If you want the truth about the current administration in Washington, you may have to buy a foreign newspaper.
"The Clintons look good from a distance," observes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Washington correspondent for the London Telegraph. "It is only when you walk through the looking glass into the Arkansas underworld they came from that you begin to realize something is horribly wrong. You learn that Bill Clinton grew up in the Dixie mafia stronghold of Hot Springs, and that his brother, Roger, was a convicted drug dealer. . . . You learn about sworn testimony that links Clinton to cocaine smuggling in the early 1980s. You learn that Clinton's chief of security in Little Rock was gunned down in 1993 by assassins who seem to be enjoying immunity."
Especially revealing was Clinton's selection of Patsy Thomasson, "top lieutenant of convicted cocaine dealer Dan Lasater," as White House chief of personnel. Evans-Pritchard argues that the choice of a person of such dubious character for a position of such great influence demonstrates "how seriously this president has been compromised."
Also revealing was the speed with which the incoming Clinton administration took control of the U.S. Justice Department, just in time to put some irksome investigations on ice. "It was a move of breath-taking audacity," observes Evans-Pritchard, "one that gave the Clintons control over the prosecutorial machinery of the federal government in every judicial district in the country. They then set about eliminating the Director of the FBI, William Sessions, who was known for his refusal to countenance White House interference in the affairs of the Bureau."
Evans-Pritchard argues that actions taken -- and not taken -- by Clinton administration officials created the climate that led to the bombing of the Oklahoma federal building. "What set the deadly spiral in motion," he contends, "was the Waco assault two years before, and the cover-up that followed. No official has ever lost a day's pay for precipitating the incineration of 80 people, most of them women and children, in the worst abuse of power since Wounded Knee, a century ago."
Clinton's worst offense, says Evans-Pritchard, was "turning the FBI into a federal replica of the Arkansas State Police. Whether it is the persecution of dissident investigators in the air disasters of Pan AM 103 and TWA 800, or allowing the White House to peruse the secret files of political opponents, or the alleged intimidation of key witnesses in the Foster case, the FBI," Evans-Pritchard protests, "is starting to look like the enforcement arm of a police state."
The British journalist argues that Clinton in his carelessness and corruption has done serious damage to the American republic. "Nothing does more to sap the life of a democracy than the abuse of power," he observes. "Public trust is dangerously low. According to polls, barely a quarter of the American people now feel they can count on the federal government to do the right thing," says Evans-Pritchard. "Is Bill Clinton to blame? Of course he is. Degradation spreads from the top down."
