David Corn is Washington editor of The Nation magazine, the oldest political weekly in America. He writes on a host of subjects, including politics, the White House, Congress, and national security.

He has broken stories on Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Oliver North, Colin Powell, Richard Gephardt, Hillary Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Clarence Thomas, Senator Paul Laxalt, Senator Robert Bennett, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, and other Washington players.

Corn has contributed articles, including political satire and book reviews, to The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, Newsday, Harper’s, The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Washington Monthly, The Village Voice, The New York Press -- which features his weekly column "Loyal Opposition" -- and many other publications. He also writes for several on-line magazines, including Slate, HotWired, and Salon.

He is the author of Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (Simon and Schuster, 1994). The Washington Monthly called Blond Ghost "an amazing compendium of CIA fact and lore." The Washington Post noted that Blond Ghost "deserves a space on that small shelf of worthwhile books about the agency." The New York Times termed it "a scorchingly critical account of an enigmatic figure who for two decades ran some of the agency's most important, and most controversial, covert operations."

Corn was a contributor to Unusual Suspects, an anthology of mystery and crime fiction (Vintage/Black Lizard, 1996). His contribution to the book -- a short story entitled “My Murder” -- was nominated for a 1997 Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America. The story was republished in The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (Carroll & Graf, 1997).

Corn frequently is a guest on television and radio talk shows. He has been a panelist on CNN's Capital Gang, and he is a regular on C-SPAN. He has appeared on ABC News, CBS Morning News, Fox Television News, Fox New Cable, Crossfire (CNN), Washington Week in Review (PBS), Equal Time (CNBC), Tim Russert (CNBC), Tribune Television, MSNBC, and other shows and networks.

He was a co-host (with Pat Buchanan) of the nationally-syndicated radio show Buchanan and Company. He has appeared often on the syndicated Diane Rehm radio show, and provided commentary to National Public Radio. He is a featured guest on RadioNation, a nationally-syndicated show. He has contributed political commentary to BBC Radio, CBC Radio, Pacifica Radio, Australian National Radio, and has been a guest on scores of call-in radio programs.

Corn, thirty-nine years old, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. Before joining The Nation, he worked for Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law and Harper’s magazine.

Click here to read more of David Corn's Loyal Opposition.

This Tape Will Self-Destruct

On and on and on. This scandal has come to resemble one long tape loop. One wonders if independent counsel Kenneth Starr will ever snip it. Weeks ago, Washington breathlessly anticipated what appeared to be the pending appearance of Monica Lewinsky before the grand jury. That has yet to happen. And Starr's office has signaled another reverse: there probably will not be any interim report. It seems the World Series will be decided before Monicagate is.

When Linda Tripp came before Kenneth Starr's grand jury last week, bookers from several cable shows called to see if I would fill airtime (feels more like filling air space) by discussing Tripp's credibility as a witness. Well, who knows? Unless one is in the room with her and watches and evaluates. What we do know is that she is no true gal-pal. It's hard to feel sorry for her as the local Maryland state prosecutor investigates Tripp for illegally taping Lewinsky. In Maryland, where Tripp lives, it is a crime to secretly record a conversation. But it does seem he has a hard case to make, since appellate decisions note that one has to be aware that secret taping is illegal in order to be convicted. (What a principle. Ignorance is an excuse. Sorry, your honor, I never really checked to determine if not paying taxes was against the law.)

In the meantime, on Larry King Live, Tripp's co-conspirator, Lucianne Goldberg, the literary agent turned scandal pimp, told the world that Tripp used a voice-activated Radio Shack device to record a woeful Lewinsky: "You stick a thing in here and thing in there, and you punch the button and any time you pick up that line, it activates the tape." Goldberg is not an unimpeachable source, but that remark did raise the delicious possibility that Tripp taped others. Some Clinton advocates have been wondering who else might have been captured by Sticky Tape Linda. Did that little device record conversations with Goldberg in which Tripp voiced suspicions that taping Lewinsky might not be kosher? Before any speculation could turn into fact, Goldberg confessed that she had taped a conversation with Tripp. What a pack of shifty troublemakers. This whole business is turning into an ad for Maxell. The best advice for scandal entrepreneurs these days: stay off the phone.

On the other side of the political divide, Maria Hsia, a former Clinton/Gore fundraiser, was indicted by the Justice Department of the Clinton/Gore Administration for allegedly funneling illegal contributions to the 1996 Clinton/Gore campaign and for filing false tax returns. Given that Justice has also brought charges against Charlie Trie, a Clinton chum and moneychaser, and against Thai businesswoman Pauline Kanchanalak for allegedly passing $679,000 in illegal foreign donations to the Democratic Party and others, one could argue that the slow-footing campaign-finance task force Attorney General Janet Reno assembled is doing more to clean up official Clinton corruption than the sex-and-lies-obsessed Starr. Take that, William Safire!

Hsia is a key figure in the conspiracy theories that hold that Bill Clinton sold out the United States to Beijing in order to bag a couple hundred thousand dollars in political donations. Some Clinton antagonistes have dubbed her an agent of China. Even Senator Fred Thompson's lackluster investigation last year inched close to the Clinton-as- Manchurian-Candidate line and did its best to exploit the Buddhist temple episode, in which Hsia arranged for illegal contributions to be slipped to the Clinton/Gore campaign in conjunction with an Al Gore visit to the Hsi Lai Temple in California.

But the temple was more closely linked with Taiwan then the dreaded Red Chinese. (Actually, considering the passion of the kleptocratic oligarchs for money-making deals, we should be calling them the Red-and-Green Chinese.) And documents obtained by the Thompson committee show that in the late 1980s Hsia raised money for Democrats in order to gain influence for American businessmen who happened to be of Asian ancestry and who were more interested in U.S. relations with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia.

This small band of financers and politicos were based in California and went by the name of the Pacific Leadership Council. John Huang, the now-discredited Democratic fundraiser and former Commerce Department official, was a central player in this gang. In 1988, James Riady, the prominent Indonesian banker who was running the Bank of Trade/Lippo Group and who was a friend of Clinton, sent a memo to Hsia telling her what the PLC wanted out of its relations with (read: donations to) Democratic lawmakers. He desired help in pressing "Taiwan to allow Asian-American banks (or at least the Bank of Trade) to be allowed to open a branch office in Taiwan." He was looking for the appointment of Asian-Americans to policy-making posts in the federal government. He was hoping to encourage Democratic Senators to visit Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan -- no doubt, so he could display his political juice to present and potential business associates in those countries. Riady also wanted funds of "various Federal Government Agencies" and that of the Democratic Party to be deposited in Asian-American banks in the United States. "Perhaps," he wrote, "the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] could start by making a deposit at Bank of Trade." His bank, that is. And he was seeking "assistance for special, exceptional immigration cases."

The PLC documents indicate that Hsia was a run-of-the-mill party hack fundraiser, collecting money from special interests for politicians and encouraging the recipients to respond with favors. She was no agent for China at this point. She was an agent for a greedy businessman and his colleagues, who wanted to play the system like so many others. She even used her position as a fundraiser for Gore to attempt to put together a business deal between Taiwan and Tennessee interests.

It could be that Hsia later became allied with Beijing. But the documents available so far demonstrate that her early connections with Riady, Huang and Gore were employed not to benefit those sneaky Chinese but to assist a small clutch of wealthy businesspeople. Which makes the Hsia story a very American tale.

A Whole Lott of Hate

Trent Lott is the man in the news these days. He deep-sixes the tobacco bill and during a television interview compares homosexuality to alcoholism, sexual addiction and kleptomania, and then ink gushes like a geyser for all the newspaper stories, profiles and op-eds on Lott, Washington's least-well-known macher. "Surprise, surprise," Lott quipped to reporters, "I'm a conservative"

But the extent of Lott's ties to the yahoo right have gone unnoticed in most, if not all, of the recent huffing and puffing. For instance, Lott is a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, according to Mark Cerr, the chairman of its Washington branch. What's the Council? Go to its website, and you will find that what this organization seems to care most about is preserving the "heritage" of the South. That's code for being nostalgic for antebellum white supremacy. The group recently blasted Virginia Republican Governor James Gilmore III because he dared, as the outfit put it, "to call on white Virginians to reflect on the evils of slavery" during Confederate History Month. That was, the council said, a betrayal of confederate history. "Governor Gilmore," it noted, "has gambled that white Virginians (and their sympathizers around the nation) will simply accept this latest insult." An insult to ask people to reflect on slavery's consequences? It's clear where Lott's compatriots are coming from.

The Council remains one of the few rightwing organizations to decry the federal holiday commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. In Oklahoma it sued in federal court to force the state administrator's office to display the Confederate flag at the State Capitol. It was upset that the Mississippi Republican Party invited New York Governor George Pataki to a fundraiser after Pataki removed the Georgia state flag, which contains the Confederate emblem, from the state capitol in Albany. In opposing statehood for Puerto Rico, the Council called the territory a place "whose cultural and moral decay is second to none."

Lott is part of this crew? His office did not respond to an inquiry about his membership in the Council. But his affiliation with this band is in keeping with a pattern. This guy likes to hobnob with extremists of the right. Twice he has appeared in videos made by Jeremiah Films, a Christian right outfit known for producing conspiratorial videos that attack Clinton and others, including the Mormon Church. One of its film claims evolution is a hoax. Its most famous -- and infamous -- product is "The Clinton Chronicles," which suggests that Clinton plotted the murders of those who stood in his way. (For a while the Reverend Jerry Falwell was hawking this sleazy video.) Lott has appeared on two Jeremiah productions. One attacked the gay rights movement. The other is entitled "The Crash -- The Coming Financial Collapse of America." For $19.95 it will tell you how to protect your family and your future. Jeremiah Films is Ground Zero of the loony anti-Clinton right. Its book version of The Clinton Chronicles claims the President "long ago embraced the dream of world socialism." (If only!) And by appearing in its works, Lott has helped this company make money and legitimize itself.

Lott's homophobia is not news. Over two years ago, The Detroit News ran a column by Deb Price under the headline, "Lott is a real worry for gay Americans." Price reported that in the anti-gay Jeremiah video, Lott had opined that the gay rights movement "makes a mockery of other legitimate civil rights.… And it's going to hurt a lot of people that deserve these protections." (The video was designed to foment fear among African-Americans about the gay rights movement.) Lott, Price noted, had voted in 1990 for an unsuccessful Jesse Helms amendment that stated that "the homosexual movement threatens the strength and survival of the American family as the basic unit of society; state sodomy laws should be enforced."

So it was no surprise when Lott called homosexuality a sin on a television show. The news is that he has long gotten away with appearing as a reasonable conservative Republican.

He Got Game

In a stunning move, House Speaker Newt Gingrich came out last week for affirmative action. How else can we interpret his endorsement of Dylan Glenn, who is seeking the Republican congressional nomination in southwestern Georgia?

Glenn, a twenty-nine-year-old political consultant who recently moved from Washington to Georgia to run for office, is competing with businessman Joe McCormack, who has the backing of most local GOP leaders. Yet Gingrich took the unusual step of weighing in on the local fight. Oh, did I mention that Glenn is an African-American?

In both major parties, it is customary for national leaders to keep their snouts out of primary contests, unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise (say, Klansman David Duke is running and the national Republicans do not want to be directly linked to a racist). But in this race in Gingrich's home state, the color of Glenn's skin was the reason for the Speaker's intervention. A Gingrich spokesman admitted this, explaining that Gingrich is supporting Glenn because Glenn would help the GOP "reach out to minorities and get our message out to them." But what makes carpetbagger Glenn, who has no reputation as a political organizer, such a reach-out sort of guy? A little thing called pigment. And you probably thought Gingrich, who has supported conservative calls for ending affirmative action, was in favor of color-blindness.

An endorsement from the Speaker of the House certainly counts as preferential treatment. Gingrich is overseeing his own one-man quota program. Sorry, McCormack, for this leader of the Republican Party, you're too white. And Gingrich provided Glenn the type of preference a primary candidate craves: he appeared at a Glenn fundraiser in Atlanta two weeks before the election.

To follow a line of questioning conservatives are so fond of asking, if Glenn was of a different hue, would he be receiving this political hand-out? Gingrich's mouthpiece did say that his boss considers Glenn to be "a bright young star in the Republican Party." But if you think Gingrich's decision was based purely on merit, then you probably believe that Clarence Thomas was one of the nation's brainiest and most accomplished jurists when President Bush selected him for the Supreme Court. No, Gingrich is merely once again demonstrating allegiance to the principle he cherishes most: political opportunism.

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