DCDave Reviews "Hillary's Secret War"

Thumbing through this 2004 book, with a foreword by Jim Robinson, founder of FreeRepublic.com, one gets the impression that this is a much harder hitting and genuine effort than Edward Klein's The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President.

The tip-off as to who is expected to read this book is at the top of the dust jacket: "This book is required reading," it says in bold italics. And right under the quote in bigger, bolder, all capital letters is the name of the professional polarizer being quoted, none other than Ann Coulter. With such a recommendation, the publisher is assured that the only people likely to spend more than five minutes with the book are hard core Fox News junkies. And Poe gives them a lot more raw meat than Klein or even Coulter, herself, ever did.

Recall that I faulted Klein for pulling his punches on Hillary Clinton's likely lesbianism and the various Clinton scandals, particularly the death of Deputy White House Counsel, Vincent Foster. Hillary's domestic life is not a topic of his book, so her sexual orientation is, appropriately, not addressed.* As for the scandals, Poe can hardly be said to have gone easy on Hillary. Though both Klein's and Poe's books are aimed principally at conservatives, Poe's is obviously meant for only a small subset of that audience. The giveaway is that Klein's book got tons of publicity and Poe's book got absolutely none. I didn't even know of the existence of Poe's book until I stumbled across it at a used book store a couple of months ago, even though it actually mentions me and references my "America's Dreyfus Affair, the Case of the Death of Vincent Foster." It is safe for Poe to tell his readers about some of the worst of the Clinton scandals, because only a very select group of people who already hate the Clintons with a passion are likely ever to read it.

That is not to say that Poe tells the whole truth. Far from it. His job is clearly to play right-wing shepherd and to herd his assigned flock away from the corruption that envelopes both the Democrats and the Republicans as well as our ruling media elite.

Poe describes a shocking manifestation of the corruption in his apparent gloves-off treatment of the murder and cover-up in the Foster case. Revealing more than journalist Christopher Ruddy, whom he praises to the skies and ridiculously likens to Emile Zola in the Dreyfus case, he describes here the reaction of Kenneth Starr's "investigative" team to the terrifying harassment** that the inconvenient witness, Patrick Knowlton, whom British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard had ferreted out, received after being subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury:

No one knows who ordered the harassment team to begin its operation against Patrick Knowlton on October 26, 1995. However, someone close to the Starr investigation must have tipped them off that Knowlton had received a subpoena.

Throughout Knowlton's ordeal, Starr's team treated the beleaguered witness with extraordinary contempt.

When the street harassment began, Knowlton called the FBI and requested witness protection. Nothing happened for two days. Finally, Agent Russell Bransford--the same FBI agent who had delivered Starr's subpoena--showed up. "He had this smirk on his face, as if he thought the whole thing was amusing," says Knowlton. "I told him to get the hell out of my house."

At the same time Knowlton was calling the FBI, Ruddy and Evans-Pritchard called Deputy Independent Counsel John Bates to report the intimidation of a grand jury witness. Bates's secretary jotted down some notes. "An hour later I called again," says Evans-Pritchard. "She let out an audible laugh and said that her boss had received the message...Bates never called back.

As a last resort, Knowlton prepared a "Report of Witness Tampering" and took it personally to the Office of the Independent Counsel. "It was their responsibility, at the very least, to find out who leaked word of his subpoena," notes Evans-Pritchard. According to Evans-Pritchard, John Bates responded by calling security and having Knowlton removed from the building.

Perhaps the most telling indication of Starr's attitude toward Knowlton is the humiliating cross-examination to which this brave man was subjected before the grand jury. Knowlton says that he was "treated like a suspect." Prosecutor Brett Kavanaugh appeared to be trying to imply that Knowlton was a homosexual who was cruising Fort Marcy Park for sex. Regarding the suspicious Hispanic-looking man he had seen guarding the park entrance, Kavanaugh asked, Did he "pass you a note?" Did he "touch your genitals?"

Knowlton flew into a rage at Kavanaugh's insinuations. Evans-Pritchard writes that several African American jurors burst into laughter at the spectacle, rocking "back and forth as if they were at a Baptist revival meeting. Kavanaugh was unable to reassert his authority. The grand jury was laughing at him. The proceedings were out of control."

It was at that point, reports Evans-Pritchard, that Patrick Knowlton was finally compelled to confront the obvious: "the Office of the Independent Counsel was itself corrupt." (pp. 106-107)

Indeed it was, which explains how it could come to the conclusion that Foster committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park against the compelling testimony of Knowlton that the extra car in the park parking lot was not that of the already dead Foster, plus a ton of additional suicide-contradicting evidence.

Where Poe intentionally misleads us, to his eternal discredit, has to do with the nature, the depth and breadth, and the origin of the corruption of Starr and his team. Consistent with his book's title and its general orientation, Poe would have us believe that the Clintons were behind the cover-up and that George H.W. Bush's former solicitor general, Kenneth Starr, went along with it out of simple timidity and cowardice:

As Ruddy paints him, Starr was the sort of man who makes police states work. He may well have been the decent fellow whom his friends describe, upright and diligent in his work. But Starr had a vice that outweighed all his virtues. He was a coward, so paralyzed with fear in the face of naked evil that he would look the other way and pretend not to see it. He was just the sort of man that Bill and Hillary needed. (p. 103)

Actually, it's not quite that simple. Really effective police states need effective propaganda that is believed by a high percentage of the population. That's where the layers of propagandists, from the mainstream journalists, to the Edward Kleins, the Ann Coulters, the Christopher Ruddys, the Richard Poes, and the various "persecuted," "heroic," Internet journalists in Poe's book, Joseph Farah, Jim Robinson, Matt Drudge, David Horowitz, and a host of others come in (entering stage right, of course). And here's the proof of the pudding.

Note carefully the names of those two Starr underlings involved in the harassment of the witness, Knowlton. They are John Bates and Brett Kavanaugh. On page 143 Poe says, not surprisingly, "Like most Americans I support George W. Bush and his War on Terror." But Poe conveniently neglects to tell his readers that this president, whom he praises as a "decent, God-fearing man," has made federal judges--with the approval of the United States Senate--of these two accomplices after the fact of a high-level murder.

Poe's omission of this fact is surely intentional. To impart this information would be to completely undermine his simple-minded message aimed at simple-minded readers, that is, that the deep, pervasive national corruption that he reveals in his book essentially begins and ends with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and that his right-wing heroes are free of the taint. His editors apparently recognized the risk he was taking of giving the game away by telling us of the cover-up role of Bates and Kavanaugh in the Foster murder, because neither name appears in the book's detailed, extensive index.

Again, this omission could hardly be unintentional. Even the brief mention of my "America's Dreyfus Affair" got my name into the index. Poe must be pretty sure that the true believers who read his work are not going to go to the trouble to track down my six-part Internet article and actually read it. Were they to do so, they would see how his beloved "conservative" crowd did as least as much as the hated, pro-Clinton liberals to cover up the Foster murder. These include Ann Coulter, FBI agent Gary Aldrich, and the late Barbara Olson, whom Poe praises so highly in his book. On the role of conservatives in particular, see "Vince Foster's Valuable Murder." With this broader education, one should not be at all surprised that George Bush should reward obstructers of justice by giving them positions of great importance in our "justice" system. Who is a nominal Democrat or Republican in this corrupt apparatus is completely beside the point.

Finally, and again, not surprisingly, a name that you will not find anywhere in either Poe's or Ruddy's account of the cover-up of the Foster murder is that of George Bush's current head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. He was minority counsel in the first Senate investigation related to the death of Vincent Foster and majority special counsel in the second such Senate inquiry. Readers can see how cleverly he labored to prevent the truth from getting out at "Michael Chertoff, Master of the Cover-up.

* Poe later more than made up for that omission in spades with his glowing review of Klein's phony Hillary attack book on FrontPage Magazine.

** For a detailed account of that harassment, see the statement that Knowlton and his lawyer, John Clarke, prepared and a 3-judge panel had Kenneth Starr append to his report on Foster's death over Starr's strenuous objections.

I was unaware until reading this that Bush had made federal judges of two attorneys involved in the Vince Foster cover-up, which added to his appointment of the attorney involved in the Sandy Berger cover-up makes three. The more I learn, the worse seem the prospects for a Free Republic.

Poe's omission of this fact is surely intentional.

Who is Dave Martin?

his beloved "conservative" crowd did as least as much as the hated, pro-Clinton liberals to cover up the Foster murder. These include Ann Coulter, FBI agent Gary Aldrich, and the late Barbara Olson, whom Poe praises so highly in his book.

Oh, I see. A nut.

Even nut cases stumble across interesting facts now and again. I would characterize the “beloved ‘conservative’ crowd” as ignorant concerning Foster and Knowlton, rather than complicit, but what happened to Knowlton indisputably happened, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did order Starr to append Knowlton’s attorneys’ summary to the Independent Counsel Report. It is a quite extraordinary document, and it took courage for the Court to do that, publicly signaling to all concerned that the Court had no confidence in Starr’s report.

I thought the book was about Hillary’s insidious attempt to control the internet, Vince Foster being a small sidenote.

Interesting though that two prosecutors are now on the bench.

Thanks for the info.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.