The conservative magazine contends that it paid the former state trooper, L.D. Brown, to reimburse him for the cost of chartering a private jet to fly to Washington in 1994 to meet with one of their reporters, and for "investigative services" he performed for the magazine in 1997.

But federal Whitewater investigators have expressed concerns that the payments to Brown, as well as his ties to conservative political activists, may have influenced him to provide erroneous or false information on several matters to independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Most important, Brown provided information to Starr's office that partially corroborated allegations against Clinton made by David L. Hale, a former Little Rock municipal court judge who has been the central witness to the independent counsel's Whitewater investigation.

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Then we have an independent counsel who lacks any moral authority to make his case. Not to mention a press corps that has abdicated its responsibilities to explain to the American people the consequences to constitutional governance of trivializing the impeachment process as a means to conduct partisan warfare.

It is as if the various parties to this dispute are in a fast and furious competition to see who can inflict the most serious and permanent damage to the Constitution and the rule of law. And just when it seemed the debate could not sink any lower, hard-line congressional Republicans continued their assault on Clinton after the Iraq airstrikes, even as American troops were in harm's way.

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Then we have an independent counsel who lacks any moral authority to make his case. Not to mention a press corps that has abdicated its responsibilities to explain to the American people the consequences to constitutional governance of trivializing the impeachment process as a means to conduct partisan warfare.

It is as if the various parties to this dispute are in a fast and furious competition to see who can inflict the most serious and permanent damage to the Constitution and the rule of law. And just when it seemed the debate could not sink any lower, hard-line congressional Republicans continued their assault on Clinton after the Iraq airstrikes, even as American troops were in harm's way.

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The committee chairman, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., has announced his intention to limit questions to Starr. The 37 committee members will be given five minutes each to question the independent counsel about the allegations of bias, leaks, conflicts of interest and collaboration with Clinton's enemies that have plagued his inquiry from the outset.

As Salon has revealed, Starr pursued his initial investigation into Whitewater with the key assistance of David Hale, a tainted witness who stands accused of taking money and legal help from anti-Clinton activists at the Arkansas Project, a secret $2.4 million project to undermine Clinton financed by Starr's former patron, Richard Mellon Scaife. When Starr's Whitewater inquiry went nowhere, he latched onto Paula Jones' civil suit, and then when that failed, he wired Linda Tripp and finally snared Clinton on adultery. The ties between Starr, Tripp and Jones -- which have not been satisfactorily explained -- helped the independent counsel create a perjury trap for the president in his Jones deposition that would lead to the impeachment crisis.

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Milas Hale has told confidants that he had no firsthand knowledge about whether David's allegations regarding Clinton were true, and that he would be lying to the federal authorities if he corroborated his brother's story, as he had been asked to do. Milas Hale ultimately refused to lie on his brother's behalf, sources say.

This account of David Hale's attempted subornation of perjury by his brother was provided to Salon by three people close to Milas Hale. Significant portions of those accounts have been independently corroborated by other sources and documents as well. Milas Hale himself declined to comment for this story, however.

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Their community shared a passionate attachment to the land, which, though harsh and unforgiving, allowed its inhabitants to live, in the words of one historian, amid "fresh air and intense morning sunlight, softened and diffused by the mists and low-hanging clouds."

Although the Hales did not have much in the way of material wealth, they had their way of life and a set of bedrock values. The five Hale children were in attendance every Sunday at the local Baptist church. Their dad constantly told them that education was the only way for them to get ahead. There was no such thing as situational morality. There was only right or wrong.

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Milas Hale has told confidants that he had no firsthand knowledge about whether David's allegations regarding Clinton were true, and that he would be lying to the federal authorities if he corroborated his brother's story, as he had been asked to do. Milas Hale ultimately refused to lie on his brother's behalf, sources say.

This account of David Hale's attempted subornation of perjury by his brother was provided to Salon by three people close to Milas Hale. Significant portions of those accounts have been independently corroborated by other sources and documents as well. Milas Hale himself declined to comment for this story, however.

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But HRC officials didn't know the whole story about D'Amato's record on AIDS. Salon has uncovered new details about the New York senator's role in carrying water for a major corporate campaign contributor, a maneuver that jeopardized thousands of AIDS victims in Zimbabwe, a country that suffers from one of the world's worst HIV infection rates. At the behest of the New York-based multinational insurance conglomerate the American International Group (AIG), D'Amato threatened to introduce an amendment to the Senate foreign operations appropriations bill in 1996 that would have dramatically reduced U.S. aid for Zimbabwe, over a dispute between the Zimbabwe government and an AIG subsidiary. Both the State Department and the Agency for International Development (AID) opposed D'Amato's move. The tale is described in confidential AIG documents.

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But HRC officials didn't know the whole story about D'Amato's record on AIDS. Salon has uncovered new details about the New York senator's role in carrying water for a major corporate campaign contributor, a maneuver that jeopardized thousands of AIDS victims in Zimbabwe, a country that suffers from one of the world's worst HIV infection rates. At the behest of the New York-based multinational insurance conglomerate the American International Group (AIG), D'Amato threatened to introduce an amendment to the Senate foreign operations appropriations bill in 1996 that would have dramatically reduced U.S. aid for Zimbabwe, over a dispute between the Zimbabwe government and an AIG subsidiary. Both the State Department and the Agency for International Development (AID) opposed D'Amato's move. The tale is described in confidential AIG documents.

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The White House has attempted to distance the president from the proposal in recent days, after influential Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., strongly questioned the political and constitutional propriety of any such action. But congressional and administration sources have told Salon that it was Clinton himself who put forth the proposal in a conversation with Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., two weeks ago.

Daschle spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer declined to comment on any private conversations between the senator and the president. A White House spokesman did not return telephone calls.

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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.

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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.

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The grand jury in Fort Smith, Ark., has been investigating allegations since August that funds from that effort, known as the Arkansas Project, were provided to David Hale, the central anti-Clinton witness in the Whitewater investigation of independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

The alleged payments to Hale were made during the time that he was a cooperating witness with Starr's investigation of the president. The grand jury heard testimony in early August from two witnesses who have said that they had firsthand knowledge of the numerous cash payments to Hale by Parker Dozhier, a former Arkansas Project employee.

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But Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr was adamantly opposed to prosecution by the local authorities of Hale, then the most crucial witness to his probe of President Clinton. Starr and his top deputy in Arkansas, W. Hickman Ewing Jr., had let it be known in no uncertain terms that they considered the state inquiry to be part of an effort by the Arkansas political establishment to impede their own criminal investigation of the president and then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.

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The entire affair should now become a private matter between him, his family and God, he argued: "Even presidents have private lives ... It's time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life."

A longtime Arkansas state employee named Charlotte Perry might be excused for believing otherwise. An African-American woman with three young children at home, Perry is the type of person who comes to mind when, as he is wont to do, the president talks about those who work hard and play by the rules. It was such folks whom Clinton said he wanted to serve when he asked us to elect him as president in the first place.

In February 1990, Charlotte Perry hoped that her hard work, integrity and many years of service to the state government were finally going to pay off. She applied for a better paying job as an administrative assistant at a state agency called the Arkansas Board of Review. The position paid slightly more than $17,500 a year.

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Starr's pressure on the state prosecutors culminated during a meeting with them on Sept. 21, 1995, when one of his senior advisors warned that Starr might even consider charging the local law enforcement officials with federal witness intimidation if they proceeded with bringing criminal charges against Hale, according to three sources familiar with the discussions.

The new information indicates that even some of Starr's own investigators had privately raised questions among themselves about the fairness and integrity of Starr's four-year investigation of the president -- an investigation that led to the impeachment report sent to Congress Wednesday. The criminal case against Hale that Starr attempted to derail involved a scam in which Hale looted funds from an insurance company that sold funeral and burial insurance to Arkansas residents, mostly poor African-Americans.

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Starr's pressure on the state prosecutors culminated during a meeting with them on Sept. 21, 1995, when one of his senior advisors warned that Starr might even consider charging the local law enforcement officials with federal witness intimidation if they proceeded with bringing criminal charges against Hale, according to three sources familiar with the discussions.

The new information indicates that even some of Starr's own investigators had privately raised questions among themselves about the fairness and integrity of Starr's four-year investigation of the president -- an investigation that led to the impeachment report sent to Congress Wednesday. The criminal case against Hale that Starr attempted to derail involved a scam in which Hale looted funds from an insurance company that sold funeral and burial insurance to Arkansas residents, mostly poor African-Americans.

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While frenzied media attention continues to swirl around Starr's grand jury probe of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, this previously undisclosed grand jury, meeting far from the national limelight in Arkansas, may eventually pose a threat to the credibility of Starr's four-year Whitewater probe.

The federal investigators conducting the grand jury probe have questioned at least six potential witnesses to date, according to sources. The grand jury itself heard testimony on Aug. 5 from two of the witnesses, Caryn Mann, an assistant director of a funeral home in Bentonville, Ark., and her son, Joshua Rand. The pair first made allegations to Salon in March that conservative political activists had made numerous cash payments and provided other gratuities to Hale during a time when he was a cooperating witness with Starr's Whitewater investigation.

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But the more Simpson looked into the complaints of several of David Hale's own courthouse employees, the more he became convinced that a judge who was sworn to uphold the laws of the state of Arkansas was routinely violating them with impunity. "Some of the things that they were doing were absolutely illegal," recalled Simpson, who is also a retired Little Rock police chief.

After conducting a lengthy inquiry, Simpson concluded that Hale had allowed a private collection company, Special Court Services (SCS), to operate rent-free out of his court and to use restricted law enforcement crime databases. Simpson also discovered that Hale had allowed the same company to collect off-the-books "warrant withdrawal" fees from defendants even though no warrants had been issued in the first place.

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After an apologetic beginning to his speech, the president went on an all-out attack on Starr. Clinton stated: "I had real and serious concerns about an independent counsel investigation that began with private business dealings 20 years ago; dealings, I might add, about which an independent federal agency found no evidence of any wrongdoing by me or my wife over two years ago.

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