GENE LYONS
GENE LYONS
Since you wrote the Harper's piece, have you seen anything new to change your mind?
I get more solidly reaffirmed every day. The inaccuracy of press accounts has now reached a standard of hysteria. They're writing things now that are so easily proven wrong.
For example?
The whole lying-Hillary-bitch theme. Everywhere you look on TV, you see a clip of Hillary in her pink suit supposedly denying she did any legal work for Madison Guaranty. If you read her whole answer to the original question, she describes how she had pitched (Madison Guaranty owner) Jim McDougal the idea, signed on for the retainer of $2000 a month, and served as the billing attorney.
Not one of the biggest retainers one has ever heard of.
No. And again, one of the things the press does is feign the credulousness of a child. I mean, here is a highly successful corporate litigator in one of the biggest firms in the state -- $2000 a month was a pittance. Which also goes back to that ridiculous statement of McDougal -- who can't tell anything straight because he's mentally ill -- that Bill comes by his office and begs for the business on the grounds that he's going broke. $2000 a month after expenses probably increased Hillary's monthly paycheck by $20.
Then there's Hillary's alleged mendacity in "Travelgate." I don't think this was the Clintons' finest hour, but she never denied that she had taken an interest in the travel office. The assertion that she lied is itself a bald-faced lie.
Why has the press got it so wrong?
The press mob is locked into a prosecutorial mentality. And reporters have careers at stake. Look at what happened to Woodward and Bernstein. There's blood in the water, and there's the opportunity, or at least the thought, of bringing a president down. It's now gone so far, they can't turn back.
But the Clintons do seem to have behaved a little oddly.
I understand. The suspicion that they're hiding something has driven a lot of this investigation. First of all, Hillary Clinton has, basically, contempt for the press, and also great fear, because of all sorts of things done to them in Arkansas. Then Whitewater comes up, and the press begins clamoring, "Prove your innocence." And I think she drew herself up and said "Not if they tie me up and throw me in the Potomac River in the winter -- screw them!" And the rest is history. I don't think she's ever adjusted to public life. She wants to have it both ways. She wants to be on national TV every night, and she wants to keep things private also. You can't do that.
Besides the mishandling, could there be some wrongdoing, like Whitewater and/or Madison Guaranty money being illegally funneled into Clinton's gubernatorial campaign?
If you read the Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro report (done for the Resolution Trust Corporation), every single check that went in or out of the Whitewater Development Co. was scrutinized and traced to its origins. They concluded there was no evidence of hanky-panky. Maybe someone could say Hillary should have suspected there was something fishy going on with Madison and gotten to the bottom of it, instead of turning away.
So where is the story going?
You don't know, at the end of the day, that there isn't some guilty secret in the shrubbery somewhere. I don't believe it. When the whole thing started, the focus was supposed to be, did the Clintons do something crooked for money or power. Now, since there's no evidence of that, we're asking things like, did Hillary lie about who approached who on some deal, and the answer is, who gives a shit? Maybe the story could stop right here, as an unsolved mystery -- and people could say, my God those Clintons are good at a coverup. It could be like the Kennedy assassination.
For you, what is the bottom line of this story?
It's frightening to me as a believer in our system that you've got what is essentially the unchecked power of the media to destroy. It's shocking to me that people don't know better. But don't you think people are becoming more aware? I'm alternately exhilarated and depressed. Some days I feel like I'm going to expose them all; it will all come out. Other times I feel like the Dutch boy with one finger in the dike.