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And Nothing but
Lies
Clinton testified as scheduled
on August 17, and took to the airwaves as promised that night. The statement he made
was brief and to the point. "As you know," he said, "in a deposition
in January, I was asked questions about my relationship with Monica Lewinsky. While
my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information. Indeed, I did
have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was
wrong. It constituted a critical lapse on my part for which I am solely and completely
responsible." Although he claimed that he had somehow not committed perjury,
he had misled people: "I know that my public comments and my silence about this
matter gave a false impression. I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply
regret that." But his motives for "misleading" were noble: he was
"very concerned about my family."
Then he angrily turned his
fire on the Independent Counsel. "This [investigation] has gone on far too long,
cost too much and hurt too many innocent people. Now this matter is between me, the
two people I love most -- my wife and our daughter -- and our God . . . it is private,
and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It's nobody's business but
ours." It was a minimalist quasi-apology, coupled with a brazen attempt to tell
the American people that his past perjury and behavior in the Oval Office was none
of their damn business. And so far as a lot of Americans were concerned, it was good
enough. But by now, as reluctant as most Americans were to consider the possibility
that their president had engaged in such tawdry behavior and had lied about it to
them and, despite his protests, probably committed perjury in the Jones case, the
reality of the matter was sinking in. The members of Congress who had believed Clinton's
denials in January turned critical.
It was a minimalist quasi-apology,
coupled with a brazen attempt to tell the American people that his past perjury and
behavior in the Oval Office was none of their damn business. And so far as a lot
of Americans were concerned, it was good enough. But by now, as reluctant as most
Americans were to consider the possibility that their president had engaged in such
tawdry behavior and had lied about it to them and, despite his protests, probably
committed perjury in the Jones case, the reality of the matter was sinking in. The
members of Congress who had believed Clinton's denials in January turned critical.
The wheels of justice continued
to grind. The Independent Counsel recalled several witnesses, and said he'd get a
full report to Congress in a timely fashion. News organizations reported that it
would be turned over to Congress sometime in September, and rumors abounded about
specific dates. When it became apparent that the House of Representatives would likely
publish the report shortly after receiving it, the president asked for an advance
copy, so his spinmeisters could issue a response concurrent with the release of the
report.
On September 9, two vans with
police escorts pulled up to the Capitol and delivered the report and supporting documents.
Two days later, the House voted to release it to the public, and within hours, it
was widely available. (Curiously, the president's lawyers and spinmeisters published
a rebuttal of its charges while the report was still under lock and key, seen by
no one but its authors.) Within 24 hours, several newspapers had published it in
full.
I had a copy in my hands about
two hours after its release, thanks to the Internet. It makes fascinating reading,
but not for its salacious content. Yes, there is something bizarre about a middle-aged
man who has a young employee of his perform fellatio on him, but refuses to climax
in her mouth because he does not "trust and not know [her] well enough."
But the smutty stuff is a relatively small portion of the report, and is related
in a clinical, anti-pornographic style.
What They Did for
Love . . .
The first time she was alone
with him she hiked up her jacket so he could see her thong underwear, and two hours
later he invited her to meet him in George Stephanopoulos's office. They quickly
moved to his private office, where he talked on the phone to a congressman while
she performed oral sex on him. At first their relationship consisted entirely of
stolen kisses, followed by his feeling her breasts with his mouth and hands, and
her fellating him. By the time of their third sexual encounter six weeks later, she
was afraid he had forgotten her name. He offered to perform oral sex on her during
their next encounter a week later, but she demurred because she was menstruating.
After she performed oral sex on him, they returned to the Oval Office (from the windowless
bathroom). "He was chewing on a cigar," she told investigators. "And
then he had the cigar in his hand and he was kind of looking at the cigar in . .
. sort of a naughty way. And so . . . I looked at the cigar and I looked at him and
I said, we can do that, too, some time."
Two weeks later, during their
next in-person encounter (they'd started having phone sex in the interim), she began
to worry that their relationship was one-dimensional: "I asked him why he doesn't
ask me any questions about myself, and . . . is this just about sex . . . or do you
have some interest in trying to get to know me as a person?" At their next encounter,
he talked with her for about 45 minutes, and their "friendship began to blossom."
Two weeks later, the president
abruptly terminated their sexual relationship because he "no longer felt right
about their relationship." But six weeks later, he called her to visit him in
the Oval Office on the pretext of delivering papers, and the next thing they knew
he was inserting a cigar into her vagina. ("It tastes good," he told her
after he put the cigar in his mouth.)* Before their affair was over, they'd
met for ten secret trysts (in the final two he trusted her enough to ejaculate in
her mouth) and exchanged dozens of gifts, and people were starting to notice.
The details may be salacious,
but the story is mundane, and its effect anti-pornographic. The president comes off
as immature, manipulative and, well, a bit silly. Lewinsky comes off as aggressive
and demanding. Their whole affair seems ridiculous.
If Clinton were a great leader,
the story might be tragic. But Clinton is a pathetic sociopath, and the story is
a farce, though not a very funny one.
But the Independent Counsel's
report is only incidentally about sex. Its real subject is the question of whether
the president perjured himself, obstructed justice, tampered with a witness, or abused
his constitutional authority. The report concludes that "there is substantial
and credible information" supporting all of these charges.
I don't know enough law to
know exactly what "obstructing justice" consists of, or exactly what "abusing
constitutional authority" or "tampering with a witness" means. But
I have a pretty clear idea of what perjury is, and the report makes a powerful case
that he lied under oath in both his civil deposition in the Jones sexual harassment
case and in his mid-August testimony before the grand jury investigating whether
he had committed perjury in the Jones case.
A Tangled Web
In the Jones case, he denied
having either a "sexual relationship," or "sexual relations"
or a "sexual affair" with Lewinsky. He claimed he could not remember ever
being alone with her. He claimed he could not remember giving her any gifts, although
he had given her gifts only three weeks earlier. He denied talking to Lewinsky about
the pending Jones case. And he denied discussing Lewinsky's role in the Jones case
with his friend Vernon Jordan. There is a mountain of evidence, including in the
president's own subsequent grand jury testimony, that these statements were lies.
In his testimony before the
grand jury in August, he claimed that he never touched Lewinsky's breasts or genitals.*
And he claimed that his sexual contact with Lewinsky began in 1996, after she had
obtained a paying job at the White House, thus avoiding the embarrassing charge of
having sex with an unpaid intern. Again, the report produces a mountain of evidence
that these statements are false.
Personally, I cannot see how
any refutation is possible. The response from Clinton's attorneys is laughable. It
begins by making a patently political charge against a patently legal document:
[I]t is plain that
"sex" is precisely what this four-and-a-half-year investigation has boiled
down to. The Referral is so loaded with irrelevant and unnecessary graphic and salacious
allegations that only one conclusion is possible: its principal purpose is to damage
the president.
This is an obvious attempt
to play on the Clinton spinmeister theme that the entire investigation has "boiled
down" to nothing but a report on the president's sex life. In fact, the investigation
has already resulted in 14 criminal convictions on other matters that the Independent
Counsel has investigated, and more indictments are in the works.
In point of fact, the report
is more about the president's attempts to keep Lewinsky quiet than it is about sex.
The main section of the report, the "narrative," comprises some 42,948
words, of which only 7,472 are about the sexual encounters between Clinton and Lewinsky.
The charges made in the report arise out of the president's lying about his sex life,
so it is impossible to evaluate them without reporting on those aspects of his sex
life that he is accused of lying about under oath.
There is no more merit to the
rebuttal's claim that the Independent Counsel inclusion of "graphic and salacious
material" was not needed. In his deposition in the Jones case, the president
claimed he could not remember whether he had ever been alone with Lewinsky. Evidence
that she fellated him in the Oval Office on nine different occasions and that on
one occasion he stuck a cigar in her vagina, offers striking evidence that this was
a deliberate lie. To believe the president could not remember whether he was ever
alone with Lewinsky, one would have to believe either that the president engaged
in these acts while others were present, or that his illicit sex life is so extensive
that he has forgotten these episodes entirely.
Or consider this argument against
the first charge leveled by the Independent Counsel, namely, that Clinton perjured
himself in his January 17, 1998, deposition when he claimed that he had neither a
"sexual affair" nor "sexual relationship" with Lewinsky:
[T]he terms "sexual
affair" and "sexual relationship" are inherently ambiguous and, when
used without definition, cannot possibly amount to perjury.
In other words, no matter what
the president had done, he could answer this question anyway he wanted without fear
of perjuring himself!
The Wizard of Is
Okay. What about Clinton's
claim that he did not have "sexual relations" with Lewinsky? Here his attorneys
argue that according the definition offered by the judge in the case, the woman Clinton
was having sex with was having sex, but he wasn't! An amusing footnote to the Starr
Report quotes Clinton's explanation before the grand jury of why he didn't perjure
himself when he "said I did not have sex with" Lewinsky:
It depends on what
the meaning of the word "is" is. If the -- if the -- if "is"
means is and never has been, that is not -- that is one thing. If it means there
is none, that was a completely true statement.
Indeed, so far as the Clinton
defense team is concerned, Clinton should not be impeached no matter what he did.
At least, that seems to be what Chief White House Counsel Charles Ruff seemed to
be saying the next day when he told Tim Russert of Meet the Press, "My goal
because I represent the office of the president and I believe that there is no basis
here for beginning impeachment proceedings is to focus on that proposition and to
convince not only the House Judiciary Committee but very candidly you and the
American people that whatever they believe happened here, there is no grounds for
impeachment" (emphasis added).
Judging from the preposterous
arguments offered so far, that will be no easy task. Twice, the president has gone
into court, knowing what questions he was going to be asked, and extensively prepared
to answer them. And twice he has taken an oath to "tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth." And twice he has lied.
But before we conclude that
the president is clutching at straws and that his end is near, we should remember
that impeachment is ultimately a political process, not a judicial process. The Constitution
specifies that a president may be impeached for "Treason, Bribery, or other
high Crimes and Misdemeanors." But in practice, the House may impeach and the
Senate may convict for any offense they please. Indeed, the first "Article of
Impeachment" against Richard Nixon charged him with "making or causing
to be made false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers
and employees of the United States," which is undeniably less serious than the
charge that Clinton lied under oath to a grand jury.
So Clinton's lawyers can argue
that his perjury is not an impeachable offense all they want. If Congress says it
is, then those arguments mean nothing. By the same token, Starr can argue that perjury
is impeachable, but if Congress says it is not, then his argument means nothing.
(To his credit, Starr makes no such argument: he merely advised Congress that the
president's perjury, obstruction of justice, and abuse of constitutional authority
are "possible grounds for impeachment.")
The members of the House will
have to make up their own minds about whether to impeach. If a majority of them decide
to, then senators will have to make up their own minds about whether to remove the
president from office.
So I'm not planning on collecting
my bet any time too soon. At least some of the people who want to believe the president
will accept the arguments of his defenders, no matter how lame those arguments may
be. And the president remains determined to hold on to his office. Just as he was
unwilling to tell the truth until he had virtually no other alternative (and even
then admitted only part of the truth), so will he clutch to his office until it is
manifest that he will be found guilty and removed from office. He knows how to count
the votes in Congress. And he knows that the vote will not come for some time.
Holding on to Power
The Republicans hold majorities
in both the House and Senate, and the evidence is that they would prefer not to impeach
the president. Certainly, they are better off with a Democratic president who is
wounded so badly he cannot interfere with their legislative plans, and is so preoccupied
with his own survival that he is totally ineffective in setting the national agenda
-- not to mention the fact that he is liable to be a millstone around the necks of
other Democratic politicians.
In contrast, Democrats in marginal
districts have every incentive to get the president out. He certainly isn't advancing
their legislative agendas, and having him in a position of party and national leadership
harms their re-election chances. So it's not surprising that most of Clinton's remaining
Democratic support comes from congresspeople from overwhelmingly Democratic districts.
They have no fear of losing their next election because of the president's unpopularity,
and even a wounded president is able to reward his allies in Congress with pork barrel
projects.
Even so, I suspect the jig
is up for the president. His behavior was outrageous and felonious. Over time, people
will probably overcome their natural distaste for such tawdry character of the charges
against the president and conclude that he has to go. Eventually, there will be enough
votes to impeach him, and he will resign rather than face the ignominy of being the
first president ever convicted by the Senate. And I will win my bet.
But I won't be happy about
it, and not just because a wounded and ineffectual president is better than an effective
and popular one, or because Al Gore is an ideologue committed to an agenda of increasing
government power.
During the whole Lewinsky crisis,
American voters have told the pollsters that they think Clinton's job performance
is good. I think they are correct. Since Clinton's plan to socialize medicine was
defeated, he has done remarkably little to harm the country. He's basically gone
along with some of the more enlightened aspects of the Republican agenda. He's signed
legislation that does away with an individual's "right" to welfare. He's
pretty much kept us out of military conflicts. He hasn't raised taxes. This is more
than you can say for any Republican president since Eisenhower.
And how much harm can a president
who is an acknowledged liar do? Every time I see that wonderful piece of videotape
of him looking into the camera, squinting his eyes to feign sincerity, point his
finger at the American people and say, "I want to say one thing to the American
people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual
relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." I rejoice. How can anyone ever believe
him again?
Personally, if I were a member
of Congress, I don't know how I'd vote. As a lover of human liberty, I'd vote to
keep him in office. But as a lover of justice, I'd want him out of office, disgraced
and serving a jail term.
* Such an admission would have undermined his goofy definitional
argument that his denials that he had had sexual relations with Lewinsky in his Jones
deposition were based on his understanding that sexual relations didn't begin for
him unless he touched the "genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks
of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person
. . . . 'Contact' means intentional touching, either directly or through clothing."
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* Later, Lewinsky wrote (but didn't send) a letter thanking Clinton
for giving her a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: "Whitman is so rich
that one must read him like one tastes a fine wine or good cigar ñ take it in, roll
it in your mouth, and savor it!"
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