MER - Washington - 3 March:
    It's never been like this!
    Washington in the age of Clinton has never been more scandalous or more duplicitous.  Political deception and chicanery are hardly new to this capital, but the Clinton folk have lowered all standards, in some cases considerable so.  Even Oval Office groping and phoning-for-dollars have been reduced to a kind of redneck grotesquesness.
   What's really important to appreciate about all this is that Bill Clinton's personal life does in fact mirror his political and financial dealings, contrary to public perceptions and the polls.  True enough, Clinton is a masterful actor and manipulator; but beneath the public facade the same deceitfulness and debauchery being so tortuously revealed about his "personal life" can similarly be found in Clinton's "political life".  Things Middle Eastern, for instance, have been bad in Washington for some time; but never like this!
   The Israeli/Jewish lobby was powerful before; but never like today!  Clinton essentially sold U.S. Middle East policies to this power special interest group that helped bring him to power.  He personally never had much interest in, knowledge about, or experience with the region.  And "the lobby" -- an intertwined group of some 30+ pro-Israeli and Jewish organizations -- knew this from the beginning.  Indeed, the President of the main Capital Hill Israeli lobby group -- the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) -- was secretly taped himself in 1991 bragging how the Clinton campaign had been infiltrated with many of "his people" and how when elected Clinton would be their man.
  Sure enough, from the very start, Clinton put many of the lobby's chosen into key government jobs from the White House and the State Department to the Pentagon and the CIA.  Today, one of the "his people",
a former Israeli lobby official, is Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East!  And a former Israeli army volunteer is the President's main money-man, dubbed "Senior Political Adviser" and stationed two
offices down from the Oval Office where he can oversee all comings and goings.
   Rampant militarism and cheap sloganeering have been prevalent in Washington in the past of course; but never with such hubris, such arrogance, and such deceitfulness as comes from the Clinton appointees  and their Israeli interlocutors.  The campaign promise was to bring a "kosher kitchen" to the White House.  Clinton even lied about this --for we now know he really meant "kosher Cabinet"!
   The following is from the inside pages of The Washington Post a few days ago.  Though labeled satire, it bites so hard precisely because in today's Washington such parodies and realities substantially intersect!
 

"Reporters fear that the leakers in the White House, whom they cannot name other than to say that one of them rhymes with Bidney Slumenthal, will be forced to tell the grand jury the names of the journalists to whom the leaks were leaked.  Correspondingly there are fears at the White House that some journalists have been leaking themselves, letting Starr's deputies know the names of the White House leakers, and that Starr's deputies may soon leak this information to other journalists,who will then leak it back to the White House, finally resulting in total pandemonium and confusion, and everyone will feel bad.

"Starr may soon have to subpoena himself to find out what he knows, according to a senior White House official disguised as a rosebush.  Already the stakes have gotten so high that some newspaper stories are appearing with no bylines, because the reporters are ethically bound not to reveal who they are...
 
"In the grimmest scenario of all, the leaks from the Clinton and Starr camps could simply evaporate, requiring journalists to rely solely on William Ginsburg to leak them information.  The voluble attorney for Lewinsky has appeared don all the broadcast networks as well as CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, Nickeodeon, and the Cartoon Channel, and has had an antenna and a microwave dish permanently mounted on his skull so that he can be uplinked by satellite at anytime anywhere in the world.  Some critics say Ginsburg is not serving his client's interests.  He replied that he has to be outspoken because his client is a liar and a stalker, "in the best meaning of those words".

"Lewinsky herself has been largely in seclusion except for brief visits to watch her sister Tara perform in the Olympics and to provide support for her jailed cousin Ted, also known as the Unabomber.

"United Nations inspectors, meanwhile, are probing a tip that Lewinsky was originally developed by Saddam Hussein to use against President Clinton as a 'biological weapon'."

"What's certain is that both Starr and the White House are playing hardball. Starr has shown that he will do whatever it takes -- even if it means making Lewinsky's mother cry, even it if means hauling Clinton's dog Buddy in front of the grand jury and denying it a delicious-looking doggie-biscuit -- to find out if the president had certain moments of panting blissful inappropriateness with a young staffer who, everyone has to admit, has been looking better and better in the most recent photographs.

"Clinton, in turn, has shown that he will do whatever it takes, even if it means watching his friends and staffers dragged through the mud and the entire government nearly immobilized, to maintain the aura of dignity around the presidency by declining to admit stuff that everyone knows is true.  Clinton apparently feels that if the American people thought he groped and exploited a staffer, they might start to think that he sometimes shades the truth.  They might lose respect for him and not introduce him to their sisters, daughters, wives and surprisingly vixenish mothers.

"Vernon Jordan, Clinton's friend, golf partner and alleged co-conspirator, has been trying to keep a low profile in recent weeks, focusing on his work as an attorney, power luncher, board member for dozens of corporations and philanthropist who gets jobs not just for Monica Lewinsky but for all young people who might be interrogated about their complicated human relationships with the president.

"Press secretary Mike McCurry, asked recently to explain why he has no comment on any substantive matter involving the scandal, said he couldn't comment on that.  He then went 'on background' and said that he was not Mike McCurry and had never met Mike McCurry.  He then paralyzed the press corps with a Boredom Ray from his forehead."