Clinton Lies

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Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/147/oped/Dangerous_lies+.shtml

Dangerous lies

By John Ellis, Globe Columnist, 05/27/99

As a first-time presidential candidate, he lied about how he avoided military service, lied about drug usage, lied about his extramarital affair with a former state government employee, lied about his role in Arkansas real estate transactions, lied about his accomplishments as governor and lied about what
he would do if elected president. But that was OK because things would be different when he took the oath of office.

The day before he was sworn in as president, Clinton told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that he planned to change US policy toward Iraq. The very next day, he denied saying any such thing, which was a lie.

He lied when he took the oath of office (saying that he would see to it that the laws were faithfully executed) and there followed a torrent of lies, half-truths and outright falsehoods that have since made it impossible to take anything the president says at face value.

Looking back over the last 6 1/2 years, the collected lies of William Clinton test the hard drive of memory.

He lied about Whitewater. He lied about Castle Grande. He lied about the firing of the White House travel office personnel. He lied about his staff's mishandling of FBI files. He lied about the circumstances surrounding the suicide of White House counsel Vince Foster. He lied about a vast White House effort to hush up former assistant attorney general and convicted felon Webster
Hubbell.

He lied to his friends, and he told lies about his adversaries. He lied on policy matters big and small. He lied on political matters big and small. And when it came time to gear up for his reelection campaign in 1996, he lied with renewed and reckless abandon.

He lied about Democratic Party fund-raising efforts in 1995-96. He lied about his own fund-raising on behalf of the Clinton-Gore Committee. He lied about the involvement of the Riady family and Chinese operatives in these fund-raising efforts. He lied about the damage done to the national security as a result of those efforts.

After he was reelected in 1996, he lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He lied about his efforts to cover up that relationship. He lied to his wife, his daughter, his staff, his Cabinet, and his constituents and authorized a vast public relations campaign to slander duly appointed officers
of the US Department of Justice charged with investigating many of the lies listed above.

He lied in a federal civil suit, and he lied to the federal judge who presided over that case. He lied, repeatedly and under oath, to a grand jury in a federal criminal investigation. And along the way he engaged his minions to lie about Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones, who accused him of sexual harassment and about Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of rape. He brushed the rape charge
aside, using his lawyer as a mouthpiece, but the charge stands uncontested on any important detail.

So it should come as no surprise that Clinton's contention that ''to the best of my knowledge no one has said anything to me about any espionage, which occurred by the Chinese against the labs, during my presidency'' is a lie. Or that ''I can tell you that no one has reported to me that they suspect such a thing has occurred'' is also a lie. These lies concern the largest spy scandal since the Rosenbergs.

On Monday, New York Times columnist William Safire expressed puzzlement as to why the president would lie about something he really didn't have to lie about.

After all, Chinese espionage at US nuclear weapons facilities began during the Carter administration and continued through the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies. Surely there was enough blame to go around. Surely the national security interests of the United States superceded the presidents need to prevaricate.

It was a wonderfully naive column, assuming as it did that Clinton could make the distinction between lying about unimportant matters (as his lying was characterized during the impeachment hearings) and lying about matters of state. But there is no distinction. Clinton lies because he is a pathological liar.

In the wake of the Cox Report, which details the wholesale theft of America's most precious nuclear secrets and the Clinton administration's stunning indifference to its discovery, nothing will change. No one will resign in disgrace. No one will be fired. And the president and his handlers will continue to lie about what happened, when it happened, and why it was allowed to continue to happen.

All these lies, and hundreds more like them, have made liars of us all. We have allowed them. We have accepted them. We are now complicit in them.

There was a time when Clinton's lying was his problem, but that time has long passed. Clinton's lying is our problem now. We ignore it at our peril.

John Ellis is a Globe columnist.

This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 05/27/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.