Posted on 09/13/2004 11:59:41 AM PDT by litany_of_lies
PAULA ZAHN: You got a lot of attention last week for on "The Factor" calling Bill Clinton an honest man. You said you know that you consider sort of astonishing anybody--oh, someone--I--Mr. O'Reilly said that he found it astonishing you would think that Mr. Clinton was an honest man.
And you said you thought at his core, he's an honest person. "I know that you have a different view, and I know that you consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things." Well, Sam Donaldson reacted to that interview several days later--
DAN RATHER: I didn't see Donaldson's reaction.
ZAHN: Yeah, and he said, clearly, Bill Clinton was not honest and thinks that the record speaks for itself.
RATHER: Well, he's entitled to his view. And I do remember the conversation with Bill, that who among us can say that we have never lied? My point is, I don't approve of lying. I certainly didn't approve of Bill Clinton lying. I think it was very serious. Btu I'm not going to be hypocritical and say I've never lied in my life. If you or Bill or Sam can tell me that you've never lied in your life about anything, well, a tip of the Stetson to you.
I do think you can be an honest person. I think you can be a decent- you tell a lie believing that, "Well, maybe I'll be protecting somebody else by telling the lie." But look, I have no argument with anyone who says "I have a different view." Bill Clinton's record stands for itself, but I would stand -- my own belief is, yes, you can be an honest person and still sometime in your life, maybe several sometimes in your life, have lied about something.
For example, in--you're the interviewer here, and understand it. Are you prepared to tell me--I would be very surprised if you were--that you have never lied about anything in your entire life? If you say yes to that, I would say, well, you're one of the rare people on earth who can say it. So it's in that context that I say--yeah. Yeah, I'm not one going to attack him. My job as a reporter is to say, "All right, what did he do? Let's look at his record." Now, the record shows that he lied. He stood up in front -- lied in front of the country, lied on television. That -- I do not approve of that. I don't know very many Americans who do. But I do understand it.
--Dan Rather and Paula Zahn on The Edge With Paula Zahn, May 22, 2001.
Its a little like Michael Moore calling F-911 his "version" of the truth.
Maybe Bill O'Reilly is behind the memos. Either Bush gets smeared or Rather does. Fair and Balanced.
Someone with research resources greater than mine should go back and check Rather's activity on the eve of the 1992 election. George H. W. Bush appeared to be surging in some polls and potentially pulling even with Bill Clinton. Then, a couple of days before the election, the TV news networks were leaked a memo that supposedly "proved" Bush's involvement in Iran-contra. All of the networks carried it, but Rather was the most brutal - calling it "the smoking gun" linking Bush to the Reagan-era scandal.
I recall that it was later decided that the document was very unclear on this fact (though it was not a forgery!),and that the leaker was a pal of Al Gore's on a Senate committee staff. But the damage had been done. By Rather. To another Bush.
And of course Mr. Rather believes he is 'protecting' John Kerry's election chances by broadcasting false documents about Pres. Bush.
This wasn't a leak. It was an indictment.
Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh indicted Cap Weinberger (and perhaps someone else) very publicly in connection with Iran-Contra.
Weinberger was never convicted of anything.
Walsh's probe accomplished next to nothing, and no links to Bush 41 or Bush Admin higher-ups were ever proven.
Glad you reminded me of that. The election may have turned out diffferently without the bogus indictment.
More information than you can stand follows.
Link:
http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/levin022001.shtml
++++++
Mr. Levin is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation
February 20, 2001 11:40 a.m.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the Marc Rich pardon is Bill Clinton's attempt to defend it by, among other subterfuges, pointing to George Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger in the so-called Iran-Contra matter. I'm appalled by the failure of conservatives to respond to this malicious fabrication. There is absolutely no correlation between the two pardons.
By now, most literate people are familiar with the broad strokes of the Rich scandal. Marc Rich is a fugitive from justice and a tax cheat who renounced his citizenship and fled the United States. Moreover, he traded with the Iranian government while it was holding American hostages. He's a detestable man who did detestable things.
In lobbying Bill Clinton for her ex-husband's pardon, Denise Rich gave over $1 million to Clinton's campaign and the DNC, $450,000 to the Clinton library, over $100,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign, and thousands of dollars in gifts to both Clintons. Law enforcement may not be able to prove a quid pro quo as a matter of law, but one nonetheless exists as a matter of fact.
Let's contrast this with the Weinberger/Iran-Contra situation. Weinberger had always opposed the sale of arms to the Iranians. And he had no knowledge of the transfer of funds from those sales to the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters. But even if he had supported the sale and knew of the transfer of funds, neither violated the law (including the unconstitutional Boland Amendments) — which is why no one was ever prosecuted for these actions.
The prosecutor in this case, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, demanded that Weinberger nonetheless discredit President Ronald Reagan's account of events and provide incriminating testimony against him. Walsh was hoping to bring a possible obstruction charge against the former president. In exchange for turning state's evidence, Walsh would permit Weinberger to plead to a single misdemeanor. Weinberger refused, insisting that Reagan did nothing wrong. That's when Walsh indicted him. He charged Weinberger with, among other things, obstructing Congress. Both Republican senator Warren Rudman and Democrat senator Daniel Inouye, who co-chaired the joint congressional investigating committee, came to Weinberger's defense and disputed that Weinberger had lied to Congress. The court dismissed quickly the charge as failing to allege a prosecutable criminal offense. It was utterly frivolous.
Walsh also later brought a second indictment against Weinberger — just days before the November 1992 presidential election between then-President Bush and then-Gov. Bill Clinton — for lying to Congress. The court dismissed this charge for violating the statute of limitations, but only after the damage to Bush's reelection had been done. Clinton seized on the indictment calling it "smoking gun" evidence that Bush had lied about his role in the so-called "arms for hostages" deal. More than frivolous, this indictment was malicious and intended to punish a candidate Walsh personally disliked.
Another of the earlier charges Walsh brought against Weinberger alleged that he withheld documents from the Independent Counsel's office. The fact is that Weinberger gave his documents to the Library of Congress, which placed them in a secure area. Weinberger's lawyers even informed Walsh on the whereabouts of the documents. However, Walsh mistakenly looked for the documents in the wrong area of the library. Rather than being embarrassed by his incompetence, he charged Weinberger for concealing the documents from prosecutors. (Walsh is the same prosecutor who dropped off suitcases full of classified documents at an airport sidewalk check-in. When the luggage was lost by the airline, he concealed their disappearance from the FBI for two weeks. The classified documents were never recovered.)
Then-President Bush saw Walsh's actions for what they were — an outrageous abuse of power. Bush deserves accolades for his wisdom and courage in granting this pardon. There were legitimate, articulated reasons for Weinberger's pardon. And the pardon was reviewed through normal Justice Department processes. No secrets were kept from the United States Pardon Attorney or anyone else. This is precisely what the presidential pardon power is for: correcting a wrong done to an upstanding citizen.
Leave it to Bill Clinton and his underbosses to rewrite history to excuse their own contemptible conduct.
I don't remember that Rather was any better or worse than any of the other anchors re the Weinberger indictment. I remember restricting myself to CNN Headline News at the time because I couldn't STAND the three nets. CNN wasn't fair, either, but they were the least offensive of the bunch at the time.
At least there has been an improvement information choices available in the past 12 years.
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