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The man whose memory failure helped save Bill Clinton's presidency
washingtonexaminer ^ | Nov. 15, 2014 | Byron York

Posted on 11/15/2014 4:37:47 PM PST by PROCON

This weekend, dozens of former top Clinton White House officials will gather in Little Rock to mark the tenth anniversary of the Clinton Presidential Library.

Among those attending will be Vernon Jordan, the legendary Washington lawyer and political fixer who was close to Bill Clinton throughout the White House years. When Clinton got himself into the worst jam of his presidency — the Lewinsky scandal — Jordan was the man he turned to for help.

Jordan helped calm a near-hysterical Monica Lewinsky, gave her advice on dealing with investigators, and found her a job. But Jordan's most valuable service to the president came during the scandal's grand jury investigation, when he testified under oath that he could not remember key events in the Lewinsky matter — events in which he had played a central role. Jordan could have told the grand jury a lot about Clinton's activities, but he chose to remain silent.

Now, his memory greatly improved, Jordan will be among other Clinton veterans in Little Rock, reminiscing about his years close to the White House.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: billclinton; monicalewinsky; vernonjordan
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Jordan could have told the grand jury a lot about Clinton's activities, but he chose to remain silent avoid Arkancide.

There, fixed it.

1 posted on 11/15/2014 4:37:48 PM PST by PROCON
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To: PROCON

Wasn’t it a FReeper who coined the term “Arkancide”?


2 posted on 11/15/2014 4:42:20 PM PST by PROCON (I love sleeping, it's like being dead without the commitment.)
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To: PROCON

According to the Starr report, Clinton called Lewinsky at 2am to give her two pieces of news:

1. Betty Curries brother, the same one that has been beaten just before Currie had testified in Chinagate, was just killed by a hit and run driver.

2. Monica was now a witness against Clinton in the Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.


3 posted on 11/15/2014 4:50:06 PM PST by icwhatudo (Low taxes and less spending in Sodom and Gomorrah is not my idea of a conservative victory)
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To: icwhatudo

If it were not for the Republicans in Congress, Monica would be comparing notes with Chandra Levy in the afterlife


4 posted on 11/15/2014 5:04:00 PM PST by rdcbn
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To: PROCON
Jordan could have told the grand jury a lot about Clinton's activities, but he chose to........obstruct justice?
5 posted on 11/15/2014 5:04:14 PM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: PROCON

Clinton perjured himself and the Democrats declared it didn’t matter - and if the President acted like a horndog in the White House, that was a private matter.

He abused power and despite being impeached, he’s still popular with them.

It has nothing and everything to do with Obamacare today. The same belief the means justify the end and if it serves the President’s political interests, he is permitted to be above the law.


6 posted on 11/15/2014 5:05:15 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: PROCON

Clinton disgusts me. He did the first time I saw him and he still does.


7 posted on 11/15/2014 5:10:22 PM PST by Ditter
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To: PROCON

I have to wonder if the not so veiled specter of Arkancide has anything to do with GWB and Jeb’s habit of constantly kissing the Clinton’s asses with overflowing compliments?
I’m stomach sick from hearing the Bush men describe Bill as “My Brother From A Different Mother”, really? The way Hillary used to talk about W, was awful, worse than Pelosi at times. I don’t get it. Why is she not to be accountable?

It hard to accept that a family (Bushes) can be such high achievers,(2 presidents only one generation apart!) and yet so naive on this particular topic. Are they overcompensating for well concealed rage? Naive is the mildest adjective I could use to describe their behavior, so considering that I still respect W as a proud American, I will just leave it at that.


8 posted on 11/15/2014 5:14:00 PM PST by lee martell
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To: Ditter

Same here!


9 posted on 11/15/2014 5:15:20 PM PST by Empireoftheatom48 (God help the Republic but will he?)
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To: lee martell

Mena,Arkansas.

It will answer your question.


10 posted on 11/15/2014 5:20:43 PM PST by exit82 ("The Taliban is on the inside of the building" E. Nordstrom 10-10-12)
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To: PROCON
For those who may have forgotten what kind of a President Bill Clinton was:

1) Clinton’s own words show his often expressed innate hostility to, and utter contempt for, the core principles of the American founding:

``If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993

``The purpose of government is to reign in the rights of the people’’ –- Bill Clinton during an interview on MTV in 1993

``We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…that we forget about reality.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, quoted in USA Today, March 11, 1993, Page 2A, ``NRA change: `Omnipotent to powerful’’’ by Debbie Howlett

“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly… that they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare… However, now there’s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there’s too much freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.” – Bill Clinton, April 19, 1995

2) Clinton inevitably pursued his own political advantage at the expense of American interests and national security. Here is just one of many possible examples:

It is well documented that Clinton and the Democrats took illegal campaign money from groups and individuals tied directly to the Chinese People’s Republican Army. It is therefore not surprising that In January 1998 Clinton went against the advice of then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Pentagon experts by lifting long-standing restrictions against the export of American satellites to China for launch on Chinese rockets. Not only did he move control over such decisions from the more security-focused State Department to the Commerce Department, but he intervened in a Justice Department investigation of Loral Space & Communications, retroactively enabling Loral to sell critical missile technology to the Chinese. Interestingly enough, Clinton’s decision was made at the request of Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz, whose earlier $1.3 million campaign donation made him the single biggest contributor to the Democratic election effort.

The result, as stated eloquently by syndicated columnist Linda Bowles, was that “the Democrats got money from satellite companies and from Chinese communists; China got supercomputors, advanced production equipment and missile technology; Loral got its satellites launched at bargain basement prices . . . and the transfer of sensitive missile technology gave China [for the first time] the capability of depositing bombs on American cities.” Incidentally, Loral ultimately failed to benefit from this permanent injury to America’s security interests: in July 2003, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and in order to raise cash was forced to sell its most profitable business – a fleet of communications satellites orbiting over North America.

3) On two occasions, Clinton used military action for the specific purpose of distracting the American public from the fallout of the Lewinsky affair:

• On August 20, three days after Clinton finally admitted publicly to the Lewinsky affair, the news media was poised to focus on that day’s grand jury testimony by Monica Lewinsky. That same morning, Clinton personally went on national television to gravely announce his bombing of a Sudanese “chemical weapons factory,” and a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. It was the first time most Americans ever heard the name of Osama bin Laden. The factory bombing in Sudan killed an innocent night watchman, but accomplished little else. It later was proven that the plant was making badly needed pharmaceuticals for people in that poverty-stricken part of the world, but no chemical weapons.

Several months later, the U.S. Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, stated: "...the evidence indicates that the facility had no role whatsoever in chemical weapons development." Kroll Associates, one of the world's most reputable investigative firms, also confirmed that there was no link in any way between the plant and any terrorist organization. As for the Afghanistan bombing, it failed to do any damage at all to bin Laden or his organization. Clinton’s action was accurately characterized by George W. Bush when he said right after 9-11: "When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt.

Clinton’s pointless and murderous military actions did not make Americans safer that day, although they did destroy an innocent life, and for all the good they did certainly could have been delayed in any case. But they did succeed in diverting media attention from Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony for a 24-hour news cycle, which was the main point. So I guess, they weren’t a total loss.

•On December 16, 1998, on the eve of the scheduled House vote on his impeachment, Bill Clinton launched a surprise bombing attack on Baghdad. As justification for this exploit, he cited the urgent threat that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction posed to America, and the need for immediate action. Almost immediately, the House Democrats held a caucus and emerged calling for a delay in the impeachment proceedings. House minority leader Dick Gephardt made a statement: "We obviously should pass a resolution by saying that we stand behind the troops. I would hope that we do not take up impeachment until the hostilities have completely ended."

Conveniently, a delay so near the end of the House term would have caused the vote to be taken up in the next session – when the newly elected House membership would be seated with more Democratic representation, thereby improving Clinton’s chances of dodging impeachment.

The Republicans did, in fact, agree to delay the hearings, but only for a day or two. Amazingly, Clinton ended the bombing raid after only 70 hours -- once it became clear that in spite of the brief delay, the vote would still be held in the current session.

Once the bombing stopped, Clinton touted the effectiveness and importance of the mission. As reported by ABC News : “We have inflicted significant damage on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs, on the command structures that direct and protect that capability, and on his military and security infrastructure,” he said. Defense secretary William Cohen echoed the point: “We estimate that Saddam's missile program has been set back by at least a year.”

Whether or not one buys Clinton’s assessment of that mission, it is difficult to believe that its timing was so critical that it required commencement virtually at the moment the House was scheduled to vote on the impeachment. I think the most reasonable conclusion is that Clinton cynically deployed US military assets and placed military personnel in harm’s way for purely political reasons.

4) Clinton’s reckless sexual behavior was a threat to American national security:

Clinton and his supporters have been very effective in persuading large numbers of Americans that the Lewinsky scandal was “only about sex.” But I see a bigger issue here, because Clinton is on record as saying that he would have done anything to keep knowledge of the Lewinsky affair from becoming public.

To me, that statement raises a very serious question: What if, instead of sending her recorded Lewinsky conversations to Ken Starr, Linda Tripp had instead secretly offered them for sale, say, to the Chinese government? Or to the Russians? Or even to agents of Saddam?

What kind of blackmail leverage would those tapes have provided to a foreign government in dealing with America on sensitive trade, security or military issues? One of the few things Clinton ever said that I believe is that he would have done anything to keep the Lewinsky affair secret. Given his demonstrated track record of selling out American interests for personal or political gain (and there are more examples that I could have cited here), how far would he have gone in compromising America’s real interests in order to protect his own neck when threatened with blackmail?

Pretty far, I believe. Equally distressing is the prospect Clinton might, in fact, have succumbed to foreign black mail on other occasions in order to hide different sexual episodes that ultimately did not become public. There is no way to know, of course, but I prefer presidents for whom such a scenario is not a plausible possibility.

And don’t even get me started on the war crime in Kosovo.

WAR IN KOSOVO

During Bill Clinton’s 1999 NATO-led war in Kosovo – which according to some estimates cost as much as $75 billion – we bombed Belgrade for 78 days, killed almost 3,000 civilians, and shredded the civilian infrastructure (including every bridge across the Danube.)

We devastated the environment, bombed the Chinese embassy, came very close to engaging in armed combat against Russian forces, and in general, pursued a horrific and inhumane strategy to rain misery on the civilian population of Belgrade in order to pressure Milosevic into surrendering.

Why did we do all that? The US did not even have an arguable interest in the Balkans, and no one ever tried to claim that Serbia represented any kind of threat to our nation or our interests.

But for months the Clinton administration had told us that Milosevic was waging a vicious genocide against Albanian Muslims, and needed to be stopped. The New York Times called it a “humanitarian war.” In March 1999 – the same month that the bombing started – Clinton’s State Department publicly suggested that as many as 500,000 Albanian Kosovars had been murdered by Milosevic’s regime. In May of that year, as the bombing campaign was drawing to a close, Secretary of Defense William Cohen lowered that estimate 100,000.

Five years after the bombing, after all the forensic investigations had been completed, the prosecutors at Milosevic’s “War Crimes” trial in the Hague were barely been able to document a questionable figure of perhaps 5,000 “bodies and body parts.” During the war, the American people were told that Kosovo was full of mass graves filled with the bodies of murdered Albanian Muslims. But none were ever found.

BILL CLINTON ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

During the election cycle of 1992, George H.W. Bush lost his job after Bill Clinton hammered him relentlessly for having caused the “worst economy of the last 50 years.”

In fact, as CNN’s Brooke Jackson has reported: “Three days before Christmas 1992, the National Bureau of Economic Research finally issued its official proclamation that the recession had ended 21 months earlier. What became the longest boom in U.S. history actually began nearly two years before Clinton took office.” See (See http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/31/jackson.recession.primer.otsc/).

By the same token, Clinton is generally perceived as having a stellar economic record during his own presidency, in spite of the fact that the economy was already starting to decline during the last year of his term after the stock market crashed in March 2000.

According to a report by MSNBC: “The longest economic expansion in U.S. history faltered so much in the summer of 2000 that business output actually contracted for one quarter, the government said Wednesday in releasing a comprehensive revision of the gross domestic product. Based on new data, the Commerce Department said that the GDP — the country’s total output of goods and services — shrank by 0.5 percent at an annual rate in the July-September quarter of 2000.” See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3676690/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/gdp-figures-revised-downward/.

11 posted on 11/15/2014 5:23:14 PM PST by Maceman
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To: Ditter

Ditto Ditter!


12 posted on 11/15/2014 5:23:19 PM PST by Cen-Tejas (it's the debt bomb stupid)
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To: exit82

I’ll do some fact finding/ digging later on.


13 posted on 11/15/2014 5:23:54 PM PST by lee martell
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To: lee martell

You’ll see why the Bushes and Clintons are a mutual admiration society. Timeframe early to mid 1980s.

I suspect this is why Bush I and II led the campaign to rehabilitate Bill Clinton right after the 2004 tsunami.


14 posted on 11/15/2014 5:30:22 PM PST by exit82 ("The Taliban is on the inside of the building" E. Nordstrom 10-10-12)
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To: PROCON

“….Clinton Presidential Library.”


It should read: Clinton Presidential Library and Massage Parlor (per Rush).


15 posted on 11/15/2014 5:32:08 PM PST by twoputt
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To: Maceman

Thanks,Maceman. Lays it all out there, especially for the younger Freepers.

Monica Lewinsk owes her life to Linda Tripp for her advice to save the blue dress.

Hillary Clinton was ramping up the nuts and sluts offensive team and the DNA stopped them right in their tracks.

Lewinsky was due to have an unfortunate accident otherwise.

When you look back, you see that the MSM was in the tank for Clinton in 1992 onward.

They are happy to do the same for Obama from 2007 on.


16 posted on 11/15/2014 5:34:00 PM PST by exit82 ("The Taliban is on the inside of the building" E. Nordstrom 10-10-12)
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To: goldstategop

” Clinton perjured himself and the Democrats declared it didn’t matter - and if the President acted like a horndog in the White House, that was a private matter. He abused power and despite being impeached, he’s still popular with them.”

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE.


17 posted on 11/15/2014 5:48:17 PM PST by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: PROCON; ken5050; Old Sarge; Mossad1967; brucecw; EnigmaticAnomaly; KylaStarr; Califreak; kalee; ...
Hey babe; didn't I tell you a repeatedly we'd never see the inside of a prison?

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

. . . . Check out article and comments.

.

18 posted on 11/15/2014 6:15:46 PM PST by LucyT
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To: goldstategop
that was a private matter

I still find it amazing that the feminists helped this mythology along.

After all their squawking about sexual harassment they consider the predations of the most powerful man in the world a private matter.

Wonder why all the people in the DOD who are now being charged with sexual harassment don't claim that it's only a "private matter" and cite the precedent of the former CIC.

19 posted on 11/15/2014 6:39:06 PM PST by what's up
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To: Ditter
Clinton disgusts me. He did the first time I saw him and he still does.

Same here. He always had that sleezy perv look about him.

20 posted on 11/15/2014 6:41:10 PM PST by bgill (CDC site, "we still do not know exactly how people are infected with Ebola")
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