Newsmax-Inside Cover
Thursday June 29, 2000; 1:02 AM EDT
Another Clinton Witness Caught in Whitewater Hush Money Bombshell
For any who still wonder how Bill Clinton has survived in office
through eight years of wall-to-wall, non-stop scandals,
Wednesday's Wall Street Journal report about the Lippo Group's
payoffs to former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker is a must
read.
There was a time, before Monicagate proved that even smoking gun
evidence against Clinton cut no mustard with Democrats, when such
a story would have sent shockwaves through newsrooms across
America.
But now even the fourth estate seems resigned to the fact that
the Whitewater fix was in almost from day one.
When it emerged that Lippo paid Clinton insider and one-time de
facto attorney general Webb Hubbell $100,000 in 1994 as
Whitewater storm clouds gathered over his head, media smoke
alarms went off everywhere. The next year, in a conversation with
his wife taped by prison officials, Hubbell complained, "I guess
I'll just have to roll over one more time."
Hubbell's recorded promise to withhold evidence from prosecutors
was meant to reassure wife Suzy that he wouldn't finger Hillary
Clinton in any further Whitewater wrongdoing as part of his own
legal defense. To this day, Whitewater probers have little doubt
there was a connection between the Lippo cash Hubbell collected
and his promise to "roll over one more time."
Now comes the Journal report that fellow Whitewater convict Jim
Guy Tucker was, and still is, on the Lippo payroll - as part of a
sweetheart deal that could make the former Arkansas governor the
Internet cable connection baron of Indonesia.
The nifty plan was actually instigated by Clinton crony and
Lippo scion James Riady himself, just after Tucker was convicted
of Whitewater-related fraud along with Clinton's Whitewater
business partners, James and Susan McDougal.
"When Mr. Riady contacted Mr. Tucker from Indonesia and asked if
he would invest in a cable TV network here, he took the bet," the
Journal reported. "He and his wife bought $6.5 million in cable
equipment, which was subsumed into a telecommunications company
affiliated with Lippo Group. The group guaranteed the Tuckers a
minimum 5 percent return on their investment and Mr. Tucker
received a 'consulting fee.'"
Even without that "consulting fee," Tucker was guaranteed a cool
$325,000, more than three times what Lippo paid to seal Hubbell's
lips.
And that doesn't include the ritzy digs at Indonesia's Aston
Hotel, where the Tuckers bunked for free during the early months
of their Jakarta junket.
What the Journal left unsaid in Wednesday's report was the extent
to which Tucker could have damaged the president had he decided
to fully cooperate.
In 1992, RTC investigator L. Jean Lewis named both Clintons and
Tucker in a criminal referral that had bounced around the Justice
Department for almost a year. It said they were possible
witnesses to and beneficiaries of a Whitewater scheme to defraud
the government.
When the RTC in Washington illegally leaked word of Lewis'
referral to White House consigliere Bruce Lindsey in September
1993, Lindsey immediately gave Clinton a heads-up. In turn,
Clinton immediately summoned Tucker to Washington for an
emergency meeting where they say Lewis' criminal referral never
came up.
Tucker and Clinton, who were once political rivals and were
never friends, met again in Seattle weeks later, ostensibly for
reasons unrelated to Whitewater. Investigators always suspected
the meetings were part of a "getting our stories straight"
strategy.
But Tucker would never say so.
In May 1996 Governor Tucker was convicted on mail fraud and
conspiracy charges linked to the Castle Grande deal. The
conviction forced him from office. At the same trial prosecutors
netted convictions of the Clintons' Whitewater business partners,
James and Susan McDougal.
In November 1997 another telltale bit of Whitewater evidence
emerged that suggested Tucker knew more than he had told
investigators. A treasure trove of documents were discovered in
the trunk of a car abandoned at Little Rock's Johnny's
Transmission Shop years earlier. Its owner had been a courier for
McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings and Loan.
Among the reams of records probers discovered a Madison Guarantee
check made out to Bill Clinton in the amount of $27,000. The
discovery set off rampant media speculation that Clinton had
perjured himself when he denied a year earlier ever borrowing
money from McDougal's bank.
Also in that trunk was another Madison check, this one made out
to Tucker. Publicly investigators never made much of the Tucker
find. But after news of the find got out, James McDougal, who was
cooperating with probers while serving his Whitewater sentence at
a Texas Federal Prison Medical Center, told the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette that prison officials had begun harassing him
with bogus drug tests. He linked the harassment directly to the
evidence found at Johnny Lawhon's transmission shop.
Five months later McDougal suffered cardiac arrest when prison
guards threw him into solitary confinement after taking his heart
medicine away. Three weeks after McDougal's death Lawhon was
killed when his Corvette hit a tree.
Whatever the significance of the Clinton and Tucker checks,
within months of their discovery the two witnesses who could put
that evidence in context and establish a chain of custody were
dead. This year prosecutors publicly admitted that had McDougal
not died, they would have used his testimony to indict Hillary
Clinton.
If Tucker knows anything big about those checks, he sure didn't
tell investigators, who have apparently let the matter drop
entirely.
After his Whitewater conviction, Tucker came down with what his
doctors said was a near-fatal liver ailment. He needed a
transplant and suitable recovery time, during which Whitewater
Judge George Howard declined to enforce his jail sentence.
Days before McDougal's death, Independent Counsel Ken Starr cut
a deal with the former Arkansas governor that would keep him out
of jail if he told all. As with Hubbell, Starr didn't get much
for the trade. In the end Tucker implicated Clinton in nothing
and set off to Jakarta to collect his Whitewater winnings from
the Riadys.
"Obviously, it's a concern to any prosecutor when a major
cooperating witness is being paid large sums, whether for
legitimate work or not, by a crony of a person being
investigated," a Starr deputy admitted to the Journal.
Do tell.
The Office of the Independent Counsel has been had, first with
Hubbell, now with Tucker, and undoubtedly in countless other ways
throughout much of the rest of its investigation of the Clintons.
That's worth remembering the next time the OIC announces it
doesn't have enough evidence to indict either Bill or Hillary.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
