Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Waiting for the nation's major newspapers to admit they were wrong about Whitewater? You'll be waiting a long, long time.
Sep 22, 2000 | The end of the affair held few surprises for anyone who has been paying attention to the Whitewater nonscandal over the past several years. Independent counsel Robert Ray's five-page statement announced essentially the same conclusions that were foretold by his predecessor, Kenneth Starr, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearings of 1998: more than six years and $50 million expended to compile "insufficient evidence ... to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Clintons or any of their aides had committed a single prosecutable offense related to an old Arkansas land development.
More than precious time and money was forfeited in this enormous fiasco. A promising presidency was damaged and distracted from the outset. Lives and reputations were ruined, in both Arkansas and Washington, by partisan prosecutorial abuses. Democracy was disserved by a media culture that eagerly made "scandal" the overriding theme of politics and journalism. And to date there is not the slightest sign of accountability or remorse at the national news organizations that stirred up all this pointless turmoil.
The wording of Ray's brief announcement was as significant for what was omitted as for what he chose to include. Possibly chastened by harsh and widespread criticism of his decision to issue this statement only weeks before the New York Senate election, and of his tendentious statements earlier this year about the White House Travel Office case (in which he hinted at misdeeds by Hillary Rodham Clinton), the independent counsel wisely avoided any blatant insinuations of guilt concerning the president and the first lady. But in the process of rehashing each and every accusation against them and their aides, Ray also declined to mention any of the voluminous evidence that exculpated them of wrongdoing.
It may be too optimistic to expect that Ray will examine both sides of the Whitewater evidence when he files his final report someday. (He has put off that task until various ancillary matters are concluded, which makes his decision to release yesterday's statement all the more curious.) But in the meantime his repeated mantra of "insufficient evidence" left Clinton antagonists with ample excuses for the scandal that failed. Just as predictable as the investigation's desultory ending was the immediate outcry from certain quarters against interpreting that result as the exoneration of its targets. The presumption of innocence usually afforded to anyone not convicted of a crime -- let alone those who are never even indicted -- apparently doesn't extend to the occupants of the Clinton White House.
Editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which pursued and promoted Whitewater in commentary and news coverage as if convinced that it was another Watergate, greeted Ray's announcement in precisely that grudging spirit. "The Clintons themselves are largely responsible for the late delivery of Mr. Ray's statement," the Times complained, going on to argue that "they and their political confederates in the White House and the executive branch went to puzzling lengths to hobble legitimate investigations. Instead of laying out the facts of the matter, the Clinton apparatus instead stonewalled the investigators and defamed the Clintons' critics. All this gave rise to suspicions that the Clintons had something to hide, and prolonged the investigation."
In similar tones, the Post pronounced that "there is plenty of blame to go around for the way Whitewater came to hang over Mr. Clinton's terms in office," and then laid most of it on the White House. (The same editorial also chided unnamed "congressional and other critics" who were "quick to presume all of the worst allegations true," without so much as a hint of the paper's own culpability in that rush to judgment.) And although the Post declares that Ray's statement marks a "welcome end to this part of the saga," its editorial also warns that "to evaluate the Clintons' behavior we will have to wait for Mr. Ray's final report."
Whatever institutional arrogance may be detected in those butt-covering pronouncements seems almost mild in comparison with the wacky reaction of the ideological partisans at the Wall Street Journal. The Journal, which at last count had issued four fat volumes of dubious Whitewater material reprinted from its editorial pages, instantly brayed that Ray's statement proved nothing in a lead essay titled "The Coverup Worked." The excuses offered in this text ranged from the silly to the outlandish -- such as a suggestion that Ray decided not to prosecute the president for perjury because any jury in the District of Columbia would include too many sympathetic African-Americans and government employees.
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