On the day the Senate took up the suspect collection of FBI files by the Clinton White House, Sen. Fred Thompson recalled running into me at the Goodman Theatre’s 1990 production of “The Iceman Cometh,” starring Brian Dennehy.
The recollection seemed timely.
“The lie of a pipe dream,” says one of the inebriated denizens of Harry Hope’s bar in the bleak Eugene O’Neill classic, “is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”
To be in Washington these days is to be confronted with pipe dreams. Whether it’s Whitewater, Travelgate or the FBI files, Democrats and Republicans reflexively stake out polarized positions–one group asserting roundly that President Clinton will be shown a victim, the other that he will be proven a lying rogue.
The likelihood, of course, is that they both are wrong. Clinton may be proven neither unadulterated sinner nor innocent bystander.
It was thus refreshing to hear Thompson, a first-term Tennessee Republican, on Thursday when the Senate Judiciary Committee took up the suspicious matter of the FBI files. With colleagues dug in on both sides, he called for a receptivity to facts, wherever they might lead.
As attorney for the then-minority Republicans on the Senate Watergate Committee more than 20 years ago, he knows about FBI files and abuse of power. It’s not something he wears as a badge of honor but, on this day, it was an experience he pointed to for colleagues on both sides.
“I think the broader issue we are dealing with here is historically a consistent tendency by the White House to abuse and use the FBI,” Thompson said at the hearing. “It goes back at least through the Roosevelt administration. The one we are most familiar with is the Nixon administration. It has been consistent and it has been bipartisan. The FBI has powerful information and the White House always seems to want it.”
Thompson told me at day’s end that he’d been ticked off by vividly partisan comments made a few minutes earlier in the Judiciary Committee hearing by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
Thompson was speaking pointedly to the Democrats and Republicans, he said. He mentioned his political mentor, Howard Baker of Tennessee, who gained fame as a truth-seeking Republican on the Senate Watergate panel who asked of witnesses: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”
“Where is a Howard Baker?” Thompson wondered in our conversation.
Earlier at the hearing, he alluded to the astonishing potency of Watergate.
“If we don’t have a Watergate in most investigations, we consider it not worthwhile,” he said. But, remember, he continued, “We had unique evidence–tapes–which definitively answered all the questions.”
Other investigations can’t live up to Watergate, he said. Further, on crucial votes, there was unanimity, like when it came to issuing crucial subpoenas and giving immunity to Nixon aide John Dean.
“Democrats and Republicans went ahead and did so. It was a unanimous decision to sue the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. I signed those (legal papers) as minority counsel.
“Let’s not try to divide up too quickly. It’s inappropriate to compare the front end of one inquiry with the back end of another,” said Thompson, a trial lawyer and occasional Hollywood actor until two years ago when he was elected to fill the unexpired term of Al Gore.
“Those who say that we clearly have another Watergate are wrong and premature,” Thompson told the Judiciary panel. “But those who say it can’t be anything like that and that we should accept the (White House) explanation of being stupid and incompetent . . . the defense of stupidity and incompetence can only go so far.”
In the old days of Watergate, he noted, it was initially characterized as a “third-rate burglary carried out by a bunch of idiots.”
Up to this point, of course, the White House line is that it was victimized by a “bureaucratic snafu.”
Power of conviction
“Dear Mr. Warren:
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I appreciate the possibility that you might be willing to write an op-ed for me at a very conservative price, just as we appreciate Powell & Tate’s proposal for generating publicity for cancer research funding. But I rather enjoy writing my own op-eds, and fortunately (or unfortunately) Norman Schwarzkopf, Sidney Poitier and I have never found getting publicity much of a problem.”
My heart sunk at opportunity lost.
It was a letter from Michael Milken, the junk bond billionaire who did time for securities fraud.
Last week I disclosed various internal documents from a major lobbying firm and its public relations subsidiary (Powell Tate), detailing the wonderful work they could do for CapCure, a prostate cancer foundation Milken heads.
Since they included lofty prices for matters such as writing op-ed pieces for big newspapers, I offered my services at cut rates, such as a mere $10,000 for op-ed work.
Milken went on to argue for the need to increase funding to research all cancers, not just prostate, which he has. His father died of cancer, as have six other family members, prompting his Milken Family Foundation to support many cancer programs.
He wondered, “Why have the American people allowed the war on cancer to drag on for 25 years and claim more than 10 million American lives? Why have public policymakers been so complacent? And why is it that debates over budget battles are covered every day, with public officials telling us we can’t leave a deficit to future generations yet we don’t hear the same resolve when it comes to leaving a legacy of cancer to our children and grandchildren?”
He left a phone number and concluded, “And if I ever need help with an op-ed, I now know who to call.”
OK, OK. Heck, I might do one for $5,000.
Fourth estate at the trough
It was time last week for the annual White House picnic for that disadvantaged group: the members of the White House press corps.
As a bureau chief, I was invited and decided to make a brief, sociological foray with my visiting 18-year-old nephew, who lives in a village of 2,000 in England.
There were hundreds of journalists and spouses/children/chums cozying up to administration officials, including Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, who just hours before had backtracked totally on previous claims and announced that ValuJet was unsafe.
Pena was smiling, holding a beer and walking past us with Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, the two finding seats at a table with a Washington Post gossip columnist.
When my nephew asked who Pena was, I said he was a member of Mr. Clinton’s Cabinet who was smiling presumably because he hadn’t been fired that day.
We had to leave after 15 minutes and thus missed Clinton and music by Kid Creole and the Coconuts. But on our way out, we did spy one of several, jam-packed buffet tables stretching toward the horizon:
Let’s see: tomato marinated grilled shrimp with Miami bean salad; saffron-cumin braised chicken with couscous salad; fresh asparagus with watercress, mango, orange and jicama relish; smoked duck and somen noodles with oriental vegetables; green bean and new potato salad with roasted pepper and olive dressing; grilled swordfish with papaya, rosemary and garlic mojo; barbecue chicken with apple-corn relish and roasted onion; honey tamarind glazed pork loin; baked sweet potato gratin; rolls, cornbread and biscuits; and apple and plum crisp with vanilla ice cream.
“Uncle Jim, is this how they buy off the journalists?” young Timothy of Robertsbridge asked.
Smart kid.