sorry, it's not what you think: Joe Conason's Journal The once and current New York Times editor struggles to defend his own scandal: His paper's outrageous Whitewater coverage. - - - - - - - - - - - - June 18, 2003 | Lelyveld in Whitewater firefight The latest firefight in the Blumenthal wars can be observed on the letters page of the New York Review of Books, where the former Clinton aide responds to Joseph Lelyveld's review -- and Lelyveld answers. Today the Times editor takes additional withering fire from my coauthor Gene Lyons, whose Arkansas Democrat-Gazette column dismantles much of Lelyveld's defense of his paper's Whitewater journalism. Much of the argument revolves around whether the Times adequately reported the findings of the Resolution Trust Corporation's report on Whitewater, which cleared the Clintons of wrongdoing in 1995. This may seem a minor point -- but since that report should have brought Whitewater to a conclusion four years before the independent counsel confessed there was no case, it isn't. Blumenthal rightly emphasizes -- both in "The Clinton Wars" and in his letter to the New York Review -- that after studying more than 200,000 documents and interviewing 45 witnesses, the RTC concluded: "On this record, there is no basis to charge the Clintons with any kind of primary liability for fraud or intentional misconduct. This investigation has revealed no evidence to support any such claims. Nor would the record support any claim of secondary or derivative liability for the possible misdeeds of others ..." "Although the Wall Street Journal reported on this conclusion," Blumenthal says in his NYRB letter, "The New York Times did not -- except that two weeks later, a few lines buried in a 'News of the Week in Review' summary mentioned that the RTC had decided not to sue the Clintons, omitting any mention of its conclusion that the Clintons were not responsible for [Jim] McDougal's illegal actions and that, in regards to them, 'no further resources need be expended on the Whitewater part of the investigation.'" Lelyveld mentions a small mistake in the hardcover edition of our book "The Hunting of the President," which was corrected in the paperback. When he says we claim the Times "failed to report" on the RTC report, that is a distortion. Actually, we criticized the way the nation's newspaper of record handled a major government report clearing the president and first lady of wrongdoing. After years of tendentious reporting that suggested their guilt, why wasn't such an exculpatory official document covered prominently and excerpted at length? Lelyveld correctly points out that the Times ran stories referring to the RTC report on July 16 and Dec. 24, 1995, and on March 1, 1996. The latter two, he asserts, "focused on the conclusions that there were no grounds for lawsuits against the Clintons or Mrs. Clinton's law firm." Yet none of those stories directly quoted the RTC finding of "no evidence to support any such claims" of fraud or intentional misconduct by the Clintons. (The Dec. 24 article was a 628-word summary, placed deep inside the Sunday paper on Christmas Eve -- and curiously delayed for four days after the report's release by the RTC.) Lelyveld offers various additional arguments on behalf of the Times. He repeats a tendentious claim about Beverly Bassett Schaffer, a former Arkansas official victimized by bad Times reporting, which Lyons corrects (not for the first time). What really reveals the Times editor's mindset, however, is his ringing endorsement of "Blood Sport," James B. Stewart's 1996 Whitewater book. (He probably doesn't know about Stewart's sensational insinuation that Hillary Clinton committed a Whitewater felony, an error caused by his misreading of a simple loan document.) Why would Lelyveld so cherish the Stewart version? Possibly because "Blood Sport" was published before the RTC, the Office of Independent Counsel and every other investigation established that Whitewater was a pseudo-scandal. It's much easier to defend the Times if one never has to acknowledge the embarrassing end of this affair. [12:45 p.m. PST, June 18, 2003]
I already pointed this out in the other thread on bias in the media, the NY Times was way biased in spreading falsehoods on this one, too lazy or unable to find the truth. The only wrongdoing they can pin on Clinton was lying about sex and the only wrongdoing they can pin on Bush is lying to start a war... Blumenthal was saying Clinton wanted to send Special Forces into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden but the Powell and the Pentagon didn't want to do it... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...104-3757265-7244731?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 With verifiable footnotes unlike a book by Limbaugh or Coulter...
perjury...under oath. i'm not equating the two..i'm not saying bush's lies are less than clinton's or vice versa. i am saying that it's not just a "lie about sex" when that lie takes place under oath in the context of a suit regarding sexual harassment. that's more than you lying to your mom about whether or not you had sex with your high school girlfriend.
Dude, I would totally lie to a court before I ever lied to my mom. What kind of man are you, MM? Perjury is a lie under oath. Yeah. Clinton lied about sex under oath. Other people lie when they speak to their nation and the entire world. I'm not a lawyer, but I can't put greater emphasis on a court hearing than the world stage. I don't want any politician to lie to me about anything.
i would disagree entirely...but i'm not saying that if bush lied about the case for war that that's any better...i am saying that our entire judicial system is for crap if we tolerate perjury...so much for justice.
Well, I have never lied to my mom or to a court. But I swear to you on a Billy Paultz made free throw that if I have to lie to one, I'm fibbing to the courts! And if I had to choose fibbing in court about my personal life versus fibbing to my entire nation when I represent them to the world,... that's an obvious choice for me too.
My Mom has an interesting view of Clinton's "perjury... under oath". In her view, any gentleman would lie to protect another woman's honor. To do anything else would be holding the woman up for public contempt. I guess her ideas of honor are out-dated in today's world. Before you dismiss her view, consider that the affairs of men like FDR, Ike, JFK and many others were known to the press and kept quiet. To make them public would have been dishonorable. If the man did his job, his private affairs were just that... private.
Back to the original topic, there is no evidence to support any charges against the Clintons for wrongdoing in the Whitewater investigations, hence no charges...
Hence, the investigation branched out into every single bit of political dirt dredged up by any two bit wing nut with an axe to grind or a story to sell, after all, what's a Whitewater indpendent counsel for? ...i am saying that our entire judicial system is for crap if we tolerate an omnipotent prosecuter who's job is to investigate any and all embarassing information dug up by the president's political enemies..... so much for justice. ...i am saying that our entire judicial system is for crap if we allow the president's political enemies to manipulate a sexual harassment claim in the court system for four years in order to embarrass the president..... so much for justice.
Never hold back your urge to flame, even over a simple BJ lie. We all know Clinton lied under the the Oath of Matrimony.
I read somewhere that the Times ran something like two hundred front section articles on Whitewater and apparently not much of a story on the finding of no proof of illegality by Clinton. What a bunch of legalistic bs, that can't see the forest for the trees, to say that lying under oath in any judicial matter is worse per se than lying while not under oath for instance by a president trying to get a country to go to war in which thousands of people are killed. So a lie in traffic court about speeding is worse than any lie a President could tell the Nation, when he has a televised press conference, since he is isn't under oath ?? Please say you have changed your mind on further reflection. BTW maybe it would be a good idea to put the president under oath when he gives a speech and prosecute him or her if they lie.
AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!! You tell them, and you tell them, and you tell them...and they just don't listen, Woofer, I love you on the war stuff, but Clinton's wrongdoing wasn't about sex, it was about breaking the law. I could give a flying f*ck about his sex life...actually, there are few images I am less interested in than the sex lives of Ms. Lewinsky and Mr. Clinton...I thought he was doing a good job, but to excuse the head of our Justice system, a system based on testimony, and testimonial accountability, just because he ( in a brilliant demonstration of political spin) turned it into a question in the public's eye of " Do I Really, Really Care About The President's Sex Life?" is to miss the point. He broke the law...the man who is supposed to be held to the highest standard broke the law to cover his ass, the same ass he shoulda been booted out on. BTW,if he hasn't already, you do know that MadMax is gonna jump all over this, right?
I agree...I think they each misrepresented the truth, and that Bush's misrepresentation had a much more sinister aim, and greater cost. But they both should be held accountable for that, not for whether Americans still like America after invading another country for false reasons, or whether we care about Clinton's sex life, but for circumventing the systems in place to hold them accountable to the law and the will of the American people.
