Hillary Clinton created climate she now decries

Insight on the News, July 15, 1996 by Mark R. Levin

A few weeks ago, the only first lady to testify before a grand jury, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was on the Larry King Show lamenting the criticism she and her husband have received, particularly regarding the firing of the White House Travel Office staff.

"I don't think you can get used to it," she said. "It's painful sometimes. It does upset me." She later added, "I think that what prepared me most for Washington was playing lots of sports with boys in my neighborhood growing up. I'm so used to them razzing each other and razzing me. That's why I urge girls to play competitive sports with boys at an early age."

How touching. I don't mean to "razz" Mrs. Clinton, but her trip down memory lane with King seems to have skipped a very important event in her life -- namely, her role in 1974 as a 26-year-old congressional investigator with the House Judiciary Committee. You see, Mrs. Clinton helped create the current political atmosphere she now deplores.

Jerry Zeifman, a Democrat, was the House Judiciary Committee's chief counsel when Congress was considering impeaching President Nixon. He also was young Hillary's boss. According to Zeifman's book, Without Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon and the Crimes of Camelot, a few days after Nixon resigned, he learned that two of his staffers -- John Labovitz and Hillary Rodham -- had "lied intentionally to me and told me there were no drafts of proposed rules of procedure for the impeachment inquiry."

Zeifman elaborated on the significance of this revelation ill, an interview with the New York Daily News. He said, "Suppose we were going to have the World Series next week and suddenly one of the team managers says, "We want to change the rules to two strikes and you're out.'" In other words, the Daily News reported, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her fellow staffer "drew up new impeachment protocols to replace those in existence since Jefferson's day and then denied it."

It seems young Hillary was set on railroading Nixon from the presidency. Zeffman also reveals that she wrote a memorandum arguing against allowing Nixon his own counsel during the anticipated impeachment proceedings. (Today, of course, the Clintons believe every president has a right to at least two dozen lawyers.) And she oversaw a study by 10 Yale professors detailing the abuses of previous presidents but kept it from the committee apparently to cover up President Kennedy's alleged wrongdoing. Of course, this is the same committee in which then-Rep. Paul Sarbanes -- now the top Democrat on the Senate Whitewater Committee -- first received national prominence.

Our first lady was quite the partisan bomb-thrower back then. She wasn't encumbered by facts, honesty or fairness in her zealous efforts to topple Nixon. And these are the same traits that led her and then-Gov. Bill Clinton to become involved in a sleazy real-estate deal called Whitewater, to evade their federal tax obligations by routinely overstating their interest deductions and to turn $1,000 into $100,000 in the cattle-futures market with the help of a lawyer who worked for a powerful political supporter.

When Mrs. Clinton returned to Washington as first lady, she may have changed her hairdo, but she was the same person who "lied intentionally" to Chief Counsel Zeifman 20 years earlier. For instance, handwritten notes and a draft memorandum make clear that Mrs. Clinton was the person who directed the firing of the White House Travel Office staff. And the evidence also shows that David Watkins, the presidential assistant whose job it was to carry out Mrs. Clinton's directive, feared her retribution should he fail to act -- and act quickly. The FBI also was unleashed to investigate the former Travel-Office staffers and, coincidentally, the IRS just happened to start auditing these folks.

Contrary to documentary evidence, Mrs. Clinton has denied under oath any role in the firings. She says she only raised concerns about management problems in the office. Mrs. Clinton's testimony is at odds with the evidence, and she knows better than most that she might be charged with making false statements to investigators, perjury or obstruction of justice -- all crimes. If young Hillary were the prosecutor, what would she do under these circumstances?

Mrs. Clinton also was called before a federal grand jury to answer questions about long-sought previously subpoenaed Rose Law Firm records that suddenly appeared in the book room next to her personal office in the White House. Although most of the law firm's records relating to Mrs. Clinton's work for Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan were destroyed years earlier -- at Mrs. Clinton's direction -- somehow these 116 pages survived. And they show that Mrs. Clinton was more involved in one more sleazy real-estate deal -- Castle Grande -- than she previously admitted. But she denies knowing anything about the whereabouts of the records or their sudden appearance. Yet the FBI found her fingerprints on them. And unlike the other individuals whose fingerprints also were discovered on the records, Mrs. Clinton had a motive to withhold the records, she had easy access to the book room and she had the opportunity to place the records there. Again, if young Hillary was standing in the prosecutor's shoes, what would she do?