David Corn

Ask a typical pollee whether she or he is voting for a Democrat or Republican for Congress, and a slight majority says Democrat. That’s encouraging to the Democrats, who need a net gain of 19 seats to win back the House (and 3 to tie in the Senate). More good news for the Democrats: 70 of the 235 Republicans in the House are Newt Gingrich-style freshmen, class of ’94, many of whom won in very tight races, and often in congressional districts considered Democratic turf. Add in the fact that Gingrich has higher negative ratings than Freddy Krueger, and the conventional wisdom that a Clinton win should be of help to the Democrats. Republican number-crunchers say that if Clinton ends up beating Dole by more than 13 points, the House is gone.

But all is not lost for Gingrich, who has declared he will not stick around as minority leader if Republicans lose control of the House. (How’s that for incentive?) Though a majority of likely voters tell pollsters they are pulling the lever for Clinton, a majority also say they do not trust the man. That is why the Republicans have switched to Plan B, a triage strategy that acknowledges the inevitability of a Clinton victory while urging the public to re-elect a Republican Congress, so as not to hand Clinton the Untrusted a “blank check.”

An utter humiliation for Dole, this strategy might have some legs, as Clinton himself knows. While occasionally talking up local Democrats on the stump and in national forums, such as the debates, he conspicuously does not urge voters to force out the Republicans. And the coming Clinton victory has less the feel of a tide than of water finding the path of least resistance. If one examines particulars, the prospects for the Democrats seem less glorious.

To begin with, a number of House Democrats decided to throw in the towel after the party was swamped in 1994. Little did they realize how quick the lectern could turn. There are 30 open Democratic seats up for grabs, some of which — particularly in the South — the Democrats will have a tough time retaining.

At the same time, some Republican freshmen actually have learned from their mistakes. In districts across the country, onetime Republican revolutionaries are now asserting a new-found appreciation for bipartisan cooperation. Take Rep. Rick White, a freshman Republican from the suburbs of Seattle. Meeting with editors of a local newspaper last week, the former corporate attorney confessed that the GOP had overplayed its hand in the budget showdown last Christmas. What’s more, with kids in public school, parents of Medicare age and a fondness for hiking Washington state’s mountains, how could he be against education, Medicare and the environment? Since he has a smooth delivery and fine-young-man good looks, White might get away with this reconfiguring and beat back the Democratic challenge.

Then there are the individual idiosyncrasies. Democrat Loretta Sanchez looked to have a good shot at beating Rep. Bob Dornan, the wild conservative of southern California. Then her husband was nabbed — by Dornan’s son! — vandalizing Dornan campaign signs. In Los Angeles, the Republican challenger to Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman is attacking Gingrich and claiming he will vote for Clinton. In Cleveland, Republican Rep. Martin Hoke has compared his Democratic challenger, Dennis Kucinich, to “the vile, historical revisionists who claim the Holocaust never happened.” (Kucinich’s crime was defending his decision of 20 years ago not to sell the city’s public utility company when he was mayor.) It’s hard to find a pattern in all this, even less to figure out whether such tactics will help beleaguered Republicans.

So — the envelope please. For the Democrats to win back the House, they must defeat two dozen or so Republican freshmen, retain the seats of retiring Democrats, and defend the handful of Democratic incumbents who are in trouble. It’s not likely they can succeed on all three fronts. My highly qualified prognostication is that the Democrats will pick up seats there but not enough to boot Newt. As for the Senate, where their prospects have improved from the no-chance of a few months ago, I expect the Democrats to hold their 47-seat position and maybe improve it by a seat or two.

But when you call this column up to your screen the night of Nov. 5, please remember: I don’t believe in political predictions.

Quote of the day

Dark horse

“I knew the Internet was thick with libertarians, but I didn’t expect this from our readers.”

— Jay Harris, publisher of Mother Jones magazine, whose web site poll shows Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party as the clear favorite for President. (From “Clinton? Dole? Hah! Polls Show Harry Browne Is Virtual Shoo-In, in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal)

All this means that the activity of the 9/11 commission, which is supposed to hold more hearings in the months ahead and release a final report by July 26, will continue to draw intense public attention. Working under a tight deadline (because Republicans want it out of business before the final stretch of the 2004 campaign), the commission will be assessing the nettlesome facts about the administration’s performance on terrorism. These are some of the questions it may be asking Rice when she finally appears before the panel:

1) In May 2002, the public learned through news reports — not your administration — that on Aug. 6, 2001, the president received a President’s Daily Briefing (PDB) that made reference to the threat from Osama bin Laden. You told reporters that this PDB was a short and vague “analytic report,” not a “warning,” and mainly covered routine and historical information on bin Laden, noting that he might be interested in hijacking an airplane to gain the release of one of his operatives. Yet the final report on 9/11 of the House and Senate intelligence committees, which was released last summer, revealed that in August 2001 the intelligence community prepared a report for “senior government officials” that said bin Laden wanted to mount attacks in the United States; that al-Qaida had established a presence in the United States; that bin Laden wanted to hijack aircraft; and that information indicated that his supporters were planning strikes in the United States with explosives. The congressional intelligence committees’ report strongly hinted that all this information had been in that Aug. 6 PDB, which your administration refused to let the intelligence committees review. Did you accurately characterize the information about al-Qaida that the president received on Aug. 6, 2001? Did the PDB include the information disclosed by the intelligence committees’ report? Why would you not let the intelligence committees see the relevant portions of this PDB? Were you concerned that you, the president or the administration might be harmed politically if the contents of this PDB became public?

2) The congressional intelligence committees also reported that in July 2001 an intelligence report warned, “Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that UBL [Usama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.” The White House refused to let the intelligence committees say whether this warning was presented to the president or you, though committee sources told reporters it had been. Did you and the president receive this warning? If so, how did you or he respond? Did either of you call for any additional action or information? Was this warning included in the Aug. 6 PDB? And did that PDB prompt you or the president to order the national security community to take specific steps? Why did the White House not want the public to know whether you or Bush had seen this warning?

3) In May 2002, you said, “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.” Were you unaware at that point that intelligence reports dating back to the mid-1990s had indicated that al-Qaida and other terrorists were indeed interested in hijacking airliners and crashing them into high-profile American targets? When did you first learn of this reporting? After you became aware of such reports, did you ever ask whether the intelligence community and the U.S. military had considered the possibility of such a strike?

4) One interim report of the 9/11 commission says that the Clinton administration pressed the Saudi government to work with it to neutralize al-Qaida but that your administration made no effort to do so before 9/11. Why was that?

5) When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the commission, he said that prior to 9/11 he viewed al-Qaida as “a priority threat.” But another interim report of the 9/11 commission notes that counterterrorism experts at the Pentagon said that Rumsfeld’s team was “not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda.” Can you point us to evidence that Rumsfeld actually did see al-Qaida as a “priority threat”? Why did Rumsfeld not approve Richard Clarke’s proposal to launch the Predator drone over Afghanistan at the only principals meeting held that considered terrorism in early September 2001? Did Rumsfeld want the funding for the Predator to go to missile defense instead?

6) Another report of the 9/11 commission says that “some CIA officials expressed frustration about the pace of policymaking [on al-Qaida] during the stressful summer of 2001.” Did the CIA experts on al-Qaida have reason to be frustrated with the administration? If not, why would they tell the commission they were frustrated? Are they making it up?

7) The intelligence committees’ final report on 9/11 quoted an FBI budget official who said that counterterrorism had not been a priority for Attorney General John Ashcroft before 9/11 and that the FBI had been pressured to cut its counterterrorism program to free up money for Ashcroft’s other priorities. Were you and the president aware of this? Did such a move happen with your approval? If not, why were you not overseeing counterterrorism efforts as part of your job?

As you know, the issue of how much urgency the Bush administration assigned to the al-Qaida threat prior to 9/11 has become a contentious issue. You have argued that the Bush administration acted vigorously, and you have said, “We were all at battle stations.” How then do you explain the remark made by the president to Bob Woodward for the book “Bush at War.” Speaking about the period before the attacks, he said, “I was not on point, but I knew [bin Laden] was a menace, and I knew he was a problem … I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice, and would have given the order to do that … But I didn’t feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.” Did you feel a sense of urgency when the president did not? Can you point to a memo or document in which you expressed this urgency? If you did feel this way, what did you do to convey your own sense of urgency to the president? Did you fail to convince him? How did he respond? Is the president’s account wrong?

9) During the presidential transition, you, President-elect Bush and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney received a briefing from the CIA that including the topic of al-Qaida. James Pavitt, the deputy director for operations at the CIA, told the commission that at this briefing he informed the three of you that bin Laden was one of the gravest threats to the country. Why, then, did the president not feel a sense of urgency, as he has told Bob Woodward he did not? Also, do you think it was appropriate for the administration to engage in an eight-month-long policy review — at the deputies level, rather than at the principals level — on such a pressing threat, when you knew that the deputies cannot implement policy?

10) The USS Cole was bombed in October 2000, killing 17 Americans. It took the CIA and FBI several months to determine al-Qaida was the culprit. Yet your administration apparently did not respond. Did you ever hold a meeting about how to react to the Cole strike? Did you ever discuss with the president what should be done? Did he ever as president bring up the subject of the Cole? Were you concerned that doing nothing might embolden al-Qaida and send the wrong signal?

11) Gen. Donald Kerrick, who was deputy national security advisor under President Clinton and remained on the National Security Council staff in the early Bush administration, says he wrote a classified memo to his replacement, Stephen Hadley, warning that al-Qaida was going to strike the United States again. “They never once asked me a question,” Kerrick now says, “nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it … They saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence, the intelligence, wasn’t there.” Did you ever see this memo? Did you and Hadley discuss this memo or Kerrick’s concern? Did you discuss Kerrick’s concern with anyone on the NSC or with the president?

12) Richard Clarke has said that in June 2001 he was concerned that Bush officials — including yourself — were not addressing the al-Qaida issue with sufficient zeal and that he asked CIA chief George Tenet to brief you on the matter. Do you agree that you needed such a briefing? What did you think after receiving the briefing? Did you ask to hear more? Did you do anything in response to the briefing? Did you ask for regular briefing on the subject for yourself?

13) Clarke has maintained that he was excluded from all National Security Council meetings related to Iraq after 9/11 because he did not agree with the administration’s policy on Iraq. Is that true? Did you have the habit of excluding staff members from meetings if they disagree with the prevailing view?

14) In early 2000, the CIA learned that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the 19 9/11 hijackers, were inside or heading toward the United States. Yet the CIA did not share this information with the FBI — which had an informant in San Diego in contact with the two — until late August 2001. No one can know what might have happened had the FBI been informed that these two terrorist suspects were in the United States. But had the CIA passed this information to the FBI, it would have been possible for the FBI to track the men and perhaps, as the intelligence committees noted, “unravel the September 11 plot.” This appears to have been one of the worst of the mistakes leading to 9/11. When did you and the president learn of this egregious error? Did you or the president ever ask Tenet to explain this screw-up? Why has no one been held accountable for this? Was the CIA wary of the FBI?

15) Why did your administration insist on classifying nearly the entire chapter on Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 report put out by the intelligence committees, after both Democrats and Republicans urged the White House to release at least portions of it?

16) Any commission that seeks testimony from witnesses must be concerned about the ability and willingness of witnesses to speak candidly and openly to the commission in public and private sessions. Did you participate in any discussions at the White House regarding how you could discredit or undermine Richard Clarke, a commission witness? Or are you aware of any such discussions? If so, who attended these meetings? What strategies were considered? What decisions were made? Did you approve the declassification of documents in an effort to try to discredit Clarke? CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reported that administration officials were saying there were some “weird aspects” to Clarke’s personal life. Did you hear any Bush official talk about spreading derogatory information about Mr. Clarke?

17) On “60 Minutes” you said, “The [9/11] commission is rightly not concentrating on what happened on the day of Sept. 11.” Can you please explain that remark in the light of the commission’s charter to examine what happened on that day? Do you believe the commission should not be looking at what occurred on 9/11?

18) And while we have you, are you aware of any conversations or meetings about leaking the identity of covert CIA Valerie Plame operative to conservative columnist Bob Novak?

In arguing for war, Bush for months claimed that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qaida. This was a powerful charge. Bush did not merely say there were links between the Iraqi government and Osama bin Laden’s murderous outfit. He declared there was an alliance. During a Nov. 7 press conference, Bush referred to Saddam and exclaimed: “He’s a threat because he is dealing with al-Qaida.” While it is unrealistic to expect that Bush, on his own, examined the supposed evidence underlying the uranium-from-Africa allegation, it is not unreasonable to believe that Bush, prior to charging that Saddam and bin Laden were in league, would have made certain he was speaking accurately.

Yet weeks earlier, the CIA had released findings that noted it had gathered evidence of a few contacts over the years between the Iraqi government and al-Qaida but nothing pointing to a current partnership. Recent news reports revealed that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, most of which remains classified, conveyed an unclear picture of whatever contacts might have existed and warned about the reliability of the intelligence on this subject. So how did Bush reach his no-question-about-it conclusion that Saddam was “dealing” with bin Laden? In this case, he cannot blame an aide for inserting a line into a speech.

That was not the only time Bush or top administration officials made an unfounded claim of connections between Iraq an al-Qaida. During a Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted there was a “sinister nexus” between Iraq and al-Qaida. He maintained that a terrorist named Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, who had allegedly helped establish a poison-training camp for terrorists in the Kurdish-controlled territory of northern Iraq, was collaborating with al-Qaida and being supported by Saddam’s government. Powell suggested that bin Laden and Saddam were doing business through this middleman. After his speech, terrorism experts and government officials said the evidence of this A-to-B-to-C relationship was spotty. CIA director George Tenet, in congressional testimony, noted that Zarqawi and his network were “independent” of al-Qaida. Yet none of this stopped Bush from saying, two days after Powell’s presentation, that Saddam was “harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al-Qaida planner.”

Not even Powell had described Zarqawi as a “senior al-Qaida planner.” And since the fall of Baghdad there has been no public indication that Zarqawi was indeed the missing link between al-Qaida and Saddam. In fact, some evidence has emerged in a German court case that Zarqawi’s outfit was a rival to al-Qaida.

Linking Saddam to the evildoers of 9/11 was key to Bush’s case for war. After a terrorist explosion in Bali killed more than 180 people, he asserted that Saddam intended to deploy al-Qaida as his own “forward army” against the West. It seems the National Intelligence Estimate missed that, too. And Bush repeatedly warned that at any moment Saddam could pass weapons of mass destruction to his pals at al-Qaida. (In fact, al-Qaida might now have a stronger presence in Iraq than before the war. Reuters reports that some of the anti-United States resistance groups in Iraq have been adopting the slogans of Osama bin Laden.)

Did Bush have cause to believe that Saddam had WMD to give to al-Qaida? In his speech to the nation two days before launching the war, he said: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess WMDs.” Yet both U.S. Rep. Jane Harman of California, a moderate and pro-war Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee (which is examining the prewar intelligence), and Richard Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who is conducting an internal CIA review, have said that the intelligence on WMD in Iraq was full of caveats and qualifiers. In other words, it was not no-doubt stuff. They also have reported that U.S. intelligence had not unearthed any evidence of operational ties between Saddam’s government and al-Qaida. If so, might that mean Bush lied?

The record is becoming increasingly clear: Bush, to be polite about it, dramatically overstated the central elements of his case for war. The yellowcake screw-up was a minor matter, hardly the direct fault of the president. But when it came to unconventional weapons in Iraq and the relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam, Americans should have been able to assume Bush was monitoring these crucial issues closely and vigilantly and speaking about them carefully and truthfully. In defending Bush on the Niger business, the White House has said that the president is not a fact checker. True enough. But a president ought to be sure he possesses the basic facts before going to war, and he ought to convey them honestly to the public and to the troops that will be acting — and dying — on his orders. The outrage over the Niger affair is misplaced, and it is possible that the controversy over this single sentence might divert attention from Bush’s more significant prewar assertions. As Bush White House aides say, it is time to move on — but it is time to move on to scrutinizing the misleading Bush statements that were essential to bringing this country to war and occupation.

The event was sponsored by the right-leaning institute’s magazine and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a conservative outfit headed by David Horowitz, the combative leftist-turned-rightist author and Salon columnist. The lineup of speakers included nearly 100 Hillary friends and Hillary foes, but tilted toward the Hillary-sucks side. Panelists included renowned Clinton hater Christopher Hitchens; Joyce Milton and Laura Ingraham, both authors of anti-Hillary books; and Horowitz himself.

The conference opened with bad news. Dick Morris, it was announced, had canceled without explanation. Why would the toe-sucking political consultant — a one-time Clinton ally who has been a prominent Hillary slasher — pass up the chance to twist the knife once more? The first speaker, Nation and Vanity Fair columnist Hitchens, offered an explanation: Perhaps it was because Hitchens repeatedly has accused Morris of being a “procurer and pimp for Mr. Clinton.” Hitchens meant those charges literally, but at this forum he provided no further details regarding this salacious aside. After all, Hillary, not Bill, was the piqata of the day.

Hitchens whacked the first lady for maintaining a “split personality” as she shifts between “strong woman” (such as when she recalled Morris to the White House) and “weak sob sister” (such as when she attributed her hazy recollection of her suspicious commodities deal to the fact she was pregnant at the time). He compared her unfavorably with Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR’s wife, he argued, tried “to get her husband to do the unpopular thing, the uncommercial thing” — supporting the Spanish loyalists besieged by Franco’s fascists, abolishing Jim Crow.

Hitchens further criticized Clinton for having “justified” her husband’s brutish infidelities, and for displaying an “abnormal want of curiosity” about Juanita Broaddrick’s charge that Bill raped her years ago. But where Clinton has set new heights of mendacity, Hitchens concluded, is in the field of ethnic pandering. Noting that all politics in New York is “global” — by which he meant kowtowing to ethnic groups — Hitchens asserted that “never” has this game “been played with more cynicism than Mrs. Clinton has brought to it.” His evidence: her miscues regarding Palestine, the amnesty for the jailed Puerto Rican activists, the St. Patrick’s Day parade and a Pakistani-American fund-raiser. Hitchens’ claim that her pandering is abnormal may be something of a stretch. He often argues in his bad-boy way that hate is healthy, if directed at the proper people and institutions.If that is true, then regarding Hillary, Hitchens is in the pink.

Hillary’s critics from the right are deeply offended by the first lady for other reasons, though they had some difficulty explaining all of them. Milton, the author of “The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton,” observed that it was not Clinton’s marriage that differentiated her from other first ladies — plenty of past presidents have been cheats. But “the thing that makes her different is … hyperactivity. She’s very excessive in everything she does.” But wouldn’t that describe other politicians — and Nancy Reagan, who was a control freak when it came to looking out for her husband? —

In trying to define “what riles people so much” about the Clintons, Milton maintained that when Bill and Hillary are accused of wrongdoing, their immediate response is to blame someone else, that they have no sense of shame. Ronald Reagan didn’t exactly take responsibility for Iran-contra. Newt Gingrich, now an AEI fellow, hasn’t expressed shame for his extramarital affair. “Not that she should get down on her knees and grovel,” Milton commented, “but maybe say, ‘I went a little overboard when I blamed the Monica stories on a vast right-wing conspiracy.’” Then Milton took another tack: “She’s so bossy … A lot of people have trouble with that.” Is that really what has the Hillary-haters so upset?

The day’s last panel, “Hillary Rodham Clinton as a Feminist Heroine,” produced the most anti-Hillary passion. Christina Hoff Sommers, author of “Who Stole Feminism?” began her case against Clinton by recounting and mocking a meeting of successful female academics who identified themselves as “angry and struggling” and whom Sommers tagged “gender feminists” — people who consider American women to be “tyrannized and victimized” by men. “I believe the first lady is in their camp,” Sommers said, though she acknowledged that Clinton didn’t attend that meeting and doesn’t use the buzz words of the “gender feminists.” But Sommers still says Clinton is one of them. The evidence? She has complained about the inequity in pay between men and women and the exclusion of women from major medical clinical trials.

And there’s more evidence: Clinton likes the work of Eve Ensler, author of the one-woman play “The Vagina Monologues.” Ensler, Sommers told the crowd, was once described as a “loony feminist” by a British journalist. From all this, Sommers has deduced that while Clinton “does not openly write or speak” as a “gender feminist,” she is indeed a “committed and zealous gender feminist.”

Phyllis Schlafly, the social conservative leader, derided Clinton as “a very dull subject. She is not an interesting person. She has not accomplished anything of note … She is just a housewife … She made her money and built her career the old-fashioned way — she married it.” But, at the same time, “She’s a ‘macho-feminist’ … with a lust for revenge,” who “quarterbacked the [Monica] coverup.” In other words, a boring marital appendage who is Machiavelli in drag.

Ingraham, the cable-TV chatterer who has her own anti-Hillary book due out soon, attempted to put forth a more sophisticated argument. “I don’t think she’s evil, she’s just wrong” — from her “family politics to her beliefs about gun control.” Yet her marriage and views on education are not the real problems, Ingraham said. “What’s most dangerous about Hillary is not Whitewater, the billing records … The most dangerous thing is her seeming inability not to be self-reflective and talk about her mistakes.” Is that what bugs people about Clinton? She doesn’t ‘fess up to her errors? “Conservatives get in trouble when they start making Hillary personal,” Ingraham said. But when Karen Burstein, a former New York judge who supports Clinton, accused Ingraham of demanding that Clinton expose “a kind of pain inside her” that Ingraham does not demand other politicians reveal, Ingraham protested. She merely wants Clinton to “explain her life’s choices,” such as her marriage. “Was this a political bargain [between her and Bill]?” That sounds awfully personal. At this point, Lynne Cheney, an AEI fellow, exclaimed, “It drives me crazy when Hillary acts like a happy wife.” And Ingraham added, “It’s a sham.” It does sound like the personal is what’s bothering them.

But that’s not true forHorowitz, who in a 50-minute-long closing statement, branded Clinton “America’s foremost leftist.” And, he informed the dwindling crowd, “The first truth about leftist missionaries … is that they are liars.” In fact, “To be progressive is the deepest narcissism.” He claimed that “today’s leftists” — including Clinton — are the “ideological heirs of Stalinist progressives.” But Clinton and her band have gotten cagier: They seek “total power” and the opportunity to create a social utopia through “incremental ways.” She will even “sound like a conservative” if she has to.

Anyone who sat through the entire day could be forgiven if he or she ended up confused. To rightist Horowitz, Clinton is a single-minded messianic socialist to be feared. To leftist Hitchens, she is a two-faced, unprincipled 1960s sellout to be despised. To Milton, she is an overly ambitious and pushy woman to be scorned for having cut some sort of deal with her husband. To Sommers, she is a dangerous, in-the-closet feminist to be exposed. To Schlafly, she is a traditional wife who won’t own up to that. To Ingraham, she is a first lady who dares stay mum about her marriage — but we don’t want to get personal. There is much for which Clinton deserves criticism. Remember the health-care plan she botched? She also occasionally has been slippery with the truth and placed politics ahead of principle — as do most pols. But she does push her critics to excess.

“People say I’m obsessed about the Clintons,” Hitchens quipped delightfully. “I’m not. I just think about them all the time.”

For all their thinking about Clinton, her most vociferous detractors cannot agree on what ticks them off about her. But for each, the ever-changing Clinton — who, over the years, has slipped in and out of many different roles — offers much ammunition and is a highly convenient and inviting target. As she campaigns for the Senate, she will remain within their crisscrossing lines of fire.

Powell is an interesting, perhaps unique, phenomenon in public life: an untouchable. I discovered this firsthand a few years back when I broke a story indicating that Powell had lied as part of an Iran-Contra coverup. The evidence against him was strong, yet the media largely ignored the story. One news network even killed a report on it. The incident showed how tough it is to question Powell’s sterling reputation. It also revealed that the retired general does have warts that, should he leap into the spotlight as a politician, could come into view.

In 1993, after nearly seven years of work, Lawrence Walsh, the Iran-Contra independent counsel, produced his massive final report. Buried within it were a few paragraphs devoted to Powell, who had been Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s senior military assistant when the Reagan administration was secretly trading arms with Iran. As part of his investigation, Walsh had brought a case against Weinberger. Consequently, Powell came under the scrutiny of Walsh’s investigators.

In 1987, Walsh had requested that Weinberger hand over any records relevant to the Iran-Contra affair. In reply, Weinberger produced a modest amount of material, nothing incriminating. Then, in 1991, Walsh’s investigators discovered that Weinberger had sent thousands of pages of diary and meeting notes he had kept while defense secretary to the Library of Congress. This material showed that, contrary to his sworn testimony, Weinberger knew in advance that the Reagan administration was shipping weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages. A grand jury indicted Weinberger for concealing these notes from Congress and from the independent counsel and for lying about his knowledge of the arms deal.

Powell played a small but key role in the Weinberger episode. In 1987, seven investigators from the House and Senate Iran-Contra committees questioned Powell in the White House situation room. In the course of this sworn deposition, Powell was asked a standard question: Did Weinberger keep a diary? The investigators wanted to know if documentary evidence existed that could help them unravel the scandal.

Powell replied, “The secretary, to my knowledge, did not keep a diary.” But, as Walsh’s investigators found out four years later, Weinberger had kept an extensive diary. Perhaps it was possible Powell had not known about Weinberger’s notes. But in 1992, when Weinberger was under investigation for having lied about the notes, Powell had a different story to tell about his old boss’s diaries.

In a sworn affidavit submitted to Walsh’s office by Weinberger’s attorney, Powell said, “During the period I worked with Secretary Weinberger … I observed on his desk a small pad of white paper, approximately 5″ by 7″. He would jot down on this pad in abbreviated form various calls and events during the day. I viewed it as his personal diary.” In a subsequent interview with Walsh’s office, Powell revealed that he even knew that Weinberger had stored his diary notes “in his desk on the right side.”

Powell’s 1992 statement contradicted his 1987 statement. But he wasn’t ratting out Weinberger. In fact, he was supporting him, for Weinberger was then claiming that he had not conspired to hide his notes, that his diaries had not been a secret to those around him, that his failure to turn over thousands of pages was merely an oversight. Weinberger’s line was: See, everyone knew about them. Powell was backing him up.

Walsh was perturbed by the conflict in Powell’s statements. How could Powell in 1992 have a clear and specific memory of diaries, when in 1987 he had said Weinberger kept no diaries? One of these statements, each sworn, had to be false. Walsh even uncovered evidence showing that Powell had helped Weinberger maintain his diary notes.

Walsh might have explored this troubling contradiction during Weinberger’s trial, for Powell was on the witness list. But on Dec. 24, 1992, days before the trial was to begin, a lame-duck President Bush pardoned Weinberger and five other Iran-Contra figures. “Powell was going to be an important witness during the Weinberger trail,” says a lawyer who worked with Walsh. “What would have transpired we’ll never know.”

So what was Walsh to do about this Powell business? In his final report, Walsh noted that Powell’s 1987 deposition statement “hardly constituted full disclosure.” Walsh maintained that it had been “designed to protect Weinberger” and characterized it as “at least misleading.” But, Walsh added, “It would have been difficult to prove that [Powell's 1987] deposition testimony was intentionally false.” Thus, it had not warranted prosecution.

“This was a slippery issue for us,” says another former staffer for Walsh. “Because of who Powell was and because the lie did not have to do with his own coverup, but was part of Caspar Weinberger’s coverup. Even prosecuting Weinberger was difficult for us. But this wasn’t a small matter for us.”

Powell was not happy with how Walsh characterized his statements. Prior to the release of the report, he submitted a letter to the court overseeing Walsh and blasted Walsh for having “seen fit to impugn my honor.” Powell maintained there were no discrepancies between his 1987 testimony and his 1992 affidavit. This is how he explained it:

“I was asked by congressional staff in 1987 whether Mr. Weinberger kept any records at all of his daily activities. I replied truthfully that he took notes, but did not have a diary — a permanent record summarizing important events. My 1992 affidavit, on the other hand, focused in depth on the notes I said he took and my understanding that the notes were personal … I described his notes [in 1992] as a diary to convey the idea that they were private and personal, as opposed to an official record.”

Can you make sense of that? Actually, in 1987, Powell had not forthrightly told the investigators that Weinberger maintained notes. Powell only said that “whatever notes [Weinberger] kept, I don’t know how he uses them or what he does with them.” The clear implication of Powell’s 1987 answers was that Powell had no idea whether Weinberger maintained a written record of his daily dealings. Yet in 1992, he was full of details about the Weinberger notes, and he even referred to them as a “diary.”

When Walsh’s report was released, no one in the media appeared to have taken notice of his criticism of Powell. But in 1995, when Powell was flirting with the idea of running for president, I flipped through Walsh’s report, found the passage on Powell, and thought I had a hot-shit story: the all-American patriot — a man described by historian Stephen Ambrose as “defined by the word ‘trust’” — caught in a lie. When I called Powell’s spokesman for a response, I received an answer so convoluted I could not put it in the article. (People would think, I explained to an editor, that it was a typographical mistake.)

When the article appeared, I expected other media to pick up the story. No one called, except a friend who was an investigative reporter at a TV network. He asked for the supporting material and received an OK from his superiors to pursue the story. He filmed a segment, and it was scheduled to air. Then the story was killed from above. A message was indirectly conveyed to the reporter: this was not serious enough a charge to justify taking a swing at Powell and causing him to be angry with the network. After all, the network might want to book him in the future.

In the time since, Powell’s contradictory statements have received cursory mention in a few press profiles. But his part in the scandal escaped thorough media scrutiny. Imagine the media response if an independent counsel accused Hillary Clinton of making misleading statements to protect a friend under investigation.

It does not seem likely Powell will sign up as Bush’s sidekick. He has shown no interest in the job. And why should a fellow of his stature — with his brand name power — tie his future to the Bush campaign and its iffy prospects? If Powell does desire the presidency, he could credibly enter the next presidential race without having served as No. 2 to Bush. He also could waltz easily into the secretary of state or defense slots in a Bush administration. Should Powell decide to enter politics or seek a Cabinet post, it’s doubtful his bit part in the Iran-Contra affair will get in the way. But will his free ride with the media continue?

Back on the campaign trail, he will continue to portray himself as the No. 1 family guy: a devoted father, a loving husband, a loyal son. “The most important job,” he says time and again, “is to love your children … It’s important for a president to say that repeatedly.”

Bush has hardly been shy about using his own family in appealing for votes. Though neither of the Georges, father or son, are known for self-analysis, it doesn’t take a therapist to see that a key motivation for George the Sequel is a desire to avenge the honor of his father, who was humiliated at the polls by the Democrats eight years ago.

But there is a specter haunting Bush’s effort to be both Mr. Tolerance and the Good Son, and that is Pat Robertson, the evangelist who founded the Christian Coalition.

At the Wiesenthal Center, Bush declared himself a foot soldier in the never-ending battle against hate and bigotry: “We must teach our children to respect those whose ancestry or religion is different from their own,” he proclaimed.

Robertson, for starters, could use such instruction. In 1991, the televangelist said Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists represent “the spirit of the Antichrist.” He also maintained that “liberal Jews” were mounting “an ongoing attempt to undermine the public strength of Christianity.” He has repeatedly called Hinduism “devil worship.”

Not exactly the language of tolerance, nor, for that matter, “compassionate conservatism.” Yet after John McCain blasted Robertson for leading conservative Christians down the path to bigotry, Bush, looking to bolster his standing with religious right voters, quickly sided with Robertson and chided McCain for daring to criticize this upright Republican.

Robertson, after all, had been assisting Bush’s campaign in Michigan by launching blistering taped phone messages against McCain. And Robertson’s one-time lieutenant, Ralph Reed, is a key consultant for Bush. When Robertson’s calls backfired in Michigan, the Bush campaign asked him to cool it. But that was a tactical decision, and Bush has not chosen to publicly repudiate Robertson, and he seems unlikely to do so since he wants (and needs) the votes of the Christian conservatives who compose up to a third of the GOP electorate. Besides, look what happened to John McCain when he took on Robertson.

So Bush the Tolerant won’t hold Robertson’s mean and excessive rhetoric against him. But Bush also has a personal reason for excommunicating Robertson from his campaign, however. In 1992, Robertson published a bizarre book called “The New World Order.” In this barely coherent tract, Robertson claimed there was a global (if elusive) conspiracy involving the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, other policy elites, secret societies and New Agers.

The goal of this nefarious coalition was to impose a new world order that would wipe out national sovereignty, foment a “complete redistribution of wealth,” and bring about the “elimination of Christianity.” The key to penetrating the plot, Robertson argued, was to see that the Gulf War that had been waged and won by President Bush was, in fact, “a setup.”

This was Robertson’s reasoning (using the word loosely): “Powerful people of the world wanted a situation that was so obviously dangerous to the entire world that all nations would join together to deal with it … [a situation] that would cause the nations of the world to forget for a time their own claims of sovereignty in order to submerge their interests into that of a worldwide authority such as the United Nations.”

See what was going on? The conspirators cleverly and covertly had orchestrated the origins of the Persian Gulf crisis and then used Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait as a pretense for the first step toward a world government that would eventually obliterate Christianity and bring about all the other horrors Robertson feared.

Robertson revealed that the term “new world order,” which Bush used to justify the Gulf War, has been for the past 200 years “the code phrase of those who desired to destroy the Christian faith … They wish to replace it with an occult-inspired world socialist dictatorship.”

Robertson based his unorthodox insights on his reading of the Bible. The anti-Saddam coalition, he observed, “was the first time since Babel that all of the nations of the earth acted in concert with one another.” And as God showed with the Tower of Babel, he is not fond of nations toiling together.

Robertson didn’t pick on President Bush alone. He accused Jimmy Carter of being in cahoots with the secret schemers. So, too, was his vice president, Walter Mondale, for, as Robertson noted with suspicion, Mondale’s brother had once signed a humanist manifesto. Robertson also pointed at Henry Kissinger, Bush foreign policy aide Brent Scowcroft, and other prominent figures in the foreign-policy establishment

In his book, Robertson forged numerous creative connections. In the first chapter, he lumped President Bush in with a famous musician who asked people to “imagine” a time of no religion, no possessions, no heaven, no hell and one world. “George Bush and John Lennon,” he wrote, “are not alone in championing a new world order.” By the way, Robertson noted, so did Adolf Hitler. And who did Robertson peg as the primary force behind this dangerous, anti-Christian new world order? The devil himself!

According to Robertson, President Bush was, wittingly or not, “carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers.”

So Robertson literally called President Bush a tool of Satan. Yet eight years later, Robertson was campaigning for the son of this tool of Satan, George W. How could Robertson be certain that W. wasn’t in on this new world order conspiracy, picking up where his dad left off? After all, Father Bush has been giving W. plenty of campaign advice. And George W. is a member of the Methodist Church, which according to Robertson is in the pocket of the Antichrist.

It’s foolish to expect consistency, let alone logic, from Robertson. He must have some way of explaining his alliance with W. Perhaps he took George W. Bush’s inability to name foreign leaders as a sign Bush II was incapable of building the much-dreaded one-world government.

The question remains, which is more troubling — Robertson’s willingness to work for the offspring of Satan? Or George W. Bush’s decision to welcome the assistance of a man who has preached intolerance and called his father a pawn of the Antichrist? What does all of this say about W.’s loyalty to his father, his family values and his commitment to tolerance?

More to the point, if any candidate accepts the open support of an outright bigot who accuses the candidate’s own father of being part of a Satanic conspiracy to destroy Christianity and enslave billions of people, what won’t that candidate do to win an election?

It’s a good bet we’ll find out between now and election day.