President Clinton is committed to backing Iraqi opposition forces toward eventually forming a new government in Baghdad, say Clinton administration officials. But they acknowledge that risky strategy could take years to bear fruit.
“You can’t work this precipitously,” says one White House official. “What we don’t want is an ill-conceived, poorly prepared effort that will only cost innocent people their lives.” Instead, he adds, the administration’s long-term objective is “to build the opposition into a viable alternative to the current regime.”
President Clinton on Sunday modified his own Iraq policy and moved closer to a Republican-led plan. Late last week, critics like Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., along with former Bush administration officials like Paul Wolfowitz, had urged the Clinton administration to adopt a long-run strategy toward ousting Saddam Hussein. On Sunday Clinton said that while the United States will continue its policy of containing Saddam by working to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction, “over the long-term the best way to address that threat is through a government in Baghdad — a new government — that is committed to represent and respect its people, not repress them; that is committed to peace in the region.”
The last time any U.S. president talked like that was shortly after the Gulf War, when President George Bush called upon Iraqis to “force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside” and bring Iraq “back into the family of peace-loving nations.” Though Bush’s call quickly inspired mass insurrection in northern as well as in southern Iraq, the Bush administration merely stood by as Saddam crushed the insurrectionists with superior firepower that he had ingeniously saved from harm during the Gulf War.
“They were slaughtered,” says Wolfowitz, now the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, who, during the Bush administration, was a senior Pentagon planner. “I got chewed out by [Gen. Colin] Powell for fighting the decision [not to back them] even after it had been made,” he adds. “It was wrong morally and we’re paying for it now.”
Clinton administration officials say they have no intention of repeating past mistakes. Instead, their policy is designed “so the next time this set of circumstances present themselves the results will be different,” says the White House official.
For nearly six years, the Clinton administration followed Bush’s lead of not getting too close to the Iraqi opposition. Last February, during the last dramatic showdown with Saddam, Clinton snubbed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, when he came to Washington to solicit the administration’s backing on behalf of a loose coalition of opposition groups that make the INC.
Critics both within and outside the administration have long argued that the Iraqi opposition is too spent a force to play any effective role. In March, Richard N. Haass, a former Bush administration national security advisor, told the Senate Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs that the Iraqi opposition was “weak and divided.” He added: “Building a strong, united opposition is an uncertain proposition that at a minimum would take years.”
But that didn’t stop the Republican-led Congress from authorizing Clinton to provide the Iraqi opposition with $97 million in U.S. assistance. Though the president signed the bill two weeks ago, he did not encourage the legislation. “The administration has opposed any serious effort to help the Iraqi opposition in recent years,” says Zalmay Khalizad, a Rand Corporation analyst who, during the Bush administration, was also a Defense Department planner. “The question now is, does he have a plan, a strategy, a will for moving forward?”
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The Clinton administration began to rethink its Iraq policy back in February, U.S. officials say, when it became clear that Saddam’s constant thwarting of the U.N. inspection team might render it an ineffective way to curb his ability to produce weapons of mass destruction. “If it hasn’t worked for eight to 10 months,” says another White House official, “then why would it work now?” So officials at the National Security Council and the State Department began reconsidering their options. “But you only have so many tools in your toolbox,” says a State Department official.
The administration’s three main tools have been U.N. inspections to monitor Saddam’s ability to make weapons of mass destruction, unilateral bombing to enforce his compliance with the U.N. inspection team and multilateral economic and trade sanctions to maintain pressure on Saddam and his regime. Newsweek reported last week that in the face of Saddam’s constant thwarting this year of the U.N. inspections, the administration had decided that sanctions, backed up by bombing, would be the best way to contain Saddam in the long term.
“We were not getting anything with the inspections,” explains Andrew C. Winner, a former State Department political/military planner who is now with the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. “So sanctions were seen as the best lever.”
Until Sunday, there was little indication that the administration was even considering another tool: the option of seriously backing the Iraqi opposition to eventually replace Saddam in power. Now, however, Clinton has flagged that goal as a stated objective of U.S. policy, though critics still complain that he fails to move toward it. “I see [Clinton's statement] as inching in the right direction,” says ex-Bush planner Wolfowitz. “But what I think is needed is a very clear statement that we are committed to [Saddam's] removal.”
Instead, the Clinton administration has said exactly the opposite. After Clinton stepped off the White House podium on Sunday, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and Secretary of Defense William Cohen fielded questions from the press. In response to one journalist’s query about whether the president’s unusually strong language suggested that he was seeking to oust Saddam, Cohen said: “He was not calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. What he was saying is that we are prepared and will work with opposition forces or groups to try and bring about, at some future time, a more democratic type of regime.”
Clinton administration officials deny that there is any inconsistency between longing for a new Iraqi government in the future and stopping short of calling for Saddam’s overthrow now. “We are intensifying our efforts” in the support of the opposition, says the White House official. “There will be an effort to work with them more in earnest,” he adds, choosing language that seems like an admission of the administration’s failure to earnestly support the opposition before. Earlier this year, many State Department diplomats and other U.S. officials had privately dismissed the idea of backing the Iraqi opposition because, they said, it was ineffective. This week a few of the same officials who were reached for comment declined to discuss the matter. Others failed to return a reporter’s calls.
Most of America’s allies have yet to formally respond to the president’s new words of encouragement for the Iraqi opposition. But during the standoff with Saddam last February, Saudi Arabia refused to allow American bombers to launch from its soil, fearing that the attacks might be perceived as taking a heavier toll on Iraq’s civilians than its leaders. Now Arab diplomats say they are cautious about the administration’s plan to back the Iraqi opposition.
Many of the front-line states around Iraq, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have long opposed any plan for Iraq that could potentially divide the country. U.S. officials have also long feared the same result. Though about one in five Iraqis are Sunni Arabs like Saddam Hussein, three out of five Iraqis are Shia Arabs who share their religion with the vast majority of Persian people along with the government in neighboring Iran. Nearly one more out of five Iraqis are Sunni Kurds who, to some degree, share an ethnic identity with Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran. Says one Arab diplomat, “We [have long] opposed any plan that could lead to the break-up of Iraq.”
The Clinton administration now seeks to bring America’s regional allies on board with the opposition. “We know we don’t have it yet,” says the White House official. “But we want to work with a broad range of [Iraqi] groups and build a base of support for them with countries in the region.” But first the administration must convince its Arab allies, along with others, that the Iraqi opposition could be resurrected into a viable force. “After years of repression by Saddam Hussein, there is no recognizable Iraqi opposition out there yet,” says the Arab official.
There was once. Back after the Gulf War, on March 1, 1991, the very day that Bush made his call for Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, Shia clerics in southern Iraq called for insurrection, and within days, rebel forces had taken the Iraqi town of Basra near the Saudi border, while fighting had broken out as well in nearly every city in southern Iraq. On March 14, Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq followed suit by launching their own offensive. In less than a week, they liberated every town with a Kurdish-speaking population in northern Iraq. Journalists in northern Iraq at the time interviewed Iraqi army prisoners-of-war who expressed only contempt for Saddam, and they saw Kurds holding hands and singing and dancing in the streets.
This was the moment that the Bush administration chose to ignore. “We should have at least taken out [Saddam's] gunships,” says Wolfowitz, adding that without the protection of helicopters his tanks would have found it riskier to advance. Instead, Bush officials did nothing as first Shia rebels in the south and then Kurdish guerrillas in the north were decimated. In As-Samawah in southern Iraq, fleeing witnesses reported that Iraqi troops shot Shia men on sight as they advanced behind a shield of captured Shia women. Outside Kirkuk in northern Iraq, journalists saw Iraqi forces drop a blanket of fire on fleeing guerrillas and civilians. Tanks only overran Kirkuk after multiple rocket launchers had softened the ground and rocket-firing gunships, along with smaller choppers, had destroyed most fixed targets.
There has been only weak and sporadic armed opposition to Saddam and his regime since. Most of it has been concentrated in northern Iraq, where the CIA, in the mid-’90s, provided at least $15 million in covert aid to the Iraqi National Congress. The INC’s main goal was to unite two feuding Kurdish factions that have long differed over clan-based identification as well as ideology. But the effort collapsed in August 1996, when one of the Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani, invited Saddam to join forces with him against Iraq’s other main Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabini. Saddam’s forces moved in to destroy the CIA-backed operation, reportedly killing many detainees after capture.
Baghdad is the only other place where any significant military action against the Iraqi regime has occurred since the spring of 1991. In December 1996, a group identifying itself as Al-Nahdad, or the Awakening, attacked Saddam’s eldest son, Uday, who was notorious for torturing suspected dissidents, leaving him a paraplegic. Meanwhile, in southern Iraq, though some fighting has occurred among its remote marshlands, no known urban confrontations have taken place since the 1991 revolt, known throughout Iraq as the intifada.
The impact of its demise — throughout Iraq and the region — is something that the Clinton administration now seeks to overcome. To be successful, says Wolfowitz, Clinton “would have to finish George Bush’s war.” But he and other observers doubt whether Clinton is any more committed to the task. “We would have to show people that we were serious about this, and reassure them,” says Winner of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. “And that is a tall order.”
Richard Porter, a law partner in Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s private practice, provided advice and shared information with a covert investigation of President Clinton’s sex life conducted between 1992 and 1994, Salon has learned.
In addition, Porter has been involved in a wide variety of efforts to damage the Clinton presidency, including “opposition research” for the Bush campaign in 1992, the “Troopergate” scandal, the Paula Jones case and the Linda Tripp tapes getting into the hands of Starr’s staff last winter. These revelations raise new questions about whether Starr’s inquiry has actually been independent from parallel efforts by conservative partisans to discredit the president.
Porter, a partner of Starr’s at the Chicago office
of Kirkland & Ellis and a former senior aide to President George Bush, worked in the spring of 1994 to find competent legal counsel to represent
Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton,
according to two attorneys who worked on the case.
In addition, as the New York Times has reported, Porter is
one of three conservative attorneys
who secretly assisted Tripp in obtaining legal counsel, and in
bringing her tapes and other information about Monica Lewinsky to
the attention of the independent counsel’s office. The
information about Porter’s role in the earlier investigation of the
president’s sexual conduct and in assisting Jones in finding
legal counsel has not been previously reported.
The private investigation of Clinton’s sexual conduct was
initiated during the 1992 presidential campaign and privately
financed by Peter W. Smith, a Chicago businessman and conservative
activist and a major fund-raiser for House Speaker
Newt Gingrich.
Porter’s role in these various endeavors has been a
particularly sensitive and contentious issue both for Starr and for Porter’s employer, Kirkland & Ellis. During his tenure as Whitewater independent counsel, Starr has been under constant attack from partisans of the
president, who have criticized Starr because he has been a part-time
prosecutor and some of his law firm’s clients have been adversaries
of the president. Earlier this year, the law firm began an internal
investigation into whether Porter had worked on the Jones sexual
harassment case without the approval of the firm’s other partners.
To date, the firm has declined to comment about that inquiry.
At the time that Porter first began assisting Smith, he was
directing an “opposition research” effort against Clinton for
the Bush reelection campaign. Sources say that Porter continued
to advise Smith regarding the private investigation of Clinton
after Porter became a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, practicing from
its Chicago office.
Through his attorney, E. Mark Braden, Smith declined to
comment. Porter did not
return phone calls seeking his comment.
Smith spent
at least $80,000 from September 1992 to March 1994 to fund a private investigation of the president’s sexual conduct. Much of
that money was ultimately spent to publicize the allegations of
four Arkansas state troopers, who had served on the personal
security detail of Clinton when he was governor, that Clinton carried
on numerous extramarital affairs with their assistance.
Indeed, it was Smith who first introduced the troopers to
reporter David Brock, who published the first story about their
allegations in the American Spectator in January 1994. Smith also
paid some of Brock’s expenses for researching the article,
according to Brock.
Smith was assisted in his efforts to promote the so-called
Troopergate story by a Republican consultant, Eddie Mahe, a longtime friend and advisor to Gingrich. In an interview with Salon in April, Mahe said that Smith
had paid him $25,000 in consulting fees over a two-year period for
providing advice about how best to publicize the troopers’
allegations: “I evaluated what they came up with to see if there
was any way that the establishment press might be attracted to the
story,” Mahe said.
In March 1994, Smith also made $21,000 in payments to two of
the troopers and one of their attorneys. Roger Perry, one of the
troopers, said that he had requested the money from Smith after he
lost a part-time job as a result of having spoken to the press about
Clinton’s indiscretions.
Two people involved in Smith’s investigative effort of the
president said that Porter provided advice about how
Smith might financially assist the troopers if they were fired from
their state jobs for speaking out about what they knew about Clinton.
The American Spectator article by Brock indirectly led
to the Jones lawsuit. The Spectator first
described an encounter between Clinton and a woman identified only
as “Paula” at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Ark., in May 1991.
Angered over the article, Jones sued the president and one of the
troopers.
Two lawyers who have played a role in the Jones lawsuit have
told Salon that in the spring of 1994, Porter was one of numerous
attorneys who worked behind the scenes to help Jones obtain legal
counsel to sue the president. Porter’s assistance came at a
crucial juncture for Jones’ legal battle against the president.
The statute of limitations was quickly approaching, and Jones did
not have adequate legal counsel to pursue her claim.
During the Jones case, attorneys for
Clinton subpoenaed Kirkland & Ellis in an attempt to find out more
about Porter’s possible role in the case. Kirkland & Ellis fought
to quash the subpoena, according to attorneys involved in the Jones
case. But the question became moot last March when a federal judge
dismissed the case.
And on Sunday, the New York Times alleged that Porter was one
of three conservative attorneys who assisted Linda Tripp in finding
legal counsel, and also in bringing her tapes of her conversations
with Monica Lewinsky to the attention of Starr.
The Times alleged that one of the attorneys, Jerome Marcus,
provided the first tip to Starr’s office about the president’s
relationship with Lewinsky. According to the Times account, Marcus contacted Starr’s office about the Lewinsky allegations at least a
week before Tripp contacted prosecutors. Yet, in his impeachment
referral to Congress, Starr asserted that it was Tripp who
first contacted his office about Lewinsky.
Tripp ally Lucianne Goldberg told the Times that Marcus was used as a “cutout” to obscure Porter’s role in helping Tripp, because of Porter’s close ties to Starr.
Charles G. Bakaly III, a spokesman for the Office of the
Independent Counsel, said in a statement that although his office
received a “heads-up call that some information may be coming or
may be out there,” the information provided at that time was
at best “vague” and “sketchy.” Therefore, he asserted, it was too
insignificant to have mentioned in the impeachment report to
Congress.
In private comments, Starr had much harsher things to say
about the Times account: “Did Sidney Blumenthal get a job at the
Times?” Starr commented, according to two people who heard the
comments. Blumenthal is an advisor to the president who has
spearheaded a public relations effort to discredit Starr and his
investigation.
WASHINGTON — Richard Porter, a law partner in Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s private practice, provided advice and shared information with a covert investigation of President Clinton’s sex life conducted between 1992 and 1994, Salon has learned.
In addition, Porter has been involved in a wide variety of efforts to damage the Clinton presidency, including “opposition research” for the Bush campaign in 1992, the “Troopergate” scandal, the Paula Jones case and the Linda Tripp tapes getting into the hands of Starr’s staff last winter. These revelations raise new questions about whether Starr’s inquiry has actually been independent from parallel efforts by conservative partisans to discredit the president.
Porter, a partner of Starr’s at the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis and a former senior aide to President George Bush, worked in the spring of 1994 to find competent legal counsel to represent Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, according to two attorneys who worked on the case.
In addition, as the New York Times has reported, Porter is one of three conservative attorneys who secretly assisted Tripp in obtaining legal counsel, and in bringing her tapes and other information about Monica Lewinsky to the attention of the independent counsel’s office. The information about Porter’s role in the earlier investigation of the president’s sexual conduct and in assisting Jones in finding legal counsel has not been previously reported.
The private investigation of Clinton’s sexual conduct was initiated during the 1992 presidential campaign and privately financed by Peter W. Smith, a Chicago businessman and conservative activist and a major fund-raiser for House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Porter’s role in these various endeavors has been a particularly sensitive and contentious issue both for Starr and for Porter’s employer, Kirkland & Ellis. During his tenure as Whitewater independent counsel, Starr has been under constant attack from partisans of the president, who have criticized Starr because he has been a part-time prosecutor and some of his law firm’s clients have been adversaries of the president. Earlier this year, the law firm began an internal investigation into whether Porter had worked on the Jones sexual harassment case without the approval of the firm’s other partners. To date, the firm has declined to comment about that inquiry.
At the time that Porter first began assisting Smith, he was directing an “opposition research” effort against Clinton for the Bush reelection campaign. Sources say that Porter continued to advise Smith regarding the private investigation of Clinton after Porter became a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, practicing from its Chicago office.
Through his attorney, E. Mark Braden, Smith declined to comment. Porter did not return phone calls seeking his comment.
Smith spent at least $80,000 from September 1992 to March 1994 to fund a private investigation of the president’s sexual conduct. Much of that money was ultimately spent to publicize the allegations of four Arkansas state troopers, who had served on the personal security detail of Clinton when he was governor, that Clinton carried on numerous extramarital affairs with their assistance.
Indeed, it was Smith who first introduced the troopers to reporter David Brock, who published the first story about their allegations in the American Spectator in January 1994. Smith also paid some of Brock’s expenses for researching the article, according to Brock.
Smith was assisted in his efforts to promote the so-called Troopergate story by a Republican consultant, Eddie Mahe, a longtime friend and advisor to Gingrich. In an interview with Salon in April, Mahe said that Smith had paid him $25,000 in consulting fees over a two-year period for providing advice about how best to publicize the troopers’ allegations: “I evaluated what they came up with to see if there was any way that the establishment press might be attracted to the story,” Mahe said.
In March 1994, Smith also made $21,000 in payments to two of the troopers and one of their attorneys. Roger Perry, one of the troopers, said that he had requested the money from Smith after he lost a part-time job as a result of having spoken to the press about Clinton’s indiscretions.
Two people involved in Smith’s investigative effort of the president said that Porter provided advice about how Smith might financially assist the troopers if they were fired from their state jobs for speaking out about what they knew about Clinton.
The American Spectator article by Brock indirectly led to the Jones lawsuit. The Spectator first described an encounter between Clinton and a woman identified only as “Paula” at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Ark., in May 1991. Angered over the article, Jones sued the president and one of the troopers.
Two lawyers who have played a role in the Jones lawsuit have told Salon that in the spring of 1994, Porter was one of numerous attorneys who worked behind the scenes to help Jones obtain legal counsel to sue the president. Porter’s assistance came at a crucial juncture for Jones’ legal battle against the president. The statute of limitations was quickly approaching, and Jones did not have adequate legal counsel to pursue her claim.
During the Jones case, attorneys for Clinton subpoenaed Kirkland & Ellis in an attempt to find out more about Porter’s possible role in the case. Kirkland & Ellis fought to quash the subpoena, according to attorneys involved in the Jones case. But the question became moot last March when a federal judge dismissed the case.
And on Sunday, the New York Times alleged that Porter was one of three conservative attorneys who assisted Linda Tripp in finding legal counsel, and also in bringing her tapes of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky to the attention of Starr.
The Times alleged that one of the attorneys, Jerome Marcus, provided the first tip to Starr’s office about the president’s relationship with Lewinsky. According to the Times account, Marcus contacted Starr’s office about the Lewinsky allegations at least a week before Tripp contacted prosecutors. Yet, in his impeachment referral to Congress, Starr asserted that it was Tripp who first contacted his office about Lewinsky.
Tripp ally Lucianne Goldberg told the Times that Marcus was used as a “cutout” to obscure Porter’s role in helping Tripp, because of Porter’s close ties to Starr.
Charles G. Bakaly III, a spokesman for the Office of the Independent Counsel, said in a statement that although his office received a “heads-up call that some information may be coming or may be out there,” the information provided at that time was at best “vague” and “sketchy.” Therefore, he asserted, it was too insignificant to have mentioned in the impeachment report to Congress.
In private comments, Starr had much harsher things to say about the Times account: “Did Sidney Blumenthal get a job at the Times?” Starr commented, according to two people who heard the comments. Blumenthal is an advisor to the president who has spearheaded a public relations effort to discredit Starr and his investigation.
WASHINGTON – As President Clinton flies to Moscow for an uncertain summit with President Boris Yeltsin, a whiff of recrimination is already in the air. Amid the steady drumbeat of criticism over the Monica Lewinsky affair, a troubling new question is being considered: Who lost Russia?
Never mind that Russia is not yet lost and that its political and economic crises could still stabilize. But with Wall Street’s 513-point plunge Monday, fanned by continued global uncertainty — and by Russia’s prolonged political crisis in particular — concern is deepening about the fragile young democracy.
“It could get much worse,” Stephen Cohen, a Russian specialist at Princeton, told PBS’s “Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” referring to the crisis in Russia. “It will get worse, I’m absolutely convinced of it.
“Russia’s economic collapse will mean social pain, social anger, vengeance, hatred,” Cohen said, reminding viewers that all this would be playing out in a country that was not long ago the second superpower. “Leave aside the nuclear weapons. If this country spins out of control, if this country becomes an Albania or Indonesia scenario, you’re talking about a major political catastrophe as well.”
No one in Washington has yet publicly raised the question of who lost Russia, but scholars and experts who follow Russia for a living accept with a sort of weary resignation that such a debate is now inevitable and could claim victims in the administration. If it comes to that, some of these scholars say, the first to wear a scarlet “R” on his forehead will be Vice President Al Gore, the administration’s most outspoken proponent of the reforms that have decimated the Russian economy and fomented the current political crisis.
“The front guy in the administration is Gore,” Cohen said in an interview with Salon, noting the vice president co-chairs the U.S.-Russia commission on reform with now-acting Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. “That’s been his baby. Of course you can’t find him now. He’s hiding. This will hurt him in the presidential primaries when Democratic challengers say this policy was Gore’s and he’ll have to take responsibility.”
Other scholars reject the question itself. “Russia was never ours to lose,” says Marshall Goldman, a Russian specialist at Harvard University. “It’s the Russians who lost Russia. We worked on the margins. We gave them advice. But we didn’t force them to adopt it. We always do this, torture ourselves about who lost Russia, who lost China. It’s a mistake.”
Cohen says Russia probably will have to return to some form of state-controlled economy to weather the current crisis. During the Great Depression, he notes, President Franklin Roosevelt used the government to put Americans back to work, and it is not unreasonable for Russia to do the same. The problem today arises, he says, when these practical solutions run up against the “monetarist orthodoxy” that has become the ideological fashion of the times.
“The danger is that the United States will start screaming, ‘Communism! communism!’” Cohen says. “That kind of a debate will be completely dysfunctional. We have to open our mind and say to the Russians, ‘OK, the policy that we recommended to you failed. Let us hear what you propose. We’ll try to help you. We will not scream that this is a return to communism because we realize that the Russian state has got to reenter the world economy. It’s got to come back from this crisis and stabilize things.”
But even as Cohen and other scholars warn against the dangers of an ideological debate over Russia, they cannot resist some finger-pointing themselves.
The story of America’s current involvement with Russia, they note, goes back to the Bush administration, which formulated the policies when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In the wake of that historic moment, then-Secretary of State James Baker toured the former Soviet republics and got the leaders of those countries to sign onto a 14-point “bill of rights” that allowed them to qualify for American assistance.
But American aid back then was counter-productive, says Barry Ickes, a Russian expert at Penn State. “It consisted of subsidies for imported food, which Russia didn’t need,” he says. “At that point, a ruble stabilization fund would have helped. But that would have had to have been combined with policies that closed down money-losing industries. And that simply didn’t happen.”
While American champions of Russian reform like Harvard’s Jeffrey Sachs argued strenuously for greater loans from the International Monetary Fund for ruble stabilization, experts like Goldman argued against it. “They couldn’t have absorbed it,” he said, reflecting on conditions in Russia back then. “They didn’t have the institutions. There would have been even more capital flight.”
Joining Goldman were scholars like Cohen and Peter Reddaway at George Washington University, who warned against a cookie-cutter approach to transforming Russia’s old command economy into a free-market system. In response to those who sought to pattern Russia’s transformation after the Polish model, they warned that what worked for Poland would not necessarily work for Russia. “Poland’s market system had been dormant and simply needed to be awakened,” Goldman says. “Russia’s market system had been decimated and you couldn’t reawaken it with a prince’s kiss.”
After Clinton took office in 1993, the Democratic administration launched a “missionary crusade to transform Russia into a copy of American’s economy and junior partner in world affairs,” Cohen says. While the administration waved fistfuls of money at Moscow and expressed its unqualified support for Yeltsin, the main industrial pillars of the Russian economy were being taken over by a small group of oligarchs, who managed to evade paying any taxes. As inflation soared and the lot of the ordinary Russian worsened, the only advice that the Clinton administration could provide the Russians was to “stay the course on reforms,” Cohen says.
“Why is the creation of a bunch of monopolies and corrupt bankers reform?” Cohen asks. “In America, reform was when we brought those types of people under control.
“Every time Clinton and Gore say, ‘Stay the course’ to Russia, it provokes more anti-Americanism,” he adds. “These policies have completely de-modernized Russia. Russia is full of more anti-Americanism now than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve been in this business for 30 years.”
For Cohen and other scholars, the main question now is whether Clinton will use his visit with Yeltsin to deliver a message of “compassion and understanding” to the Russians. “It’s an interesting moment,” Cohen says. “Can we, America, be undogmatic? Can we revisit facts, revisit old ideas, be compassionate, not start screaming, ‘The communists are back, the anti-reformers are running things?’”
Even if Clinton delivers such a message, the other question is whether anyone in Russia will hear him. Last week, even when it appeared that the Russian parliament would accept Chernomyrdin as prime minister in exchange for a softening of economic reforms, a number of respected foreign policy hands called on Clinton to postpone his visit until the political situation in Russia clarified. Now, with the parliament’s rejection of Chernomyrdin’s appointment, Clinton’s visit has been stripped of an operating government. To make matters worse, parliamentarians will be on vacation during Clinton’s trip.
“Last week, there didn’t seem any point in going. Now, it makes no sense at all,” says Ickes, who rejects the administration’s explanation that Clinton is going in order to show support for Yeltsin at his time of need. “That’s a ridiculous argument,” Ickes says. “Yeltsin’s weakness doesn’t come from a lack of Western support. The forces arrayed against Yeltsin are anti-Western, anti-American, anti-IMF, who accuse Yeltsin of being a puppet of the West. So Clinton’s visit isn’t going to help Yeltsin. On substantive issues, there’s not much Clinton can accomplish. The administration already has said they’re not bringing any more money. So the question then becomes: What’s the point?”
The point, answers Goldman, is that a last-minute cancellation would have aggravated an already serious crisis. “If he doesn’t go, it would be worse,” Goldman says. “Then it’s a vote of no-confidence. The Russians need to be encouraged to face up to their problems. The days when Clinton could come over and say, ‘Do it this way’ are over. But he can say, ‘Come on, let’s get together. It’s important that the country pull itself together in this time of crisis.’”
In his appearance before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury last Monday, President Clinton testified that he had perhaps six sexual “contacts” with Monica Lewinsky, and that they all occurred in the first part of 1996, with the exception of one further contact in early 1997, according to a legal source close to Clinton. “They never had sexual intercourse, and Clinton ended it in early 1997,” says the source. “She didn’t want to, but had no choice but to accept that. They really were friends and they remained friends.”
The source added that “there was never any discussion between them that amounted to obstruction of justice. Very early on, and not in response to Starr’s investigation, they took steps — as anyone would — to keep their relationship secret.” The source described the further questions put to Clinton by Starr and prosecutors as “quite disgusting,” and said Clinton refused to answer them. Published reports have disclosed that Clinton became so angry at the questioning that at one point, he and his lawyers withdrew from the room where the inquiry took place and did not return for an hour.
After wresting a confession from Clinton about his affair, Starr’s strategy now seems to further humiliate the president by exposing each and every lurid detail of the sexual relationship. This legal gambit would indeed have been damaging against a president like Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan — what American would have liked being forced to contemplate their passionate writhings? The public does not excuse Clinton’s dalliance with Lewinsky, but they seem far more able to put it into the context of his entire presidency, and recognize at the same time that raging hormones belong to the young. Washington had become accustomed to its aged presidents.
The last virile commander in chief was, of course, Jack Kennedy, inaugurated at 43, whose lifetime of sexual “contacts” numbered in the hundreds, according to historian Michael Beschloss. JFK was followed by Lyndon Johnson, whose extramarital adventures are said to have occurred before he became president at 55; Richard Nixon, 56, and Gerald Ford, 61 — neither of whom generated a hint of sexual intrigue, for obvious reasons; Jimmy Carter, who at 52 said he had lust only in his heart; Reagan, 69, whose own illicit affairs occurred earlier, during his Hollywood career; and George Bush, inaugurated at 64, who was rumored to have engaged in a discreet, long-term affair with a former aide while he was Reagan’s vice president, but managed to keep it out of the press.
Clinton’s aged 1996 opponent, Bob Dole, had an affair years earlier, during his first marriage, a story a Washington Post reporter nailed down before the election, with the woman in question going on the record. But executive editor Leonard Downie spiked the story. There was widespread speculation at the Post that Downie’s own 1996 affair, with a friend of his wife, was responsible for the Post blackout of the Dole affair. (Downie has since divorced and married the friend.)
At the elite dinner parties in Washington these days, there are not many people defending Clinton. “The Zeitgeist is to be against him, especially at the New York Times and the Washington Post,” says one social insider. “Anyone who says anything positive about Clinton or negative against Starr and the press is strongly and hostilely challenged.”
Within these circles, few people identify with Clinton’s vitality and promiscuity. By the time Clinton and his youthful crew arrived, official Washington had become a town of 60- to 80-year-old ex-appointees and advisors to the elderly Reagan and Bush administrations, no longer much interested in sex, especially pre-Viagra.
These Washington insiders have forgotten how sexual the pursuit of political power actually is. Most presidential campaigns bristle with erotic electricity, largely due to the immense power the candidate is seeking. As Henry Kissinger famously declared, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Washington luminaries — from senators to TV reporters — attract legions of groupies, some very aggressive, some vulnerable, some both.
Campaigns and Washington service involve long separations of married couples, and there are often brief affairs between staff members, between flight attendants and the Secret Service, between members of the press, all of whom are sharing an intense experience away from home and hearth. Coming together on a political quest, hitting the road for months and living on expense accounts in different hotel rooms every night is an explosively erotic mix. The endless and enormous temptations presented to candidates, particularly, are unimaginable to most people. It is the rare still-potent man who doesn’t succumb, and, as psychologist Joyce Brothers has pointed out, the physical energy and testosterone levels of those who seek high office far exceed the average person’s — with the possible exceptions of Richard Nixon and Bob Dole, who appear to have been fueled primarily by resentment.
The candidate’s psychology is that he has worked exhaustively, night and day, for many years to get to the pinnacle, and now he is still working night and day, fighting the Congress, fighting the press, fighting even some in his own party, locked for political reasons in what is perhaps a loving but no longer passionate marriage, and he says to himself, “What about the inner me? Where is my reward? I’m not getting any. I want sexual love!” This is the way it is.
Churchill said about being a public figure, “There is one’s public life, one’s private life and then there is one’s secret life.” But Clinton’s political enemies seethe with sanctimony, insisting against all signs to the contrary that leaders must have no personal contradictions, that their inner lives must always correspond to family and religious strictures.
Age is not Clinton’s only problem inside the Beltway. There is also creed. In an unusual article in the National Journal, media writer William Powers remarks upon the particularly harsh judgments being levied on Clinton by a coterie of liberal-to-moderate Democratic journalists and pundits who are also Catholics. The most judgmental in their commentary, says Powers, are the Irish Catholics among them. (Powers identifies himself an Irish Catholic.) The harshest is Chris Matthews, host of CNBC’s “Hardball,” who has been termed by Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales as “the screaming meanie.” Close behind in the vitriol count are New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and Michael Kelly, editor of the National Journal and columnist for the Washington Post. Somewhat more measured is NBC’s ubiquitous Tim Russert, and more pained than censorious are Post columnists Mary McGrory and Mark Shields. Among the chorus of Catholic former Clinton staffers who have been piling on are Dee Dee Myers and Leon Panetta.
In comments to Powers, several members of this “whole gang of us” — as Matthews termed the group, many of whom are close friends — talked about the moral absolutism of their Catholic backgrounds. But what about the other Catholic tradition that emphasizes “original sin and fallen human nature?” Powers was asked by liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, a Catholic who usually supports Clinton, “Does he [Kelly] believe in the forgiveness of sins?”
In Time’s special issue last week, Myers (who is married to New York Times reporter Todd Purdum, who has been writing about Whitewater), writes of her disappointment with Clinton’s Lewinsky speech — because he wasn’t contrite or apologetic enough to suit her, because he shifted responsibility to Paula Jones and Ken Starr and because he hadn’t done right by those who gave him “their votes, their hopes, their labor and their love.”
If you want to watch the chickens of the Monica Lewinsky and campaign finance scandals coming home to roost, keep an eye on the Middle East.
In May, it should be recalled, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tried to revive the gasping Middle East peace process by delivering a clear and unambiguous ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
Either accept a U.S. proposal for a modest Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank or the Clinton administration would “re-examine our approach to the peace process” and go public with its disagreements with Netanyahu’s ultra-right-wing government. Albright and her aides made a point of reiterating that the American proposal, which calls on Israel to surrender 13 percent of the territory in return for concrete Palestinian steps to bolster Israel’s security, would not be “watered down.”
The peace process stalled because Netanyahu was offering only a 9 percent withdrawal. Albright’s threat to go public meant that for the first time Netanyahu would have been forced to explain to Israeli voters — two-thirds of whom support continued negotiations — why the other 4 percent of territory was worth killing the peace process and straining relations with the country’s chief ally. It would have meant exposing the damaging role played by his obstinate coalition partners, most of whom refuse to relinquish one more inch of West Bank territory to the Palestinians.
The administration’s tactic struck a nerve, sending Netanyahu, his American Jewish supporters and their amen corner in Congress into a froth. On Netanyahu’s instructions, the powerful pro-Israeli lobby complained to members of Congress about the administration’s tone, with the lobby’s well-known ability to influence Jewish campaign donations for the midterm elections an unspoken but unmistakable threat. As a result, 81 senators signed a lobby-dictated letter to Clinton, warning him not to go public with his differences with Netanyahu.
Though Albright, at least publicly, stuck by her refusal to dilute the American proposal, Netanyahu’s tactic of facing down the administration through Congress was working. The first sign was an extension of the two-week deadline that Albright set for an Israeli response. Then the deadline was extended again as the Israelis played for more time.
Then, in a hopeful sign last week, senior Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Tel Aviv for the first time in 16 months. The Israelis agreed to a further 1 percent withdrawal in addition to their original offer of 9 percent, but demanded that the remaining 3 percent of territory under the American proposal be turned into a “national park,” upon which the Palestinians would be forbidden to build. The Palestinians refused, and the talks ended in deadlock, with both sides urging the Clinton administration to step in to help.
Then came the shocker. The Clinton administration, mediators of the Middle East peace process since the Oslo Accords of 1993, refused to mediate. “They should stay engaged, and they should continue to work,” said White House spokesman Michael McCurry. “There’s no progress to report, true. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t make progress. And they ought to try harder.”
The Clinton administration’s refusal to intervene masked a much more craven cave-in. According to American, Middle Eastern and European sources, Albright’s ultimatum to publicize its differences with Netanyahu has been dropped altogether, on order from the president himself. Undermined by her boss, the gutsy and sharp-tongued secretary of state now appears to be what Texans would call “all hat and no cattle.”
Why the cave-in? First of all, the Lewinsky scandal has so weakened Clinton that he is perceived by Israeli leaders as wearing an empty holster. Prominent Israeli parliamentarians from Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party openly deride Clinton as “up to his neck in scandal.” Therefore, the reaction in Jerusalem to his “accept or else” bluster goes something like: “Or else what? We have 81 senators on our side. How many troops do you have, besides your loud-mouthed secretary of state? Moreover, at this — ahem — delicate time in your presidency, do you really want to get into a fight with Israel over our security needs? No? We didn’t think so.”
If the Lewinsky scandal has tied one of Clinton’s hands behind his back in the Middle East, his Democratic campaign finance concerns have tied the other. As Democrats prepare to recapture the House this fall, and as Vice President Al Gore gears up for his presidential run in 2000, the party depends heavily on a small number of wealthy Jewish donors. No one likes to admit that fact, but the nation may learn more about this dependence if Attorney General Janet Reno recommends an independent counsel to investigate campaign finance abuses during the 1996 election.
Their donations underscore the corrosive effect of money on politics. Despite recent polls that show 80 percent of American Jews favor more administration “pressure” on Netanyahu to move the peace process forward, the small inner circle of Democratic Jewish donors do not. Their message to Clinton is simple: Take your hands off Israel, or take your hands out of my pocket. Clinton, knowing where his bread is buttered, has withdrawn the ultimatum that led so many to believe that he meant business in the Middle East.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the right-wing policies of Israel and its U.S. lobby were met by firm American resolve. In 1991, President George Bush refused to give Israel $10 billion in loan guarantees until Jerusalem pledged not to use the money to settle Russian immigrants in the occupied territories.
Outraged, Jewish lobbyists swarmed over Capitol Hill, three quarters of the Senate signed a letter warning Bush to stand down and American Jews even branded the president an anti-Semite. But Bush refused to stand down, and in the end he prevailed. The tension in American-Israeli relations caused Israelis to think twice about their right-wing leaders, and in 1992, they elected Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister.
Clinton and his aides are fond of boasting how little the Lewinsky scandal has affected his job performance, how he’s able to “compartmentalize” and filter out the background noise of the scandal to focus on the important policy issues at hand.
If ever there was a need to demonstrate that ability, it’s now. If the Middle East peace process dies — and make no mistake about it: It is very close to death — renewed fighting between Israelis and Palestinians is as certain as the sunrise. This is not a good time to let things slip. Jordan’s King Hussein, 62 years old and perhaps the most moderating figure in the Arab world, is ill. Despite Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel, Hussein’s successor may not have the stature to prevent the country’s majority Palestinian population from joining the fight. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty could snap as well, causing two decades of American peacemaking in the Middle East to unravel in an instant. And to punctuate that threat, Iran recently tested a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel. For the United States, the consequences of such a war would be incalculable.
“Lame duck” is a term that doesn’t even begin to capture the result of Clinton’s Monica and money scandals. “The Cowardly Lion” would be more like it, accent on the lyin’.
