The administration that calls itself "the most ethical" in history has harvested a cornucopia of corruption.
Millions of Americans are overwhelmed by the voluminous output of the Clinton sleaze factory. So was Peter Wehner of Empower America, until he compiled a 27-page Roadmap Through Scandal.
Wehner's Roadmap raises serious questions about abuse of power and obstruction of justice: Who persuaded the FBI to help smear the staff of the White House Travel Office? Who requisitioned more than 900 FBI files on members of previous administrations? Who authorized the removal of Whitewater documents from the office of Vincent Foster after his alleged suicide? Who possessed the missing Rose Law Firm billing records relating to real estate fraud, prior to their mysterious reappearance? Did the White House interfere in the Resolution Trust Corporation's investigation of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan? Did Bill Clinton perjure himself at the trial of Susan McDougal? Did he promise a pardon in return for her silence? Were payments arranged for Webster Hubbell meant to keep him quiet?
"The White House now acknowledges that President Clinton's top advisers and confidants mounted a campaign in 1994 to help find lucrative employment for Webster L. Hubbell," reports Wehner. He recalls that Hubbell -- the former associate attorney general, Hillary Clinton's former law partner, one of Bill Clinton's closest friends, and a central figure in the Whitewater inquiry -- "was then facing a rapidly unfolding criminal investigation into his business and billing practices while he was at the Rose Law Firm."
Both Hubbell and Hillary Clinton "had some involvement in Castle Grandé, a real estate project that bank examiners said was founded on sham land sales and phony loans intended to enrich insiders at Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, a failed Arkansas thrift that federal juries have found was a center of insider deals, whose collapse has cost taxpayers at least $50 million." The question that concerns investigators, says Wehner, is "whether Hillary Clinton deliberately tried to hide her involvement in the project, and whether Hubbell sought to conceal the record of her work on Castle Grandé and other matters by removing files on them from the Rose Law Firm."
Hubbell received a $100,000 payment from a subsidiary of the Lippo Group soon after he began "withholding important personal financial documents from Whitewater investigators," observes Wehner. "Mr. Hubbell received more than $500,000 in the nine months between his resignation and guilty plea. The $500,000 was given by about a dozen enterprises, many of which were controlled by Clinton associates or major Democratic donors."
What might the Lippo Group -- and its owners, the Riady family -- expect to gain in return for its generosity toward Hubbell? "The Riady family has an unusually big stake in maintaining Most Favored Nation status for China," Wehner observes, "since Lippo maintains enormous investments in Hong Kong, which will revert from British to Chinese control in July 1997, and in China proper. These investments would be seriously damaged -- possibly bankrupted -- were China to be blocked from exporting its goods to the United States."
