Schippers Tells All to NewsMax.com
Carl Limbacher
Thursday, Sept. 7, 2000
NewsMax.com's interview with former House impeachment counsel
David Schippers about his book "Sellout: The Inside Story of
President Clinton's Impeachment."
NM: NewsMax.com has been covering your book "Sellout"
extensively. Let me start by asking, how is the book doing?
SCHIPPERS: From what I understand � now, I haven't seen this
myself but I've been told that it's No. 10 on the Wall Street
Journal best-seller list and will soon be on the New York Times
best-seller list. And I thought it was going to be a dud.
NM: I've seen you on Fox News Channel, but I haven't seen you on
any of the broadcast networks ...
SCHIPPERS: And I don't think you will (laughs).
NM: Has CNN shown any interest?
SCHIPPERS: Not a � well, yeah, somebody at CNN has shown some
interest. But it's not "Larry King Live" or anything like that.
Up till now I don't think I have anything scheduled for CNN.
NM: Have reporters shown any interest in some of the truly
newsworthy parts of your book? For instance, you wrote that Wall
Street Journal piece on Al Gore and his role the Citizenship USA
vote fraud scheme, which is covered in your book.
SCHIPPERS: A lot of the alternative news people � radio talk
shows have been hitting that stuff pretty hard. Fox News hit it a
couple times, Paula Zahn. What amazes me is that it is such a
terrific possibility for an investigation.
NM: The title of your book, "Sellout" � you did name names as
far as the Republican congresspeople who sold out. Let me just
mention a few specific names and get your comments. Trent Lott
you covered in the book. Do you have anything additional to add?
SCHIPPERS: No. It was kind of funny, though. When we left
Washington somebody asked me what happened. And I said, "The
Republican leadership cut us off at the knees." And then somebody
asked Trent Lott what he thought about that and he said, "Well,
you know, that guy (Schippers) is a Democrat." All of a sudden I
was a Democrat again.
NM: Orrin Hatch?
SCHIPPERS: Orrin Hatch � strangely enough, I got along with Orrin
Hatch. I really believe that what he was trying to do was broker
� you know, he was a consensus maker � and he was trying to
broker some reasonable deal. He, too, could see that there was no
way that we were going to get the 67 votes (necessary to convict
Clinton), despite the fact that these people took oaths. But he
was trying to set up a deal where at least there would be a
finding of fact that Clinton did commit perjury. I have no
quarrel with Orrin Hatch.
NM: Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell?
SCHIPPERS: He had no real imput at all. He was there, but I
don't think I had any personal contact with him at all.
NM: McConnell was on "Fox News Sunday" last week and Tony Snow
asked him about your charge that the Republicans had sold out.
And McConnell said that you were basically right.
SCHIPPERS: I think that's why I'm not hearing much screaming
from the Senate Republicans or the Democrats. They know what
happened. See, it was one of those strange things where these
guys probably knew that stuff (about Clinton) behind the scenes
all the time. But it happened that there was a citizen sitting
there watching.
And I decided that the people have to know about this. They have
to know what's going on out there.
Looking back, I was a nitwit. I sat there and watched them take
the oath and I had tears in my eyes. Because I thought, oh boy,
here they are, you know, statesmen. They're no longer Democrats
or Republicans. Brit Hume actually laughed at me when I told him
that. They kept saying, "Hey, is this guy for real?"
Sen. Ted Stevens
NM: Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens � you revealed in your book that he
was the guy who told you, "I don't care if you've got Clinton on
videotape raping a woman then shooting her dead, you're not gonna
get 67 votes." Anything to add there?
SCHIPPERS: Yeah. It was obvious that Ted Stevens' role � he was
the one picked out by the leadership to cow the (House
impeachment) managers. After the initial attack on Lott by the
managers � remember when Lott came over and told us, "Listen,
you're not gonna dump this garbage on us" � the managers all
attacked him. Not physically, of course, but they just jumped all
over him. I think from then on Lott kind of avoided
confrontations. But he sent Ted Stevens in, who was a kind of
irascible guy. And his job was to just hammer us down. But to be
very honest with you, it didn't work.
NM: How about Al D'Amato? There was nothing in your book about
him.
SCHIPPERS: Since he was defeated in the 1998 election he really
didn't have much to do with us at all. We were counting on him in
the Senate, but we ended up with Chuck Schumer, who obviously
wasn't going to be much help in the Senate since he voted against
impeaching Clinton in the House. Although I'll tell you
something. Chuck Schumer's the one who got up and said, "Yeah, he
lied. Yeah, he committed perjury."
But when we were working the case in the House, when we were
trying to set up how to handle it and how to work it in the
committee, Al D'Amato gave us a lot of help because he had some
contacts with the Republicans in the House.
NM: How about John McCain?
SCHIPPERS: I didn't run head on into John McCain. He's kind of
quiet. I gained an awful lot of respect for him for the way he
handled himself in the Senate. And he was always � whenever he'd
see the managers he always had a word of encouragement.
NM: What about Sen. Lieberman? You report in your book he was
the only senator who seemed to be paying attention to what you
and the managers had to say in some of those private meetings.
SCHIPPERS: As I said in the book, I felt that one time when we
had the three Republicans and three Democrats in that first
meeting with the Senate leadership, that the only real friend we
had in the room was Lieberman; a friend in the sense that he was
asking the right questions, that he appeared genuinely interested
in whether or not we should have witnesses. And, of course, we
had that background of his speech (condemning Clinton) on the
floor of the Senate.
But I'll tell you, since then I've become very, very
disappointed, very disappointed. Because I thought he was a man
of courage. I thought he was a man of principles. And I see him
dive � when he came out and said his Senate speech was meant to
take the heat off of Clinton, I lost a lot of respect for him.
The one that really disappointed me was Arlen Specter with that
goofy "Not Proved" verdict. That was the difference between a
majority at least and just a dead-even 50 to 50 vote in the
Senate. That's what hurt most; that we weren't even able to get
our own people to come up with a majority. If we had gotten 51
votes everybody would have felt a lot better.
Newt Gingrich
NM: What about Newt Gingrich? Did he absent himself from the
impeachment process pretty much? Was Bob Livingston more or less
in charge after the Novmeber '98 election?
SCHIPPERS: Well, no. If you'll recall, after the election in the
first week in November Gingrich resigned. And there was a kind of
interregnum period through most of November. Livingston came in
shortly before our final argument and the vote in the (House
Judiciary) committee.
When I refer to the House leadership (letting us down) I refer to
Gingrich. I don't refer � I specifically do not refer to Tom
DeLay or Dick Armey. Especially Dick Armey. Dick Armey was
strong, stand up, fought for us all the way. Armey helped us
every chance he got.
The problem with Gingrich was that we would meet with him, just
maybe Hyde, myself, Tom Mooney and a few of the others and his
people, and we'd walk out of there feeling really good that we
were going to do this and he's going to have us do that. And the
next thing we know he's caved to the Democrats and he's doing
exactly the opposite.
Sleazy Details Hurt Impeachment
For example, if we had had our way, nothing, nothing would have
been released from the evidence room until October when I made my
final argument. And it was Gingrich and Gephardt that decided
they were going to put all that salacious stuff (in the Starr
Report) out. And I think that hurt more than anything else in
trying to get the president impeached.
NM: Gephardt pushed to release that material?
SCHIPPERS: Strangely enough, Gephardt was saying, "Let's put
everything out." He wanted everything. He wanted to have Starr
just leave it on the curb and let the newspeople rummage through
it. I couldn't figure it out. The only thing that I thought was
maybe Gephardt thinks that if he hurts Clinton enough, maybe he
could run for president.
And that was shocking. We went into the room and met with
Gephardt, Gingrich and a number of the other people. And out of
the blue Gephardt says, "I think it all should be put out." I
thought, well, there's some reason for this. They've got
something in mind.
NM: How about Peter King, congressman from Long Island, who went
around saying 40 House Republicans were going to vote against
impeachment?
SCHIPPERS: Yeah, but the one I faulted more than Peter King was
my own congressman, (John) Porter. He was saying he was going to
vote against impeachment and there was nobody else and it was
silly and why should we bother with this thing. And I guess the
people in his district came down on him with both feet. So he
changed his mind and voted for impeachment.
I honestly believed that when the articles came out of the House
Judiciary Committee there probably were 60 Republicans who were
going to vote against impeachment. But then the managers went out
on the floor and asked them to come over to the Ford Building and
look at the evidence, the evidence that nobody ever saw. A lot of
that evidence came over from Starr, but an awful lot of that
material was developed by us.
I'll tell you what it was (that changed their minds). If you
stick with the Lewinsky case alone, you've got a pretty bad
thing. You've got some perjury, you've got some obstruction,
you've got some witness tampering. But when you get the whole
picture � everything that happened from the time Paula Jones
filed her lawsuit � you see some of the most scary � you see a
massive conspiracy to obstruct justice and use whatever means
necessary to do it.
NM: What about (Connecticut Republican) Chris Shays?
SCHIPPERS: I have no quarrel with Shays because he came in and
spent hours and hours. And I sat with him for about three hours.
He had a lot of questions. He had a lot of comments. We went over
everything. And he voted his conscience. I really believe that.
Monica Lewinsky's Fear for Her Life
NM: One of the most amazing things that was apparently never
addressed were the repeated references by Monica Lewinsky on the
tapes to her being afraid for her life. "I would not cross these
people for fear of my life," she tells Linda Tripp at one point.
There's other references to her mother being afraid that she's
going to wind up like Mary Jo Kopechne. And there are at least
four of these instances on the tapes. Did anybody look into this?
Or say, "Oh my God, what's she talking about?"
SCHIPPERS: Well, I'll tell you something. It shocked me when I
heard those things. But we really had only one crack at Monica
Lewinsky, and by that time she had pretty much laid out her story
and she wasn't going to change it. As (Associate Independent
Counsel) Bob Bittman told us before we interviewed her, he said,
"Don't worry, she will not lie to you, but she sure as hell isn't
going to go out of her way to hurt the president."
But no, we didn't specifically get into Monica's comments about
being afraid for her life. Let me tell you something, though.
Remember when she disappeared and the White House spent three
days over the holiday, the Martin Luther King birthday, trying to
find her with any kind of family emergency, messages about "good
news," things like that. Had she not been in semi-custody at that
time, I think that something might have happened to her had she
been found.
They were really looking for her. And if she had surfaced � I
don't mean they'd kill her � that's not necessarily the point.
But remember, Clinton went into his Paula Jones deposition
thinking that Monica was in the bag. He came out of that
depositon with enough evidence to show him that she'd been
talking to somebody.
And they were genuinely worried. I don't know what they would
have done. I mean, nothing is beneath them, in my opinion.
NM: There are some clicks on the Tripp-Lewinsky tapes that
sounded like edits. Did you ever find any evidence that those
tapes had been editied?
The Non-Secure Phone Line
SCHIPPERS: I found no evidence of that, no suggestion of that.
But there's something that's on one of those tapes that people
just totally ignored and I thought it was absolute dynamite. In
fact, it affected me so much that I reached out to the FBI, CIA
and anybody else I could with as much power as I had � and that
was very little. But if you recall, during one of Monca's
conversations late at night, Clinton makes reference to the fact
that "We should be careful because I'm on an open line." That was
a non-secure line. And I think a lot of their phone sex
conversations went out over non-secure lines. C'mon, you don't
think the Chinese are picking that up? Or the Riady gang with
their satellites?
I was thoroughly convinced that those calls may have well been
picked and that Clinton was blackmailable because of that. But
nobody ever went into that. We never got a straight answer out of
the FBI. I don't necessarily blame them. This would have been
more the CIA's bag. But all I wanted to know was if there was any
evidence of an intercept, any kind of intercepts, of the White
House open lines by anybody. But if somebody's intercepting and
he's having phone sex with Monica � then later I heard from
somebody in New York those calls were in fact intercepted. But
the only one they were sure who did it was the Israeli
government.
NM: When (Hustler magazine publisher) Larry Flynt started going
after Bob Livingston and Bob Barr and had his ad out in the
Washington Post offering a million dollars for dirt on
Republicans, was there any reaction within the Judiciary
Committee or Congress at all that this guy was trying to
interfere with your investigation?
SCHIPPERS: As a matter of fact, the major reaction in the
committee was anger. I mean, Bob Barr is a big boy. He was able
to handle that without any trouble at all. It hurt Henry Hyde
very deeply when (his 30-year-old affair) came out. But he stood
up. There were a couple of congressmen that would say, "Oh, I'm
probably next," or something like that. Then nothing would come
out.
But I suggested, and a lot of other people suggested, that this
was getting awfully close to criminal interference with a
congressional inquiry. But, of course, that fell flat on its face
for the same reason we lost in the Senate. They were all afraid
to open up that can of worms.
NM: I'm sure you've heard the popular theory that one of the
reasons the Senate "sold out" was because the White House has FBI
files on everybody.
SCHIPPERS: I believe that. I have no hard evidence. But you see
people in the Senate that you figure are stand-up guys. And
they're not standing up. I don't know why. I also heard that one
of the reasons the Republicans didn't want to remove Clinton from
office is because they didn't want to have Gore running as an
incumbent. Boy, what I saw was bad enough, but if that kind of
Machiavellian thinking is going on, that's really scary.
The Press
NM: Do you feel that the press treated you fairly? Were there
any reporters that you felt were particulary biased?
SCHIPPERS: Most of the working press that I encountered in
Washington were good, decent, honest people. And they were
genuinely interested in reporting the facts. Now, when their
stories got turned in, things changed. I mean, that's what
happened. These guys were reporting and they were doing their
job, and I had no quarrel with any of them. They asked legitimate
questions. They respected me when I would say, "I'm sorry, I
can't talk about that." They didn't try to pry. They did their
job but they didn't get goofy about it.
Then you'd read the paper the next day and wham, we're getting
shot down.
NM: Let me ask you about the FBI lab report on Clinton's DNA
that's in the Starr documents which they used to prove he had sex
with Lewinsky. Is that, to the best of your knowledge, an
accurate profile of the president's DNA � or would that have been
in any way camouflaged for national security reasons? I've seen
the documents and there's a brief sequence of Clinton's DNA
markers noted in the report. Why would they have released the
president's DNA code, however brief the sequence, to the entire
world?
SCHIPPERS: One of the things that always bothered me was why
they didn't hold that until after he testified. And I asked one
of the guys in Starr's office why they did that, and he told me,
"You know why? Because we didn't trust the Justice Department. We
figured they'd leak it anyhow." As a matter of fact, they didn't.
The FBI didn't leak it, that's for darned sure.
Now, if I'd been doing it I think I would have leaked that there
was no match and then see what Clinton told the grand jury.
As far as the FBI lab report, I'm not a DNA expert. You know,
they might have major markers or something like that that they
can identitfy. But I doubt very much � you're absolutely right,
if somebody put out the DNA of the president of the United States
I think that might be a national security issue.
My God, let's hope they don't clone him (laughs). That's all we
need is another Bill Clinton running around.
NM: Kathleen Willey, and the letters released by the White House
to discredit her allegation that Clinton sexually assaulted her
in the White House. President Clinton has been found in criminal
violation of the Privacy Act by Judge Royce Lamberth. And
according to interrogatories to Judicial Watch from White House
lawyers, Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal were involved in
the decision to release those letters. In your own investigation,
did you come across any other evidence that Hillary was involved
in trying to either discredit or intimidate witnesses?
SCHIPPERS: Not directly. Hillary is a very smart lady. She did
not � remember Craig Livingstone, the guy who was doing Filegate?
The word we got was that he came right off of Hillary. The word
we got was that a lot of the top officials came off of Hillary.
And that she was the one behind a lot of the intimidation.
And I believe it because, with the whole Vince Foster debacle,
Hillary was all over it. I mean, she was on the phone. She was
back there (in Little Rock) making sure that everything got
cleaned out of his office. I think she has the street smarts.
Juanita Broaddrick
NM: Let me ask you about Juanita Broaddrick. In your book � and
Broaddrick herself told NewsMax.com the story last year � that
sometime between the impeachment vote in the House and the trial
in the Senate, her house was broken into and an answering machine
tape was taken, she was being watched and followed. Maybe this
was a little later when she was being interviewed by NBC ...
SCHIPPERS: It was right when we were working on it. Because my
investigator, Diana Woznicki, who was just about in daily contact
with Broaddrick, would come in and say, "Juanita called me.
There's a guy parked outside her house." And remember, around
this time Broaddrick took a trip from Fort Smith over to Little
Rock to check out the hotel (where Clinton allegedly raped her)
and things like that. And when she did, she said she felt that
somebody was watching her. Not doing anything, just standing
there watching her.
And I told Diana to tell her that when she gets to Little Rock,
if she sees anybody doing that she should call the Little Rock
police. They'll grab them in a heartbeat because they hated
Clinton. Nothing happened so she didn't have to do it.
But let me tell you something. They were all over that woman.
They were all over her. And it was the usual � and it was the
type of stuff we ran into with the outfit. Intimidation by just
watching her, making their presence known. It was the same thing
as when they called Kathleen Willey and said they were going to
be turning off her electricity. Just to let her know, "We can do
what we want."
NM: When you say the "outfit," you mean the mob?
SCHIPPERS: Yeah. They pulled exactly the same type of tricks
here in Chicago when I was working against them.
NM: Now � and this seems to be something of a contradiction �
you've also said that Juanita Broaddrick was "off the table" as
far as impeachment goes because her story had nothing to do with
witness tampering. Didn't these intimidation tactics make her
story relevant to your investigation?
SCHIPPERS: By the time we had learned what they were doing to
her, the decisions on witnesses had already been made. We came
upon her story at the very beginning when I was going through all
of the FBI 302 (witness statements). And one surfaced � it wasn't
even Juanita Broaddrick � it was some other guy who was supposed
to know her story. And I became very interested.
So I called Bob Bittman to see what the story was. He told me
she admitted lying, that she had filed a false affidavit. And I
said, "Was it the same type of affidavit that all the other women
got?" And when he said it was, then we got really interested.
Because we thought, well here we go again. Another package, this
one goes to Juanita and she's pressured to sign the false
affidavit.
But when Diana went down and actually talked to Broaddrick, she
said, no � it was her idea to deny the story because she was so
terrified. And the reason she was terrified is because she saw
what happened to Kathleen Willey, Gennifer Flowers, and all the
rest of them.
So the Broaddrick story really didn't fit in with what we had.
Remember, we had an obstruction of justice and we had the perjury
in his testimony to the grand jury. So I made a judgment after
talking to all my people that it would look too much like we were
trying to dirty Clinton up just for the sake of dirtying him up.
The only possible area of interest would have been, had we gone
into the Senate (with live witnesses). I think I would have found
some way to either put her lawyer on or in some way get the
information out that the same package was sent to her that went
to the other women, you know, just to establish the pattern.
NM: If you had known, before you had made the decision to take
Broaddrick off the table, about the break-in, the stolen
answering machine tape, her pets being let out, the surveillance
� would you have considered bringing her in as a witness?
SCHIPPERS: Yes. I would have tried to do it. But I'll tell you
something. The only way I got her to open up completely was to
give her my word that I would not use her as a witness. Now that
was before we knew about all this other stuff. I would not have
done it without her permission and I don't know if she would have
been able to testify.
NM: Last year Broaddrick told NewsMax.com that she had asked
Starr's investigators to look into all the things that were
happening around the time you were talking to her. But she said
they really couldn't find anything out.
SCHIPPERS: Ah, you know, I'll tell you � and again, I'm not
bum-rapping here. Ken Starr is an absolutely fabulous human
being. But I think that they had so much on their plate and they
were trying their darndest � they wanted to get, you know,
they're working on Filegate, Whitewater, and all that. And all of
a sudden they drop this bomb in the middle of them with Lewinsky.
I think what they had to do was decide, well, we've got to do
this Lewinsky thing and when they reached the stage of a possible
impeachment, the law says bring it over (to the House). So they
had to bring it over.
But they may still be looking into some of the things that
happened to Broaddrick. I know they're still looking into what
happened to Willey. You know, when everybody says Clinton's been
exonerated on this and that � that's b---s--t. He has not been
exonerated on this and that and the other. (Independent Counsel
Robert) Ray is still looking into those things.
NM: So the Broaddrick intimidation may be part of what Ray is
still probing?
SCHIPPERS: It could very well be. It's certainly evidence of
intimidation. But what they've got to do is make some sort of a
connection. And it takes a little bit of work.
You've got to go down there, you've got to try to identify the
guy, to identify where he's from. I know they've been able to do
some of that in the Willey case.
Gore's Naturalization Scheme
NM: One final question. About your investigation into
Citizenship USA, the program headed by Al Gore where they wanted
to naturalize a million immigrants by Election Day 1996. When did
they start implementing that?
SCHIPPERS: They started out in late February 1996. And
(Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner) Doris
Meissner originally fought them, which kind of surprised me. She
made the statement, "Hey, they're going to say this is political
� what are you, nuts?" She was not going to cave completely until
the White House and Gore and his people got involved. And then
they just hammered her until she � and of course, when the
director caves, all the district directors cave right along with
her. It's a damn shame that they took honorable people in the
districts and prostituted them.
NM: In your book you discussed e-mail that showed Gore's direct
involvement.
SCHIPPERS: We had e-mails right out of Gore's office. One by
Gore himself. We had four or five of them coming out of his
office by his administrative assistant. So there was no doubt
about (his involvement). I understand that last week somebody
asked the INS about this and their spokesman said, "Well, there's
no evidence of White House involvement." Well, they better take a
look at those e-mails.
NM: Mr. Schippers, thank you for your time, and good luck.
SCHIPPERS: Thank you.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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