- Jun 30, 2004
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It's my habit to check the op-eds and letters in both papers we receive. For some reason, the local owned by the OC Register has attenuated its letter publications -- coincident with the campaign cycle.
So today, readers reacted to an editorial in the last couple days in which the Times advises that the Clintons "take the Clinton out of the Clinton Foundation."
Epic Levels of Nothingness
The Times' headline for these letters follows conclusions I've made about the campaign frenzy all along -- "nothingness."
The first letter from Jonathan Greenspan expresses a sort of disgust at all the news surrounding Trump, Clinton and the Foundation. He's probably making some inferences of his own about "what's in the black-box" based on his appraisal of what is shown outside of the box. He wryly insinuates that Bill Clinton should be locked up for "doing good things" through the Foundation.
The second letter from Kip Dellinger suggests that the media and defenders of the Clintons are making light of something more serious. And he raises the specter of Watergate, the Enron and Global Crossing scandals.
But through the prism of my memories about the 1970s history, there is a political psychology evident in his thinking: Somehow, the "access" granted to Secretary Clinton for some Foundation donors ( about 85 out of 1,700 in the Secretary of State's meeting schedule) rises to Watergate equivalence. Somehow, the die-hards seem to think that Nixon resigned over nothing, or that the level of wrongdoing was less than it was made out to be. Or conversely, that every episode that put a spotlight on Clinton rises to equivalence with Watergate. But there were about four burglaries -- not just the Watergate. Tad Szulc -- a journalist, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and Orlando Letelier all had their offices burglarized by "The Plumbers."
The Letelier burglary connects to the car-bombing that killed Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffit in September, 1976. The Moffit and Letelier families appealed later to the Clinton DOJ and AG Reno, who then pursued an effort to extradite Augusto Pinochet to the US. They sent FBI agents to Chile in an effort to verify that the names on a list stolen from Letelier's office were people whose lives ended in the notorious Santiago soccer stadium under Pinochet. As soon as Bush 43 took office, that investigation was quashed. The elder Bush was CIA Director at the time of the bombing, and some historians believe he had foreknowledge of Pinochet's intentions for Letelier before it occurred.
Oddly, if you look at the person who mentored Michael Townley -- the operative who was given a slap on the wrist for the Letelier bombing and sent packing back to Chile -- there is a link to the replacement of Allende with Pinochet and something else we all remember that happened ten years earlier, linked to Nixon's oversight in planning the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Dellinger could have a point about the corporate criminals he cites who "did charitable work," but their crimes involved embezzlement, fraud and other actions in the administration of profit-making companies -- not their charitable pursuits. And if the Clintons did anything similar, it would turn up in the Foundation's accounts -- already under scrutiny, no different than the focus on the corporate criminals.
Instead, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" seemed to have followed a pattern through the Clinton years resulting in the impeachment farce, which in hindsight looks like an attempt to establish some equivalence between Watergate, Monica's dress and Clinton's litigious equivocation about it. And that's why Clinton finished his second term, while Nixon resigned before he would face impeachment. Both Nixon and Clinton had law-school credentials, and that, too, says something.
Jim Watson's letter simply observes something we've seen about government in general, and constructively argues for more transparency.
Finally, Brewer -- a lawyer -- looks at what he can see outside the "black-box" of the foundation and the tenure of Secretary Clinton, noting that Trump is calling for a "special prosecutor" when there are no facts, no indication of law-breaking, and only Trump's "pounding the table" because he has neither. But I don't have to be a lawyer to see it the same way.
So -- assuming there is something called "political pyschology," it looks more and more like everything from Benghazi, to the e-mails and the Foundation derive from a bunch of die-hards looking to "get even" over Watergate, perhaps Iran-Contra, and the failed effort of the Clinton impeachment circus and parade of elephants. A bunch of kindergarten die-hards, who can't take "no" for an answer, greedy for a return to power and desperate because of the damage done to their reputation with the Bush administration.
Or, as two of the letter-writers say in their own way -- "much ado about nothing."
So today, readers reacted to an editorial in the last couple days in which the Times advises that the Clintons "take the Clinton out of the Clinton Foundation."
Epic Levels of Nothingness
The Times' headline for these letters follows conclusions I've made about the campaign frenzy all along -- "nothingness."
The first letter from Jonathan Greenspan expresses a sort of disgust at all the news surrounding Trump, Clinton and the Foundation. He's probably making some inferences of his own about "what's in the black-box" based on his appraisal of what is shown outside of the box. He wryly insinuates that Bill Clinton should be locked up for "doing good things" through the Foundation.
The second letter from Kip Dellinger suggests that the media and defenders of the Clintons are making light of something more serious. And he raises the specter of Watergate, the Enron and Global Crossing scandals.
But through the prism of my memories about the 1970s history, there is a political psychology evident in his thinking: Somehow, the "access" granted to Secretary Clinton for some Foundation donors ( about 85 out of 1,700 in the Secretary of State's meeting schedule) rises to Watergate equivalence. Somehow, the die-hards seem to think that Nixon resigned over nothing, or that the level of wrongdoing was less than it was made out to be. Or conversely, that every episode that put a spotlight on Clinton rises to equivalence with Watergate. But there were about four burglaries -- not just the Watergate. Tad Szulc -- a journalist, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and Orlando Letelier all had their offices burglarized by "The Plumbers."
The Letelier burglary connects to the car-bombing that killed Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffit in September, 1976. The Moffit and Letelier families appealed later to the Clinton DOJ and AG Reno, who then pursued an effort to extradite Augusto Pinochet to the US. They sent FBI agents to Chile in an effort to verify that the names on a list stolen from Letelier's office were people whose lives ended in the notorious Santiago soccer stadium under Pinochet. As soon as Bush 43 took office, that investigation was quashed. The elder Bush was CIA Director at the time of the bombing, and some historians believe he had foreknowledge of Pinochet's intentions for Letelier before it occurred.
Oddly, if you look at the person who mentored Michael Townley -- the operative who was given a slap on the wrist for the Letelier bombing and sent packing back to Chile -- there is a link to the replacement of Allende with Pinochet and something else we all remember that happened ten years earlier, linked to Nixon's oversight in planning the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Dellinger could have a point about the corporate criminals he cites who "did charitable work," but their crimes involved embezzlement, fraud and other actions in the administration of profit-making companies -- not their charitable pursuits. And if the Clintons did anything similar, it would turn up in the Foundation's accounts -- already under scrutiny, no different than the focus on the corporate criminals.
Instead, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" seemed to have followed a pattern through the Clinton years resulting in the impeachment farce, which in hindsight looks like an attempt to establish some equivalence between Watergate, Monica's dress and Clinton's litigious equivocation about it. And that's why Clinton finished his second term, while Nixon resigned before he would face impeachment. Both Nixon and Clinton had law-school credentials, and that, too, says something.
Jim Watson's letter simply observes something we've seen about government in general, and constructively argues for more transparency.
Finally, Brewer -- a lawyer -- looks at what he can see outside the "black-box" of the foundation and the tenure of Secretary Clinton, noting that Trump is calling for a "special prosecutor" when there are no facts, no indication of law-breaking, and only Trump's "pounding the table" because he has neither. But I don't have to be a lawyer to see it the same way.
So -- assuming there is something called "political pyschology," it looks more and more like everything from Benghazi, to the e-mails and the Foundation derive from a bunch of die-hards looking to "get even" over Watergate, perhaps Iran-Contra, and the failed effort of the Clinton impeachment circus and parade of elephants. A bunch of kindergarten die-hards, who can't take "no" for an answer, greedy for a return to power and desperate because of the damage done to their reputation with the Bush administration.
Or, as two of the letter-writers say in their own way -- "much ado about nothing."
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