Joe Conason writes, "Thanks to [former NY Times executive editor] Joseph Lelyveld's long, sloppy, rather mean-spirited review of Sidney Blumenthal's 'The Clinton Wars' in the current NY Review of Books, the Whitewater mystery is finally resolved, at least in part. That mystery was never much about Whitewater itself - a mundane, money-losing land deal. What always defied understanding was why the editors of the NY Times tolerated their paper's persistent hyping of the phony 'scandal.' The answer, as Lelyveld reveals inadvertently, was a remarkable degree of carelessness at the very top. Although he has defended the paper's coverage publicly for several years - and continues to do so as if he knows what he's talking about - the former Times executive editor clearly never mastered the basic facts" about Clinton's 1995 exoneration by the Resolution Trust Corp. Lelyveld is also too sloppy to examine Blumenthal's detailed index before falsely accusing Blumenthal of non-existent errors.

MediaWhoresOnline.com writes, "The NY Times Book Review has run a review with factual errors and innuendo over long-refuted charges concerning Bill and Hillary Clinton and the so-called Whitewater affair. The review also contains a false statement about Susan McDougal that could well be grounds for a libel suit against the Times and its reviewer. The erroneous, baseless charges appear in a coy, bristly review of Susan McDougal's new book, written by a novelist, Beverly Lowry... Email a Letter to the Book Review , demanding a prominent published correction of the glaring factual errors in Beverly Lowry's review, along with an apology to the Clintons. Susan McDougal, and the TBR's readers... Email Beverly Lowry and demand that she substantiate, with facts and evidence, her false charges about the Clintons and Whitewater."

"McDOUGAL: The truth of it is I did not have an affair with Bill Clinton. Not everybody in Arkansas did, you know? CARLSON: Oh, there must about a club of people who didn't. A small club. McDOUGAL: But the independent counsel did question every woman in Arkansas about it. I can tell you that. CARVILLE: Seven hundred and fifty FBI agents sent down there to interview women." 750 FBI Agents investigating Clinton's sex life! Is it any wonder that Louis Freeh's FBI was so pathetic at tracking Al Qaeda? Thanks Ken Starr, Ted Olson, Richard Mellon Scaife, Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the rightwing Clinton haters for inspiring this waste of our precious resources on...SEX!

On 1/22, watch Susan McDougal on Greta Van Susteren's FOX show; on 1/26 she will be on FOX with Geraldo. Other Media coverage: Philadelphia Inquirer feature to run the week of Jan. 20; New York Times Book Review on Jan. 26; More magazine interview for June 2003. Book Events for her 'The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk' include Barnes & Noble Upper West Side NYC, 1/24/03; Barnes & Noble Los Angeles (Grove), 2/6/03; Borders San Francisco (Union Square), 2/8/03; Barnes & Noble Emeryville, CA, 2/10/03; Borders Seattle (12:30 p.m.), 2/12/03; Elliott Bay Seattle (5:30 p.m.), 2/12/03. (Schedule courtesy of Bartcop.com)

Nixon's White House counsel John Dean writes, "President Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are together asking the government to reimburse them for some $3.5 million of their legal fees resulting from Ken Starr's independent counsel investigation. The story says they 'racked up' about $11 million in legal bills for Whitewater and other investigations while in the White House. Their defense fund, reportedly, paid about $7 million - leaving a hefty sum yet unpaid... The Clintons should - and may - get at least partial reimbursement of their fees. They have fulfilled the statutory criteria for reimbursement, and thus only a partisan political decision will lead to the failure of the reimbursement request." Will Republicans and their Federalist Society judges trash the Rule of Law one more time? Stay tuned...

Another of Whitewater Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's ethical lapses--to give it the kindest possible description--came to light last week and it raises the urgent question: Have not the greater wrongs in the Whitewater caper been perpetrated by the investigators? The Nation Magazine reported that before Sens. Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth had Ken Starr installed as the special prosecutor to go after the Clintons and Arkansas Democrats, Starr's law firm had been sued by the Resolution Trust Corporation, which accused the firm of aiding and abetting a tax scam by a Colorado thrift that Starr's firm represented.

"BUZZFLASH: I wanted to explore your book in relationship to the issue of the interplay of the judiciary and political goals of the right-wing in the Republican Party. On page 307 you wrote: "I knew that the [Paula] Jones case, if it had ever had any merit at all, had been hijacked by operatives working covertly to manipulate the courts for political ends, when the secret legal strategists for Paula Jones tell me years earlier that the purpose of the sexual harassment suit was to probe Clinton's consensual sex life through the deposition process, and then to question Clinton under oath about it." That is an extraordinary charge. We had in essence, a conspiracy to unseat the President of the United States through entrapment. DAVID BROCK: Right. I can say that I knew and I know first hand that the Jones case became the vehicle for the right-wing conspiracy." Read for yourself!

Kathleen Willey, the discredited former White House volunteer who accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault - and wrecked Julie Hiatt Steele's life - has gotten the boot at WRVA-AM as a radio talk show host. Willey's show debuted on April 7th, 2002 and her last show aired this week. "We'll go back to 'The Best of Dr. Laura,'" stated program director of WRVA-AM, Randall Bloomquist, "What I heard was what you would hear if you plucked anyone off the street and put them on a 50,000-watt radio station. She just wasn't ready yet for a station at our level." Drawing from her network of Arkansas conspiracy cohorts, among the guests on Willey's four shows were Ken Starr and Dick Morris. "I'm certainly disappointed - not devastated, but disappointed," Willey said. "I had a good time, but I don't think the audience that WRVA is trying to draw now is interested in the kind of guests that I was able to bring on the show." Why doesn't KVRA give Julie Hiatt Steele a month's trial???

The stories given out by Bush Sr's top political aides about just what role Bush may have had in instigating Whitewater conflict sharply. However, this suspicious finding was covered up in the final report on Whitewater. It IS know that two of Bush Daddy's right hand men tried to find a way to get an investigation going in the weeks before the 1992 election, and to do it in a way that would implicate the Clintons. This unethical, slimeball game was stopped by Charles Banks, a Republican U.S. attorney in Little Rock, who "concluded that the Bush administration wanted to provoke an investigation so the embarrassing news could be leaked about Clinton and used to reelect George H.W. Bush. The prosecutor refused to go along." So good ole Mr. CIA has been the shadowy figure behind all the witch hunts and who knows what else that has mired the nation for almost a decade.

Why did the FBI bungle so many cases and let Robert Hanssen operate right under their noses for so long? According to Tamara Baker in American Politics Journal, Bush Sr.'s crony Louis Freeh was too busy trying to dig up dirt on Clinton and Gore to do his job! Baker cites sources that prove Freeh "assiduously did all he could to assist the GOP's impeachment efforts, all the while letting the real business of the FBI slide - and real criminals, spies and terrorists walk free." In addition, Clinton issued an executive order requiring financial-record checks on government employees who work with classified info - a clue to whether they're being paid for classified info - but Freeh disregarded it. Had he done his job instead of participating in the GOP's anti-Clinton lynch mob, Hanssen might have been caught a lot earlier!

What happens to someone who lies to help right-wing Republicans engineer a coup d'etat? They get a job as a talk show host, of course! That's right, Whitewater liar Kathleen Willey has joined G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North in the pantheon of Republican criminals (or Democratic co-conspirators, in Willey's case) getting rich off the public airwaves, which law-abiding Democrats cannot get anywhere near. If you are as outraged as we are, show your support for the woman whose life was destroyed by Willey - Julie Hiatt Steele, the one true hero of Whitewater who stood up to Ken Starr and saved the Clinton presidency by telling the truth. Bartcop is hosting a Washington DC for the nearly-destitute Steele (http://www.bartcop.com/west24-tix.htm).

It is one outrage, writes Joe Conason in Salon, that the Office of Independent Counsel's final report reveals that Bill and Hilary Clinton were guilty of nothing other than seeking the Democratic nomination to run for president in 1992. And on top of that revelation we have to deal with the grotesque spectacle of the New York Times and Washington Post telling us that the Clinton's still deserved what they got. It is almost as if the Times and Post are incapable of admitting that they were misled and that they misled us. Now they want to mislead history, too?

Senior officials of the first Bush administration used their power and influence to try to get the Justice Department to investigate the Whitewater land deal even over the objection of the Republican U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, who dismissed their attempts at political interference in a criminal matter. So what did Special Prosecutors Kenneth Star and Robert Ray do? They investigated the officials who acted properly and within the law and ignored the obvious wrongdoing by Bush Administration officials.

What Joe Conason and other journalists are pointing out about the Office of the Special Counsel's final report should be shouted from the hilltops: The Whitewater investigation was begun in the first Bush Administration and accelerated under intense political pressure by the government of George Bush the First in an attempt to undercut Clinton's candidacy for the presidency in 1992. This represents an abuse of power not seen since Richard Nixon's clumsy attempts to enlist the IRS, FBI and other agencies to harass his political enemies. The Senate Judiciary Committee can not just put this report on the shelf and write off the waste of taxpayer money. These are very serious high crimes committed by Republican political operatives from their position inside agencies of the U.S. government.

"The real shocker in the [final Whitewater report were] new details of how the scandal was fueled in its early days by the Justice Department of George H. W. Bush, who was facing a daunting election against the upstart governor from Arkansas... Critics of the Starr and Ray investigations have long held that the Whitewater probe was partisan from the start, born in dirty tricks and manipulation that began with the first Bush administration. Now the OIC itself is presenting facts that substantiate those claims... 50-odd pages... of the report reveal how political appointees at the highest level of the first Bush administration actually intervened in the normal process of the investigation, not to slow it down but to speed it up -- and with the pretty obvious intention of getting the matter before the public prior to Election Day, 1992." We demand a Special Prosecutor - for Bush Sr.!