-Caveat Lector-
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
June 13, 2001, Wednesday
Why Huckabee must be grateful to Hale
By: Gene Lyons
Anybody can understand why Gov. Mike Huckabee would be grateful to
convicted
embezzler and Whitewater con man David Hale. He's more responsible than
anybody apart from Kenneth Starr for Huckabee's becoming governor of
Arkansas.
Nor do I particularly care whether Hale serves another lousy three weeks in
state prison, although I don't buy Huckabee's rationalization about Hale's
bad heart for a minute. Arkansas penitentiaries are filled with AIDS
patients who are costing the state a fortune. The governor is not commuting
their sentences.
Besides, to hear Hale tell it, he's been at death's door for going on eight
years now. That is, ever since the day in July 1993 that FBI agents, acting
on behalf of U.S. Attorney Paula Casey, seized the records of his federally
subsidized lending company, Capital Management Services. Soon afterward,
the
Arkansas Insurance Department began probing Hale's looting of a
state-regulated burial insurance company, the crime for which he was
finally
convicted last year. The state investigation preceded Hale's unproved and,
indeed, unfounded "Whitewater" allegations against the Clintons by several
months.
You know those 600 or so letters, e-mails and phone calls Huckabee's genial
spokesman Jim Harris says Huckabee's office has received on Hale's behalf?
Well, here's what Harris didn't mention. Like the campaign to commute
Hale's
sentence in the first place, most may have originated from a creepy
right-wing Web site called NewsMax.com. The inimitable Chris Ruddy, a
"journalist" best known for a series of articles, books and videos pushing
the loony idea that Vince Foster was murdered as part of a White House
conspiracy, is taking personal credit for Huckabee's decision, which he
calls "a big victory for NewsMax readers."
"On January of this year," writes Ruddy, "I wrote of David Hale's plight
and
asked our readers across America to telephone, write and e-mail Gov.
Huckabee to give Hale clemency. We were the only media outlet to do this."
If sent to prison, Ruddy warns, "Hale could have become another Jim
McDougal." In Ruddy World, see, poor McDougal, too, fell victim to the evil
Clinton machine. He didn't die because he'd been mortally ill for years,
nor
even, as Susan McDougal believes, because Starr's prosecutors reneged on a
promise to let him do his time in a prison hospital. No, Bill Clinton must
have done him in.
"Politically," Ruddy continues, "it is not the easiest thing for Republican
Huckabee to have given Hale this commutation. Arkansas is a state in which
Bill and Hillary Clinton continue to have enormous power. The media
outlets,
few as they are, have been supportive of the Clintons and for years have
raked David Hale over the coals. The Arkansas media believed that Hale, by
telling the truth about the Clintons' wrongdoing, made Arkansas look bad
before the rest of the country. Some people in Arkansas would have
preferred
to keep Bill and Hillary's dirty linen in the closet."
Needless to say, Ruddy's knowledge of the Arkansas press is slim. This
newspaper catalogued Hale's allegations against Democrats at encyclopedic
length. His shady loans to Republicans got little space. A recent
Democrat-Gazette editorial claimed that "Clinton apologists" and "kneejerk
clinton-oids" resented Hale because he "ratted on" the former president.
In the real world, Hale had no business ties whatsoever with either
Clinton.
He couldn't furnish a single document with Bill or Hillary's name on it.
His tales of secretive meetings and phone conversations were cast in
classically vague con-man terms. Without dates and times, they were
impossible to disprove, allowing gullible journalists and partisan
prosecutors to believe anything they found convenient.
Jurors in the 1996 trial of the McDougals and Jim Guy Tucker were unanimous
in telling reporters for The New York Times and ABC's "Nightline" that they
hadn't believed a word Hale said about the Clintons.
How the same jury convicted Tucker on Hale's say-so is an enduring mystery.
Documentary evidence against the former governor was shaky at best, and
Starr's bad faith ought to have been clear from the number of charges
against Tucker for which prosecutors presented no evidence at trial.
Hale had manipulated and defrauded many business partners, including his
former mistress, who successfully sued him after he swindled her
grandparents out of the family farm. On cross-examination, he was forced to
admit that he'd even testified falsely to the judge who signed off on
Starr's plea-bargain deal.
Another mystery: Where did all the money go? Altogether, Hale embezzled
more
than $ 2 million from the Small Business Administration through sham loans
to bogus companies whose only business was siphoning taxpayer funds into
his
pocket. U.S. District Judge Stephen B. Reasoner ordered Hale to pay $
290,000 restitution. So where's the rest of it? At trial, he claimed to be
destitute. But he also said he'd paid Washington power lawyer Ted Olson's
fees out of his pocket.
Evidence surfaced during Olson's recent Senate hearings on his confirmation
as solicitor general that some of Hale's $ 140,000 fees were paid by the
American Spectator's notorious Arkansas Project, the Richard Mellon
Scaife-financed scheme to smear Clinton. That's several weeks' worth of
high-priced GOP legal work. An awful lot of rehearsal time, it's tempting
to
say. Back then, Hale's tricky heart didn't prevent such exertions.
And who financed Ruddy's Vince Foster work? After being fired by the
conservative New York Post, he signed on with the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review. After the Spectator ran a vitriolic review of Ruddy's book,
the Scrooge McDuck of the crackpot right withdrew his support in a huff.
What with Ruddy now praising Huckabee as "no ordinary politician, but a man
with a sterling character," can Scaife money be far behind?
Say it ain't so, Huck.
Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine
Award.
=======================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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