After my eight years of mulling over all this ie. Fred backing off chinagate (as this Safire article puts it) and taking into account alamo-girls 'Time Line' - I came to the following conclusions:
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"By thus thinking tactically - about how the hearings ``play’’ - Thompson is making a strategic blunder."
My thinking here is that - Thompson, at this point in time - was realizing that not only had a few of the key witnesses already fled the country, (or struck deals), but perhaps more, if not all of them had fled the country. Hard to know what Thompson had found out about fleeing witnesses in these times before any 'hearings.'
A serious Senate investigation has three purposes: first, to use its subpoena power to expose to public view..."
And with this, Thompson by now had probably found out that all of the **113 chinagate witnesses had fled the country; hence, there would not be - anyone left to subpoena.
"But just when the committee’s exposing purpose was getting traction...Chairman Thompson cut away from the chase....a deal with Trent Lott."
By this time, I'd bet that Thompson had been informed by the House Managers that Lott had flat out told them (the House Mgers) that there 'was not going to be enough votes' in the Senate to convict Clinton on treason (or any other charges).
"Too bad about Fred Thompson’s wimpout. Hope he catches his breath in time."
Thompson, knowing that there'd be no witneses available - knew for sure at this point in time that there would could not be a conviction of Clinton for treason.
And what was left for Thompson to do (for the record)? - Not much - but to go along - -for the rest of the ride. Simply nothing else he could do with no witnesses.
So, I have to disagree with Safire inferring Thompson whimped out. I have to go with the facts that we all have available to us through our varied sources, including alamo-girls fine work - 'Time Lines' to guide us.
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Of course, in my above, I'm responding to a William Safire article and the time line Safire offers up does not include actual dates/with months and or weeks, or perhaps I could be more precise in my above responses. And then again, my responses are truly irrelevant considering that I am just a layman and speaking from the sidelines.
[and the **113 figure I use above is after 1998; I believe the figure was 85 pre-1998 as stated in '98 Congressional Records]
[Calpernia, I've pinged alamo-girl to look on, but in doing so, we must realize that alamo-girl might not want to respond to any of this seeing that it is a newspaper reporters observations that are being discussed in this post]
With the knowledge of foreign money coming into political pockets, should that be a factor in voting for MFN status?