Your Covers Are Blown

Attention Scaife, Tyrrell, Hale — Your Covers Have Been Blown

NEW YORK — February 5, 1998 — No "dis" dis week. Instead, hats off for some real journalism.

A Woodward-Bernstein team is emerging in the White House Follies.

Only this time the intrepid duo in question is not out to investigate a story that leads to the Lincoln Bedroom.

Instead, the trail leads to a flaky, conspiracy obsessed billionaire in Pittsburgh who hates the President and strong evidence of a cover-up at one of the most conservative and rabidly anti-Clinton magazines around.

The intrepid reporters work for the all-too-little-known New York Observer, a weekly New York broadsheet which is a must-read in New York financial, cultural and political circles. If you don't know the name, don't be surprised. The Doc guarantees you'll remember it — if the reportage of recent times is any sign, this paper is on the way to greatness.

The team in question is that of Joe Conason and Murray Waas, and their article in the Wednesday Observer, "Richard Scaife Paid for Dirt on Clinton in 'Arkansas Project,' " sheds some light not only on Scaife but the goings-on at the magazine Tyrrell edits, The American Spectator…

…and sheds a klieg light on the methodology of the right wing's calculated attack on the President and many of the characters involved.

Yes, you do need a scorecard. But you do have a head start if you're a political junkie; you'll recognize a few of these names:

Pittsburgh billionaire

Richard Scaife

, described in the article as "President Bill Clinton’s most implacable and wealthiest critic." Critic is a kind choice of words about the way Scaife feels toward Clinton.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, The American Spectator's editor in chief (we call him "Boy" Tyrrell)

Ronald E. Burr, the Spectator's founding publisher

attorney Theodore Olson, a member of the Spectator's board of directors and friend and former law partner of Kenneth Starr

attorney Stephen S. Boynton, a Virginia lawyer with close ties to

convicted Whitewater felon David Hale, independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s main witness against the President

and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

In brief: Olson told the Observer that the magazine's board is conducting an "internal analysis" of funds spent on an operation known as the "Arkansas Project," which was receiving as much as over half a million dollars a year in tax-exempt funds from foundations controlled by Scaife. The project, run by Boynton, targeted Bill and Hillary Clinton and their friends and associates.

The tax-exempt funding and involvement of Scaife cronies created enough squabbling at the Spectator that Burr initiated an independent audit late last year — and was fired shortly thereafter by Tyrrell. According to friends of Burr, he was paid a tidy settlement on the condition that he not discuss the reasons behind his departure.

The Conason-Waas article explores two expenditure areas that raise serious ethical and legal questions for both the Spectator and the Independent Counsel — allegations of hiring and paying former FBI agents and private investigators to dig dirt on the Clintons, paying former Arkansas State Troopers under the false guise of "researchers," and suspicion that funds were diverted to pay the costly defense bills for Hale.

The "Arkansas Project" has been under way since at least around late 1994 — a year after Boynton befriended Hale, who was being investigated by the Justice Department for fraud surrounding theft of $1.5 million from the Small Business Administration. Not long after, Hale sought a plea bargain in return for allegations that he had been pressured by Clinton into loaning money to Susan MacDougal — allegations which launched the investigation by an Independent Counsel, first Robert Fiske, now Starr.

And all that's just for starters! The article is filled with so many other revelations and eye-opening details that it is must reading for anyone interested in the Clinton "scandals" or the excesses of the right wing and Independent Counsel. The Observer maintains a minimal web presence (just a table of contents), but is fully readable by members of America OnLine (keyword: nyo).

Conason and Waas have been behind a number of investigative articles into the conflicts of interest and dirty dealings involving Kenneth Starr, and this new article fills in a number of key relationships and events along with a revealing time-line which seems a bit more than coincidental.

Surprisingly, there was one part of the story that they chose not to comment on: shortly after Burr was fired, Scaife lackey Reed Irvine publicly lit into the Spectator for denouncing the hysterical charges that Vincent Foster was murdered. The Doc dissed both Scaife and "Boy" Tyrrell after this rift, but in hindsight the timing of this "blowup" begins to look pretty suspicious. Yours truly may have been right all along — Scaife was looking for "plausible deniability!" Draw your own conclusions.

But I digress.

Check out the Observer article. And if you can't get it at your local newsstand, fire up —or join — AOL.

'Nuff said.

- Dave "Doctor" Gonzo