XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX 18:21:06 PST SUN FEB 22
1998 XXXXX
DIGENOVA FALLOUT: WHO'S PAYING THOSE INVESTIGATORS?
Reporter building West Coast connection
**Exclusive**
"No one at the White House or anyone acting on behalf
of the White House or any of President Clinton's
private attorneys has hired or authorized any private
investigator to look into the background of Mr.
DiGenova, Ms. Toensing, investigators, prosecutors or
reporters."
White House press secretary Mike McCurry in a
statement quickly issued after DiGenova told Russert
on MEET THE PRESS that investigators were hired to
delve into the lives of him and his wife, former Bush
administration official Victoria Toensing.
DiGenova has been a regular television commentator on
MSNBCCNBCNBC where he's been highly critical of the
President's handling of the Lewinsky crisis.
DiGenova asserted on MTP that he had been informed by
a reporter "that word had gotten around town that I
and my wife... were being investigated by a private
investigator with links to the White House and the
attorneys representing the president."
He added, "If the White House is condoning the
investigation of private citizens, looking into their
lives ... that is truly a frightening, frightening
development."
DiGenova said reporters told him Investigative Group
Inc. [IGI], headed by Terry F. Lenzner, is doing the
digging.
[See also http://users.aol.com/beachbt/nichols.txt.
Lenzner was also the Investigator who was alleged to have been
hired to dig up dirt on a Congressional commitee chairman. BT]
Has DiGenova been given bad information?
Or could "friends of the White House" really be going
for dirt on DiGenova, Peter Baker & Sue Schmidt of
the WASHINGTON POST, Jeff Gerth & Stephen Labaton of
the NEW YORK TIMES, Drudge, Michael Isikoff at
NEWSWEAK, Jackie Judd of ABC NEWS and others?
McCurry called DiGenova's assertions "blatant lies,"
but who might be bankrolling these investigations?
Readers of this report log on for answers!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned from several sources
directly involved with the situation that one
reporter, who apparently "shared" with DiGenova, is
busy preparing a deep and detailed print story on the
situation.
Publication date: not known, but one well-placed
source in Washington says the reporter will show that
the money for investigators is coming from
California, from one extremely wealthy person who has
spent private time with Clinton.
It's a turn that promises to rock media circles as
well as the grand jury.
One East Coast publishing source says the reporter is
also zeroing in on a senior White House official who
may be acting as a "go-between" -- coordinating with
"The Purse" and PIs digging around in the field.
FOOTNOTE: Editors at the WASHINGTON POST have some
fun with the "White House Denies Hiring PIs" story on
Monday when reported-targets Peter Baker and Sue
Schmidt are the very ones assigned to do cover
DiGenova's MEET THE PRESS claims!
Baker & Schmidt end their piece on a curious beat.
Without any build or background they meow: "Mickey
Kantor, who represents Clinton as a lawyer in the
Lewinsky matter, refused to say whether he has hired
[IGI's] Lenzner."
X X X X X
More from the NY Post:
"Several sources have told me that the White House is already compiling
dossiers on the private lives of the congressmen on the House Judiciary
Committee who might have to vote on impeachment."
- - -
TRUTH'S GETTING HARDER TO IGNORE
New York Post
February 23, 1998 Jack Newfield
The presumption of innocence doesn't require the suspension of common
sense.
The noose of truth is starting to tighten around Bill Clinton's neck.
The president is a great trickster and escape artist, but nobody can
keep juggling 20 fictions in the air forever without a few crashing to
earth for all to see.
From the beginning, my view has been that most of the truth will
eventually emerge about the sex, obstruction-of-justice and fund-raising
scandals swirling around the White House. The legal process is slow, but
inexorable.
In the last week, there have been six significant developments that
suggest that Clinton is beginning to lose the war over the facts, even
as he continues to win the war over the politics:
Vernon Jordan's friends are starting to circulate a story that diverges
from Clinton's.
Jordan, the go-between, is now saying that Clinton never told him that
Monica Lewinsky was a witness in the Paula Jones sex-harassment case at
the time Clinton asked Jordan to find her a job.
Clinton's well-liked press secretary, Mike McCurry, shockingly suggested
in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that Clinton's story may change
over time, and that there might not be "an innocent explanation" for the
Lewinsky relationship.
When asked if he was misquoted, McCurry honorably replied, "I said what
I said, but I shouldn't have said it."
Clinton is starting to use the Nixon-like coverup and stalling tactics
of invoking executive privilege and Secret Service privilege to keep the
grand jury away from some key evidence.
Former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, an old Clinton rival, has pleaded
guilty and is now cooperating with the independent counsel in the
original Whitewater real-estate-deal probe.
Two major players in the 1996 Asian-money campaign-finance scandal have
been indicted for money laundering - Charlie Trie and Maria Hsia.
A new independent counsel will soon be appointed to probe Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt. He is accused of favoring a casino license for
an Indian tribe that contributed heavily to Clinton's 1996 campaign.
The sex, dirty-money, Whitewater and obstruction allegations are
starting to converge into one big muddy river.
Vernon Jordan and Webster Hubbell are the bridges linking these polluted
streams.
Our common sense is also affected by Clinton's everyday actions. He
doesn't act like an innocent man. He doesn't answer questions. He hasn't
offered a plausible account of all the gifts, White House visits, or
job-seeking assistance given Lewinsky.
And he is spending his time trying to destroy his critics - just like
Nixon.
Yesterday, Joe DiGenova appeared on Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" show
on NBC.
DiGenova is an ex-prosecutor, a Republican, an effective talk-show
guest. He disclosed that White House private eyes are investigating him,
his wife and a Republican committee chairman in Congress.
He named them as Terry Lenzner, who worked on the Nixon impeachment with
Hillary Clinton, and Anthony Paladino, a P.I. hired by Clinton's 1992
campaign to suppress "bimbo eruptions," mostly through threats.
"I want to know who is paying Mr. Lenzner and Mr. Paladino," DiGenova
said, "to investigate citizens like me and my wife. Who is getting their
dirt?"
DiGenova said he knows his privacy is being violated because
correspondents for two "national magazines" have told him, and told the
chair of the congressional committee he does work for on the Teamsters
union.
The White House also has another conspiracy going to attack critics in a
Nixonian fashion.
They are violating privacy rights while trying to use the privacy issue
as their sword and shield.
Last week, Mary McGrory, The Washington Post's universally revered
liberal columnist, exposed Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal for trying to
ruin that paper's scrupulous Whitewater reporter, Susan Schmidt.
McGrory revealed that former journalist Blumenthal had prepared a
dossier attacking Schmidt, but that McCurry had "killed circulation of
the finished product."
McGrory also named conspiracy fetishist Hillary Clinton as the
instigator of this slimy effort.
McGrory is the last person in Washington who would join the "vast
right-wing conspiracy" Hillary invoked as a demonizing diversion.
Several sources have told me that the White House is already compiling
dossiers on the private lives of the congressmen on the House Judiciary
Committee who might have to vote on impeachment.
Last Sunday, George Stephanopoulos casually mentioned on ABC-TV that
Clinton's advisers are working on such a doomsday blackmail strategy,
likening it to something JFK did in 1963 when Congress was supposedly
considering outing one of his mistresses as an East German spy.
It's time for some national Democrats to start speaking up about these
tactics, and about which way the facts are starting to point.
So far, only Sens. Moynihan and Lieberman seem to be willing to say what
they actually think, and put principle ahead of partisanship.
But where are the other Democrats - like Bill Bradley, Richard Gephardt,
Tom Daschle, and Bob Kerrey - who have a single standard about truth,
law and privacy?
Where are the Democrats with the common sense to analyze all the facts
on the merits, and tell the truth, no matter what?
==========================================================================
NY Times
February 23, 1998
White House Denies Using Private Eyes to Go After Starr
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON -- The White House
Sunday forcefully denied that it had
engaged private investigators to
examine political opponents of the
president or members of the staff of
Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel
pursuing the Monica Lewinsky case.
Mike McCurry, the White House
spokesman, said in a statement that
printed and broadcast accusations that
the White House or President Clinton's
lawyers had hired private investigators
to scrutinize the president's critics were
"blatant lies."
McCurry was responding to a report in
Time magazine and televised comments
by Joseph diGenova, a Republican
former federal prosecutor, that the
White House had started an
investigatory effort aimed at
intimidating Starr and other perceived
enemies of the president.
The harsh words traded by diGenova
and the White House on Sunday mark
an escalation in the conflict over tactics
in the legal battle that threatens
Clinton's presidency. Starr and his staff
are investigating whether Clinton
engaged in a sexual relationship with
Ms. Lewinsky, a former White House
intern, and then suborned perjury and
obstructed justice in an effort to cover it
up. Clinton has denied the charges.
The White House, fighting a multifront
political and legal war, is trying to
protect the president while trying to
discredit Starr and his team of
prosecutors. One White House official
called the effort "our continuing
campaign to destroy Ken Starr."
Clinton's private lawyer, David Kendall,
has already accused Starr of illegally
leaking secret grand jury information to
reporters and asked a federal court to
cite him for contempt of court. The
White House and the Democratic
National Committee are also
encouraging reporters to look into the
background of Starr's financial backers
and into the personal and professional
histories of several of the senior
prosecutors on his staff.
DiGenova said on NBC's "Meet the
Press" Sunday that he had heard rumors
from reporters that he and his wife,
Victoria Toensing, a Republican former
senior Justice Department official, were
the subject of a White House-directed
personal inquiry using private
investigators.
DiGenova and Ms. Toensing, now in
private practice in Washington, are legal
consultants to a House committee
investigating the teamsters, including its
political and financial links to the
Democratic Party and the Clinton
re-election campaign in 1996.
DiGenova said he had no proof of the
reports, but that he had heard them
from several independent sources and
believed them. He added that if it were
proved true it would be "truly a
frightening, frightening development."
But McCurry strongly denied that
Clinton had sponsored any such
investigatory effort. Other White House
officials suggested that diGenova was
part of a counterattack directed by Starr
and his lieutenants.
"No one at the White House, or anyone
acting on behalf of the White House, or
any of President Clinton's private
attorneys has hired or authorized any
private investigators to look into the
background of diGenova, Ms.
Toensing, investigators, prosecutors or
reporters," McCurry said in the
statement.
Another White House official, speaking
on the condition of anonymity,
wondered whether it was coincidental
that diGenova had voiced his suspicions
on the same day that Time magazine
was reporting that Starr was incensed by
the White House effort to discredit him
and was preparing to fight back.
"The timing of this smear is curious,
given news reports that the independent
counsel is launching a counterattack at
the White House," a senior White
House official said. "If these are the
tactics of the independent counsel's
office, and if the independent counsel is,
as he says, only interested in getting at
the truth, then deliberately
disseminating false information is a
curious way of getting at the truth."
Starr's office declined to comment on
the matter.
But one of Starr's deputies, Jackie
Bennett, last week defended two senior
prosecutors in the office who have been
the targets of White House and
Democratic Party accusations.
Administration officials spread rumors
late in the week that Michael Emmick
and Bruce Udolf, two top aides to Starr,
were about to resign because of
accusations of misconduct earlier in
their careers.
"They are highly distinguished,"
Bennett said in defending the two
lawyers and denying that either was
resigning. "In fact, they are revered in
federal circles for their work since
joining the Department of Justice.
That's their history. That's why we
brought them on board."
Several Democratic members of
Congress who are loyal to Clinton have
called on Attorney General Janet Reno
to dismiss or censure Starr for leaks and
other alleged prosecutorial misdeeds.
At a recent strategy session, one source
who was present said, the president's
defenders said they did not expect Reno
to dismiss Starr. They hoped, however,
that a constant barrage of criticism
would "chill" the independent counsel
and stop the flow of damaging
information that appears to originate in
his office, according to this source.
==========================================================================
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