"Good bye, good riddance" said The London Daily Telegraph's Washington correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Such was the title of his parting shot at the current U.S. Administration, published in his home newspaper when he was recalled to London. In that editorial, Evans-Pritchard gave a penetrating and stinging analysis of the state of American politics as seen through the eyes of a foreigner who is apparently capable of discerning the "forest for the trees."
The French historian Alexis de Toqueville, during his visit to America in 1831, upon witnessing slavery and the unrest it was creating, predicted more presciently than anyone in this country that race issues would become the greatest national dilemma of the young republic. It is more often the rule than the exception that the finest and most accurate history of a country is set forth by historians who are not nationals of that country. This phenomenon very clearly expresses itself also in those tasked with the recording of the political events that will, themselves, ultimately become history. For this reason, Evans-Pritchard's analysis of the administration of William Jefferson Clinton takes on a sharp, focused perspective in which the British journalist pulls the flowers out of the White House political garden to reveal what is really fertilizing them. (Don't panic, environmentalists--the flowers are only plastic anyway).
Mr. Evans-Pritchard's newspaper, along with other foreign press, was accused of partaking in a feeding frenzy within the "media food chain." When charged personally by the White House "spinmeisters" of making such outrageous statements as claiming that Vincent Foster was actually a spy, Evans-Pritchard reacted with apparent amusement. "The White House," he said, "seems to be displaying a standard of accuracy that would not pass muster at any of the newspapers they are attacking." American politicians accused of being less honest than the media?--a great stretch of credibility?
The Telegraph reported that the White House legal office "issued a 331-page tome blaming a 'media frenzy' - orchestrated by 'right-wing' think-tanks and abetted by British newspapers - for the leader's [Clinton's] troubles." This is an interesting turn of events--a liberal administration accusing the media of collaborating in a "right-wing" conspiracy. Is it not that same media that conservative "right-wing" politicians continuously blast as being irrepressibly leftist? Is it possible that this distinction between "left" and "right" is blurred because the reality of it is that there is no distinction?
The scandals of the Clinton White House have become international in perspective and proverbial for the disgust and dismay they have stimulated in other countries. The opposite, however, is often heard in America: that foreign nations, because of their own inherent political corruption, wonder at the "big deal" we make of such antics here. This view, created by the U.S. media for domestic pacification and to present the image of American honesty and forthrightness, is simply not supported by even the most casual perusal of any moderately honest foreign press--as Evans-Pritchard's article so clearly presents.
The Telegraph reporter has been more than just a thorn in the side of the Clinton White House. He has managed to become an entire one-man briar patch. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is best known in this country for his penetrating articles castigating the Clinton Administration and his recently published book The Secret Life of Bill Clinton in which he documents and reveals just what the title proclaims. Reviewed as "an assiduously documented exposé of the crimes that have made the Clinton presidency easily the most corrupt in history," the book is causing considerable turmoil within the administration. Press Secretary Mike McCurry even claimed that Evans-Pritchard's articles are the genesis of virtually every scandal story on the Clinton White House.
"Now apparently, " Evens-Pritchard says, with typically droll British humor, "the President's men are relishing the prospect of my departure after four years as Washington correspondent for The Telegraph - the notorious London 'tabloid', as they call it." The Telegraph, of course, is not a "tabloid" as the White House either ignorantly or contemptuously refers to it. It is, in fact, a full broad-sheet newspaper of considerable respectability. The comparison would be somewhat as likening the Washington Post to the National Enquirer. (No sarcasm intended)
The Telegraph's reporter quotes JFK, Jr.'s George magazine as citing a White House source commenting on the departure of Evans-Pritchard: "That's another British invasion we're glad is over." This "British invasion," like the last, burned Washington but in a different way than did General Ross in 1814. Mr. Evans-Pritchard explained how even he was taken in by the Clinton charm when he first arrived and before he became entangled in what he calls a "spitting match with President Clinton."
"As for Hillary," he says, "I was rather taken by her image of flinty altruism." But when the new president "repudiated his campaign promise for a tax cut," the corespondent observed, "It was downhill from there.
"The Clintons look good from a distance. As Yale Law School graduates they have mastered the language and style of the mandarin class. It is only when you walk through the looking glass into the Arkansas underworld they came from that you begin to realize something is horribly wrong.
"You learn that Bill Clinton grew up in the Dixie mafia stronghold of Hot Springs, and that his brother, Roger, was a convicted drug dealer who was once taped during under-cover surveillance saying 'got to get some for my brother, he's got a nose like a vacuum cleaner'. [1] You learn about sworn testimony that links Clinton to cocaine smuggling in the early 1980's. You learn that Clinton's chief of security in Little Rock was gunned down in 1993 by assassins who seem to be enjoying immunity."
As Mr. Evans-Pritchard points out, Bill Clinton does not hold exclusive rights to being the only U.S. president with mob connections. "Harry Truman, for instance, was a protégé of the Pendergast crime machine in Kansas City. All you have to know about Bill Clinton is that he chose Patsy Thomasson - top lieutenant of convicted cocaine dealer Dan Lasater - to be his White House chief of personnel."
"Once that has sunk in," the British journalist says, "you can start to understand how seriously this president has been compromised, and how much of a threat he could pose to the democratic system if allowed to get away with incremental abuse at a national level."
Reviewing the beginnings of the administration, the writer observed that, "The Clintons wasted little time taking charge of the U.S. Justice Department. All U.S. Attorneys were asked to hand in their resignations. It was a move of breath-taking audacity, one that gave the Clintons control over the prosecutorial machinery of the federal government in every judicial district in the country." Where, one might ask, was the American media outcry over that counterpart to the "Saturday night massacre"?
"They then set about eliminating the Director of the FBI,[2] William Sessions, who was known for his refusal to countenance White House interference in the affairs of the Bureau. The post of FBI Director is supposed to be a 10-year appointment that puts it above politics....Sessions was toppled in a Washington putsch...and replaced by the hapless errand boy Louis Freeh."
The Briar Patch from London, in another article, briefly explained how the Clinton Administration craftily maneuvered Director Sessions before the Executive firing squad, and then he commented briefly on the manner in which it wasn't handled by the media. "Director Sessions," Evans-Pritchard says, "was fired on the grounds that he had used official resources for personal benefit - his wife had carried a bundle of firewood on the Director's small aircraft, and other such absurdities. It was an obvious set-up, although the Washington press corps allowed it to pass unchallenged."
Evans-Pritchard voices a concern that has been entertained by most thoughtful persons when they come into contact with so much that seems so incredible and yet is accompanied by either irrefutable proof or too many witnesses to be comfortably ignored. "When you are living through events day by day," the journalist observes, "it is hard to know whether you are witnessing a historic turning point, or just mistaking the usual noise of politics for something meaningful. But there is no doubt," is his conclusion, "that strange things have been going on in America."
The vivid impression one is left with when considering Evans-Pritchard's view of the "land of the free" is that Americans truly live in a hall of mirrors and, most disturbingly, we have no apparent desire to discern the illusion from the reality. The ones who do, it appears, seem to want to revert to an era when musket and cannon were effective instruments of changing the order of things.
"The Clinton era," the Englishman observes, "has spawned an armed militia movement [3] involving tens of thousands of people. The last time anything like this occurred was in the 1850's with the emergence of the southern gun clubs. It is easy to dismiss the militia as right-wing nuts: it is much harder to read the complex sociology of civic revolt. At the very least the militias reveal the hatred building up against the irksome yuppies who run the country.
"It is under this president that domestic terrorism has become a feature of life in America, culminating in the destruction of the Oklahoma federal building on April 19, 1995. What set the deadly spiral in motion was the Waco assault two years before, and the cover-up that followed.
"No official has ever lost a day's pay for precipitating the incineration of 80 people, most of them women and children, in the worst abuse of power since Wounded Knee a century ago. Instead of shame and accountability, the Clinton administration accused the victims of setting fire to themselves and their children, a posthumous smear that does not bear serious scrutiny. It then compounded the injustice by pushing for a malicious prosecution of the survivors.
"Nothing does more to sap the life of a democracy than the abuse of power. Public trust is dangerously low. According to polls, barely a quarter of the American people now feel that they can count on the federal government to do the right thing.
"A majority refuse to accept that Vincent Foster committed suicide, [4] and they have good reason for their doubts. The paramedics and crime scene witnesses in Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993, tell a story that flatly contradicts the official findings. A police Polaroid shows a .22 calibre bullet wound in Foster's neck that the autopsy somehow failed to note. Are Americans to believe that Hillary Clinton's closest friend shot himself twice, with two different guns?
"The Washington press corps has chosen not to report on this sort of thing, of course, because it always gives more weight to the utterings of an 'official' source, with a title, than it does to the testimony of a common citizen. It has the matter backwards, in my opinion, because the 'official' usually has the greater interest in lying."
Evans-Pritchard makes the observation that contrary to the perhaps jealous, but definitely effective, smear campaign the mainstream media and the Washington administration has leveled at the credibility of the Internet, this medium has become the largest source of obtaining the very truth they attempt to suppress.
The strongest indictment he makes, labeling it "the worst thing Clinton has done to America," was to make the FBI a mutated clone of the Arkansas State Police resulting in them becoming a mere rubber stamp for whatever the Clinton Administration declares as truth. "Whether it is the persecution of dissident investigators in the air disasters of Pan Am 103 and TWA 800, [5] or allowing the White House to peruse the secret files of political opponents, or the alleged intimidation of key witnesses in the Foster case, [6] the FBI is starting to look like the enforcement arm of a police state." "The FBI," he states in another article, "has now been politicized to the point where it cannot be trusted."
A "shocker" as Evans-Pritchard calls it, was "the decision to punish Frederic Whitehurst, the whistle-blower who first came forward with tales of corruption at the FBI crime labs. An internal inquiry has conceded that the lab tilted evidence 'to incriminate the defendants' and cooked up the theory that a fertilizer bomb blew up the Oklahoma federal building after it found fertilizer at the house of a suspect, Terry Nichols. But the Justice Department seems more interested in denigrating Whitehurst, the lone hero of this sorry tale, than flagellating itself.
"Look at the treatment of Carol Howe, [7] the undercover informant who tracked the early stages of what appears to be the Oklahoma bombing conspiracy. The moment she surfaced as a threat to the 'lone bomber' case against Timothy McVeigh, this January, ['97] she was indicted on criminal charges.
"The FBI claims that she was dropped as an informant months before the bombing, but debriefing reports show the Bureau continued to receive her intelligence weeks after the blast. They also show that she named members of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell who had cased the Oklahoma federal building in December 1994 with the intention of bombing it. Yet the FBI did not follow up her reports. It conducted 26,000 witness interviews, most of them irrelevant, but could not find time to pursue the suspects who were specifically named by a paid informant."
If the FBI has indeed been co-opted by the Clinton White House into, among other things, covering up the fact that the OKC bombing was "a bungled sting operation by the FBI, as some of the victims are now alleging," the British journalist has a novel idea of what the national response should be: "Gather an armada of D-9 cats and send the Hoover Building into eternity. Then on the rubble of that once-respected agency erect a monument inscribed with the Latin words 'Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?'--Who Shall Guard the Guards? ...as a warning to free-born Americans of the next millennium."
Concluding his farewell address to the American people Ambrose Evans-Pritchard asks the rhetorical question, "Is Bill Clinton to blame?" and provides the implied answer and explanation, "Of course he is. Degradation spreads from the top down. Four years were damaging enough. Another four, if Clinton lasts, will do real harm to the institutions of the U.S. federal government. Degradation does spread "from the top down". It is, however, a hotly debated fact that Mr. Clinton is not the top, nor does he decide national policy, no matter how corrupt. The idea is essentially laughable on the face of it that anyone with such a well-documented history of moral turpitude, like that of even the charming William J. Clinton, could be elected by a popular vote from the fantasy-rulers they call the people.
"Perhaps it is impolite for a London newspaper to say such things about a president of the United States. Many people think so. Clinton is not so bad, the argument goes. He is running a pretty good economy. The planes are flying on time. But you could have said the same about Benito Mussolini. A lot of people did, in fact, much to their regret later.
"Critics tell me that I have invested too much emotion in my quarrel with the Clintons. To that I plead guilty. It comes from befriending so many of their victims. I am content to be blacklisted as the 'mad scribbler' - as the Washington Post called me this week - for I am confident that one day historians are going to view Clinton as a the last great cad of the 20th century, or worse.
"To the American people I bid a fond farewell. Guard your liberties. It is the trust of each generation to pass a free republic to the next. And if I know you right, you will rouse yourself from slumber to ensure exactly that."
Likely the most damning testimony against the American people in all this is that, in the face of clearly demonstrated governmental and moral corruption placed directly at the White House doorstep, they remain unmoved in their approval of Mr. Clinton's presidency.
The current (March 30th) issue of U. S. News and World Report [8] reveals that the president's approval rating stands at 59 percent--"essentially unchanged from the heights he reached in January just before the first reports about Monica Lewinsky's taped allegations of an affair with the president sent the White House into crisis. Indeed," U.S. News continues, "in the nine weeks since the Lewinsky scandal has commandeered the headlines--interrupted only intermittently by developments in the Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey stories--the media, the political community in Washington, and even some of Clinton's own aides have been bewildered by the public's continued support for Clinton." It appears that even those peddling acceptance for the actions of the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are amazed at the profound moral apathy of "the people."
Should one be surprised at that moral apathy when considering things such as the perpetual television role models those same people choose for themselves?--children raised by parents, primarily mothers, whose nearly entire perspective is shaped by such as soap operas and movies in which there is expressed almost non-stop hostility and violence, not to mention adultery? Is it surprising that these same mothers then pass on that value system to their progeny?--and on and on it goes. Is this what is meant by God when He says that He will visit "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." (Exodus 20:5). Is it possible that we are the ones really creating the immoral legacy and that He is merely taking the responsibility for it?
Those familiar with The WINDS are aware that this agency is largely in agreement with Mr. Evans-Pritchard's assessment of America and its politicians--EXCEPT--for the very last sentence of his closing statement. We have continuously emphasized the nature of the "beast" with which we are at war and the times in which we live. That emphasis has centered around the Scriptural accounts which focus upon this time as the day of judgment which has come upon all the earth. When Mr. Evans-Pritchard optimistically, and we believe sincerely, expresses faith in America that "you will rouse yourself from slumber to ensure" that this generation will "pass a free republic to the next," we must emphasize that the Lord of creation has indicated otherwise.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard articles cited:
Other sources cited:
8. U.S. News and World Reports: Why is he so darn popular?
Written 4/01/98