-Caveat Lector- ISSUE 2097 Tuesday 20 February 2001 London UK Telegraph (Rightwing) Most powerful man in the world is now a nobody By Philip Delves Broughton in New York STRIPPED of office, shunned by friends and rattling alone around a half-furnished suburban home, Bill Clinton is in a deep, post-White House funk. Instead of the presidential platoon of butlers, cooks and drivers, he now has just one valet, Oscar, who keeps him fuelled with Diet Coke and cookies. Rather than relying on his personal telephone exchange, he now struggles with a Palm Pilot, searching for the numbers of friends who are suddenly not so keen to take his calls. The panoply of aides and advisers he deployed to divert the scandals that scarred his presidency are gone, and he is forced to fight his battles alone. Mr Clinton hoped for a triumphal entry into New York accompanied by celebrations and Hail Caesars. Instead he has endured a month in the stocks pelted with charges of corruption, petty larceny and abuses of power. The sophisticates who fawned on him when he could offer rides on Air Force One and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom now treat him like the Arkansas hick, unfit to play in the big leagues of money and power. "The Incredible Shrinking Ex-President" is how Time described Mr Clinton in its latest issue. The magazine claimed he was indignant about the reaction to his last-minute presidential pardons, notably of the fugitive financier Marc Rich. He has told friends that if he wanted to reward his financial supporters he would have pardoned Leonard Peltier, a jailed Native American activist, whose backers include David Geffen, one of the founders of the Hollywood studio Dreamworks SKG. Mr Clinton was reported to have huffed: "David Geffen will barely talk to me." The former friends and colleagues now arrayed against Mr Clinton is staggering. On Sunday, two more former allies weighed in against his pardon of Mr Rich. Charles Schumer, the New York Democratic Senator and Hillary Clinton's Senate colleague, said: "There's no excuse to pardon a fugitive." Referring to Mr Clinton's New York Times article defending the pardon, he said: "Nothing the president wrote has changed my views." Also critical was Charles Rangel, the Representative from Harlem, who earlier in the week welcomed Mr Clinton to the New York district where he will have offices. Mr Rangel said it was necessary to establish "whether any criminal activity was involved" in the pardon. One of Mr Clinton's former Cabinet members told Time he felt "total disgust" at his former boss's behaviour. Congressman Barney Frank, a liberal Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, said the Rich pardon was "just abusive", adding of the Clintons "these are people who forgot where the line was between public service and what was personally convenient for them". As he sits alone in Chappaqua, while his wife toils in Washington and his daughter finishes university, Mr Clinton does what he did throughout the debacle surrounding Monica Lewinsky: telephones friends at all hours and asks them to validate his endless self-justification. But even they are said to be weary of listening. __________ EcoNews Service - Always online for Ecology, Consciousness & Universe Exopolitics. EcoNews http://www.ecologynews.com/ Prague http://mujweb.cz/www/ecologynews/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/Vancouver, BC V6M 1V8 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
