Another Wacky Week at GOP Spin Central!

Better Late Than Never:
Gene Lyons' Column Makes a Detour
by The Editors

Friday, Dec. 17, 1999 --- New York (APJP) -- Most political junkies know free-lance political writer Gene Lyons as the incisive, sardonic and thought-provoking columnist and investigative journalist who first hit the national radar in 1994 with the publication of the article "Fool for Scandal: How the Times Got Whitewater Wrong" in that year's October issue of Harper's. The article would later be expanded into a book on the misreporting of the Whitewater land deal -- and the consequences to the Clintons.

His forthcoming book, co-authored with Joe Conason, The Hunting of the President, is already beginning to garner an enviable buzz in anticipation of its expected release early next year.

His regular Wednesday column in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette has become mandatory reading for those following the escapades of Kenneth Starr, especially those seeking corrections to the continuing litany of errors and misstatements of "fact" in the mainstream media.

But those readers expecting his column in this Wednesday's edition of the Democrat Gazette received a surprise: the column wasn't there.

Lyons had prepared a commentary centering on a key revelation that appeared in an affadavit submitted as part of pre-trial hearings over whether Linda Tripp will be tried in Maryland on wiretapping charges. As reported in the Baltimore Sun on Tuesday, the affidavit submitted by Starr aide Stephen Bates revealed that Jackie M. Bennett Jr. and Bruce Udolf, both chief lieutenants of then-Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, turned over one of Tripp's tapes of conversations with Monica Lewinsky to Tripp's lawyer, James Moody, during a midnight rendezvous in a Howard Johnson's in Washington on Friday night, January 16-17, 1998 -- a tape that was almost immediately turned over to Michael Isikoff and Newsweek magazine.

In a conversation with one of our editors earlier this week, Lyons said, " I was told that the editor was concerned that I had accused Kenneth Starr of doing something illegal, committing a crime. My column didn't say that."

Lyons had also made note in the column of a significant change in Isikoff's book, Uncovering Clinton; a pre-publication galley had mentioned the handover, but the published edition instead mentioned Linda Tripp's quite different recounting of the incident.

Lyons said, "When Joe [Conason] and I were editing our new book, we didn't make anything of the discrepancy between the galley and the published version -- we just simply noted the difference.... Now, Isikoff says 'I didn't say that, I said Linda Tripp said that!' But why would Isikoff substitute an inaccurate second-hand account for an accurate first-hand account?"

"I hadn't talked to the editor [at the Democrat Gazette], but I offered to soften some of the language. I offered to provide every bit of my documentation -- and even faxed the affidavit, the two versions of the [Isikoff] book excerpt, and the Baltimore Sun story.

"I got word from an Arkansas Democrat Gazette staffer saying that they decided not to run it. My thought was that this piece was important... and that I can put the facts together in a way nobody else had done."

At press time, The Arkansas Times has decided to publish the column in their December 17th edition.

Lyons also feels that this most recent revelation once again raises questions concerning leaks from Kenneth Starr's office -- leaks being investigated by Judge Norma Holloway Johnson for possible Rule 6(e) violations. "I think that Judge Johnson should look into it.... One other -- and dicier -- issue is the list of twenty-four leaks. But does anyone in the press want to cooperate?" He noted the understandable concern among many members of the press that such cooperation would undercut the trust of confidential sources -- a situation that makes Judge Johnson's task extremely difficult.

Also present at the Howard Johnson's meeting was George T. Conway III, a New York lawyer with ties to Paula Jones's defense team. Lyons ruefully noted that "...the presence of George Conway puts the cat among the pigeons."

He also made note during his conversation with our editor of a fact that the press almost completely missed -- but that he and Joe Conason learned in the process of writing their book: "We found out that Judge Starr was cited for criminal contempt of court by Judge Johnson only after Judge [Laurence] Silberman's panel overturned it! Compare that to the press's handling of Judge Wright's citation of Clinton."

And while one might expect Lyons to be busy preparing for the inevitable appearances that accompany the publication of a high-profile book, he has been busier reading.

His career as a free-lance political columnist and author is for the time being taking second place to his teaching duties at Hendrix College. The decision by the Democrat Gazette not to run his column and its detour to the Arkansas Times cut into time he was taking re-reading Dostoevsky's The Possessed and reviewing novels by Milan Kundera and Günter Grass in preparation for a college course on political fiction that he teaches. Lyons is focusing on a number of themes common to totalitarian states on both the left and right, including the influence of "mystical nationalism" in addition to the cult of personality.

"It seems the further we get from Hitler and Stalin, the the harder it is to see the differences -- and the more similar they look."