Krugman's Fantasy

Paul Krugman, an economist who writes columns for the New York Times Op-Ed page, plugged a new a book by David Brock in his March 29 column. Brock is a former conservative who turned left and repudiated the work that won him fame and fortune. As a conservative, he had exposed how the left used Anita Hill in its failed effort to block Senate confirmation of Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. He was responsible for breaking "Troopergate," the stories told by Arkansas state troopers who had served as bodyguards for Gov. Clinton.

One of their duties was to drive him to assignations with his numerous girlfriends. Another was to try to arrange meetings between the governor and young women that had caught his eye. One was Paula Jones, who was escorted to Clinton’s hotel room by trooper Danny Ferguson. It was David Brock’s story in the American Spectator about that incident that resulted in Paula Jones suing President Clinton.

Brock told Gary Aldrich about President Clinton eluding the Secret Service and slipping out of the White House to meet a woman in a nearby hotel. Aldrich did some checking and used the story in his book, "Unlimited Access." Brock shocked Aldrich by claiming that the story was not true. Aldrich says he was able to find other sources that confirmed it. At the time, Brock was working on a new book about Hillary Clinton. Those who had expected a devastating exposé, were surprised that it treated her favorably.

His work on this book brought Brock, a closeted homosexual, into close contact with Hillary’s press secretary, Neal Lattimore, who was out of the closet. Suspicions that Lattimore was responsible for turning Brock left were recently confirmed by a conversation overheard at a seaside town that attracts many homosexuals. A reliable source sent me this report about what he had personally heard. "Several gay guys at an adjacent table at a restaurant were discussing David Brock’s new book. One of these guys remarked, ‘Well, Neal certainly did God’s work on him.’ Another asked, ‘What do you mean?’ Whereupon the first guy said when Brock was working on his Hillary book, he became sexually involved with her press secretary, Neal Lattimore, to the extent that his view of the First Lady did a 180 degree spin."

Brock has repudiated his stories about Anita Hill, Troopergate and Whitewater, but the known facts don’t support the repudiation. The Senate rejected Anita Hill’s claims. The Troopergate stories were confirmed contemporaneously by the Los Angeles Times. Whitewater was loaded with illegal loans and corrupt real estate deals that resulted in convictions of the partners and collaborators of the Clintons, including the governor of Arkansas.

But Brock is the rock on which Krugman bases a claim "that the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ is... a straightforward reality." He says "a special interest group financed by a handful of wealthy fanatics—men like the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose cultlike Unification Church owns the Washington Times, and Richard Mellon Scaife, who bankrolled the scandal-mongering American Spectator and many other right-wing enterprises....managed to turn Whitewater—a $200,000 money-losing investment—into a byword for scandal, even though an eight-year, $73 million investigation never did find any evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons."

The New York Times, not The American Spectator or the Washington Times, ran the first story that raised questions about Whitewater on March 8, 1992. In January 1994, Janet Reno, not Dick Scaife, hired Robert B. Fiske, to investigate it. He got guilty pleas from David Hale, who obtained a government guarantee of a fraudulent $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal that benefitted the Clintons because $50,000 of it went to the Whitewater partnership. Ken Starr, who replaced Fiske, found enough wrongdoing to convict Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, Jim and Susan McDougal on 24 felony counts.

Starr’s successor, Robert Ray, has not said he couldn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. His report says the evidence was insufficient to convict them, ignoring the fact that Starr said in court filings that over $500,000 given to Webb Hubbell by Clinton supporters was "hush money" that bought his silence. Ray denies that donors were trying to buy Hubbell’s silence. Of course not. They were currying favor with the White House, which wanted to seal Hubbell’s lips. The Clintons were creating an alibi when they denied knowing that Hubbell was in big legal trouble when their aides were raising all that money for him. Ray lets them off the hook by not mentioning their motive nor their lies in his report.

>Isn't corruption in government fun? It spreads to virtually everything government comes in contact with.

Yeah, well the thing is, the Klinton's had their eight years. They were supposed to crawl back under the rock they crawled out from. But they didn't!

Mark W.

P.S. And think about this "corruption in government" stuff -- when the libertarians get their way and everything is privatized, the corruption is still going to be there. Only because "deal making" is actually legal in the business world (even encouraged), the corruption won't be "bad." And because there is less public oversight in the private sector, citizens won't even know about it...

So, sexual favors, sexual blackmailing, Byzantine financial crap, underhanded social agendas -- that's the tsunami wave of the future for America...

"Suspicions that Lattimore was responsible for turning Brock left were recently confirmed by a conversation overheard at a seaside town that attracts many homosexuals."

So the Brock/Krugman/Aldrich/Scaife story is now being sourced solely by anonymous sources at gay bars?

It's time to let everyone concerned fade into history and stop wasting bandwidth.

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.