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HenchPAC NewsGeorge W. Bush has been getting a good deal of advice, mostly from conservative and Republican quarters, to pardon Bill Clinton soon after Inauguration Day. Among those calling for a pardon for the departing president are the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch; Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post's gifted columnist; Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign manager, Scott Reed; and even the man who lost to Clinton in 1992.
"I don't want something bad to happen," the first George Bush told ABC. "He's been through a lot, the country's been through a lot. Let's heal and forget."
The second George Bush seems inclined to agree -- "I think it's time to get all of this business behind us ... and let [Clinton] move on and enjoy life," he said last week. But he considers talk of a pardon for Monica's soulmate premature:
"The suggestion that I would pardon somebody who has never been indicted -- that doesn't make any sense to me." Doesn't make any sense to me either.
For two years Clinton has been peddling the fable that every accusation made about him was the product of right-wing malice and Republican jealousy. Now, on his way out, he has the cheek to insist that he never ran afoul of the law.
"So after all this time," Clinton told Esquire magazine, "and they spent over $100 million on all these special prosecutors and congressional investigations, trying to make those the whole story of the administration, and they have yet to come up with one example of official misconduct in office -- not one." The danger with an early pardon, one that aborts any charges Independent Counsel Robert Ray may be planning to file, is that Clinton and his media cheerleaders will declare him vindicated. No indictment will be spun into no wrongdoing: He wasn't charged with any crimes, we will be instructed, because he didn't commit any crimes -- "not one."
But he did.
In *An Affair of State*, his book on the Clinton impeachment, Richard Posner -- chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and one of the nation's foremost legal scholars -- concludes that "Clinton engaged in a pattern of criminal behavior and obsessive public lying, the tendency of which was to disparage, undermine, and even subvert the judicial system of the United States." The president's violations were "felonious, numerous, and nontechnical," Posner writes, and it is "clear beyond reasonable doubt" that he is guilty of perjuring himself, suborning perjury in another, and tampering with a witness.
Others judicial voices have said so too. Because of his "serious misconduct," a committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court has recommended that Clinton be disbarred. And a federal judge fined him $90,000 because he "gave false, misleading, and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process."
The Man from Hope seems to have decided long ago that he was exempt from the rules mere mortals must adhere to, and it is to dispel that heresy that Ray ought to indict him. As Ray himself said last April, "There is a principle to be vindicated, and that principle is that no person is above the law, even the president of the United States."
Surely the leading lights of Clinton's party wouldn't object if an indictment was handed up after January 20. How could they? At the time of the president's impeachment trial, they stressed over and over that he would be required to answer for his misdeeds when his term in office was up.
"Whether any of his conduct constitutes a criminal offense," insisted Senator Joseph Lieberman, "... should and must be left to the criminal justice system, which will uphold the rule of law in President Clinton's case as it would for any other American."
"Once the president leaves office," Senator Bob Graham of Florida assured his colleagues, "he will be subject to the same prosecutorial and judicial review all Americans face."
"Rejecting these articles of impeachment," averred California Senator Barbara Boxer, "does not place this president above the law.... He remains subject to the laws of the land just like any other citizen."
"Mr. Clinton may still be prosecuted and convicted of criminal wrongdoing when he leaves office," said Representative Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat, "because the president should not be above the law."
We are all agreed, then: If Ray can prove his case, Clinton should be indicted.
Should he also be pardoned?
Yes, and for the same reason Nixon was pardoned: Not because he deserved it, but because the American people did.
"Nixon ... had already suffered enormously," President Ford wrote in his memoirs. "But I wasn't motivated primarily by sympathy for his plight... It was the state of the country's health at home and around the world that worried me." Let Nixon be prosecuted and "the story would overshadow everything else. No other issue could compete with the drama of a former president trying to stay out of jail... Passions on both sides would be aroused. A period of such prolonged vituperation and recrimination would be disastrous." And "the spectacle of a former president on trial" would damage the United States abroad.
What was true in 1974 is even more true in 2001. Heaven knows there are strong reasons to put Clinton on trial. But the reasons not to are even stronger.
So, yes, pardon him.
But first make sure he's indicted
HENCH adds: Let the liberals like Boxer and Graham boil when GWB refuses to pardon him, quoting Boxer and Graham, "No man, even the President, is above the law."
Shortly after President William Jefferson Clinton leaves office, Independent Counsel Robert Ray is expected to make a decision on whether he should be indicted for possible crimes that were uncovered during the investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Pressure already is being applied by influential Democrats and Republicans alike to encourage his successor to issue a blanket pardon for any and all misdeeds Clinton may have committed in order to spare the nation the expense and embarrassment of a trial.
However, before President-elect George W. Bush can consider whether such an act is justified, he and the citizens of this nation need to know the nature of the crimes that may have been committed.
The political “spin” is that the charges under consideration all concern Mr. Clinton’s relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Therefore, they are only of a sexual nature, and sex, even sex with an intern entrusted to the people’s house, is somehow none of our business. Since illicit sex is a private matter, even perjury is justified if it is meant to spare one’s family the painful discovery.
While I do not share this conclusion, what if it is not “just about sex,” or, more accurately, the molestation of an intern?
In his closing remarks to the House Judiciary Committee, David Schippers, the Democrat who served as chief investigative counsel for the Clinton impeachment, said this:
We uncovered (since the time the Inquiry of Impeachment was passed) more incidents involving probable direct and deliberate obstruction of justice, witness tampering, perjury and abuse of power. We were however, informed both by the Department of Justice and by the Office of Independent Counsel that to bring forth publicly that evidence at this time would seriously compromise pending criminal investigations that are nearing completion.
Please note that Mr. Schippers did not say that these incidents involved only Monica Lewinsky. In fact, the implication in Mr. Schipper’s remarks was that these incidents were separate and apart from the Lewinsky matter.
Presently, there are many people in this country who feel used, bewildered and betrayed because of personal information they hold about crimes allegedly committed by Mr. Clinton, information they willingly shared with both investigators working with the independent counsel and with the Judiciary Committee at great personal expense, that they feel has been ignored or swept under the White House rug. Equally bewildered are those who have had sensitive information that they held on Mr. Clinton pried out of them by aggressive investigators, who, having achieved access to their secrets, seemed to have lost interest in pursing these matters, after having left their targets exposed.
Among the disillusioned is Dr. Paul Fick, a clinical psychologist from Laguna Nigel, Calif. Dr. Fick is an expert in treating individuals with compulsive disorders. In 1994, he felt compelled to go to Arkansas in order to gain insight into the president’s behavior.
In his book, "The Dysfunctional President," Dr. Fick set out his theories as to why Bill Clinton exhibited a strong tendency to lie, was indecisive and often denied personal responsibly for his actions. In the course of his investigation into what Fick maintains is a psychological disorder, he interviewed more than 80 Clinton friends and former associates. At the time, some of the information he uncovered in Arkansas was deeper and far more damaging than he was prepared to handle.
As a result, the book that was released in 1995 only skimmed the surface, partly because Fick did not want to take the focus off of his clinical revelations, and partly because he did not want to betray confidences or put at risk the individuals who had confided in him.
However, one of the most shocking revelations in his book came from Bert German Dickey III, who, for many years, had been involved with both Clinton and the Democratic party in Arkansas but had become disillusioned with Mr. Clinton’s lying and disrespect for the law. Dickey maintained that Clinton, who always was looking ahead to the next election, put a price on the various government commissions in his state of anywhere from $1,500 to $50,000, although, in the end, commission posts often went to the man or woman who came up with the largest campaign donation. Since the law limits individual contributions, the cash was funneled to Democrat Party faithful, who put the money in their own private accounts and wrote checks back to Clinton. According to Fick, Dickey admitted to doing this himself on at least one occasion.
Dickey detailed for Fick how the cash from the sale of seats on the Fish and Game, Highway and other commissions also was funneled to those who were influential in the black community in east Arkansas in order to guarantee a certain number of votes. “You have to pay your drivers and the preachers to get in the black church, and it’s X number of dollars a vote. And that’s how you got the so-called street money to get out and grease the skids, and that’s what we would do.”
After his book was published, Dr. Fick and Dickey were interviewed by FBI agents working for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, together and separately. When Dickey was reluctant to give out information involving some of his friends, Fick said, “They showed him copies of his own checks and told him, ‘You have a much bigger problem.’” The FBI already had documented some of the information contained in the Fick book and, by applying pressure, obviously obtained a lot more. What happened to this information?
Fick turned over copies of the documentation he had on Clinton to the independent counsel and later to investigators for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee because, as he put it, “It was the right thing to do.”
From Fick’s perspective, the plot thickened when Clinton was subpoenaed to testify in the trials of Herbie Branscum and Robert Hill who were indicted on charges of bank fraud related to Clinton’s campaign funding. Clinton had appointed Brascum to the Arkansas Highway Commission. When Clinton was questioned for the trial on videotape he was asked, “When you were governor of Arkansas did you ever put a price on or sell a state commission?” The president answered emphatically that he had not.
If Fick’s accusations are true, then Clinton perjured himself in a case that was not about sex, it was about government corruption. FBI personnel in charge of the independent counsel’s investigation in Arkansas had this information, but for some reason, sat on it.
In December of 1998, Fick got a call from the House Judiciary Committee and was asked to come in for a meeting. Two days before Schippers made his closing argument, Fick gave his information to Schipper’s chief investigator and two attorneys. When Fick laid everything out in chronological order, he said one of the attorneys commented, “I don’t see how he can get out of this.”
However, when Fick was told that this was the first time these investigators had seen this information, he was stunned, because he had faxed it to every Republican member of the Judiciary Committee.
Prior to the 1996 election, Fick contacted former FBI Director William Sessions, who was so surprised by his information that he called Kenneth Starr. At the time Fick was told that this information was just too political to bring out before the election. It would have to wait, and so Fick waited.
When nothing happened, Fick then sat down with staff members of key congressmen and senators including Sens. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Bush Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft and provided each of these men with copies of his documents. In addition, former Congressman William Dannemeyer, R-Calif., personally took this information to House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde.
Prior to the confirmation hearing for Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, Fick said he provided Sen. McCain, who chaired the hearing, information that Slater had bought his highway commission seat in Arkansas. It was ignored.
Fick also said he has provided information to Jeff Gerth of the New York
Times, Peter Yost of the Associated Press and Lou Kilzer, the Pulitzer Prize
winning investigative reporter, formerly with the Denver Post. Fick claims that
Kilzer found three sources to confirm his information, including one in the
White House who wouldn’t go on record. Nevertheless, he said that when the
Post was set to publish the story it was scrubbed after someone at the paper had
a conversation with White House Counsel Mark Fabriani. Fick said he was told
that the White House had “unkind things” to say about his former employer
psychiatrist David Viscott and that Clinton operatives were looking into ways to
discredit him. That was not a surprise.
What was surprising to Fick is that Schippers and his staff ultimately could not
find enough selfless men and women in Congress and other positions of
responsibility who were willing to rise “above party and faction” in order
to reestablish “justice, decency, honor and truth as the standard by which
even the highest office in the land must be evaluated.”
There is every reason to believe that the pattern of corruption that appears to
have existed in Arkansas when Clinton was governor might have continued after
the Clintons moved to Washington, D.C. Schippers has called the House inquiries
into Chinagate, Filegate and Travelgate “infantile.”
At the very least, the American people need to know what, if anything, the
Chinese got in return for the money reportedly given to the Democratic National
Committee and the Clinton Defense Fund and whether it had any impact on our
national security.
There is little reason to suspect that anyone in Congress will have the guts to
pursue this matter. Likewise, there is little reason to believe that the current
independent counsel will have the stomach to lay out the perjury charge Fick
believes he helped to uncover. However, if any of these things should come to
pass, it is likely that George W. Bush will take the avenue of least resistance
and pardon Mr. Clinton from all his past sins.
When Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, the country was
divided on whether or not he should be indicted. One month after taking office,
his successor, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned him for all federal crimes he may have
committed in order to “reconcile divisions in our country and heal the wounds
that had festered too long.”
In retrospect, it may have been the worst decision ever made by one of our heads-of-state. For, if that is the pattern we use for dealing with the misdeeds of all future presidents, our system of government, with its checks and balances, is, for all practical purposes, lost.
HENCH adds: Forget the indictment and trial, let's just get straight to the public hanging.
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