Never Forget: FOCUS SCANDAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE: LITTLE ROCK'S MEAN MACHINE

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard goes 'underground' in Conway, Arkansas, and finds a climate of bitterness and fear. The talk is of revenge, the targets are the President and the political system that nurtured his climb to power

BODY: WE were followed by a white-red Chevrolet Lumina. It weaved in and out of the traffic on the main drag about 50 yards behind us, just too far back to make out the licence plates. After a few blocks the Lumina peeled away and a blue Mazda slid into place. At the first turn, we were picked up by a cream-coloured jeep. The Lumina, the Mazda, and the jeep, always the same trio, keeping watch all morning as we drove around the provincial town of Conway, carrying out minor errands.

"They've been doing it pretty intensely for about a month," said the driver, Larry Nichols, in the gruff voice of a chain smoker. "The way they rotate off like that, it makes me think it's the Arkansas state police." He said that he no longer ventures out at night alone, and carries a loaded revolver at all times. "What else can I do? Its getting real dangerous right now, and I don't want to end up as another one of those mysterious suicides."

Mr Nichols is an eccentric character. He worked with the Contras in the 1980s, going down to Nicaragua with a video-camera to prepare field reports on the conditions of the guerrillas. He also claims to have been a sort of secret personal assistant to Governor Bill Clinton, alleging that he transferred state funds into special accounts used for entertaining mistresses, investigated opponents and fixed things behind the scenes.

As a reward, he says, he was appointed marketing director of the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), an agency created by Mr Clinton in 1985 with a board in the hands of the Governor's appointees and free from federal oversight. Officially ADFA was a simple development agency.

But as Mr Nichols tells the story, ADFA allegedly became the instrument for a massive kick-back scheme, infinitely greater than anything under investigation in the Whitewater affair, for enriching the inner circle of the Arkansas Democratic establishment and for channelling money into Mr Clinton's election campaigns.

When he became disenchanted and tried to blow the whistle in 1988, he alleges, he lost his job, his family was threatened, and the resources of the Arkansas one-party, one-media state were used, very successfully, to discredit his story.

The Governor's supporters counter attacked that he himself had misused the resources of his office. An embittered Mr Nichols denies this, and has determined on revenge ever since. "Bill Clinton destroyed me. He took away my reputation, and the only way I can get it back is to destroy him," he said. "I'm going to prove that everything I said about him is true."

Mr Nichols is unusual in his intimate knowledge of Mr Clinton, and his willingness to talk openly about the alleged corruption within the Arkansas political machine. But he is not alone in his bitterness or in his determination to settle scores with the Clintons. There is a whole "underground" at work in Arkansas.

It is made up of people who feel that they have been injured or misused by the system, and they are eager to help journalists expose the "chicanery" of the last decade. Many of their allegations are wild, but as more and more sources come out of the woodwork to corroborate past events it is no longer possible to dismiss their stories out of hand.

The Arkansas underground is not a structured organisation. It has no hierarchy or command council. But in some respects it operates like the urban resistance movements of Guatemala City, San Salvador, and northern Nicaragua during the 1980s, a comparison that would astonish commentators in Washington who have no inkling of the climate of fear, bordering on paranoia, that prevails among dissenters in the state. Sources will not convey information on the telephone. Code words are used, or couriers are sent by car.

Duplicate copies of sensitive documents are lodged in safe places. Journalists are passed along a chain of contacts, one source leading to the next in an intricate network of conspiracy against Mr Clinton and the machine. At a meeting I arranged with a source in the foyer of the Little Rock Hilton last week, a bodyguard came through to "sweep" the area, checking corridors and adjacent rooms, before signalling the all-clear.

There have been deaths. Jerry Parks, the head of security for the Clinton presidential campaign headquarters in Little Rock, was gunned down on September 26 in a targeted assassination that is widely thought to have political overtones. The week before last there were two separate accidents each involving a twin-engine Cessna aircraft spiralling out of the sky. Both have raised eyebrows. One of the crashes killed a man said to be under scrutiny for allegedly funnelling illegal money into Mr Clinton's campaign chest.

A grizzled veteran of the underground showed me a list that he had put together on the mysterious deaths that had occurred in his home town. As we sat in his trailer, surrounded by boxes labelled "explosives", he went through the names one by one, elaborating his suspicions. Explaining that he wanted to extract his revenge against the political machine which he blames for destroying his home and livelihood, he has kept computerised files on the Clintons' circle.

These explore several angles of the scandal threatening the Clintons and their closest advisers in the White House, compiling evidence on allegations that range from bribery to intimidation. "You tell anybody my name, and my life's not worth a plugged nickel," he said as I was leaving. "The Arkansas state police is nothing but a hit squad, and don't forget it." It is almost impossible to believe that Third World police repression could be going on within the borders of the United States.

But a book entitled Conflict of Interests, by Gene Wirges, tracks the history of a small Arkansas town where he was editor of the local newspaper and makes a devastating case that the local Democratic machine, in power from time immemorial, was always allegedly corrupt and brutal. This was the machine that Mr Clinton used, masterfully, to climb to power in Arkansas and to entrench himself for 14 years as Attorney-General and Governor. What is new is that the state has suddenly been invaded by journalists and federal investigators. Under the eyes of the nation, the lid is being blown off the whole squalid regime.

I post this as a reminder to those of you who are flocking towards a corrupt degenerate RINO for the sake of "victory".

The Sheeple looked the other way back in the 90's.

Will you now look the other way now?

And for what? So our taxes can be raised? So we can have amnesty? So we have a governor who won't support or defend Prop. 187 or 54?

Please stop saying "there's nothing to see here". There is.

Get off the bandwagon. If you don't, Clinton will truly have won.

3 posted on 08/30/2003 11:07:57 PM PDT by ambrose (If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention...)

To anyone that has forgotten, while the source for this story is a newspaper article, it was later published as The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, by the same author. Now you want to talk about wild stories! This book is full of them, and if the author is to be believed, it exposes clinton as one of the most corrupt politicians this Republic has ever seen. It also has a few interesting tidbits on Hillary.

P.S. I believe him...100%.

6 posted on 08/31/2003 12:09:47 PM PDT by ambrose (If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention...)

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