[FROM THE PAST] Goodbye, good riddance

TO the delight of the White House, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is leaving Washington. Time and again his stories on the Clintons and their abuses of power have been proved correct. He leaves with a warning for Americans.

"That's another British invasion we're glad is over," the White House told George magazine. "The guy was nothing but a pain in the ass."

Disappointment was swift, however. I was stunned when the new President - barely installed in the White House - repudiated his campaign promise for a tax cut. It was downhill from there.

The Clintons wasted little time taking charge of the US Justice Department. All US Attorneys were asked to hand in their resignations. It was a move of breath-taking audacity, one that gave the Clintons control over the prosecutorial machinery of the federal government in every judicial district in the country.

They then set about eliminating the Director of the FBI, William Sessions, who was known for his refusal to countenance White House interference in the affairs of the Bureau. The post of FBI Director is supposed to be a 10-year appointment that puts it above politics. But Sessions was toppled in a Washington putsch, without a murmur of protest from America's press, and replaced by the hapless errand boy Louis Freeh. And I almost forgot, the Clintons installed their friend Webster Hubbell as "shadow" Attorney General - until Hubbell was jailed for Arkansas crimes.

When you are living through events day by day it is hard to know whether you are witnessing a historic turning point, or just mistaking the usual noise of politics for something meaningful. But there is no doubt that strange things have been going on in America.

The Electronic Telegraph archive is behind a paywall these days, and many of th eold articles cannot be retrieved. Still this piece on Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is also worth reading. (I don't copy the links since all of them are broken.)

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/clinton/ambrose.html

But the White House was not the first to publicly question Mr Evans-Pritchard's journalistic credibility. In 1995, the Washington Post, in a front page article on the "Foster conspiracy theorists", attacked the Sunday Telegraph and its outspoken correspondent.

In response, he turned the tables on the US newspaper with the article: America's top newspaper has pointed the finger at our man in Washington. Now it's his turn, written on July 10.

Candid as ever, he wrote: "My straitjacket is buckled tight. The foam is wiped off my mouth. A bottle of sedatives sits at hand. I am cool, calm and ready to answer on behalf of all "conspiracy theorists". And I say to the powers of the Washington Post: 'J'accuse.'"

It is not just the political manoeuvrings of Bill Clinton that have been subjected to Mr Evans-Pritchard's steely gaze, however. He has also written on the alleged drug use of the president, America's partial birth abortion industry, which he describes as "essentially infanticide", and on the controversial issue of "child abuse witch-hunts". These are to name but a few.

Read it all.

It's so unfortunate that freepers seem to have abandoned reading long pieces. This nearly 20-year-old essay is eerie in its foreshadowing. If only Republicans had believed their own paranoia about the Clintons back then.

Pritchard was protected by his status as a foreign correspondent, giving him a much more clear-eyed view of whatever the Clinton Admin was doing than our already sold-out American press.

Here's a video of Evans-Pritchard within some weeks the above essay being published:

The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: Exposing the Truth About the Clintons (1997)

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