The other day I was chatting with a distant associate who is a practicing Communist and Political Cynic, regarding the Clinton Impeachment Trial. I often keep people who hold opposite political opinions around as sounding boards and to challenge myself to deeper thinking about various issues. He certainly has a dislike of Clinton, but for different reasons then mine! He says that Clinton elevated himself to the position of power through some very clever strategies, and that this is where his higher IQ is actually used. We discussed the Iraq situation and Clinton's timing and release of some 450 cruise missiles, missiles that were not Y2K compliant (from Jane's Defense Weekly). He told me to think larger. He said that Clinton is always thinking strategy and several moves ahead. He asked me, which Senator benefits from the re-fit and resupply of Cruise Missiles? Are any of them on the 'undecided list' on the Presidential Impeachment Trial? He said that Clinton does things that have several implications at once. Certainly he gained public support during the Iraqi attacks, but he also may be able to make allies using the same attacks. I thought for a moment and then realized that undecided Senator Slade Gordon, "Boeing's Senator", would benefit from the restock of cruise missile weapon stores. So let's see, Boeing's influence on Senator Gordon also has a hand around Clinton's neck. If Boeing is now deciding against payments to the TWA 800 survivors (recent Insight Magazine Article), and seeing it's 747 airliner manufacturing taking heavy hits in sales, benefitting AirBus, because of the results of the TWA 800 investigations with the NTSB and resultant FAA A/D's, they now have a chance against the one man who ordered the extensive coverup, William Jefferson Clinton. Of course Al Gore Jr. is a lifetime family friend of James Hall, head of the NTSB, that provided the disinformation report on the TWA 800 center fuel tank as cause. We must never think about TWA 800 alone and in isolation. We must see it as a pattern, as interconnected to other aspects of our political atmosphere. In order for a coverup to be as extensive as TWA 800, many other components were brought in to satisfy the protests of all of the parties involved, from TWA the airline, to the IM unions, the Flight Attendant's Union, the emergency aid and money for the survivor families, Boeing the manufacturer, Weapon Systems manufacturers, FAA, NTSB, FBI, The TWA insurance carriers, Naval Officers, various News Agencies, critical witnesses, etc. Best Regards, Marshall Houston Portland, Oregon http://38.201.154.103/articles/?a=1999/1/23/4405 White House Lawyer Fudges Clinton Civil Rights Record Carl Limbacher January 23, 1999 Cheryl Mills' Moving Moment Based on Myth "I'm not worried about civil rights, because this President's record on civil rights, on women's rights, on all our rights is unimpeachable." Those were the words of White House lawyer Cheryl Mills on Wednesday, as she invoked Bill Clinton's public record on race and women's issues to repudiate the notion that Paula Jones' rights were violated in any important way. Reportedly, Mills' presentation was so moving it left the eyes of several Republican Senators moist. Though the young African-American lawyer won media accolades for her performance, the substance of her argument is undermined by the facts of Bill Clinton's actual record, especially as it relates to his own treatment of black people. Take the example Mills used to explain the genesis of what is said to be the President's remarkable sense of racial tolerance: "Bill Clinton's grandfather owned a store. His store catered primarily to African-Americans ... he taught his grandson that the African-Americans who came into his store were good people, and they worked hard, and they deserved a better deal in life. The President has taken his grandfather's teachings to heart and he has worked every day to give all of us a better deal, an equal deal." Clinton's maternal grandfather, Eldridge Cassidy, did indeed own a grocery store in the black section of Hope, Arkansas. And Clinton spent much time there as a toddler. But just after his fifth year, Clinton's widowed mother, Virginia Blythe, married Roger Clinton and he moved the family to Hot Springs -- leaving young Clinton with a good deal less contact with his reputed role model during his formative years. But the move brought another man into the picture. Young Bill became the favorite nephew of his new uncle, Ray Clinton. Uncle Ray was wealthy, well connected and employed the future president's stepfather in his Hot Springs Buick dealership. According to Clinton biographer Roger Morris, there was "convincing evidence" that Bill Clinton's Uncle Ray was linked to the Ku Klux Klan. As young Bill came of age he poked fun at his uncle's "notorious racism", but gratefully accepted his help to escape the draft. Ray Clinton pulled every string at his disposal and managed to keep his nephew's draft notice on hold for nearly a year, enough time to secure an ROTC slot under Colonel Eugene Holmes. According to a statehouse reporter quoted in Morris' Clinton biography, "Partners in Power", well into his governorship, Clinton regularly referred to his Klan-connected uncle as "the most commanding male presence in his life." Racist Uncle Ray isn't the only bit of tarnish on the Clinton civil rights halo. Every Clinton biography notes that young Clinton got his start in politics working for Senator J. William Fullbright. Today's journalists prefer to remember Fullbright for his early opposition to the Vietnam War. But it was Fullbright's staunch opposition to civil rights legislation that got him re-elected time and again in Arkansas. Clinton considered Fullbright his Arkansas role model, according to presidential biographer, David Maraniss. But surely, as Cheryl Mills might argue, once young Clinton was able to wield power on his own, removed from the pernicious influence of the old South's racial sensibilities, his commitment to civil rights would emerge. Well, not exactly. As editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, longtime Clinton watcher Paul Greenberg remembers the Governor Clinton the rest of the press pretends to forget. According to Greenberg, the President's famous reputation as a civil rights champion came as "news to some of us who had followed Bill Clinton over the years." When Clinton came home to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Little Rock's Central High desegregation crisis, he delivered a speech heavily laced with recollections of his home state's racial inequities, describing his desire to right those wrongs as, "the driving passion of my life." Greenberg wrote days later, "He could have fooled me. I remember writing editorial after editorial urging then-Governor Clinton to take a stronger stand on racial issues. Arkansas would not get a civil rights law of its own until after Bill Clinton left the Governor's Mansion." Greenberg recalled how the young Governor began his tour of duty cozying up to the villain of the Central High episode, then-Governor Orval Faubus. In 1980, Greenberg said, Clinton had even "aped the Orval Faubus of 1957 by promising to defy 'the whole United States Army' if Jimmy Carter sent more Cuban refugees to Fort Chaffee," after Castro had begun dumping his Marielito exiles on American shores. "Only later," wrote Greenberg, "did the legend of Bill Clinton as a stalwart defender of civil rights take shape, largely in his own revisionist imagination." Cheryl Mills spoke of the honor she felt as an African-American granted the opportunity to defend the President of the United States before the Senate. But does Mills know about the opportunity he denied another African-American woman, Charlette Perry -- when it was her turn to move up the ladder? In 1991, Perry was in line for a promotion at her state job with the Arkansas Board of Review. But when a slot opened up, Governor Clinton saw to it that the job went instead to his unqualified mistress, Gennifer Flowers. Perry filed a formal complaint, which required a hearing where Flowers would have to deny under oath that she won the slot because of Clinton's influence. Bill Clinton personally suborned Flower's perjury about the job that should have gone to Perry, during an exchange that was inadvertently captured on Flowers' telephone tape recorder. FLOWERS: The only thing that concerns me, where I'm concerned at this point is the state job. CLINTON: Yeah, I never thought about that. But as long as you say you'd just been looking for one, if they ever ask if you've talked to me about it, you can say no. Perry won her case before the Arkansas Labor Grievance Review Board and was awarded back pay along with a promotion to a comparable position. But the ruling wasn't legally binding. Perry's boss, Clinton crony Don Barnes, ignored the finding -- citing "prior disciplinary issues" to keep Charlette Perry from collecting on her victory. Charlette Perry's ordeal, replete with its sex-connected lies, was surely a harbinger of things to come for Paula Jones. Would White House lawyer Cheryl Mills dispute that Ms. Perry's civil rights were violated? Ms. Mills might also care to bone up on the story of Billy Ray Washington, another African-American, who was literally framed on a homicide rap to cover-up malfeasance by Bill Clinton's mother. As documented in The New Republic (Aug. 3, 1992), Washington's brush with Clinton style "civil rights" was harrowing. One day in 1983, Washington found himself the subject of racist taunts by a carload of white teens. He responded with a rock, which struck 17 year old Susie Deer in the face. But Deer's injuries were not serious and the hospital recommended only some minor plastic surgery. Then why did Susie Deer end up dead? Nurse-anesthetist Virginia Dwire (later Kelly, Clinton's mother) had apparently botched the procedure on Deer. A subsequent hospital investigation revealed that Dwire often indulged herself during her work by reading the racing form and filing her nails. After Susie Deer's death, Dwire's job was on the line. Dwire was saved when Little Rock's Clinton-friendly medical examiner Dr. Fahmy Malak ruled Susie Deer's death a homicide. Investigators learned that Dwire had discussed the case with her son and that Malak had been made aware of the Clinton connection in Deer's death. Rather than implicate the governor's mother, Billy Ray Washington was charged with criminally negligent homicide and sent to jail for six months. Does White House woman-of-the-moment Cheryl Mills know about the plight of her fellow African-Americans, Charlette Perry and Billy Ray Washington? And what does Cheryl Mills think of her boss' regular remembrance of his Klan-friendly doting uncle Ray Clinton as, "the most commanding male presence in my life? Or of Mr. Clinton's failure in twelve years of governance to give Arkansas it's first civil right law? Bill Clinton, indeed, has a record on civil rights. It's just not the record Cheryl Mills thinks it is. ========= Md. Mortgage Co. Disputes Clinton Tuesday, January 19, 1999; 5:43 a.m. EST COLUMBIA, Md. (AP) -- A mortgage company is disputing an announcement by the Clinton administration that it has agreed to a $6.5 billion settlement of discrimination accusations. The head of Columbia National Inc. denied that the company, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission reached a settlement. Chief Executive Officer Dave Gallitano said the only agreement with HUD is to continue the company's mission to bring home mortgage loans to low-to-moderate income families. ``The statements released by the White House and HUD are inaccurate and very misleading,'' Gallitano said in a statement. Columbia National was accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by making too few loans to minority or low-to-moderate income families. President Clinton announced the settlement Monday in a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., saying the Columbia, Md.-based lender agreed to make $6 billion in home mortgage loans available over five years to minorities and low- to moderate-income families in 28 states. The company also will spend $529 million on programs designed to increase home ownership among minority and poor families, the president said. But Columbia National said the $6.5 billion figure actually represent the ``volume of loans we made over the past five years.'' It said it was told HUD had made no finding of discrimination. � Copyright 1999 The Associated Press ============ N.Ireland's Hume accepts King peace prize By June Preston ATLANTA (Reuters) - Northern Ireland nationalist leader and Nobel laureate John Hume accepted the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Prize on Monday, saying the example set by the slain civil rights leader laid the groundwork for peace in Northern Ireland. Hume, leader of Northern Ireland's Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party who shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, received the award in Atlanta on the U.S. holiday marking the anniversary of King's birth. His 70th birthday would have been last Friday. ``He spoke to everyone who would seek justice where there was injustice, who would seek equality where there was inequality,'' Hume told a crowd inside Atlanta's tiny Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached before his 1968 assassination. ``Fate decreed that I would not only be inspired by Dr. King but would find myself facing a challenge like Dr. King faced,'' he said. The King Peace Prize is awarded annually for efforts to promote peace. Past winners include former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rosa Parks, who became an enduring symbol of peaceful integration when she refused to give up a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Hume and David Trimble, leader of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, received the Nobel jointly for their roles in striking a peace accord between Catholic and Protestant factions for the first time in more than 25 years. The U.S. holiday honoring King, who was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, is observed in every state except New Hampshire, with many workers having a day off to attend parades, concerts and other celebrations. At least two of King's deputies -- the Rev. Jesse Jackson in Chicago and Hosea Williams in Atlanta -- said they felt King's dream had still not become the reality he envisioned. ``This is an economic country,'' Williams, 73, said. ``Every group that comes to this country is doing well except black people. That's why crime in the black community far (exceeds) crime in any other community in America, because we are so economically deprived. ``That's why they (slave traders) came to Africa to get us,'' he said. ``It wasn't a racist thing. It was an economic thing.'' Jackson, who was with King in Memphis the day he was shot, said closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots in America was the fourth stage of the black struggle, following the ending of slavery, the scrapping of segregation and the extension of the right to vote. ``We must greenline a redlined America in order that we might share in the country's growth, wealth and prosperity,'' Jackson said, a reference to the practice of some lending institutions to ``redline'' neighborhoods where blacks live. As if on cue, President Bill Clinton used the holiday to announce settlement of a U.S. Justice Department action against Columbia National Mortgage Co. of Maryland, which had been accused of unfairly denying home loans to minorities. Clinton said the mortgage company agreed to lend $6 billion to 78,000 members of minority groups and low- or moderate- income families to settle the case. Officials said it was the largest such settlement in U.S. history. The theme of the day was ``A Day On, Not a Day Off,'' and King's sister, Christine, stressed in Atlanta that the day should be spent doing volunteer work. In New York City, students from Martin Luther King High School worked at a senior citizen center and prepared meals for home-bound AIDS patients. In Cleveland, public transport and the city's museums were free for the day. In Philadelphia, Vice President Al Gore's wife Tipper and the black singing group Boyz II Men rang the Liberty Bell at a noon ceremony meant to start bells pealing across the United States. In Miami's Liberty City neighborhood, torn by race riots in the 1980s, thousands of people marched in a parade and gathered for a concert in MLK Memorial Park. The event was billed as the largest multicultural King event in the country because so many ethnic populations are part of the city's makeup. 18:53 01-18-99 Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.
