Posted on 07/01/2005 4:06:28 AM PDT by RetSignman
Edited on 07/01/2005 4:31:33 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Time magazine said today that it would provide documents concerning the confidential sources of one of its reporters to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent, Valerie Plame.
The United States Supreme Court turned down appeals in the case on Monday, concluding the gravest legal confrontation between the press and the government in a generation. Two reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, face jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Agreed.
I guess that's why it has to be discredited ASAP as was Gary Aldrich's book warning us that the Clintons were systematically dismantling the White House security system. That facilitated the treason of Chinagate.
Both books were/are attacked in the same manner as smears on peoples' private lives.
I guess I am going to have to read this book after all.
Gary Aldrich got the same treatment this author is getting.
Sad that the conservatives have to fall all over themselves distances themselves from the truth.
I swear it looks like a she-male.
OK, but it is indeed from memory!
Tripp took a phone call shortly after Foster's death from a caller she wouldn't name, who said that the matter Foster was distressed about was something about contaminated blood. The call came directly to the White House legal office instead of through the White House switchboard, so the caller was clearly close to Foster. Tripp was subbing for Foster's secretary Deborah Gorham during lunch hour, as was usual. When she tried to reference the matter on Gorham's computer, she ran into a locked file with password protection.
The computer was later removed and the files lost. Gorham might know what was in those files. I don't think she was ever asked.
Tripp and two of her conservative friends know who the caller was but declined to identify him. We bloodhounds were more than a little interested in his identity (and still are). Now that time has passed, I hope one of these three people will tell us who the caller was.
Foster was known to be involved in the Arkansas tainted blood story. He was thought to be a bag man for the scheme. At one point he personally visited BLOOD TRAIL author Michael Galster and offered him a deal to help squelch an inmate lawsuit. Galster refused, despite a threat from Foster that he would never work for the state again. Thus, we can conclude that Foster not acting as a private attorney but as a representative of Clinton and the state.
What it all adds up to, speculatively, is that Foster may have been ready to blow the whistle on the tainted blood scam due to then-breaking news that many people in Canada were contracting Hepatitis C and AIDS from that blood. There is reason to think the Arkansas gang in the White House tried desperately to talk him out of it just before he died. And failed. The last of these efforts was apparently a summons to the White House Monday evening, July 19th. Foster wouldn't go. The next day he ended up dead in Fort Marcy Park.
As an intriguing added mystery, I found a routine wire story reporting that on Monday, July 19th, Hillary Clinton, who was in California pitching her health care plan, abruptly cancelled all of her California events for the week without explanation. Did she know something was going to happen?? She was on a plane to Little Rock the next day when Foster's body was found, and within hours was directing her staff in the White House to ransack Foster's office and remove his files. What evidence she succeeded in destroying by this, we will never know.
Whoa. I didn't know that. But it explains a lot...
Anyone think they'll be the real notes?
Nope :)
THE TAINTED BLOOD MYSTERY
New York Post September 25, 1998
By Maggie Gallagher
Can I tell you a little story? I warn you, I don't know how it ends yet. Maybe I never will.
Once upon a time - in fact a day or two after Vince Foster died - a man called the White House Counsel's Office. "This was not a line that kooks typically rang us up on," my source told me. Lunatics call the main office number. This guy called one of Vince's assistants directly.
The man said he had some information that might be important. Something had upset Vince Foster greatly just days before he died. Some thing about "tainted blood" that both Vince Foster and President Clinton knew about, this man said.
"I'm only telling you this now because Vince Foster was very distressed about this only days before his death," the mysterious caller (whose name I am withholding) said. "I'm not saying this caused his suicide. I'm only saying it might have contributed to his distress and I thought someone should know."
The White House Counsel's office didn't pay much attention. "Probably a kook," they agreed around the office.
Probably.
Except that when his computer name was typed into the computer log of phone calls for Vince, something strange happened. The computer flashed "password required" or some such phrase indicating a special code was needed to open that file. "Aw, probably just a computer glitch," Bernie Nussbaum, then chief White House Counsel, said at the time. And so the matter, as far as I know, was dropped.
A strange little memory fragment, meaningless in itself, no? Until last week, when a story published in The Ottawa Citizen suddenly jogged it front and center.
"HIV BLOOD CAME FROM ARKANSAS JAIL," the head line screamed. Then, The Ottawa Citizen reports, "A U.S. firm with links to President Clinton collected HIV- tainted blood from Arkansas prison inmates in the 1980's and shipped it to Canada, newly uncovered documents reveal... It is like several hundred, perhaps thousands, were infected by the tainted products."
Seems the now defunct Health Management Associates, heade by an FOB named Leonard Dunn (who served as head of the Finance Committee in Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial election campaign, for instance) how a contract to offer medical care to and sell blood from Arkansas prisoners.
By 1985 the AIDS crisis made it impossible to sell prisoners' blood in the United States or most other places. HMA found one willing blood broker in Montreal who retailed it to another Canadian company who didn't know it came from prisoners. Bingo! A few hundred Canadians infected with an incurable deadly disease.
The Citizen says it has copies of internal Arkansas documents from police, who at this time were investigating rumors: Clinton appointees to the prison board had demanded bribes in exchange for renewing HMA's contract with the state of Arkansas in 1985.
The matter was dropped after investigators decided to accept the prison board's explanation: Bill Clinton had been very concerned about reports of inadequate medical care; a mysterious $25,000 payment was actually a legitimate fee to obtain the services of an "ombudsman" for the prisoners, though no letter of agreement or other documentation could be found. According to the state trooper's note, HMA chief Leonard Dunn went out of his way to boast to them that he was a "friend of Gov. Clinton."
Coincidence? Or a piece of the puzzle we didn't even know was there? I don't know.
One thing I do know, Mr. Name Withheld, the conscientious guy who tried to inform the authorities about Vince Foster's distress over "tainted blood", your message didn't get through. If you contact me [here she gave her e-mail address], I'll try to bring it to their attention.
I too thought that this book was a set up to innoculate Hillary from harm on certain subjects and to create sympathy as the victim of a right wing smear. Now that I know Klein included information on the Clintons' (and Foster's) participation in the Arkansas tainted blood scam and tragedy, I don't think it's any kind of cover up.
Lots of people in Canada died drawn out, agonizing deaths because of this contaminated blood. Please look at T'wit's excellent posts #25 and #27 to get an idea what this really means.
It was huge news in Canada, but somehow never made it to our MSM. Possibly they didn't want their guy tied to a scam that killed innocent people in a horrible way.
T'wit, thank you very much for your recollections and the Maggie Gallagher column.
Blood pressure alert!!!
Tony, the Arkansas contaminated blood story never made it past the MSM gate guards, but it was surely among the most shocking Clinton scandals. In a nutshell, the Clintons were involved in a scheme to sell blood plasma drawn from prisoners at the nasty Cummins state prison farm in Grady, Arkansas. The plasma was contaminated and spread Hepatitis C and, to a smaller extent, AIDS wherever it was sold, starting in Canada. We traced its wake of disease and death all over the world. The tainted blood sales went on through all six of Clintons' gubernatorial terms, and even a little longer, under Jim Guy Tucker.
A group of us "bloodhounds" ran upwards of 600 posts on the scandal here in Free Republic. It is still quite a story!
I have several copies of a fictionalized version of the story, BLOOD TRAIL, by an Arkansas orthopedist who had a small role in the case and a big role in breaking the story. If you'd like a comp copy, freepmail me a snailmail address.
IIRC he got some big trouble for it, too, although he was among the luckier opponents of the Clintons in that he did not get dead.
Budge, any news?
Thanks again, T'wit. I thought something had been burned but I didn't remember that it was his clinic. I'm very glad it's been rebuilt and especially that he's been okay since.
Nothing new, T'wit. You already know the story of the video.
Remind me which video story you are talking about -- ? But meanwhile, how are YOU? And do you see Mike?
This book I mentioned, "Their Lives," apparently says that a female reporter (?) pursuing the tainted blood story was harassed by the Clintons. Off the top, I can't think who it could have been. I ordered the book and will soon get that story.
Couldn't very well have been Rikki Magnussen. I still wonder what happened to her. I dropped her off at the bus station after the house managers' dinner and never heard from her again. Hope she is happy and well back in Denmark.
Suzi maybe?
Do a google on Suzi. My, she leads an interesting life!!
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