Let's see if they have as many stories about this as they did about the prison photos.
Their behavior over this whole campaign has been disgraceful. The Times used to be the paper of record, the old Grey Lady, the source for news. They are now relegated to the role of the mouthpiece of Terry McAuwful and the DNC as they adopt their front page to the daily DNC talking point of the day. They should be ashamed of themselves as "journalists."
One former colleague likened Lindsey's approach in handling various White House controversies to that of a criminal defense lawyer who doesn't worry so much about whether or not his client is guilty as he does about how to poke holes in the prosecution's case.
"The only way the president could have survived all this is with Bruce Lindsey and the reason is Bruce has helped clear up . . . the great vast majority of [false allegations against Clinton]," the former official said. "He's been the unwavering person in the White House who reminds everybody we cannot turn for a second and consider the potential truth of these. We have to attack, attack, attack."
For Lindsey, a grand jury appearance would be only the latest in a string of legal travails that friends say has cost him $250,000 to $500,000 in legal fees, according to his most recent financial disclosure form, and taken an emotional toll as well. The ravages of the experience show on his spare frame; Lindsey, who started out thin, has dropped about 30 pounds since Clinton took office.
His darkest moments, friends said, came when he was named an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a case in which Starr alleged that Lindsey had directed a pair of Arkansas bankers, Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert M. Hill, to conceal large cash withdrawals used to finance get-out-the-vote efforts in Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign.
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The son of a renowned Little Rock lawyer, Lindsey has known Clinton for 30 years, since they worked together for then-Sen. William Fulbright (D-Ark.). Lindsey advised Gov. Clinton from Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, his father's law firm, where Lindsey practiced management-side labor law, then signed on to the presidential campaign. "Bruce was the one constant on the campaign. He was there by Bill Clinton's side from the beginning to the end," said former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers. "Part of what he brought was the institutional memory. He knew Bill Clinton. He knew who Bill Clinton's friends were. He knew where all the information was, and on an issue like the draft . . . knew how to get ahold of people who had more information than we did in the early days and could help buttress the president's case."
At the White House, where he began as personnel chief, Lindsey's formal title is deputy White House counsel. But his portfolio is far broader, encompassing substantive issues such as the tobacco settlement, labor relations, product liability and judicial selection along with damage control efforts, and his access to the president, as his near-constant traveling companion and Air Force One hearts partner, is far more constant than that title would suggest.
Former Senate Whitewater committee counsel Robert J. Giuffra Jr. called Lindsey "the go-to guy for taking care of all the really serious problems" in the administration, from securities litigation to Whitewater.
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If Lindsey had some involvement handling the Lewinsky and Willey allegations, it wouldn't be the first time he was drawn into such damage control efforts. For example, in 1994, when reporters were looking into Paula Jones's allegations that Clinton sexually harassed her and seeking evidence of any similar conduct with other women, Lindsey called a former flight attendant on Clinton's campaign plane who had been contacted by reporters.
The aide, Christy Zercher, quotes Lindsey asking: "Did you say anything to anybody? What did they want to know? Did they want to know if Clinton was flirting on the airplane?" He urged her to say "all positive things," Zercher recalled.
Lindsey said at the time that he understood Zercher was upset about being called and wanted to assure her she did not have to talk if she chose not to.
Earlier, he led the White House defense when the American Spectator reported allegations that Arkansas state troopers said Clinton used them to procure women when he was governor. In one of the few times Lindsey's behind-the-scenes role has emerged so starkly, an ABC news crew captured Lindsey on the telephone with a sympathetic former trooper, Buddy Young, as they filmed an interview in Young's office. "We need you to do CNN at some point," Lindsey told Young. "Call the White House and ask them to page me while you hold or have me call you right back."
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"Bruce is circumspect and tight-lipped beyond belief," said former deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. "I don't think I've ever run into anyone who is as circumspect and tight-lipped as he is."
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"Well if we give them this they'll just want more," James Stewart reported in his book, "Blood Sport."
When allegations about Democratic fund-raising practices erupted three years later, in the closing days of Clinton's reelection campaign, Lindsey adopted a similar strategy. He told White House lawyers Mark Fabiani and Jane Sherburne to characterize meetings between Clinton and Indonesian banker James Riady as "casual, drop-by visits."
That account omitted the fact -- which emerged only after the election -- that Clinton had discussed the administration's policy toward China and Indonesia with Riady and that at one of the meetings, John Huang, Riady's employee at the Lippo Group, had asked for a fund-raising position at the Democratic National Committee.
In a memorandum to then-Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, Sherburne described efforts to wrest information out of Lindsey, saying that "nearly everything I had learned from Bruce since [his initial account of the visit as purely social] had been as a result of asking him to confirm what I had learned from other sources."
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Lindsey has also provided contradictory accounts about when he learned about White House efforts to find work for close Clinton friend Webster L. Hubbell after he was forced to resign as associate attorney general. White House officials had said that Lindsey did not know about the Lippo Group's hiring of Hubbell until news accounts in 1996.
However, in a deposition with Senate Whitewater investigators, Lindsey said he knew of Hubbell's consulting work for Lippo as early as November 1994 because Lippo planned to send a group of 20 Arkansans, including Hubbell, to Indonesia to meet Clinton on a trip there. "I believe I may have been told that he was on the list because he was doing some work for them," said Lindsey, who quashed the trip. Lippo paid Hubbell $100,000.
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"There's that great myth floating around out there, and it just ain't so," said White House counsel Charles F.C. Ruff. Former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum called Lindsey "totally loyal but totally honest and a person of impeccable judgment," while Pryor said: "I can't imagine him really trying to be deceptive. I don't think he can spell the word manipulate."
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"Unquestionably, and it is not a close call, Bruce gets the most valuable player award in this administration, and there is not a close second."