-Caveat Lector-
With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Thursday July 5, 2001; 10:57 a.m. EDT
Clinton Precedents May Save Condit
It looks pretty bad for California Congressman Gary Condit, especially now
that a witness -- a former paramour no less -- has come forward fingering
him in an attempt to get her to lie about their relationship.
Now Condit may go to jail, legal experts say, even if he had nothing
whatsoever to do with the disappearance of 24-year-old Washington, D.C.
intern Chandra Levy, the event that brought him into the spotlight in the
first place.
Still, with newly emerging details driving ever more accusatory reportage
since 39-year-old flight attendant Anne Marie Smith went public claiming an
affair with the married Washington pol, it's easy to forget that the case
against Gary Condit, so far at least, is all about sex.
And as Bill and Hillary Clinton taught the nation three years ago, all
manner of criminal wrongdoing can be justified, as long as it's in the
cause of covering up sexual misconduct.
After all, how many Anne Marie Smiths tumbled out of Mr. Clinton's closet
to allege they'd been threatened to silence them?
And many of the incidents described by the Clinton women -- death threats,
burglaries, vandalism and more -- were far more ominous than anything even
hinted at by Smith in her Monday Fox News interview.
Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Liz Ward Gracen, Juanita Broaddrick -- they
all alleged sexual contact with Clinton (in Jones and Broaddrick's cases,
that contact was unwanted). And after coming forward, all had their income
tax returns audited.
The same reporters now breathing heavily over Condit's attempt to get Smith
to sign a false affidavit erupted in a collective yawn at Clinton's blatant
misuse of the IRS to persecute his accusers.
Then there's Sally Perdue and Kathleen Willey, both of whom reported
suffering physical violence, threatened as well as realized. Willey says
her cat was killed and her car vandalized. And she told prosecutors that a
stange man had approached her two days before she testified in the Paula
Jones case to threaten her children by name.
Even when a private detective came forward saying he'd been hired by the
White House to conduct a noisy investigation of Willey designed to
intimidate her, the shocking news was barely reported, let alone
investigated.
As for Ms. Perdue, a named Democratic campaign operative told her in the
presence of a named witness that she'd have her legs broken if she didn't
lay low. When she went public anyway, her car windows were shot out and she
was fired from her job.
Afforded no protection whatsoever by journalists who dismissed her story
based on White House claims she was nuts, Perdue fled to China one step
jump ahead of a subpoena from Paula Jones lawyers.
Instead of pursuing the hair-raising accounts from these women, Beltway
pundits complained that Mr. Clinton's privacy was being invaded. Who
doesn't lie about sex? they unceasingly reminded, rallying the public to
his defense with the notion that, They all do it.
Now that Mr. Condit has been caught doing it, however, it's
stop-the-presses news.
Is it because, in the case of the California congressman, there's a dead
body -- or at least a young intern missing for so long investigators
unofficially presume she's now dead?
Even though there's no evidence whatsoever that so far ties him to Chandra
Levy's disappearance, the mere fact that he was romantically involved with
her -- no one believes his denials on that point -- has made Condit the
center of the investigation.
Strangely, nothing like that happened to Hillary Clinton, when her lover
turned up dead in an out-of-the-way Virginia park just six months after the
Clintons ascended to the White House.
Like Condit, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly denied having any sexual
relationship with her late Whitewater lawyer, Vince Foster, who was found
with a bullet in his head eight years ago this month.
But numerous witnesses, both on and off the record, have attested to the
Clinton-Foster affair, offering far more details linking the two than have
emerged to tie Condit to Levy.
For instance, no one has come forward to say they've seen Condit and Levy
in the throws of passionate foreplay. Not so Clinton and Foster. At least
two of Mrs. Clinton's former bodyguards say they saw the couple hugging,
kissing and playfully groping one another.
Even a once-trusted member of the Clintons' inner White House circle, David
Watkins, has emerged to say the two were sexually involved.
But unlike Condit, Mrs. Clinton never became the focus of any investigation
into Foster's death. In fact, through five federal investigations lasting
over three years, probers never once asked Mrs. Clinton about her affair
with the dead man.
None of this is to say that the California congressman should be let off
the hook. Indeed, the level of media scrutiny is about right for somebody
who has
