HILLARY'S SECRET WAR
The gelding of
Rupert Murdoch
Posted: July 14, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
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If that sounds too fantastic to be true, read on.
By Richard Poe
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
After former FBI assistant director Mark Felt announced that he was "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame, a Wall Street Journal editorial of June 2, 2005, noted certain parallels between Presidents Nixon and Clinton: "One lesson we learned from the Nixon and Bill Clinton eras is that it is both difficult and painful to check a president, especially one abusing the Justice Department," said the editorial.
David Brock's MediaMatters.org – a self-described media watchdog site closely tied to the Soros network – bristled at this comparison between the Nixon and Clinton presidencies. It responded the same day, falsely stating that the Clintons had been "exonerated" and that countless investigations had "failed to produce evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Clintons."
Nixon, by contrast, had directly threatened American liberty, MediaMatters charged. As proof, it quoted an article from the American Journalism Review of August 2004, which said:
The Nixon administration variously investigated, wiretapped and audited the income tax returns of numerous reporters. In all, more than 50 journalists appeared on a special White House "enemies list." Nixon's otherwise pro-business Justice Department filed antitrust charges against all three broadcast networks.
As Woodward reported a year after Nixon's resignation, Nixon himself allegedly ordered an aide to falsely smear syndicated columnist Jack Anderson as a homosexual, and two White House aides held a clandestine meeting to plot ways to poison the troublesome journalist. In many respects, reporters who investigated Nixon were less hunters than prey.
As we will see, Hillary's Shadow Team employed nearly identical methods to muzzle bothersome journalists. If Nixon's Plumbers and Hillary's secret police differed in their media suppression tactics, the difference lay principally in the fact that Hillary's efforts proved more successful. Her most impressive victory was the gelding of conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
White House Enemy No. 1
In January 1998, White House press secretary Mike McCurry appeared on CNN's "Evans and Novak." The talk turned to "hate merchants" in the press. Asked to provide an example of a "hate merchant," McCurry named Christopher Ruddy.
"I think it may do a disservice to say he's a journalist," said McCurry. "His personal views ... border on hate."
Two months later, on March 16, the legal activist group Judicial Watch hauled Clinton adviser James Carville into a deposition to grill him about Filegate. At one point, Judicial Watch chief counsel Larry Klayman asked Carville which journalists he considered, "the most antagonistic toward the administration."
"Christopher Ruddy," said Carville. And who were the five journalists the White House hated most, Klayman pressed. Carville named four, with Ruddy in the No. 1 spot.
Clearly, the Clinton White House hated Christopher Ruddy. But why?
At age 27, Ruddy was a rising star in journalism. He had already broken several major stories when he started work as a reporter for the New York Post in late summer 1993. Vincent Foster was already dead. Big Media had moved on. Foster was depressed and committed suicide, they said. Case closed.
But a source in Washington told Ruddy that something was fishy about Foster's death. Virtually all information on the Foster crime scene had been suppressed. The Park Police report, the autopsy report, and a copy of Foster's alleged suicide note had never been released to the public. Ruddy decided to investigate.
He found many flaws and anomalies in the official investigations of the case – too numerous to detail here. To give but one example, when a White House lawyer claimed to have found a suicide note in Foster's briefcase, the Strategic Investment newsletter asked several of the world's top handwriting experts to analyze the note. Some declined comment, but all three who were willing to talk declared the note a forgery. Professor Reginald Alton of Oxford University stated, "It was not just a forgery, but an obvious forgery."
Ruddy reported his findings in his 1997 book, "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster." Former FBI director William S. Sessions contributed a blurb to Ruddy's book, calling it "serious and compelling." Sessions also wrote, "While enduring great criticism, [Ruddy] has tenaciously argued a persuasive case that the American public has not been told the complete facts of the case. Mr. Ruddy has carefully avoided undue inferences about the death. His reporting raises serious concerns about the handling of the Foster case."
Ruddy exercised remarkable restraint in his reporting on Foster's death. He never claimed, for instance, that Foster was murdered. Ruddy confined his claims only to what he could prove definitively. His investigation established two things: First, that Foster did not die where his body was found – his corpse was deposited in Fort Marcy Park after he was dead; second, the Clinton White House systematically obstructed every investigation into Foster's death, for reasons unknown.
As with Nixon, the Foster cover-up would shine a brighter spotlight on the Clintons than the wrongdoing they were trying to hide. To this day, we do not know exactly what the Clintons were trying to hide in the Foster case. But we know, without a doubt, that they were hiding something.
Smear campaign
Instead of joining Ruddy in seeking the truth about Foster's death, Big Media launched a smear campaign against the young reporter. His Foster exposes began running in the New York Post in January and February 1994. Major news organizations launched an immediate counterattack. The hardest blow came from ABC News.
Ruddy had reported on March 7 that Park Police had no "relationship photos" of the crime scene – that is, photos showing the relationship of Foster's body to its overall surroundings. Ruddy also said that other "crucial" crime-scene photos were missing.
In response, "ABC World News Tonight" aired a report promising to dispel "rumors" and "speculation" over the Foster case, "for instance, the rumor that there are no photographs of the crime scene," said the newscaster. "There are. ABC News has seen a complete set."
ABC dramatically unveiled a close-up Polaroid shot of Foster's hand, with a gun dangling from the trigger finger, a photo the public had never seen. The implication was clear. Though the segment never mentioned Ruddy by name, it strongly implied that this photo disproved his story. But did it?
In fact, the Polaroid did not affect Ruddy's story one way or the other. Ruddy had never claimed that every crime scene photo was missing, only that certain crucial pictures were missing. And he was right. The close-up of Foster's hand was not a "relationship photo." Nor was it particularly "crucial." It did not prove or disprove any part of Ruddy's theory. Moreover, it was just a Polaroid, which police shoot as back-ups until the real photos – shot on 35-mm film – are developed.
ABC News claimed that it had seen a "complete set" of crime-scene photos. But had it really? One year after the broadcast, the government released documents showing that all 35-mm negatives taken at the Foster crime scene were "underexposed" and useless. There were no relationship shots and no videotape. Moreover, the most crucial and revealing Polaroids had gone missing. Only 13 Polaroids remained in the police file – stunningly poor documentation for any death investigation.
How, then, could ABC News have seen a "complete set" of crime scene photos?
It turned out that Ruddy had been right all along. But his vindication came too late. ABC News had done its damage. It had destroyed Ruddy's credibility and killed the story.
White House pressure
Back at the newsroom, Ruddy explained to his editor, Ken Chandler, how ABC News had twisted the facts. "He was very supportive," Ruddy recalls. "He said, 'Don't talk to any of these people. All they want to do is destroy you.'"
Chandler's sympathy notwithstanding, Ruddy was taken off the story. He never again wrote about the Foster case for the New York Post. "I don't blame them," says Ruddy. "The Post came under withering criticism. It was a difficult situation."
Indeed it was. The Post terminated Ruddy in September 1994. No one mentioned the Foster story at his termination. But no one had to. It had been hanging in the air for months.
Rumors flew that the order to fire Ruddy had come straight from Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owned the New York Post. At the time, Murdoch was battling for his company's life, as the Federal Communications Commission investigated charges that his Australian-based News Corporation violated federal regulations barring foreign companies from owning more than 25 percent of U.S. broadcast companies.
If the FCC ruled against Murdoch, he stood in danger of losing his broadcast license, and, with it, the Fox Network. Given the stakes, it is not hard to understand why Murdoch might have been looking for ways to improve his relationship with the Clinton administration.
Ruddy's editor, Ken Chandler, vehemently denied these rumors, as reported in the trade journal Editor & Publisher of Sept. 17, 1994. Regarding Ruddy's most recent report on the Vincent Foster case, E&P noted:
Chandler's denial was predictable, but inaccurate. In fact, Ruddy had not left to pursue other opportunities. He initially had nowhere to go after leaving the Post. More to the point, the late Eric Breindel, who was then New York Post editorial page editor, admitted soon afterward that Ruddy had been dismissed due to government pressure.Chandler also categorically denied allegations that the paper did not run the report because of political pressure – specifically regarding owner Rupert Murdoch's broadcast holdings and the Federal Communications Commission.
E&P quoted Chandler saying, "It's hard to imagine a situation where pressure like that would affect one's news judgment. Chris left us because he had other opportunities to pursue. He left with a good relationship with us."
Before hiring Ruddy at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, publisher Richard Mellon Scaife called Eric Breindel to get a recommendation. "Ruddy is a good guy," Breindel told him. He then explained to Scaife that "the feds" had demanded Ruddy's firing.
During the early to mid 1990s, the "feds" were active on a number of fronts, shutting down any and all efforts to investigate Foster's death. In his book, "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes:
The subsequent conduct of the U.S. Park Police, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, the Virginia medical authorities, as well as Independent Counsel Robert Fiske and all those who participated in his report indicated that the police and judicial apparatus of this country had been dangerously politicized. Every backstop mechanism had failed. If ever there was a need for a crusading prosecutor to cleanse the institutions of the republic, it was in the case of Vincent Foster.
Alas, no such crusader emerged. Instead, the job was handed to former Solicitor General and former U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth W. Starr. What happened next is one of the least-known – yet most damning – episodes in the annals of Clinton corruption.
Richard Poe is the investigative editor of David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, as well as managing editor of Horowitz's group blog Moonbat Central. The views expressed in Poe's book, "Hillary's Secret War," are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
