt intends to sue Schimdt and Weisskopf over this:

Joe Conason - 02:05 pm PDT - Jun 6, 2000 - #275 of 312
As it happens, Gene and I both decided to discuss "Truth at Any Cost" this week. Schmidt and Weisskopf have made a serious error in their description of Watt, who told me that he plans to pursue legal redress.

Schmidt and Weisskopf couldn't even get through the first chapter of their book without violating a prime rule of right-wing invective:

Never libel people who can defend themselves.

You can get away with libeling Bill Clinton: not only is he a touch preoccupied with running the most powerful nation in the world, he's a public figure, which means thanks to a 1964 Supreme Court ruling, he's unable to defend himself properly.

You can get away with libeling Julie Hiatt Steele: She's a single mom who's got enough problems trying to pay the legal bills inflicted on her by the OIC.

But you can't get away with libeling an obscure legal-savvy citizen of Pulaski County, Arkansas. He has the ability and the motivation and the time to prosecute your libel until he has prosecuted you right into an orange jumpsuit.

I can't wait!