March 31, 1999

The Flynt Fizzle

It wasn't the first time I was disappointed by a pornographer. As I flipped through Larry Flynt's latest assault on the moral hypocrites of Washington, an 82-page document dubbed "The Flynt Report," one word came to mind: dud.

The report is closer to the Soviet-style (or North Korea-style) propaganda hailing the Great Leader (in this case, Flynt) than it is to investigative journalism. Most of the report rehashes Flynt's noisy crusade against the anti- Clintonites. There's an interview with Larry Flynt. There's fan mail received by Larry Flynt. There's an account of a press conference held by Larry Flynt. There's a piece on the media's treatment of Larry Flynt. There's also picture of a topless beauty, with the caption: "Most congressmen wish their hidden skeletons were as attractive as this women." (No, she is no government official's mistress. She's merely window-dressing.) In between all the paeans to "America's Pornographer," the report reviews pre-existing derogatory information on leading Republican members of Congress, including Henry Hyde (extramarital affair), Dan Burton (extramarital affair and out-of-wedlock child), Helen Chenoweth (affair with a married man), Dick Armey (charges of inappropriate behavior with female students when he was a professor), and J.C. Watts (two out-of-wedlock children). The not-too-special report revisits Flynt's glorious strikes against Near-Speaker Bob Livingston and House impeachment manager Bob Barr.

Alas, it does not deliver on Flynt's earlier promise to produce further hard information on the sexual exploits of values-thumping GOPers. Instead, it irresponsibly tosses out tiny morsels of unconfirmed gossip about Senator Tim Hutchinson and Representatives Mary Bono and Charles Canady. The report is not even substantial enough to be called thin gruel. While staring at its pages, searching for material over which one could become excited, I was reminded of the first time I saw a porn film. The occasion was a parents-are-away party at a friend's house during high school, and the host was displaying the illicit celluloid courtesy of Dad's home movie projector. The overly mechanical images were utterly unfulfilling and hardly stimulating. I felt dirty, without any reward. That's the sensation caused by this report.

It's not that Flynt's million-dollar-offer attracted no other flies than a Livingston mistress and Barr's second ex-wife. The pornographer had concrete evidence on other prominent Republicans, but legal obstacles intruded. Moreover, three events occurred that "chilled us," says Dan Moldea, a veteran Washington investigative reporter who worked for Flynt but who had "absolutely nothing" to do with the flimsy "Flynt Report." After Livingston outed himself and resigned, Livingston's wife called Flynt and pleaded with the hustler to look no further into her husband's affairs. Flynt has said that conversation caused him to consider the collateral damage his project might wreak. He told Moldea to forget about Livingston and move on to the next guy. Later -- as the world waited for another Flynt bomb -- a Republican woman contacted Moldea. She was sobbing. She worked with a man who thought he was on Flynt's hit list, and this fellow was saying he would kill himself if his sexual antics were revealed. The woman begged for a heads-up, so she could arrange to be by the man's side when the dime dropped. "That caused us to ask, 'How can we live with this?'" Moldea recalls. Then, in another instance, an informant who had made contact with Hustler was careless with a confidentiality agreement the magazine had sent the informant, and one of Flynt's targets discovered he or she was in the crosshairs. "We thought the informant might be at physical risk, that this person would be hammered," Moldea notes. After these episodes, Moldea says, "we lost our spirit. They showed there was a real dark side to the whole process. Larry Flynt recognized there was a human cost to this and showed some serious restraint and compassion."

Flynt's reluctance was reinforced by political developments. When Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat who had been critical of Bill Clinton, called for a quick end to the impeachment trial, the Flynt gang concluded there was no chance Clinton was going down; they decided to hold their fire. Bagging another Republican could only complicate matters and inflame proceedings that appeared to be breaking in Clinton's favor. "The decision was, 'let's sit back and see what happens," Moldea says. As the trial stumbled along, Flynt liked what he saw and thought there was no reason to pull the trigger. "He could have moved ahead and ruined some people," Moldea adds. "Once it became clear we had won, Larry Flynt became almost docile."

With that the case, the inside back cover of "The Flynt Report" is surprising. In between a red headline -- "Got Sex? Want Money?" -- the text reads, "Larry Flynt believes that anything worth doing is worth doing again." So he's still offering money for "documentary evidence of illicit sexual relations" with members of Congress and other prominent officeholders. This time, he's not promising a million dollars: "How much will we pay if we choose to publish your verified story and use your material? Call today, and let's talk about it." For his part, Moldea, whose book on Vince Foster, A Washington Tragedy, concluded Foster had killed himself, is working on a book, a first-person account of his involvement in Whitewater, Monicagate, and the Flynt Follies. On the GOP sex front, he says, he is not going to name any new names.

Flynt had a good idea. Those who run on family values but live by their own free-wheeling rules deserve exposure. But it's nasty business -- especially when it entails negotiations over money and when "documentary evidence" is required. You want to deal with illegal tapes a la Tripp and chase after secret lovers, hoping to snag video footage? Even Flynt, a fellow with no taste, could not sustain his appetite for this sort of scandal. The Republicans are lucky that Flynt is not as sleazy as they believe.

Coups and Fibbers

Those old enough to remember Watergate will recall the cry that rang out after President Richard Nixon published his memoirs: 'Don't buy books from crooks!" After watching Henry Kissinger hawking the latest installment of his self-serving memoirs on Crossfire last week, a viewer in the know might want to shout: "Don't buy lies from those who worked with crooks." It was amazing how many untruths passed between the lips of the Doctor in so short a time. With Chile's General Augusto Pinochet in the news -- the House of Lords in England was about to declare that Pinochet, who was arrested on charges of crimes against humanity, was not entitled to immunity -- cohost Bill Press thought it a propitious time to query Kissinger on the efforts he oversaw in 1970 to overthrow Chile's democratically elected government of Salvador Allende when Kissinger was Nixon's Secretary of State. "What business did we have trying to overthrow a president of another country?" Press inquired.

Kissinger did not fully address the basic issue. How could he? At the time, the analysts of the CIA, according to a subsequent Senate report, noted that the United States "had no vital interests within Chile, the world military balance of power would not be significantly altered by an Allende regime, and an Allende victory in Chile would not pose any likely threat to the peace of the region." In response to Press, Kissinger pointed the finger: "Much of this was conducted on the recommendation of an ambassador -- our ambassador in Chile, who was a Democratic appointee from the Johnson administration and was held over." Kissinger was referring to Ambassador Edward Korry. To anyone familiar with the history of the U.S. secret plots against Allende, this was a howler. Kissinger was at a September 15, 1970, meeting in the White House, when Nixon ordered CIA director Richard Helms to get rid of Allende, and the CIA, according to Helms' notes, was to make sure there was "no involvement of [the U.S.] Embassy." Ambassador Korry was to be kept in the loop on the plans concerning an anti-Allende propaganda and political action program but he was to be kept in the dark about the so-called Track II scheme to encourage the overthrow of Allende.

Kissinger did briefly try to defend the get-Allende policy. He noted that Allende had won office in a tight three-way race, which meant that, a majority of the voters had not chosen Allende. Kissinger was suggesting that, consequently, Allemande's electoral win did not deserve to be honored. Under his logic, a foreign nation could oust Jesse Ventura and claim he was not really the people's choice. Then Kissinger fell back on the old chestnut: "Our concern was that Allende...was going to bring a communist government to Chile." But as CIA analysts observed, there was no reason to assume that, and Allende, during the three years he served as president before losing his life in the Pinochet-led coup, did not move to bring communism to Chile. Bad guess, Henry. How unfortunate it led to bloodshed and the installation of a murderous dictatorship in Chile. Well, it wasn't that unfortunate, in Kissingerian terms, since Kissinger has acknowledged he preferred Pinochet, who banned political parties, shut down newspapers, and ran a torture state, over Allende, a socialist who told aides he would leave office if diselected by the voters.

Later in the show, Press grilled Kissinger about the bundles of White House and State Department papers Kissinger took with him when he skiddadled out of government. The records included transcripts of his telephone conversations with world leaders (Kissinger had his secretary eavesdrop and transcribe) and thousands of memos and pieces of correspondence -- material that would be quite useful to Kissinger when he was writing his memoirs. To maintain exclusive access to the transcripts, Kissinger fought a suit brought by media representatives, including William Safire, who were seeking the transcripts. He argued that these documents were his personal property, not public property. (That's hard to believe. The records were created by a government official, and they referred to official government business.) The lower courts wisely didn't buy Kissinger's claim. Subsequently, the Supreme Court vacated those rulings, but only because it believed that Kissinger's pursuers did not have the standing to bring suit. All the material is now stored in the Library of Congress, but it stays under Kissinger's control. Anyone who wants to compete with Kissinger in the history-writing business cannot utilize these crucial records. Press asked Kissinger if he would release all these papers and telephone transcripts. "They've always been released," a defiant Kissinger retorted.

"This is totally not true," says Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies and counsel to the nongovernmental National Security Archive. "Nobody gets to see the telephone transcripts without Henry Kissinger's permission, until five years after his death." He has allowed State Department historians to view the transcripts, but it remains up to Kissinger to decide who gets a looks. (John Karlin, the Archivist of the United States, is now considering a move to reclaim the telephone transcripts for the public.) And Kissinger's other papers at the Library of Congress cannot be examined without his permission. Kissinger has attempted to monopolize history, and he refuses to be honest about that (as well as about Chile). But that makes sense. Kissinger apparently does not want history to be honest about him.

Out-Take

Oh the perils of predictive journalism. The election of 1998 and the entire last year should have prevented me from ever again daring to foretell the future. Yet I did not learn. In this column two weeks ago, when I reported on my visit to the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles, I noted the bright moment of the evening was the pick of Roberto Benigni as best male actor. "Can you envision the stodgy and conservative Academy selecting a foreigner who delivered a non-English performance over Tom Hanks?" I snidely asked. "Hooray for the Hollywood populists of SAG." I blew that one. As anyone who survived the 437-hour-long Academy Awards ceremony will recall, Benigni walked on the furniture and talked about making love to the entire audience after winning in the best male actor category. The best I can figure is that while Joseph Fiennes and Ian McKellan were never in the running, Nick Nolte (the sentimental pick) and Tom Hanks (dependable Mr. Box Office) split the Academy's nationalist vote, providing Benigni an opening. Can one extrapolate from this that, under the right conditions, third parties have a chance? Benigni was, in a way, the Jesse Ventura of the evening. He looked ready to climb into the ring, and he said whatever came to mind. At least, I didn't flub my Oscar prognostication as badly as Presidential hopeful Steve Forbes. On Meet the Press, Forbes boldly predicted that Saving Private Ryan would win best picture. He doesn't deserve a whack for that error. But when Tim Russert asked him to crystal-ball the best male actor contest, Forbes mumbled, "Good one....Kevin....Who played the lead in Private Ryan?" This man wants to be President of the United States, and he doesn't know who Tom Hanks is? Cut!

To the Academy, I apologize. (That's not something you'll ever hear Elia Kazan say.) I thought there was no chance this conventional and parochial bunch would reward Benigni's performance. In fact, I handicapped Benigni's chances as equal to those of Dan Quayle's winning the White House. You've been warned.