The Clinton-Gore crime syndicate

WASHINGTON -- Over the past three-and-a-half years, without
exaggeration, I've watched the biggest presidential scandal in American
history merge into the biggest Washington cover-up ever.

All the while, I've seen the national media report the evidence of
this monstrous story, perhaps the biggest of our time, in fits and
starts.

It's a story ripe with corruption and foreign intrigue, yet they've
nibbled around the edges. A constellation of dots, yet they've failed to
connect them.

Their failure to burrow into the Chinagate scandal as they did
Watergate and Iran-Contra, pinning down culpable White House officials,
has allowed them the intellectual cover, tenuous as it is, to keep
writing off the probe as just another "Republican witch hunt." A donkey
is being Gored this time, so they're not interested.

TRENDING: 'Situation is completely unstable:' Crenshaw tours border, exposes how bad it really is

In observing up close such a glaring double standard, I've become
extremely disillusioned with my profession, even ashamed of it. It can
no longer with any credibility call itself the Fourth Estate, watchdog
of government corruption.

But then earlier this month, Congress offered the media a chance at
redemption.

On June 6, a House panel dropped in their laps hundreds of pages of
proof from career FBI agents and federal prosecutors of what even the
most casual observer has probably suspected all along:

• The '96 fund-raising abuses weren't random and unconnected,
  but organized from the top by the White House.

• The culprits weren't just a loose-knit band of hustlers and
  opportunists, but a team recruited and coached by White House and
  Democratic National Committee officials with the knowledge, if not
  participation, of the president, vice president and first lady.

• The '96 Clinton-Gore campaign enlisted communist Beijing bagmen
  to help finance it, jeopardizing national security in the process.

• And it cheated to win. By defrauding voters, it may have
  illegitimately assumed power.

Taking a powder

Despite the compelling evidence -- straight from prosecutors -- the
old media gatekeepers have, once again, taken a powder on the Chinagate
story.

The TV networks, with the exception of Fox, have virtually blacked
out the story on the nightly news. Of the Big Three, only NBC touched
the story -- for 35 seconds. Even CNN, despite 24-hour coverage, passed.
Nothing on PBS, either.

Even the big papers -- with the notable exception of the Washington
Times, which deserves a Pulitzer for exposing the Clinton corruption --
couldn't be bothered.

Los Angeles Times printed not a word (although it ran a story in April
after being leaked parts of the so-called LaBella memo). Wall Street
Journal? Zip the day after the memos were released (but it recovered by
printing excerpts on its editorial page and running a long editorial
June 14). New York Times? Buried on A26.

USA Today thought it worthy of a brief on 6A. In a refreshing
surprise, though, the Washington Post ran an above-the-fold story on its
front page.

But like other media that managed to cover the release of the LaBella
and Freeh memos, the Post couldn't resist mentioning fund-raising abuses
by the Republican National Committee and the '96 Dole-Kemp campaign.

Yet, you'd have to use a fine-toothed comb, a high-powered microscope
and tweezers to turn up any reference to Republicans in the combined 121
pages of the Freeh and LaBella memos. The White House and the DNC
plainly are the targets of this investigation, languid though it's been.

Both parties pushed limits?

The 27-page Freeh report contains a total of just four words,
wrapped in parentheses, about Dole. In 94 pages, LaBella cites the RNC
or Dole in all of one parenthetical statement and two paragraphs -- one
of which declares RNC abuses "not on par" with the DNC's.

The media elite, borrowing a line from the White House, claim the
memos are "old news," and therefore not worth covering.

But the most important aspect of the fund-raising abuses now is not
the stories themselves, many of which have been told before, but that
the FBI and task-force prosecutors thought the evidence against
President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other top officials
compelling enough to turn the case over to an independent counsel.

(Attorney General Janet Reno turned them down, over and over, telling
them that there's not enough evidence to investigate, so no one can
investigate to see if there's enough evidence. Talk about your
Catch-22s.)

In his own words, FBI Director Louis Freeh -- a Clinton appointee
who's hardly part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" -- notes the
evidence is "compelling" and "reliable." Former task-force prosecutor
Charles LaBella says the sum of the evidence against White House
officials shows a "pattern of conduct worthy of investigation."

Yet to this day, no White House official has been charged, or is even
a target of the ongoing probe. Only small-fry donors so far have been
charged.

What's more, the new documents are the first with details of
prosecutors' doubts about Gore's honesty regarding his role in the
illegal fund-raising "scheme," as Freeh called it. Some wanted to
investigate Gore for allegedly making false statements to the FBI.

The memos also reveal a new national security wrinkle. It turns out
Freeh may be holding back intelligence on China from Clinton because it
conflicts with the task force's investigation of "Chinese government
efforts to influence" his campaign.

And that's not news?

Enter the new media. As a public service, WorldNetDaily has made the
entire Freeh and LaBella memos available on this Internet news site for
easy viewing.

Every American concerned about the rule of law and national security
should read them. Their findings are shocking, alarming and leave little
wonder why the Clinton administration has suppressed them for years.

White-collar criminal enterprise

You won't find any of the salacious tidbits dished out in the Starr
report. No thongs, no cigars, no stained dresses. Just hard-core
analysis of a white-collar criminal conspiracy orchestrated at the
highest level of government.

LaBella's narrative, in particular, reads like a road map to likely
White House felonies involving Clinton and Gore.

It also documents the concentrated effort among Justice Department
brass, from Reno on down, to keep a lid on the crimes, ostensibly to
protect Reno's boss and keep voters in the dark about what he and Gore
did.

Here are some of the bombs in the Freeh and LaBella memos the Clinton
administration and their media apologists don't want you to see:

• Freeh, p. 6: "The task force has also been investigating a
  number of activities of a sixth covered person -- Peter Knight, the
  chairman of the Clinton-Gore campaign."

  He added: "Among other things, Knight coordinated VP Gore's
  fund-raising calls from the White House and was present when the calls
  were made. The [Justice] Department has not yet triggered an independent
  counsel review as to Knight."

• Freeh, p. 11: "The task force has obtained substantial evidence
  that the president and his key advisers controlled virtually all aspects
  of the DNC fund-raising efforts."

• Freeh, p. 25: "With respect to the investigation of Chinese
  government efforts to influence U.S. elections, DOJ [Department of
  Justice] and the FBI have conflicting duties to (1) keep the president
  informed about significant national security matters, and (2)
  simultaneously keep from the White House certain national security
  information that may relate to the ongoing criminal investigation."

  He added: "DOJ and the FBI have faced this conflict several times
  during the course of the investigation, most recently in early November
  1997."

LaBella bombshells

• LaBella, p. 7: "The campaign-finance allegations [involving
  senior White House officials and key DNC and Clinton-Gore officials] do
  not present the typical criminal matter. Rather, they present the
  earmarks of a loose enterprise employing different actors at different
  levels who share a common goal: Bring in the money."

  He added: "Everyone who has worked on these investigations has noted
  that the overlaps and crossovers deserve investigation. And yet, the
  task force has never conducted an inquiry or investigation of the entire
  campaign-finance landscape."

• LaBella, p. 8: "When viewed in context, events develop into a
  pattern running through the separate investigations. This is especially
  true with respect to the conduct of senior White House officials and key
  DNC and Clinton-Gore officials."

• LaBella, p. 33: "In light of statements made by [Johnny] Chung in
  his debriefing concerning [Yah Lin "Charlie"] Trie acting as a conduit
  for PRC [People's Republic of China] money into the presidential
  election, this transfer [$100,000 gift to Clinton] in
  August 1996 -- like the other Trie 'donations' and solicitations --
  takes on greater significance as does the true source of the Trie PLET
  [President's Legal Expense Trust] 'contributions' [of $639,000]."

• LaBella, p. 51: "There are several incidents that suggest the
  president and senior White House officials knew or had reason to know
  that foreign funds were being funneled into the DNC and the reelection
  effort."

• LaBella, p. 79: "If the [Loral-China export waiver) matter is
  sufficiently serious to commence a criminal investigation, it is
  sufficiently serious to commence a preliminary inquiry under the ICA
  [Independent Counsel Act], since it is the president who is at the
  center of the investigation."

• LaBella, p. 81: "Senior White House officials, working with
  senior DNC and Clinton-Gore personnel, were the architects of a
  'contributions-for-access-and-perks' system."

• LaBella, p. 82: "[Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold]
  Ickes, [the] first lady [and the] White House counsel [were] aware of
  donations collected by Trie, which were comprised of foreign funds in
  violation of PLET rules and regulations."

• LaBella, p. 89: "The magnitude of these abuses can alter the
  outcome of a particular election."

'Anyone other than the president'

• LaBella, p. 14: "If these allegations involved anyone other
  than the president, vice president, senior White House or DNC and
  Clinton-Gore '96 officials, an appropriate investigation would have
  commenced months ago without hesitation."

Stunning stuff. So why wasn't Reno forced out long ago, as was
John Mitchell during Watergate? Why hasn't Clinton had to go on TV to
declare he's not a crook?

Why isn't Gore hounded by reporters everywhere he goes? How is
Hillary able to mount a credible run for the U.S. Senate?

Because the establishment press has bottled up the dirt on them and
kept it from the public.

But no more. The cat's out of the bag. Now it's up to citizens to
demand lawmakers exercise their duty under the Constitution and check
these executive-branch abuses.

Their next step should be to investigate the foot-dragging
investigators at Justice to see if they took any marching orders from
the White House.

Before they can do that, though, Congress must remove Reno, the prime
obstacle of justice, from power. The House Judiciary Committee should
now move to draft impeachment papers against her and hold hearings.

Waiting to send a criminal referral, in the hopes likely GOP
presidential hopeful George W. Bush takes over, assumes he 1) will win
and 2) will have the guts to prosecute Reno. And by then it would be too
late anyway. Reno could easily cover her tracks.

Then, after Reno is removed, Congress should force Justice to turn
the Chinagate probe over to a special outside prosecutor, where it's
belonged all along.

Congress needs also to get quickly to the bottom of the Project X
e-mail scandal. It may shed some light on any collusion between Justice
and the White House.

The White House has kept hidden from investigators more than 246,000
subpoenaed e-mails sent mostly to Clinton and his top aides from outside
the White House from 1996 to 1998.

Did any of the e-mail come from Reno or her Chinagate bottleneckers
in the Public Integrity Section?

See WND's news report on the Freeh and LaBella memos.

Go directly to the

Freeh memo.
Go directly to the

LaBella memo.