|
|
Jewish World Review / June 9,1998 / 15 Sivan, 5758
Cal Thomas
President Clinton has ordered the federal government to start
using ``plain language'' in official documents in order to
``send a clear message about what the government is doing.''
One wishes the president would apply the directive to
himself, his staff and his legions of lawyers in their refusal to
fully cooperate with the office of the independent counsel.
Is this the way honest people behave? One of the president's
lawyers, Charles Ruff, said with a straight face that Clinton's
legal maneuverings are not about obstruction of justice but
about principle. This is an administration that has repeatedly
demonstrated it has no principles and is willing to bend or
break any law to sustain its power.
The president and his men (and first lady) realized they would
probably lose a claim of executive privilege before the
Supreme Court, so their fallback position was that
attorney-client privilege should prevent top aide and keeper
of evidence Bruce Lindsey from testifying before a grand jury.
That claim has already been dismissed by Judge Norma
Holloway Johnson, who rejected the same reasoning
administration lawyers used in their executive-privilege claim.
The issue is important not because it is about ``private sexual
matters'' in the Monica Lewinsky affair, as Clinton defenders
claim, but because it involves sexless matters such as
suborning of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Starr asked the Supreme Court to rule on the issue of
executive privilege and whether Secret Service agents could
be compelled to testify before the grand jury, bypassing the
appeals court. But the justices refused on Thursday to take the
cases directly, saying the appeals route was the way to go.
This is good news for the White House because it means
more delay.
The administration daily demonstrates its reluctance to get
the facts out to duly authorized investigators and to the
public. Even if Lindsey is eventually forced to tell what he
knows, which the spinners are already telling us is nothing, it's
unlikely he'll be to Clinton what John Dean was to Nixon.
Dean had to have a shred of decency to confront Nixon
about the ``cancer growing on your presidency'' and to spill
the beans to the special prosecutor. Clinton just shreds
decency.
Every one of the administration's maneuvers is about delaying
a day of reckoning with the truth. With 31 months to go in
this presidency and with a legal process that is notoriously
slow, the Clinton administration thinks it can run out the
clock.
Two major newspapers that endorsed the president's election
in 1992 and reelection in 1996 now seem to regret their
decisions. In an editorial, the New York Times calls the latest
maneuvers, ``A White House Legal Dodge.'' It says President
Clinton ``will continue to impede Mr. Starr's investigation''
and that he demonstrates ``a refusal to cooperate with a
prosecutor's reasonable requests for information in a
legitimate criminal inquiry.'' A Washington Post editorial says
that Clinton's ``public promises of cooperation continued to
be belied.'' In the plain language preferred by the
administration in other categories, belied means ``to give a
false impression.'' It appears just ahead of ``believe'' in my
dictionary, a word that means ``to consider to be true or
honest.'' In other, even simpler words, The Washington Post is
calling the president of the United States a liar.
Starr notes an executive privilege claim for government
lawyers in criminal cases involving public officials is bogus and
that the courts have so ruled. ``Litigants often try to concoct
new privileges by contending that their relationship is just as
important as the attorney-client relationship or the spousal
relationship,'' said Starr in a speech. ``But their problem is
that they make this argument in the wrong forum. If you want
to expand an existing privilege, to apply it in a new and
unusual area, then the place to go is Congress, not the courts.''
Which is precisely where this administration wants to go, but
for different reasons. The administration would prefer taking
its case to Congress instead of to court. If it can get Starr's
report submitted to Congress, it has sufficient allies to delay
completion of the investigation and hope the public's
attention will wane. It's worked before, and the scandal story
would have gone away by now if a new one didn't crop up
every few months.
The Clinton people have effectively hidden behind the
institution of the presidency, which they continue to demean
each day. The courts, not the Congress, have the best chance
of holding them accountable to the law and prying loose the
truth which, in plain language, this bunch is unwilling to
SPEAKING PLAINLY: THE COVER-UP CONTINUES 
