[Californiajones]

I just caught the last half of PRIMARY COLORS on tv a few weeks back. I was impressed with one thing from the very gifted but very pc/now insane director Mike Nichols (who once gave us THE GRADUATE and WIT but sank to strange blasphemous lows in his truncated ANGELS OVER AMERICA) -- how this group of Hollywoodites and lefties managed to make a film about the political corruption and idolatry of the Clintons. Emotionally, it felt real -- even if the facts were skewed. What did you think of that film, Mr. Poe?

And are there any redeeming qualities at all in Hill or Bill? I recall meeting with my pastor, a very famous local LA guy, right before Monica, and he had been at the White House and met with Bill Clinton. He said that he sincerely believed that Clinton was a believer. In light of that, I recall hearing through the Starr frenzy, that Bill actually had a period of time in which he tried to be faithful and it was Monica who shattered that attempt. (Funny how this was the time he should have been nailing Bin Laden instead of her... but God oversees legacy, not man).

Anyway, I guess I am straining for some human qualities in Hillary and to a lesser extent Bill. Some mark of human kindness beyond the Madame Mao mask. Without having read your book, is there anything of true American spirit in her? It scares me that she does know a bit about Presbyterianism (liberation theology!) and that she will try to conjure up a sort of Oprah spirituality in order to win the religious vote when she runs. Any thoughts and thanks again for your excellent writings. I will be getting the book.

Also what did you think of Ambrose Pritchard's book on them? That man is excellent, though I may have gotten the name wrong, he is a conservative anti Marxist Brit writer.

[Richard Poe]

Californiajones writes: "What did you think of that film [PRIMARY COLORS], Mr. Poe?"

I thought it was a whitewash. The moral of the story seemed to be that the Clintons, for all their flaws, had the potential for greatness — a boilerplate Clinton press office theme which also emerges in the title of George Stephanopoulos' memoir All Too Human. This message would have been harder to sustain had the film honestly portrayed the full range of Clinton corruption and brutality, rather than focusing on Bill Clinton's sex flings.

Californiajones: "And are there any redeeming qualities at all in Hill or Bill?"

Everyone has redeeming qualities. However, the Clintons possess no qualities so redeeming as to justify appointing either one of them to any office of public trust in these United States, IMHO.

Also what did you think of Ambrose [Evans-]Pritchard's book on them?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's The Secret Life of Bill Clinton provides the best-sourced, best-written, most complete and most reliable account of Clinton corruption yet produced.

Its chief (and perhaps only) weakness lies in its analysis of the Oklahoma City bombing, which unfortunately ignores the Middle Eastern connection (see The Third Terrorist by Jayna Davis), but nevertheless points correctly to disturbing and unexplained evidence of U.S. government foreknowledge and perhaps actual complicity in the bombing.

The Clinton anti-terror policy was predicated on the assumption that America had more to fear from home-grown, "right-wing" terrorists than from foreign terrorists. Some researchers have charged that, during the Clinton administration, terrorist attacks by Middle Eastern groups were covered up and falsely characterized as accidental (eg. the downing of TWA Flight 800), while the Oklahoma City bombing was used as a showcase to justify the Clinton policy of targeting "rightwing" terrorism almost exclusively.

You may remember that the Clinton White House blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on a general atmosphere of rightwing hysteria generated, they said, by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. Mainstream media took up the chant with an all-out propaganda war against what they called "hate radio." The FBI subsequently launched Project Megiddo — an aggressive intelligence offensive against allegedly violent elements of the Christian Right.

Thus the bombing proved politically useful to the Clintons. But it was only useful as long as the American people were kept in the dark about the fact that OKC bombmaker Terry Nichols had received training in the Philippines from al-Qaida operatives. This fact — if widely reported — would have greatly diluted the propaganda value of the OKC bombing for the Clintons, and was suppressed.