Eternal Verities
The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the Federal Election Commission has joined a ballooning, multi-agency investigation focusing on an August 2000 Hollywood gala that raised more than $1 million in Senate campaign contributions for then-first lady Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, the Justice Department is continuing its public corruption inquiry into the activities of Chicago consultant David Rosen, who, as Mrs. Clinton’s finance director, had a major role in organizing the Hollywood event, held on the eve of the Democratic National Convention and billed as a tribute to outgoing President Bill Clinton. The Justice Department is said to be concerned about possible false statements or other forms of obstruction by one or more witnesses. And a federal grand jury in Los Angeles is said to be examining evidence of related but much wider criminal wrongdoing by several people involved in the city’s Clinton-friendly celebrity circuit.
One such person, fundraising impresario Aaron Tonken, has already pleaded guilty to fraud and has cooperated with federal investigators while awaiting sentencing. For instance: Tonken, whom Mrs. Clinton described as “my good friend” in a videotape broadcast at the August 2000 affair, is also a longtime friend of Denise Rich, and Tonken is reported to have talked to the FBI about President Clinton’s controversial last–minute pardon of Rich’s ex-husband, billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. For now, Tonken will say nothing about any of this publicly. But he may soon break his silence. At an April 15 creditors’ session of his Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy proceeding, Tonken testified that he has secured a book contract to tell his tale. The book is scheduled for release in November by WND Books, in which the conservative Internet operation WorldNetDaily has an interest.
Which turns out to be only the tip of the vast right-wing conspiracy iceberg, here. Drug felon turned Internet entrepreneur turned Brazilian prison inmate turned cooperating witness Peter Paul, who is awaiting trial on his own federal fraud charges, has sued the Clintons in Los Angeles Superior Court for allegedly defrauding him in connection with the August 2000 gala. The event’s up-front costs ran to nearly $2 million, it seems, the bulk of it coming from checks drawn against Wall Street margin accounts holding stock in Paul’s company–which subsequently collapsed, triggering a major SEC investigation. Paul is being represented in his suit against the Clintons by Larry Klayman and Judicial Watch. The Clintons, in turn, are being represented by defense attorney David Kendall.
A third shady character, Paul’s friend Stanley Myatt of Miami, gave several hundred thousand dollars for another fishy Aaron Tonken party starring Bill Clinton: “Family Celebration 2001,” an ostensible charity benefit held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on April 1, 2001. Two months earlier, Myatt had been the intended target of a murder-for-hire plot foiled by the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office. Myatt’s would-be assassin: one James Pritchett, whose rap sheet includes a manslaughter conviction arising from a 1978 accident off the Florida Keys–in which the plane he was piloting nosedived straight into the ocean, killing his girlfriend, who’d apparently distracted him by performing an act of oral sex. Which just had to be a factor in a story like this, didn’t it?
Oddly enough, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff doesn’t have anything to do with it at all, but we’ll mention him anyhow, just for completeness’ sake.
Sen. Kerry’s “Honest” Words
“Senator John Kerry on Sunday distanced himself from contentious statements he made three decades ago after returning from the Vietnam War, saying his long-ago use of the word ‘atrocities’ to describe his and others’ actions was inappropriate and ‘a little bit excessive.'”
That, anyway, is how Jodi Wilgoren’s next-day New York Times story described Kerry’s April 18 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. THE SCRAPBOOK watched that show. Ms. Wilgoren must’ve been watching a different one.
The segment in question began with a little film-clip gem from the program’s archives–a 1971 appearance by Kerry, then a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “There are all kinds of atrocities,” this younger Kerry was shown earnestly insisting,
When the clip was done, Russert turned to middle-aged John Kerry and said, simply, “You committed ‘atrocities.'”
First Kerry tried a lame joke: “Where did all the dark hair go, Tim? That’s a big question for me.” Then Kerry did his distancing business: He’d “thought a lot” about the matter, “things we said,” and he’d concluded that “atrocities” was “a bad word” to use, “inappropriate,” one of those “mistakes” a man makes “in anger”–“honest” but “a little bit over the top.” And then–the key word here being “honest”–Kerry un-distanced himself from all this over-the-toppery:
Evidently curious about what might be a “less abrasive way” to call people “war criminals,” Russert pointed out to Kerry that in 1971 he’d testified before Congress about American soldiers having “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and on and on.” Since “a lot of those stories have been discredited,” Russert wondered–
But Kerry cut him off. “Actually, a lot of them have been documented,” he claimed–though follow-up federal investigations determined that the so-called Winter Soldiers Hearings had been riddled with fabrications by “veterans” who’d never actually served in Vietnam. No matter, according to Kerry: “I’m proud that I stood up,” and “I don’t want anybody to think” otherwise, though he wishes he’d “phrased things more artfully at times.”
Hmm. What’s a more artful phrase for “cut off heads”?
Speaking of Kerry and Vietnam
Last week the Kerry campaign posted on its website a trove of paper documenting the candidate’s military career (johnkerry.com/about/military_records.html). THE SCRAPBOOK has pored through these files and found some minor amusements–like Kerry’s handsome certificate from the Nuclear Weapons Training Center, Pacific, which features a nifty, pen-and-ink drawing of a giant mushroom cloud as its logo. Oh, yeah: THE SCRAPBOOK has also found evidence possibly relevant to a judgment about the quality of John Kerry’s brain.
Kerry’s transcript from Officer Candidate School, for example, recounts that he finished 80th in a class of 563, with numerical grades equivalent to low Bs in “Tactical” and “Technological” and middle Bs in “Organizational” and “Military Aptitude”–for an overall “final average” in the low-to-middle B range.
Then, on Kerry’s Training School “Officer’s Qualification Record,” there’s what is, for THE SCRAPBOOK at least, a tantalizing mystery. The document is blurry and largely blank. But it does contain one discernible bit of data: results from Kerry’s “Officer Qualification Test.” Those results read like this: Under “Form,” it says “7.” Under “Raw Score” it says “58.” And under “Stand. Score” it says “50.”
Readers able to clarify what any of this means–and whether, please, please, please, the numbers might represent some kind of IQ algorithm–are strongly urged to let us know at [email protected].
