Wednesday, December 16, 1998 -- WASHINGTON, D.C.

Years ago, long before anyone ever heard of Paula Jones, the President and First Lady sat together in the executive residence and thought about the tens of millions of Americans who were not insured against catastrophic illness and who were being turned away at a growing number of hospitals.

They wanted to do something about it.

This was not a new concern to either Bill or Hillary Clinton. They had often discussed this problem while he served as Governor of Arkansas and while they dated at college.

Some time in 1993, a plan was born -- to have Hillary Clinton take the lead on the issue of health care reform. But along the way, the Clintons and those around them forget what got them elected in the first place -- running as conservative "New Democrats" under the tutelage of the Democratic Leadership Council and some of the finest pollsters in the world.

Clinton inherited a campaign climate still fresh from the go-go Reagan years and a nation, so relieved that nothing bad had happened to it for more than a decade, far more conservative than when it elected Jimmy Carter in 1976.

In short, Bill Clinton had to out-Reagan Reagan himself in order to whip George Bush fresh from "victory" in Iraq and unscathed by his own lies surrounding Iran-Contra.

Bill Clinton was elected for doing that -- and doing that just right -- and got enough votes, thanks to Ross Perot, to carry the election with more than 48% of the vote. People were tired of Bush and, for some reason, did not trust him.

Forgetting how one arrives at a particular place in one's own personal history is something we are all guilty of on occasion.

Bill and Hillary forgot that they were elected as putative Republicans -- they wanted to help their people.

The Clintons couldn't have known at the time how their zeal to do good would result in their public lynching nearly six years later, as Henry Hyde, an admitted adulterer himself -- and a man who lied to his constituents about this tragic affair for decades in the most cynically hypocritical manner -- began to read Articles of Impeachment against William Jefferson Clinton for precisely the same "crime" he himself had committed.

The only difference was that Bill Clinton had been entrapped to force him to come close to lying under oath.

From his high perch as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Hyde, a likable cuss, read with dramatic soberness the "high crimes" Bill Clinton had committed.

He had lied in a civil suit deposition to a group of extortionists hired by ultra-right religious fanatics -- themselves being used by much more powerful forces -- to fund the Paula Jones suit against Mr. Clinton for propositioning her while she was a state employee and he was Governor of Arkansas.

He compounded this lie, in order to protect his reputation, in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

He somehow, through hypnotic or other suggestion, counseled his secretary and friend -- Betty Currie -- to lie about Lewinsky to a grand jury impaneled by another persecutor: Ken Starr, himself an ally and friend of the same powerful people who urged and supported Paula Jones in her suit.

He also participated in hiding gifts he had given Ms. Lewinsky so that prosecutor Starr couldn't find them.

In short, he lied about sex.

Or so said Chairman Hyde, an admitted adulterer and a liar himself.

Today, only a day or two before the House of Representatives will vote on whether the Senate should try Mr. Clinton for these high crimes, thinking Americans are bewildered.

What got us to this point, they ask? Is the President a liar? Are his lies high crimes? Will he be thrown out of office?

The answer depends solely upon which side of the aisle you sit -- as they say inside the Beltway.

If you are a Republican, the President is guilty of defiling the Constitution itself. If you a Democrat, the President merely lied about sex, as do all men and women, in order to protect their families from scandal and hurt.

But nobody seems to be asking the correct question:
How did it start?

It started with health care and with Bill and Hillary's decision to add 40-60 million people to Medicare rolls -- or worse, to force business to pay a large portion of the cost.

It started with corporate treasurers realizing that this would cost the nation $15 to 30 billion. Who would pay for it? Certainly not the individual taxpayer. They were already pushing for more tax cuts. No. The target was clearly business, and particularly giant corporations who in general pay little or no income tax as a sort of "reward" for providing jobs.

I take no issue with this corporate welfare plan. It works. However, it might not work so well if the new expenditure -- universal health care -- was added. In boardrooms from New York to Atlanta and Boston to San Francisco the word went out:

"Stop Bill Clinton - any way you can!"

And the money began to flow -- into the coffers of one Newt Gingrich and his favorite illegally operating charity: "GOPAC," the vehicle through which he raised tens of millions in soft money and by which he controlled more than 150 congressman who owed him their election. He provided the mother's milk of politics -- campaign cash -- from his treasury-foefdom GOPAC, funded by a relative few businesses who wanted no part of Bill and Hillary's vision of the future when it came to health care coverage.

Most corporate participation ended with monetary contributions to the Republican Party and their assigns -- legal and not-so-legal. But a few eager-beaver conservatives began to do something else: they sicced their dogs on the Clintons.

Attack dogs -- trained to kill.

They had their surrogates -- professional dirty tricksters like "investigator" David Bossie -- go to Arkansas and find anyone who would speak ill of the President. Paula Jones revealed herself to them through an almost itinerant writer. They sucked on to her and carried her and her husband using their money and their power. They coached her. They ditched her incompetent lawyers. They got her new lawyers -- men like themselves who loathed and preyed upon homosexuals and sinners. They filed a "civil rights" suit for Jones alleging that Bill Clinton attempted to have sex with her, and claiming that when she didn't cooperate, she was demoted.

Paula Jones never proved any of these allegations. In fact, she contradicted claims made in her sworn complaint on at least five occasions under cross-examination during pre-trial manoeuvering. But that was never the point. All she had to do was lie early on, tell the truth, or tell half-truths to get what these men wanted -- Bill Clinton in a courtroom. Bill Clinton humiliated as heck. Bill Clinton forced to resign in shame.

At the same time, a costly public relations effort was put in motion by unseen hands, unseen corporate hands. I'll call it the "Socialism of Medicine" campaign -- aimed directly at Bill Clinton, using his wife as the foil. You remember. It wasn't that long ago.

"Bill Clinton is trying to socialize medicine," they'd say. "And what is the WIFE of the president doing -- dictating this nation's health policy?"

They did a good job -- while everyone agreed (somewhere in their hearts) that all Americans should get adequate health care, few people wanted this nation to be governed under "Socialist, " even "Communist" dictates.

And that was the end of universal health care, and the President had been dealt a deadly card to boot -- one he would not soon forget.

"Don't mess with us" was the message.

Bill got at least part of the message, and so did Hillary. Both of them decided to placate the attackers by signing off on "welfare reform" -- something Bill hated to do but did nonetheless in the name of political expediency.

"We'll fix it in the second term," they said. But they had damaged themselves with the very people who elected them in the first place. The poor, the black, the marginalized. And so they had to create a new constituency to fill that void. Who was it? Who would provide the support they'd need for "Clinton II?"

Why, business, of course!

"We'll turn tables," said Bill. "We'll turn tables," said Hillary.

And they did.

And the money flowed, this time to both sides. To the Republicans, and to the Democrat President who was now acting more like a Republican than Ron Reagan. It was Nirvana for Conservative America.

...but not for a handful of men and women with a slice of power. These were the elite of the ultra-right. These were the "Bishops" of pseudo-Christian ethics, men like Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Gary Bauer and Tom DeLay. These were the preachers of the "New Moralism" led by right-wing intellectual William Kristol, a man almost no American has ever heard of save for his smug appearances with Sam and Cokie on their Sunday morning pundit show "This Week" -- a nice-acting man who is the devil incarnate.

These men weren't happy simply with cutting off the President's liberal legs. They wanted more. They wanted to undo the election of 1992 and put a conservative in the White House in 1996.

They would have succeeded but for one shuffling genius -- a relatively unknown man named Mark Penn, not only the President's pollster, but the man who was the real architect of Clinton's comeback in 1996. It was not Dick "Judas" Morris who put Bill Clinton back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was the not-often-mentioned and publicity-shy Penn -- who also nearly single-handedly elected Ed Koch mayor of New York when they said it couldn't be done. Penn, along with soon-to-be famous media guru David Garth, sat up nights in Penn's dorm room at Harvard making the computers work -- and computers didn't work so well in the 70s! Penn polls for every super-pol in the "industry" and counts among his clients some of the world's most powerful corporations seeking the truth from his master-crafted public opinion research.

Dick Morris, a creature serving "nigger"-hating Southern politicians, and Bill Clinton were unlikely allies. Morris, who helped elect some of this nation's most high-profile embarrassments, met Clinton years before when Morris is said to have masterminded Clinton's comeback as Governor of Arkansas. While it is true that Clinton has called Morris back when he (Clinton) was at his weakest, it is also true that Clinton didn't trust him -- and secretly wanted Morris gone.

Penn filled the shoes overflowingly. Morris was relegated to the sidelines early in '95. His wife and he -- already separated secretly, well before his notorious tryst with the prostitute at the Jefferson Hotel -- realized they were no longer directly the Clinton '96 Team, almost too late. Fearing this was the end of the Clinton/Morris team, Morris attempted to undo the President's growing reliance on Penn. I cannot reveal how he almost accomplished this, but suffice it to say that it was a move as underhanded as even Morris can get -- and that's about as low as a Texas iguana in the noonday sun.

Penn, to the chagrin of the GOP, Bob Dole, and Morris, succeeded in bringing Clinton back to life -- and bigger than ever. Morris has been trying to get his revenge ever since by turning on the White House and revealing his most intimate moments with the President.

With Clinton reelected, the unseen hands who had been so busily at work in Arkansas and Washington began to work at a fever pitch. They had to get dirt on Clinton. Their hired gun, Kenneth Starr -- who Republicans love to point out was "appointed" by Janet Reno -- was finding nothing. Nothing on Whitewater. Nothing on Travelgate. Nothing on Vince Foster. Nothing even on Filegate. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

The untold story of how Ken Starr really came to be the not-so-Independent Counsel is a book in itself. Let it suffice here that it wasn't a random occurrence, and it wasn't by Reno's choice either -- not by a long shot.

Then luck finally smiled on Starr and his backers. Someone, I think Dick Morris, told some right-wing activists about the President's real interest in women. From there to Linda Tripp was not such a long road. From Linda Tripp to Monica Lewinsky was an even shorter journey.

All that was to be done now was to set the trap.

Wires in place, tape recorders going, they waited. And they got lots of stuff. They knew -- for many months before the public -- that the President was having his trysts with Lewinsky. But they knew that wasn't enough.

They waited some more.

They fertilized the friendship between Lewinsky and Tripp. They waited. And one evening, not so long ago, they got what they wanted. They knew the President was going to do everything in his power not to let Jones and her mentors get away with extortion.

The unseen hands knew that at some point either Lewinsky or Clinton would stumble. They were right.

Luck remained at their side. First, the Supreme Court, in an ill-considered decision which they now surely regret, allowed Jones and her supporters to sue a sitting President -- claiming that this would not hinder the office of the presidency.

How wrong they were.

Then Linda Tripp, a Clinton-basher at heart and in practice, began to collect information in an effort to collect some money for what she knew at some later appropriate date. She took notes. She had befriended Lewinsky and eventually she went to Kenneth Starr with what she knew. Starr told his friends -- the unseen hands -- and got the go-ahead.

Within days the story leaked from the Republican side. Would it play with the American people? Would they buy it? It was a nerve-wracking period.

But help from unanticipated sources came rushing in to aid in the lynching. The mainstream media itself, whose newspaper sales and Nielsens went sky-high on news of the Presidential trysts, became witting and unwitting abettors to the crucifixion of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Once-thoughtful men and women who bored us to death on Sunday morning with talk about the re-authorization of the Clean Air Act now enjoyed millions of new viewers eager to get the latest dope on the Presidential sex life from anybody who claimedto know.

Television ad time on pundit shows became much more expensive. All of a sudden people were interested in who Dick Armey, Tom DeLay and Bob Barr were. It was too much to have hoped for. It was paradise for Neo-Nazis who, cloaked in the American flag, were about to accuse Bill Clinton of treason and the undermining of the Constitution itself!

And Bill Clinton cooperated. Like the consummate lawyer he is, and coached by the best, he decided to deny Paula Jones the ability to blackmail him legally. He went to her deposition. He jousted with small-minded and ill-prepared lawyers who didn't ask the right questions and who purposely led him down the primrose path toward the edge of perjury.

But he didn't bite. Read the transcript. see the tape. He never lied -- he merely took advantage of bad lawyering -- or great lawyering, depending upon the outcome expected. If you were Paula Jones, you would have been disappointed in her lawyer's performance that day. But if you were Dick Scaife, you would have been delighted.

Okay, they thought, maybe he didn't commit perjury per se -- or as defined by the law -- but he came close enough to get us in the door. He came close enough to accuse him of it. Once done, the other facts in the case could be "fitted" into the myriad charges to follow. Any good prosecutor knows this.

Starr knew it.

To the unseen hands, Lewinsky was a still a thorn. She wouldn't 'fess up to fellatio she had performed on Clinton like a cheap prostitute at his or anyone's bidding. She had to. It was the whole case. So Tripp was wired and her tape machine rolled. Listen to her. Listen closely as she manipulates the childish Lewinsky into closing the trap on Clinton. It's enough to make one retch.

Was Tripp doing all this on her own watch or someone else's? The answer is clear: Tripp herself was being managed.

People say that Bill Clinton's biggest problem is his temper. I disagree. It's his stubbornness, born of a childhood filled with anguish and probably some self-loathing. Imagine having an IQ of 168 and realizing that you might never be able to use it. I know someone like that. He's a self-described predator, a pre-requisite for any modern day politician.

So Bill Clinton took his stubbornness into the Grand Jury, Ken Starr's Grand Jury.

That was a mistake, because even Bill Clinton couldn't expect a group of Jane and John Does to understand the corpus of a crime like perjury. He could not expect them to jump up and say "Hallelujah!" after he finished his explanations on the nuances of the term "It" or "Is" or the meaning, in law, of Judge Susan Webber Wright's definition of sexual relations.

It was his biggest mistake. He should have passed on Starr's invitation to the ball. But like a moth, he was drawn to the flame of hand-to-hand combat with Starr -- a man Bill Clinton might rightly think is the personification of evil.

Bill Clinton knew he hadn't committed perjury. And hundreds of other legal scholars know that too. In fact, most of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee know it as well. But that was not the issue. The issue to them was: can we twist the reality enough to make the American people believe he did?

The answer, as it always is in these case is "yes and no."

So, now we have arrived at the big moment. Will the House of Representatives, in their political wisdom, vote to save their own sorry heads, or will they vote the truth? The answer is clear. They will vote a lie and perpetuate it as best they can until the nation sits through what may be a year of humiliation for their president.

In the end, the truth will out. Just like it does in the movies.

But it will come too late to save Chelsea Clinton and the tens of thousands of us who love and admire Bill Clinton for having the sheer energy to take on the beast.

It is the specter of Chelsea Clinton that will haunt Hyde, Starr, DeLay and Lindsey Graham for the rest of their lives. For they know, in their heart of hearts, that what the President did was not only legal, it was moral as well. He sought nothing more than to stop a sinister group of political extortionists who had used Paula Jones as their tool for monetary blackmail.

They know, and you know, that Bill Clinton is a man of frailties not that often unseen in the species. Several men on the Judiciary Committee and scores of men in the Congress have done far worse themselves. They know that Bill Clinton never lied or manipulated people in such as way as to commit a felony, or even a misdemeanor.

They know that Ken Starr is a freak of nature who delights in punishing petty criminals and persecuting U.S. presidents while earning a million dollars a year defending corporations who murder people with cigarettes.

They know that Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg, Tim Russert, Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, Tony Snow, Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume all have had their 15 minutes of fame and earned several hundred thousand dollars extra on the backs of the Clinton family. They know it as well as they know their own names.

But liars have a way of convincing themselves that the lie is real and that the liar is righteous.

That is why you heard these hypocrites so eloquently lie to you last week. Over and over again, with crocodile tears, they applauded each other for their goodness and their godliness and, most of all, with a secret wink and a nod, for their craftiness at putting over what they must think is the biggest scam in American history perpetrated on the American public.

Yes, there's a sucker born every minute. Luckily, there are true Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons who are born much more often.

Woe to those who led this witch hunt. If I'm not wrong, they will pay a long and bitter price for their hypocrisy. Certainly, they will lose whatever power they so zealously guarded.

If not, this is not the America of my father, my grandfather and their fathers before them.

-- Mac MacArthur