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Would you vote for a Hillary/Gore ticket?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by kokopuffs, Oct 16, 2007.

Page 8 of 11

mc mark Member

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NewYorker said:

It's really the same thing. And we don't need these types of leaders.
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Who does NewYorker feel is best for the country?

#141 mc mark, Oct 18, 2007

thegary Member

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mc mark said:

Who does NewYorker feel is best for the country?
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a canada/india joint military dictatorship?

#142 thegary, Oct 18, 2007
thumbs Member

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mc mark said:

It's telling that not one person can come up with any coherent reason for the visceral hatred of Hillary. This thread is 7 pages long and the question has been asked several times. Can anyone give any rational excuse for the Hillary hate?
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Disagree. Some of us have 1been busily involved in the American economy.

Hillary inspires visceral dislike because of all the borderline criminal affairs we so willingly attribute to the Bush administration.

For example, when a politician's name to linked to something shady, you wonder but you forgive and move on. When that politician's name is linked repeatedly through the years with scandal, there's generally some fire under all that smoke. And I'm not even counting the proven vindictiveness and self-glorification Hillary exhibits. To me, she is leaps and bounds worse than Dubya.

To wit:

1) She absolutely turned her back on Arkansas in the most ungrateful ways thinkable -- the people who gave Bill and Hillary their start. Believe me, there is deep-rooted hate there for her -- not so much Bill -- because of her cavalier politics.
2) Whitewater -- the worst land swindle in AR history.
3) Subsequent "suicide" of Vince Foster
4) Filegate
5) $100,000 windfall off a $1,000 investment
6) Involvement in the investigations of drug money laundering while Bill was governor
7) Her role in pardoning the FALN 16
8) Senatorial pardoning of the New Square Four
9) Her role in trashing Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and all the other girlfriends when their only sin was committing adultery with her husband. (Okay, I forgive her on that one.)
10) Very, very shady contributors like Hiu and the guy who runs the telemarketing listing service for scammers.

The list is endless. Those are just from memory.

#143 thumbs, Oct 18, 2007
kokopuffs Member

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Plus, she looks like the chick from the new Manchurian Candidate. I'd hate her for that alone.

#144 kokopuffs, Oct 18, 2007
NewYorker Ghost of Clutch Fans

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mc mark said:

Who does NewYorker feel is best for the country?
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Right now, the only candidate I feel I could vote for is Obama.

#145 NewYorker, Oct 18, 2007
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NewYorker said:

Right now, the only candidate I feel I could vote for is Obama.
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but what if it was a obama/gore ticket?

#146 danny317, Oct 18, 2007
mc mark Member

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thumbs said:

Disagree. Some of us have 1been busily involved in the American economy.
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Thanks for the honesty thumbs

So the hatred mainly comes from not being convicted or indicted of any of the rumors you sited?

#147 mc mark, Oct 18, 2007

mc mark Member

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NewYorker said:

Right now, the only candidate I feel I could vote for is Obama.
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We agree!

Man! We've been doing that a lot lately!

#148 mc mark, Oct 18, 2007
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NewYorker said:

Right now, the only candidate I feel I could vote for is Obama.
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Hilarious. Not only is he a raging liberal, but there's not a single position he holds that is out of line with the liberals on this board.

#149 Batman Jones, Oct 18, 2007
NewYorker Ghost of Clutch Fans

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Batman Jones said:

Hilarious. Not only is he a raging liberal, but there's not a single position he holds that is out of line with the liberals on this board.
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Not at all, I wouldn't say Obama is a liberal at all. I think he's a centrist and someone who really is a moderate. I think he's someone who can bring both conservatives and liberals together. He's a pragmaticist.

I don't think he has a serious chance of winning this election cycle though, I think he's setting himself up to be a front-runner down the line.

What I like about Obama is that he doesn't engage in absolute politics. He won't take an either or stance, and can balance things and really be someone who builds a consensus across republicans and democrats. He'd be a very popular president - very clintonesque or even reagan-like.

#150 NewYorker, Oct 18, 2007
Batman Jones Member

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NewYorker said:

Not at all, I wouldn't say Obama is a liberal at all.
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Well, you're wrong about most things so this isn't surprising. And you have a habit of falling for rhetoric in all things. Obama says he's a centrist and you like him so you agree. But you can't name one single issue on which he is substantively out of step with liberal positions expressed here (to your great dismay) and elsewhere.

Then again, maybe you're just being "sarcastic" when you say you back Obama. Maybe you're just conducting another of your grand sociological experiments.

#151 Batman Jones, Oct 18, 2007
rimrocker Member

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thumbs said:

For example, when a politician's name to linked to something shady, you wonder but you forgive and move on. When that politician's name is linked repeatedly through the years with scandal, there's generally some fire under all that smoke. And I'm not even counting the proven vindictiveness and self-glorification Hillary exhibits. To me, she is leaps and bounds worse than Dubya.

To wit:

1) She absolutely turned her back on Arkansas in the most ungrateful ways thinkable -- the people who gave Bill and Hillary their start. Believe me, there is deep-rooted hate there for her -- not so much Bill -- because of her cavalier politics.
2) Whitewater -- the worst land swindle in AR history.
3) Subsequent "suicide" of Vince Foster
4) Filegate
5) $100,000 windfall off a $1,000 investment
6) Involvement in the investigations of drug money laundering while Bill was governor
7) Her role in pardoning the FALN 16
8) Senatorial pardoning of the New Square Four
9) Her role in trashing Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and all the other girlfriends when their only sin was committing adultery with her husband. (Okay, I forgive her on that one.)
10) Very, very shady contributors like Hiu and the guy who runs the telemarketing listing service for scammers.

The list is endless. Those are just from memory.
Click to expand...

Ugh.

Wingnut fantasies never die.

Just taking the first three...

Whitewater:

The end of the $73 million witch hunt

Independent counsel Robert Ray's final Whitewater report confirms what was clear from the start -- Bill and Hillary Clinton were innocent.

By Joe Conason
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/col/cona/2002/03/22/whitewater/

Mar 22, 2002 | Almost exactly a decade after Whitewater commenced with a confusing article in the New York Times, the great pseudo-scandal finally concluded last Wednesday with the release of a mind-boggling, five-volume report from the Office of Independent Counsel. Ten years of investigative mania, partisan malice and misplaced ambition haven't improved the story, but merely inflated a footnote into an epic.

To read the contents of the 2,200-page document produced by the OIC -- at $73 million, or more than $33,000 per page, probably the costliest publication in human history -- is to marvel at how stubbornly these prosecutors evaded the obligation to admit that their primary targets, Bill and Hillary Clinton, were innocent. Even now they cannot confront that damning verdict without resorting repeatedly to the weasel phrase that has become their fraternal motto: "insufficient available evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt."

It is likely by now that most Americans have forgotten what, exactly, Kenneth Starr and his persistent assistants were attempting to prove. The Whitewater allegations were vague and constantly shifting, as each headlined accusation quietly evaporated. The few clear and pertinent questions about the defunct development deal were answered with finality at least seven years ago.

Did the Clintons abuse their political authority to help their real-estate partner James McDougal keep afloat Madison Guaranty, his insolvent savings and loan, as the original Times article suggested? No. The investigation quickly revealed that then-Governor Clinton ordered his appointees to treat McDougal no differently than anyone else. Did the Clintons profit illicitly from McDougal's manipulations? No. Investigators learned within a year after the probe began that the president and first lady were swindled by McDougal and had lost about $40,000. Did Bill Clinton play any part in obtaining an illegal loan from the crooked businessman David Hale? No. The only testimony to that effect came from Hale and McDougal, both sources that the OIC knew were bereft of credibility.

There was never, in short, a plausible case that the Clintons had committed a single illegal act, or that they even had the slightest idea what McDougal had done. The footnotes to the final report show that the OIC failed to uncover any significant information about Whitewater beyond what the lawyers at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro had found when they completed an exhaustive and exculpatory report on the land deal "and related matters" in late 1995. Yet by then the creative prosecutors working for Starr -- and their allies in the media -- were focused on another target. If they couldnt get the president, they would settle for indicting his controversial spouse.

Once it became obvious that the Whitewater deal itself would never yield an indictment against either of the Clintons, Starr's zealous lawmen decided to rake through the files of the Rose law firm, looking for some violation by Hillary Clinton or any of her former partners. Rose had represented Madison, which sounded suspicious, or could be made to sound suspicious. And they did discover that Webster Hubbell, a Clinton friend and former Rose partner, had committed multiple frauds, mostly against his own firm. The problem, from the prosecution viewpoint, was that Hillary Clinton, instead of being complicit in Hubbell's crimes, had been among his victims.

Eventually, Starr's prosecutors turned to the task of proving that Mrs. Clinton had lied about or hidden something -- and it didn't much matter what. They spent years trying to show that she had testified falsely about who had first arranged for Rose law firm to represent Madison Guaranty, and whether Jim McDougal had or had not paid his legal bills on time. Had she correctly remembered brief conversations that had taken place eight or 10 or 12 years earlier? Could she recall, with perfect accuracy, every minute she had billed a client connected to Madison from that bygone era?

The account of this phase of the investigation is numbingly pointless. Mrs. Clinton's version of various events differs in minor detail from testimony offered by her former partners and associates -- but then none of them agree precisely with each other. The notion that anyone might face criminal charges over such minutiae would be amusing if it weren't so sinister. (If you want to understand the OIC's gambit, try to recall perfectly a conversation or a circumstance from 10 years ago, and then imagine that you might be indicted by an unscrupulous lawman if somebody else contradicts you.) Perhaps someday Starr will explain why he and his colleagues regarded the endless parsing of these irrelevancies as a mission of national importance.

The final report does contain a tantalizing reference to the missing Rose billing records that caused all of Washington to swoon in January 1996, when they were found in the White House. The theory was that Mrs. Clinton had concealed her billing records because they would prove that she had guilty knowledge of swindles by McDougal and others. They proved the opposite, confirming her testimony (and reaffirming information previously available in other copies of the same records). There was no conceivable reason to hide them, and even less motive for producing them suddenly at the beginning of an election year.

But Starr's successor, Robert Ray, could not resist the impulse to impugn her reputation one last time. So he includes a reference to three witnesses who claimed to have seen Mrs. Clinton carrying a box of what "could have been" a "rolled-up sheaf" of billing records sometime in July 1995. Actually, only two of these individuals said they saw her carrying any papers, and none explained how they would have guessed what the billing record looked like.

"Insufficient evidence" is putting it mildly. But Ray has spent the past few months preparing to run for the Senate in New Jersey, where he must think that smearing Hillary Clinton will impress Republican primary voters.

With all its discussion of obstruction and concealment, this report is itself a form of cover-up. Its massive size and complexity are designed to obscure the fundamental truth. This case was dead as early as July 1995, when the Clintons were cleared by the Pillsbury report (a comparative bargain at only $3.5 million), and no later than January 1997, when Starr made his first abortive attempt to resign in frustration.

There was never a "Whitewater case." There was only a political prosecution that was transformed from a failed financial investigation into a successful sexual inquisition, encouraged by a media elite that ought to have exposed rather than applauded this gross abuse of prosecutorial power.
Click to expand...

Foster:

3 Different investigations, including Starr, all ruled it suicide.

The available evidence points clearly to suicide as the manner of death.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/docs/foster.htm
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Filegate:

March 17, 2000
Report Clears White House In Inquiry Over F.B.I. Files
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...25750C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

Nearly four years after the office of independent counsel began investigating how the White House acquired some 900 confidential F.B.I. files, many of them of prominent Republicans, the current head of the office, Robert W. Ray, officially reported today that no criminal wrongdoing had been involved.

The report was the first of several to be issued over the next several months by Mr. Ray as he closes the independent counsel's office, which has been investigating a range of issues involving President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In a statement released at the same time he filed the report at the federal courthouse here, Mr. Ray said: ''In the F.B.I. files matter, the independent counsel determined there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official, or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was involved in seeking confidential Federal Bureau of Investigation background reports of former White House staff from the administrations of President Bush and President Reagan.''

The report itself was filed under seal and was not released publicly, under procedures established under the independent counsel law that give those named in the report a chance to respond. Lawyers familiar with the report's contents said it concluded that the files had been inadvertently collected at the White House through a series of errors committed by midlevel officials in the White House security office.

The report also definitively clears Bernard W. Nussbaum, a former White House counsel, of any wrongdoing in connection with a peripheral matter involving the files.

The acquisition of the F.B.I. files led to wide criticism of the Clinton White House for its apparent carelessness in handling sensitive personnel files. More troublesome was broad speculation that the files were obtained purposely to collect political intelligence on prominent Republicans. Some of the files received by the Clinton White House were those of Brent Scowcroft, President George Bush's national security adviser, and Marlin Fitzwater, press secretary to Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush.

The investigation included fingerprint analyses to see if any senior Clinton officials or the first lady had handled the files. Those tests produced no evidence that the files had been read by senior officials or Mrs. Clinton, investigators said.

The report concluded that the files were improperly collected because a midlevel investigator, Anthony J. Marceca, requisitioned them from the F.B.I. using an outdated list compiled by the Secret Service of who had passes to the White House.

Some senior Clinton associates said today that they were pleased about the findings and sought to portray them as evidence that justified their complaints that enormous time and money had been wasted in the investigation, which started with the Clinton's investment in the Whitewater real estate venture and expanded to many other areas. The investigation, which has lasted more than five years, is estimated to have cost more than $50 million.

The only public statement from the White House today was by Jim Kennedy, a spokesman who said that the Ray statement ''confirms what Mr. Starr said two years ago.'' Mr. Ray succeeded Kenneth W. Starr.

But Mr. Ray's office is planning to file other reports in the coming months. The next report, due about July, will deal with how officials fired seven longtime employees of the White House travel office and planned to replace them with longtime associates of the Clintons. That report may be more problematic for the Clintons as it will likely explore Mrs. Clinton's role. She has insisted to investigators that she was only slightly aware of what was happening while others have testified that she was at the center of it.

In his statement today, Mr. Ray struck a different tone than had Mr. Starr, who had deeply strained relations with the White House. Mr. Ray made a point of thanking the White House for its cooperation.

Under the independent counsel law, the reports are filed with a special three-judge panel. The law expired in June, but its provisions still govern Mr. Ray's operation.

The panel allows people named in the report to see it to respond to it. After that, a process that could take three months, the report may be released publicly.

More than a third of the 100-page report filed today was devoted to the Nussbaum investigation, which had come to symbolize for many in the Clinton White House the quickness with which Attorney General Janet Reno had once sought to turn minor accusations into full-blown independent counsel investigations.

Ms. Reno had asked the independent counsel's office to investigate whether Mr. Nussbaum had testified untruthfully before Congress. A House committee investigating the acquisition of the files wanted to determine who had hired Craig M. Livingstone, who was in charge of the office when the files were collected.

In testimony before the committee, Mr. Nussbaum denied that he had ever told an F.B.I. agent that Mr. Livingstone was hired because either he or his mother was a friend of Mrs. Clinton's. The agent, Dennis Sculimbrene, had produced handwritten notes of his interview saying that Mr. Nussbaum attributed Mr. Livingstone's hiring to an association with Mrs. Clinton.

White House officials were angered that Ms. Reno sought an independent counsel to investigate Mr. Nussbaum, as many argued that the case was always flimsy because it involved two different accounts of a meeting, Mr. Nussbaum's and Mr. Sculimbrene's. In the end, the report is unequivocal in its conclusions that there is no case against Mr. Nussbaum, lawyers familiar with it said.

Mr. Ray said in his statement that ''The independent counsel found no substantial evidence that Mr. Nussbaum lied to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight about his discussions with Mrs. Clinton regarding the hiring of former Office of Personnel Security Director Craig Livingstone or about his knowledge regarding the circumstances of Mr. Livingstone's appointment.'' Mr. Ray added that there was no evidence that Mrs. Clinton had been involved in the hiring.
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If Ray's not good enough, try Starr...

As to the FBI files, Starr says that "while there are outstanding issues that we are attempting to resolve with respect to one individual," who is not named, the investigation "found no evidence that anyone higher" than White House security officials Craig Livingstone or Anthony Marceca "was in any way involved in ordering the files from the FBI. Second, we have found no evidence that information contained in the files of former officials was used for an improper purpose."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/impeach111998.htm
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#152 rimrocker, Oct 18, 2007
El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking

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I'm telling you, if Hillaroid, the most cheated on woman in America, wins the democratic primary, then you can expect ALL of this stuff to come back to life.

Read this little excerpt -- great stuff. Hillary has gotten clowned by Bill on so many occasions. Just pathetic of her to stick with him -- I guess that's her unbridled selfish power hunger for you...

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/troopers.html

#153 El_Conquistador, Oct 18, 2007

mc mark Member

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Trader_Jorge said:

I'm telling you, if Hillaroid, the most cheated on woman in America, wins the democratic primary, then you can expect ALL of this stuff to come back to life.
Click to expand...

Why would you perpetuate a bunch of lies?

Oh wait...

#154 mc mark, Oct 18, 2007
El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking

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F**k off! It's enough that I have to see you ****-kickers every day, I'm not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut."

(From the book "American Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p. 90 - Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with "Good morning."

BUENOS DIAS

#155 El_Conquistador, Oct 18, 2007
rimrocker Member

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More:

FALN 16:

First lady opposes presidential clemency for Puerto Rican Nationalists
From CNN White House Correspondent Chris Black

September 5, 1999
Web posted at: 11:34 a.m. EDT (1534 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/09/05/senate.2000/hillary.puerto.rico/

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Sept. 5) -- First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton opposes her husband's offer of clemency to a group of Puerto Rican nationalists saying they took too long to renounce violence.

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton's U.S. Senate exploratory committee, said Mrs. Clinton felt that the prisoners had waited too long to accept the condition for the commutation of their prison sentences -- the renunciation of any future violent activity.

President Clinton, responding to an appeal for clemency from a number of religious organizations, Puerto Rican politicians and former President Jimmy Carter, offered to commute the sentences of 11 prisoners. He also would reduce the remaining sentences of three others and cancel fines levied against two more. The commutation offer, made August 11, set conditions that included the renunciation of violence.

Each of the prisoners has served more than 19 years, longer than the amount of time usually served for the crimes they were convicted of committing, said White House officials.

None of the prisoners was found guilty of murder, bombing or hurting a person.

Their crimes include armed robbery and illegal weapons possession. Most of the inmates did not have lawyers and refused to defend themselves in court because they did not recognize the authority of the US government.

In a statement Sunday, Mrs. Clinton said three weeks was long enough and the failure to respond to the president's offer in that amount of time "spoke volumes."

Wolfson said Mrs. Clinton now would oppose the clemency offer even if the prisoners renounce violence.
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Drug Laundering:

Behind the Clinton cocaine smear
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/03/26news.html

Conservative billionaire funded secret investigation of Clinton's alleged drug connections.

BY MURRAY WAAS | Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife secretly paid more than $250,000 to two law firms and a former Mississippi law enforcement official to investigate allegations that President Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, ordered local law enforcement authorities to protect the activities of a cocaine smuggling ring operating in his state.

The investigation was part of a broader, three-year, $2.4 million anti-Clinton campaign funded by Scaife from June 1993 to December 1997, known as the "Arkansas Project."

As part of the Arkansas Project, Scaife retained a private investigator and former Mississippi state law enforcement officer named Rex Armistead to look into Clinton's alleged drug connections, according to documents and sources. Armistead is a former director of the criminal investigation section of the Mississippi Department of Safety.

The disbursements to Armistead and two law firms are detailed in financial records obtained by Salon, and the role of the private investigator was described by four sources.

Armistead supplied information about his Clinton drug investigation to the House Banking Committee, which conducted an exhaustive two-year probe of the charges, according to a committee spokesman. Federal investigators have found no evidence to support the allegations, which have been widely circulated by fierce conservative opponents of the president.

The investigative effort by Armistead was so secretive that funds that were paid by Scaife to Armistead were first funneled through two tax-exempt foundations, and then through two law firms before they finally reached Armistead.

Later, Armistead, while twice being interviewed by agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency, misled the federal agents about the true source of his investigation's funding, according to the confidential reports of those interviews obtained by Salon.

Armistead was hired by Scaife to investigate allegations that President Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, ordered state law enforcement officials to turn a blind eye to a cocaine smuggling ring operating out of the small airport of Mena, Ark., about 120 miles southwest of Little Rock.

Almost no expense was spared for Armistead's investigation of the Mena allegations: Armistead took trips to Europe and the Central American nation of Belize to pursue the charges. He also traveled extensively across the United States in the effort.

In a brief telephone interview, Armistead refused to answer most of a Salon reporter's questions about his Mena investigation. He did say that the reporter had false impressions of his work, threatening, "You better be careful what you write, or I'm going to put a lawsuit on you."

Armistead also called the reporter a "punk" and implied that he had investigated the reporter's personal life. "Are you a Jew?" he asked the reporter. When the reporter replied, "I'm Jewish," Armistead said, "I thought so."

Allegations about Clinton and the Mena drug trafficking ring have been publicized for several years by numerous conservative political organizations and media outlets. According to these stories, then-Gov. Clinton ordered Arkansas state officials to overlook the Mena operation because a wealthy campaign contributor was said to profit from the illicit activity, and also because proceeds from the smuggling were allegedly funding a covert CIA operation.

No credible evidence, however, has ever come to light to substantiate the charges.

Indeed, two official U.S. government investigations of the matter -- by the House Banking Committee and the CIA Inspector General -- have found the charges to be groundless.

The first allegations regarding Mena were made on talk radio shows and in videos produced and distributed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Citizens for Honest Government, a conservative, Orange County, Calif.-based political organization. Citizens for Honest Government also covertly paid individuals identified in the group's accounting records as "expert witnesses" who were later quoted in the American Spectator and the Wall Street Journal.

As Salon reported, the Wall Street Journal articles prompted House Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach, R-Iowa, to launch an investigation of Mena allegations. In an interview with Salon, David Runkel, the House Banking Committee spokesman, said that House Speaker New Gingrich encouraged Leach to undertake the investigation and that Gingrich followed its progress.

"I don't know the frequency or the nature of the contacts between Mr. Leach and the Speaker," Runkel said. "But I do know that Mr. Leach has kept the Speaker appraised and that the Speaker has been appreciative."

Armistead provided information from his Mena investigation to federal law enforcement officials, journalists for conservative publications such as the American Spectator and investigators for the House Banking Committee, according to documents and sources.

Runkel confirmed that committee investigators had spoken with Armistead on numerous occasions. "More than one of our committee staff spoke to him several times," Runkel said. "But information for our investigation was gathered from hundreds of people. Mr. Armistead was not a primary source."

Twice, Armistead also met with agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency to provide information to them about his Mena investigation, according to confidential DEA reports obtained by Salon.

Armistead urged DEA agents to investigate the Mena allegations. But the DEA agents conducting the interviews were also interested in who was funding Armistead's efforts, the DEA reports indicate.

During both interviews with the DEA, Armistead misled agents as to who was behind his investigation. In one interview with DEA agents, Armistead said that he had been retained by a law firm that represented the Republican National Committee. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said they knew nothing about Armistead. In a second interview with the DEA, Armistead said he was working with the House Banking Committee.

But in an interview with Salon, Armistead denied ever meeting with investigators from the House Banking Committee or the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Information unearthed by Armistead was also used for a series of articles written about Mena that appeared in the American Spectator, written by the magazine's editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. The articles on Mena were published over the objections of other editors at the magazine, including one who resigned over the matter, sources at the conservative magazine said.

In conversations with others at the Spectator, the sources said, Tyrrell often referred to Armistead as "my investigator."

Indeed, the American Spectator played a key role as a conduit through which Scaife sent funds to Armistead and other agents of the Arkansas Project, two sources said.

Under the scheme, two of Scaife's tax-exempt foundations transferred as much as $600,000 a year to the American Spectator Educational Foundation, which owns the conservative magazine. The American Spectator, in turn, then transferred almost all of the funds to Stephen S. Boynton, an attorney with long-standing ties to Scaife, according to documents detailing the financial transactions.

Boynton then transferred funds to another law firm, which then paid Armistead to conduct his investigation, two sources said.

In an interview, Armistead said he knew nothing about Scaife or the Arkansas Project. Armistead said that he was paid for his investigation by a Clinton, Miss., attorney, William E. Spell.

In an interview, Spell denied that he had ever retained Armistead to investigate the Mena matter. He also denied having anything to do with Scaife, the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator or Stephen Boynton "I don't even know who the hell these people are," said Spell. "I live in the South. I am trying to forget the North."

But Spell said he had retained Armistead to investigate other matters: "He and I have been involved in some matters that involve sensitive national security issues, and I'm not at liberty to talk about them. It would not be good for the national security. And it would not be proper for the attorney-client privilege to be violated."
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The Falwell connection
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/03/cov_11news.html

HOW THE REV. JERRY FALWELL AND A CALIFORNIA POLITICAL ORGANIZATION HELPED FINANCE AND ORCHESTRATE AN EXTENSIVE ANTI-CLINTON PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
BY MURRAY WAAS

A conservative political organization with ties to the Rev. Jerry Falwell covertly paid more than $200,000 to individuals who made damaging allegations about President Clinton's personal conduct, Salon has learned.

The money was paid out over a three-year period, between l994 and l996, by Citizens for Honest Government, headquartered in Orange County, Calif. The payments are detailed in the organization's confidential accounting ledgers and other internal records, copies of which were obtained by Salon.

The payments and the allegations -- some of which were either fabricated or grossly exaggerated -- were part of a covert and sophisticated political propaganda effort to influence public opinion against President Clinton.

One of the allegations, that Clinton protected an Arkansas-based cocaine-smuggling operation when he was governor of that state, spread from local talk radio shows to propaganda videos to the mainstream media, and eventually prompted an exhaustive, multimillion-dollar investigation by the House Banking Committee in 1994. The investigation concluded Clinton had nothing to do with the drug operation.

In another instance, in March, 1995, the Arkansas representative of Citizens for Honest Government signed a contract agreeing to pay two Arkansas state troopers who had made questionable allegations supporting the theory that the late White House Counsel Vincent Foster had been murdered. The troopers, Roger Perry and Larry Patteson, who had previously told news organizations about Clinton's alleged extramarital affairs, had provided information about Foster's death to Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel.

The drug smuggling and Vincent Foster allegations were prominently featured in "The Clinton Chronicles," a video produced by Citizens for Honest Government and co-financed, publicized and distributed by Falwell. The notorious 1994 video also insinuated that Clinton's political adversaries often met untimely and suspicious deaths.

Citizens for Honest Government also covertly paid individuals who provided information to media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the American Spectator magazine, which named them as sources. Publicists hired by Citizens helped these people get numerous appearances on right-wing talk radio shows.

Almost all of the people named as recipients of Citizens for Honest Government funds in the group's accounting ledgers confirmed to Salon that they had been paid by the organization. The ledgers listed them as "expert witnesses."

Patrick Matrisciana, president of Citizens for Honest Government, acknowledged that his organization had paid the individuals but denied they were encouraged to tell stories to the press and public that were untrue.

"We did not pay people to tell lies," Matrisciana told Salon. "We paid people so that they would no longer have to be afraid to tell the truth. Most of the folks whom we have paid money have been the victims of political persecution and political oppression. These people [told] ... the truth, and we wanted to compensate them for that."

A number of the people who received payments from Citizens for Honest Government also appeared in "The Clinton Chronicles," according to the organization's records.

A spokesman for Falwell, Mark Demoss, said in an interview that Falwell was unaware of the payments made by Citizens to its "expert witnesses." Matrisciana also said in an interview that he did not inform Falwell or anyone else in Falwell's organization about the various payments.

In an interview with Salon lasting several hours, Matrisciana insisted that Falwell had no role in Citizens' payments to people who have made allegations about the president. "I have not had contact with anyone associated with Rev. Falwell for at least a couple of years," he said. However, telephone records obtained by Salon show that shortly before meeting the Salon reporter that very same day, Matrisciana had a lengthy telephone conversation with an official in Falwell's organization.

Asked about that, Matrisciana said: "I guess I'm only a bit player in all of this, but that's all I am going to say."

Demoss gave conflicting accounts of Falwell's relationship with Matrisciana and Citizens for Honest Government. Initially, he said, "The Rev. Falwell and Pat Matrisciana have had a relationship for over 20 years, and Rev. Falwell thought that there might be merit to what Pat had produced." But in a subsequent interview, Demoss said that Falwell and Matrisciana had only "met each other about twice" in their lives.

According to Demoss and Matrisciana, the two men agreed that Falwell would promote "The Clinton Chronicles" on Falwell's "Old Time Gospel Hour" television show, as well as for a special half-hour infomercial.

"We had no involvement with the video until long after the fact," said Demoss. "The only role of Rev. Falwell was to tell the American people about it."

However, a direct-mail fund-raising appeal by Falwell suggests that Falwell was indeed involved with the video much earlier than he has acknowledged. The fund-raising appeal also shows that Falwell subsidized the production of the video as well. In the August 1994 direct-mail solicitation, Falwell asked supporters to "help me produce a national television documentary which will expose shocking new facts about Bill Clinton." The letter stated that Falwell was ready to make it available "as soon a I can raise approximately $40,000 needed to produce this video."

Despite being widely discredited, "The Clinton Chronicles," which contained all the lurid anti-Clinton allegations of cocaine trafficking and murder, was an effective piece of propaganda. With its sophisticated production and its adept film editing, the video imitates the style of an evening news program or television documentary. The video ends with former Republican Rep. William Dannemeyer urging that President Clinton be impeached, while a message flashes across the screen warning: "If any additional harm comes to anyone connected to this film or their families, the people of America will hold Bill Clinton personally responsible."

More than 150,000 copies of the video have been sold, according to Matrisciana. As many as double that number are reportedly in circulation.

The video's commercial success is due in large part to its promotion on Falwell's "Old Time Gospel Hour," as well as in an infomercial for the video, which viewers could order through Falwell's Liberty Alliance.

During the infomercial, Falwell interviews a silhouetted individual whom he identifies only as an "investigative reporter."

"Could you please tell me and the American people why you think that your life and the lives of the others on this video are in danger?" Falwell asks the man.

"Jerry, two weeks ago we had an interview with a man who was an insider," the mystery man replies. "His plane crashed and he was killed an hour before the interview. You may say this is just a coincidence, but there was another fellow that we were also going to interview, and he was killed in a plane crash. Jerry, are these coincidences? I don't think so."

Falwell reassured the man: "Be assured, we will be praying for your safety."

During Salon's interview with Matrisciana, a reporter told him that his voice sounded familiar. When the reporter told Matrisciana that he sounded like the man in silhouette, Matrisciana acknowledged that he was the mystery man.

"Obviously, I'm not an investigative reporter," Matrisciana admitted, "and I doubt our lives were actually ever in any real danger. That was Jerry's idea to do that ... He thought that would be dramatic."

Another key player in the Citizens for Honest Government anti-Clinton scheme was an Arkansas state trooper, Larry Patterson, who in December l993, along with two other former members of Gov. Clinton's personal security detail, first made salacious allegations regarding the private life of the president to the American Spectator magazine and the Los Angeles Times. The American Spectator's "Troopergate" story, which included a reference to a woman named "Paula," was the root of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones against Clinton.

In the April issue of Esquire magazine, David Brock, the author of the American Spectator story, casts doubt on Patterson's and the other troopers' accounts. Admitting that he had an "ideological motive" for writing the original story, Brock says he now wonders whether the troopers "took me for a ride," and accuses them of being "greedy" and having "slimy motives."

One of those troopers, Roger Perry, told Salon that he still believes the stories he told to Brock four years ago are true. But he has also become critical of the operation conducted by Citizens. "I came to believe that what they were up to was wrong," Perry told Salon.

Trooper Patterson was closely associated in the anti-Clinton scheme with Larry Nichols, a disgruntled former Arkansas state employee who has waged a relentless campaign against Clinton ever since the then-governor fired him from an Arkansas state agency for malfeasance in 1987.

In l994, Nichols joined Citizens for Honest Government. Beginning sometime in early l995, he opened up a joint bank account with Patterson. Out of the account, the two made modest payments to at least six other individuals who made allegations about the president, financial and other records indicate.

Patterson and Nichols confirmed the existence of the bank account and details of the payments in separate interviews after Salon learned about them from other sources.

The largest single recipient of funds from Citizens for Honest Government was Nichols, who received more than $89,000. Nichols, who narrated "The Clinton Chronicles," has repeatedly said in interviews that he has never received any money for his appearance in the video or his other anti-Clinton efforts. But according to records obtained by Salon, Nichols received more than $89,000 in l994 and l995 from Citizens for Honest Government and a film company called Jeremiah Productions.

Jeremiah Productions shares offices with Citizens for Honest Government in Hemet, Calif. Matrisciana heads both entities. According to Citizens' records, beginning in 1996 Matrisciana and Christopher Ruddy, a conservative, conspiracy-minded journalist, maintained a joint bank account in the name of Jeremiah Productions that made modest payments to critics of the president.

Ruddy is a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a newspaper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, the reclusive billionaire and vociferous critic of Clinton who has financed numerous investigations of the president.

According to the internal records of Jeremiah Productions, which also were obtained by Salon, as of Sept. 1997 the bank account controlled by Matrisciana and Ruddy had "total assets of $3.069 million" and no liabilities.

Scaife and Ruddy did not return numerous calls for comment. Matrisciana asserted in an interview that neither Citizens nor Jeremiah Productions had ever received money from Scaife. "I wish that was the case," he said. Matrisciana said the two organizations earn their income through an aggressive direct-mail campaign and by sales of their various films and videos.

Three former employees of Citizens for Honest Government told Salon that Nichols received far more than the $89,000 he was paid by the organization. The former employees say that Nichols boasted of earnings as high as $200,000 from selling copies of "The Clinton Chronicles" and other anti-Clinton videos produced by Jeremiah Productions.

In l995, Nichols, in turn, also began to make payments to other individuals who have made allegations about Clinton's personal life, according to banking records and sources familiar with the transactions. The payments were drawn from the joint bank account Nichols maintained with Patterson, the Arkansas state trooper, the documents show.

In separate interviews with Salon, both Nichols and Patterson acknowledged they made at least a half dozen payments from the joint bank account to individuals in Arkansas who have made allegations about President Clinton's private life.

Matrisciana denied in an interview with Salon that he or Citizens for Honest Government were behind the payments made by Nichols and Patterson: "We gave Larry Nichols an awful lot of money, but it does not follow that we directed him how to spend it," Matrisciana said. "He was not our cut-out. He was not our front. And we, in turn, were never a front for Rev. Falwell or anyone else."
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#156 rimrocker, Oct 18, 2007
mc mark Member

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Trader_Jorge said:

F**k off! It's enough that I have to see you ****-kickers every day, I'm not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut."

(From the book "American Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p. 90 - Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with "Good morning."

BUENOS DIAS
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Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what she said,

#157 mc mark, Oct 18, 2007
El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking

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mc mark said:

Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what she said,
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It certainly wouldn't be out of character for Hillaroid. I could list 20 other similar examples if you are not satisfied!

#158 El_Conquistador, Oct 18, 2007

rimrocker Member

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Trader_Jorge said:

It certainly wouldn't be out of character for Hillaroid. I could list 20 other similar examples if you are not satisfied!
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Anything on tape, or is it all heresay?

Wait, wait... I know the answer to that.

Of course, we have a legit photos of the current president shooting the finger and ample evidence of the current vice prez dropping the f-bomb... so, where's the outrage on that TJ?

#159 rimrocker, Oct 18, 2007
El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking

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rimrocker said:

Of course, we have a legit photos of the current president shooting the finger and ample evidence of the current vice prez dropping the f-bomb... so, where's the outrage on that TJ?
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So is this your new "Presidential" standard? LOL

#160 El_Conquistador, Oct 18, 2007

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