Part 14 (2/2)

In time, the ident.i.ty of ”Charlie” became known and deeply resented by the White House staff, especially by Harold Ickes and George Stephanopoulos. Morris not only began single-handedly to supersede the White House staff, he also began to outs.h.i.+ne them, showing a political ac.u.men and degree of cynicism absent among Bill Clinton's true believers.

As Morris's strategic vision guided the 1996 campaign, the White House staff began its a.s.sault on its own strategic genius. Morris relates that a story was first put out among the press that he was billing the campaign for p.o.r.nographic movies in his hotel room. The story wasn't true, but a little detective work likely ordered by White House enemies exposed a personal foible that was far more embarra.s.sing.

d.i.c.k Morris was spending his own money for room service in the Jefferson Hotel from a $300-an-hour prost.i.tute who was happy to take the money to have her toes sucked. The prost.i.tute was persuaded to take Morris onto the balcony where the two of them could be photographed. (Fortunately for Morris she had her shoes on.) When the tabloids ran the story, Morris was finished. As so often happens with the Clintons, the people who give them the most, suffer the most.

But as also so often happens, the Clintons gain everything they need from their victim before discharging him. Morris's strategy, was masterly. He revived his tactic of advertising early and often--which had worked so well in Clinton's comeback bid against Frank White in 1982.

Now, as Gingrich and Clinton locked horns over the budget in the fall of 1995, shutting down much of the government, the early ad strategy was dusted off.

The Democrats aired a battery of radio and television ads to defend the president and his party. The ads aired in swing districts, in swing states. Morris and Clinton refrained from airing their ads in Los Angeles, New York, or Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., hoping that the Republican political apparatus would be too lethargic to notice.

In truth, Republicans noticed what was happening. They knew all too well that the Clinton ad strategy was winning the election before it even began. They simply had no way to match the Democratic onslaught, one that we now know was paid for by Bill Clinton's unprecedented prost.i.tution of his administration, his office, even the White House itself.

HUANG, CHUNG, AND TRIE.

d.i.c.k Morris and Harold Ickes had clashed since their days as West Side, New York student activists. But the fights over how much to spend on political advertising a year before the 1996 election were the most monumental yet. Eventually, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) agreed to borrow money, with Ickes masterminding a scheme to make every stick of furniture in the White House, every presidential M&M, and every c.o.c.ktail napkin on Air Force One pay for itself. The White House and the presidency were put up for sale on a scale theretofore unimaginable.

Under Clinton, anything and everything had a price: the Lincoln Bedroom, rides on Air Force One, state dinners, personal tours of the White House by the president, the presidential suite at the Kennedy Center, the weekly presidential radio adresses to the nation, jogging or golf with the president, first-run movies at the White House, trips abroad with the Secretary of Commerce, even burial at Arlington Cemetary. All could be had for the right price.

Ten thousand dollars would get you into a coffee, or even a dinner with the president. For $100,000 you could join the president at his table. For $1.5 million, a New Jersey donor of Polish descent got to fly with Clinton to meet Pope John Paul II at Newark Airport.*17 In the midst of the Waco tragedy on April 19, 1993, when at least twenty-four children and more than fifty Branch Davidians burned to death, Bill Clinton escorted privileged donor James Riady, an Indonesian businessman with links to Communist China, to the White House situation room to view the action.*18 Vice President Gore was similarly busy, making fund-raising calls from the White House and visiting sham donors at a Buddhist temple in California--actions that would lead Gore into political trouble of his own.

The administration's unprecedented practice of blatantly selling seats on the Department of Commerce's foreign trade missions for $50,000 apiece raised hackles even from the slick cabinet officer charged with doing it. ”I'm a motherf.u.c.king tour guide for Hillary,”

Commerce Secretary Ron Brown told his business partner and lover, Nolanda Hill, shortly before his death.

Nolanda Hill later told journalists that Secretary Brown was ordered by Hillary herself to bring into the Commerce Department none other than John Huang, a LippoBank executive who had squired Governor Clinton and his wife around Hong Kong in 1985. Since then, Huang had made a number of interesting career decisions, including moving to Arkansas to work at the Riady-controlled Worthen Bank.

It was Riady money that had rescued Clinton's first presidential campaign when it was at its most vulnerable. Riady cash made a big difference in Georgia, where Clinton beat Bush by a razor-thin 13,000 votes out of 2.4 million cast. James Riady and John Huang each gave $100,000 to the Clinton inaugural.*19 Joe Giroir, a former Rose partner who had been pushed out of the firm by Hillary, Vince Foster, and Webb Hubbell, now became a certified FOB, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DNC as a representative of the Lippo Group.

During the mid-1980s, the Riadys had s.h.i.+fted much of their wealth from Indonesia into the People's Republic of China (PRC). They relied on Chen Xitong, Politburo member and mayor of Beijing, to break the lease of the most profitable McDonald's in the world to clear the way for them to build the immense and profitable w.a.n.gfujing project.*20 The CIA reported to Senate investigations that ”Lippo has substantial interests in China--about US $2 billion in the Riady's ancestral province of Fujian alone. These include real estate, banking, electronics, currency exchange, retail, electricity and tourism...

Lippo has provided concessionary-rate loans to finance many of these projects in key [Communist] Party members' home areas.*21 The close ties between the Riadys and the Communist government in Beijing became even closer when the Indonesian economy plummeted, prompting the PRC-controlled China Resources to buy up Lippo shares. The latter, of course, is controlled (as are so many ent.i.ties in the PRC) by Chinese intelligence.

The Riadys soon learned to wire their deals with Was.h.i.+ngton as neatly as they did in Beijing. On the very day a Riady-controlled company steered $100,000 in business to Hillary's friend Webb Hubbell, who had left the Justice Department under investigation, was out of funds, and who needed to be kept happy and quiet, John Huang, a Riady ”fixer” and Democratic fund-raiser, was hired at a very sensitive position at the Commerce Department.

There, Huang could dip into the flow of U.S. cable traffic at will.

He had access to hundreds of CIA doc.u.ments, including sensitive files on technology transfers. He had access to information that, if revealed to a foreign power, would have exposed informants to torture or execution. Curiously, when Huang wanted to make an overseas phone call or send a fax, he did so on his lunch hour from the Stephens, Inc., branch office in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Huang was given liberal access to the White House because of his fund-raising prowess, and would escort high-level Communist Chinese officials to watch President Clinton deliver his radio address.

Huang's amazing access was duplicated by Johnny Chung, a southern California businessman who later admitted to making campaign donations on behalf of the daughter of one of the most senior generals in the Chinese Communist army. When Chung delivered a $50,000 check to Hillary Clinton's chief of staff who inappropriately accepted it on behalf of the DNC--Hillary was on hand to greet Chung and a Communist Chinese delegation in the White House map room.

Chung came to the White House more than fifty times. Twenty-one of those times, he was ”cleared in” by Hillary Clinton's office.*22 Then there was Charlie Trie, a veritable Horatio Alger of foreign influence peddlers. From his humble position as a Little Rock restaurateur, Trie had morphed into a major donor and even foreign policy advisor.

In the spring of 1996, Trie brought bags of phoney money orders and cash totaling a half-million dollars to the president's legal defense fund. But with the money came a letter protesting the deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers and cruisers in the Straits of Taiwan.

”Why U.S. has to sent the aircraft carriers and cruisers to give China a possible excuse of foreign intervention and hence launch a real war?” the letter asked in broken English. ”It is highly possible for China to launch real war, based on its past behavior in sino-vietnam war and then Bao-Tao war with Russia.”*23 This is the first time an American president has ever received a threat of war from a fund-raising bag man who ran a Chinese restaurant in Little Rock.

MARRIED TO THE MOB.

For a first lady willing to secure money from a Communist government, there was little reason not to embrace the mob.

Arthur A. Coia, general president of the Laborers International Union of North America, was charged by the Justice Department for being ”a.s.sociated with and controlled and influenced by organized crime.” For years, prosecutors alleged, Coia had helped the mob loot pension funds of some of the hardest working people in America. Such a background did not deter Hillary Clinton from flying to Miami to appear with Coia on stage at a Laborers International Union of North America convention at the Fontainebleau Hotel. He had already made his investment, beginning with a $100,000 donation to the inaugural committee. Hillary invited him to the White House to have breakfast with her. Several times, she earnestly solicited his advice on health care reform. Coia attended a reception for the j.a.panese emperor, and flew on Air Force One to Haiti.

In years past, the Justice Department has moved with alacrity to prosecute and remove from office union bosses with ties to organized crime. Not this Justice Department. A week after Hillary's appearance with Coia in Miami, the Justice Department agreed to an unusual deal that allowed Coia to keep his presidency (a direct election was permitted, but no one of any rank dared to take him on).

The Laborers International Union of North America held out against the Justice Department on the direct election of officials below the rank of president and secretary-treasurer.*24 The same Justice Department that had once been tough enough to launch a takeover of the Teamsters behaved with remarkable timidity when it came to Coia.

But perhaps even more remarkable is that the Clintons thought they needed financial support from the mob and the Communist Chinese in order to beat the hapless campaign of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp that started on empty and never bothered to stop for gas.

TEN.

HILLARY AND THE DEVIL IN THE BLUE DRESS.

”One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's profound interest in the issue.”

-- SAUL ALINSKY, RULES FOR RADICALS.

Having bought, spun, and triangulated her husband's reelection--making Bill Clinton the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two terms--Hillary found that her popularity had also been solidly restored.

On the other hand, she was constantly absorbed with damage control.

The Clintons and their administration careened like a drunken sailor from one scandal to another sometimes producing two or more at a time.

Already, in Clinton's first term she had had to provide sworn testimony to special prosecutor Robert Fiske. Then she had to deal with Fiske's replacement, Ken Starr. And Starr's investigation not only wouldn't end quietly, it kept getting bigger.

Starr won his first big scalps in May and June 1996, with the twin Whitewater-related convictions of Governor Jim Guy Tucker and Susan McDougal. White House aide Bruce Lindsey was named but not convicted as unindicted co-conspirator.

The Starr investigation intensified the pressure on Hillary in 1996.

She went through a grueling four hours of testimony before a federal grand jury on the disappearance and embara.s.sing reappearance of her billing records. She was questioned again in 1998 by Starr and his lieutenants about the FBI files. In April 1998 she underwent almost five hours of questioning in the White House as a Whitewater witness.*1 As the Clintons saw their legal exposure widen (and legal bills stack up into the millions) over Whitewater, Travelgate, and Filegate, another aspect of Bill's past opened up. As Arkansas state troopers began to talk freely of their exploits to David Brock and the American Spectator, Clinton tried to move swiftly to plug the leaking dike. He saw to it that the head of his security detail, Raymond ”Buddy” Young, received a $92,000-a-year federal post as a regional manager for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). He even found time in his busy schedule to make two calls to trooper Danny Ferguson to dangle the promise of federal jobs in front of him.

THE ANIMAL HOUSE PRESIDENT.

”This is fun,” Clinton had once confided to Susan McDougal. ”Women are throwing themselves at me. All the while I was growing up, I was the fat boy in the Big Boy jeans.”*2 Arkansas State Trooper L.D.

Brown would later charge that he had solicited more than one hundred women for Governor Clinton during their years of houndd.o.g.g.i.ng in the dance clubs and honky-tonks of Arkansas. Now Bill's prolific past finally began to catch up to him. When the American Spectator printed its story, about Clinton's women procured by the state troopers, Paula Corbin Jones filed a lawsuit to clear her name.

It is a measure of the discipline, tenacity, and viciousness of Hillary's War Room that at first the story of the Jones lawsuit and its repercussions did as little damage as it did.

Nevertheless, Jones's story would soon become world famous. Jones, a low-level state employee during Clinton's governors.h.i.+p, was working at a hotel for a trade show when she caught Clinton's eye. Given all that is now known about Clinton's behavior--the combined weight of partially corroborated testimony from women like Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, and others, and what Clinton and his defenders no longer bother to deny--we know that a state trooper did ask her to see the governor in his hotel room. Clinton, with his usual directness, allegedly dropped his pants in front of Jones, asked her to f.e.l.l.a.t.e him, and warned her, when she refused, not to talk.

The War Room response was immediate and effective. Hillary's people took a handful of rhetorical razors and went to work on Jones. James Carville, a man who apparently has no principles or scruples and will say anything no matter how outrageous or stupid, to advance his own interests, told a national television audience, ”Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find.”

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