Why You Should Read Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" -- Part II
Like a Cornered Animal
Christopher Hitchens' "review" backfires
By Jeff Koopersmith

Order "The Clinton Wars" at borders.com, barnesandnoble.com or powells.com

June 4, 2003 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- One has to marvel at the atrophy, the utter despoliation of Christopher Hitchens' palpable sharp-witted intelligence and now-and-again sober wit in his latest act of contrition to Sidney Blumenthal.

Writing for his life, Hitchens, in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly, weaves a deceptive tale so queasy and full of self-loathing that it makes me cringe.

Why would a man so ostensibly adept -- a British gatecrasher posing as a progressive, then a neoconservative, then a moralist, then a friend, then an enemy -- have time, between near-psychotic shifting personalities, to be so dishonorable when it is more than obvious -- even to the casual observer -- that his venom spews from an almost pathologic mistrust of himself, and the heavy weight that treachery brings to the traitor?

Mr. Hitchens "reviews" Mr. Sidney Blumenthal's superb new history, "The Clinton Wars," on the pretense that he has rank to do so.

Yet Mr. Hitchens must admit that he couldn't possibly be an expert on the inner workings of any White House even though he pretends a "demonstrated" expertise on both foreign and domestic policy, war, strategy, media relations, human sexuality, the holocaust, psychology, Middle East politics and policy, The European Union, and, of course, the overbearing misuse of the English language -- to such an extreme that even English professors put down his material with a sigh and remark, "Hitchens must be a genius, because even I cannot understand a sentence he writes."

I admit, it does take heaps of patience to slog through most of Hitchens' blather. Yet he is published time and again in pop culture magazines -- especially the leading intellectual Bergdorf Goodman catalog called Vanity Fair -- an apt title for a rag whose editors, because they can't be au fait with Hitchens either -- assume he'll appeal to the hirsute reader -- as a sort of "proof" that Vanity Fair does not simply engage "vanity" but also intelligence.

In his mugging review of Mr. Blumenthal's most recent book, Hitchens takes care to craft a slick fairy tale that he is reviewing this important contribution to American history rationally, to hide the truth that he is condemning this tour de force of presidential history to cover his normal despicable double, triple, even quadruple-agent persona.

In a nutshell, I believe from a preponderance of the evidence that Christopher Hitchens, perhaps to protect himself from corporate government, made a bargain with the Devil himself -- invited Mr. Blumenthal to ostensibly dine with him and his wife in celebration, milked him for information on the pitiable Monica Lewinsky, and then promptly ran to the nearest telephone and yelled "I got him!" followed by his swearing to an affidavit which he knew was a lie.

Now I may be wrong, but judge for yourself after reading this in full.

I have warned American Politics Journal readers about Mr. Hitchens before ("Stunned Inarticulate", "He's Clueless", "An Open Letter"). I did so before I knew of his animosity and treachery toward Mr. Blumenthal. I have never met Mr. Hitchens -- but in my family, like Plutarch, we call "a spade a spade", and Hitchens is a spade.

In his new harangue, Mr. Hitchens spends more than six thousand words on a hit piece that could have been done in perhaps three hundred, or perhaps four words: "I envy Sidney Blumenthal."

Hitchens begins unimaginatively and pedantically filling the reader full of his instruction on American politics. He seems not to know the distinction between American commercial politics and those who are engaged in it, day to day, on the floors of the House and Senate, in the City Halls and State Capitals in this nation.

This should come as no surprise. Hitchens is not an American. He is unqualified to pick up the nuances involved therewith.

He whines over the rancidness and banality of domestic politics even as he contributes to and earns a living at it. He "enlightens" us claiming there is little difference between politicians while knowing there is. He offers that there is less and less to disagree about, when it is apparent to the homeless, those without jobs and health care, and those who are offended by the neoconservative hijack of our Constitution, that there is more and more to argue about.

All of this is offered up to set a stage upon which to lynch Mr. Blumenthal, who is parenthetically included in most of Mr. Hitchens' diatribe, which is aimed largely at himself and others defenseless.

Hitchens makes much about the Dick Morrises and David Gergens, the Mary Matalins and James Carvilles -- attempting to fool the reader into believing that Mr. Blumenthal is a paid political hack that would work for anyone for a buck.

Yet is this not Mr. Hitchens' claim to fame?

And wouldn't he frame you just for the chance? Just for the downstream money that may flow as reward?

I must admit that Hitchens posturing as Jesus Christ is a bit off-putting, especially from a man who threatened to sue Henry Kissinger simply because Kissinger called him a "Holocaust denier." Of course, Kissinger may have made a mistake here: Hitchens may not deny the Holocaust -- he merely defends those who do.

Or am I mistaken?

Mr. Hitchens begins his onslaught below the belt, naturally -- as is his usual coarse itinerary.

Chris Hitchens

He attacks Sidney Blumenthal for stating facts regarding the pardon of Mark Rich by then-President Bill Clinton. He attacks Blumenthal for defending gifts made to the Clintons upon their departure from the White House, but makes no mention that Ronald and Nancy Reagan's friends bought them a home in tony Bel Air -- rightfully, to my mind -- in thanks for their service to this nation.

Hitchens also claims that Blumenthal "elsewhere accuses the Republican Party of being essentially lawless and segregationist." These too are lies. Blumenthal attacks neoconservatives, not the Republican Party as a whole. Neoconservatives do operate outside the law and are bigoted.

Is it not surprising that one can find hundreds of journalists making these same claims against the "new right" yet Mr. Hitchens ignores all of us, as he does most everyone else and as if only his opinion counts.

What we have here is a man , frightened to death, for fear of being exposed for what he is -- an arrogant and ill-mannered boor. Hitchens also invites, through use of the usual codified language, his comrades in right-wing arms chance here to sue Mr. Blumenthal, stating that Blumenthal has written "a long and turgid and self-justifying book, in return for a completely ridiculous publisher's advance."

Mr. Blumenthal's book does give explanation for what happened during the Clinton years and certainly point to the culprits involved in what most Americans now know was a witch hunt, but this book is by no means a "justification" -- only a history.

One either accepts or rejects that history. To write such a book, of course, requires the judgment of an insider -- a position Mr. Hitchens will never enjoy because of his time and again demonstrated deceitfulness.

Like all disciples of Brutus, Hitchens offers that he would never have become a "friend" of Sidney Blumenthal's if he hadn't "had some relish from the ironic contrast between the sublime and the ridiculous." This single line is prima facie evidence of the depth of Mr. Hitchens' ability to make and cement true friendships and underscores his notion of fidelity -- none.

Hitchens was never a friend at all. Friends do not deal with the devil in order to harm their comrades.

Like all "hit men" Hitchens takes care to rationalize his iniquity by pointing his reader to how much he loved his target.

He claims that Mr. Blumenthal's arrival on "his" scene was a "distinctly cheering event" when in fact Hitchens, by his own story, pursued the Blumenthals for his own aggrandizement -- the advancement of his career and the important connections in New York, California, and later in this nation's capital that the Blumenthal's might offer.

Like a worm, he writes:

He and his wife, Jackie, were charming and smart and generous, and unlike many if not most politicized types, they had a real feeling for history and for literature. Blumenthal was politicized, all right, and very committed, but he had written a book that tried to expose the underlying racket. It was called "The Permanent Campaign: Inside the World of Elite Political Operatives."

As for compliments, that was that. What followed in Hitchens' review is simply a well-orchestrated series of stabs, jabs, and slashes seeking to destroy Mr. Blumenthal's reputation in favor of his own.

Hitchens exposes himself as shifty little troll. He claims to have learned a lot from Blumenthal -- like the leech that he is -- and was impressed "despite himself," a hint of Hitchens' mastery of the obscenely sticky innuendo.

He continues, with little add-ons, like "actually" -- implying a lie; "he had been accused" -- with no citation for that accusation; the "affectation of integrity in Washington" -- implying that Blumenthal might not have none.

Then it hits you. Hitchens -- who absolutely bathes in his self-delusional reputation as an intellectual -- talks about "another flaw" among "Washington intellectuals:

...to prove they are not simply "ivory-tower" or pointy headed; that they can be tough and practical and even, when occasion may demand it, ruthless.

"Ruthless", as in "Blumenthal" or as in "Hitchens"?

He goes further, calling Blumenthal, often by naming others, "full of Camelot prose, crackpot realism, moral rough stuff, and subacademic, hard-boiled, alarming, foppish", and then this strange remark -- "his happy resemblance to Christopher Reeve."

Hmmm? Was it Mr. Blumenthal or Mr. Hitchens who salivated over this alleged resemblance?

Then, as do most pseudo intellects from the right -- Hitchens begins an onslaught on Blumenthal's past. "...his fondness for conspiracy theories", "his background included Students for a Democrat Society."

And then of course, Hitchens, in his typical anti-Semantic measure, adds that Blumenthal was at "Brandeis" as if to remind that reader that Blumenthal is Jewish and schooled at a "Jew" University.

Aren't we unclothed, Mr. Hitchens, aren't we unclothed?

He makes fun of Carl Oglesby, who Blumenthal knew and associated with, as "an inventive radical" in his work on the Assassination (Kennedy) Information Bureau, writing that his "take on the secret history of the country could most kindly be described as original. How shall I put it?"

Yes, and Christopher Hitchens -- he knows what happened in Dallas that day -- doesn't he?

Hitchens takes pains to insult Blumenthal, and again alludes, almost with homosexual interest, to male attractiveness -- this time focusing on Bill Clinton's physical presence as described in passing by Blumenthal -- a presence many have written about in almost the same words -- and one which I have witnessed, exactly as described.

What is Hitchens' gambit here -- to label Blumenthal? And as what?

He calls Blumenthal's statements regarding the fact that Clinton never left a roomful of people until he had spoken to and physically touched as many as he could -- "astonishing grandiose."

Yet hundreds of journalists, including me, have witnessed and written the same description -- a true description of President Clinton's campaign style. As Blumenthal points out, Bill Clinton believed, as do many politicians, that once you speak to someone or shake their hand, their vote is yours.

This is the stuff of Politics 101, yet Hitchens thinks it is pretentious?

The fact is that Christopher Hitchens knows absolutely nothing about American politics save for what he watches on FOX News or reads in some non-performing academic's white paper. He was never an American practitioner, nor even a envelope stuffer. He hasn't got a clue -- even about the most rudimentary elements of well-practiced politics.

Hitchens is an elementary schoolyard bully -- and proves it over and over again.

Naturally Hitchens, as a putative whore for the ultra-right, could not resist showing his hand and spending suspiciously too much time insulting Bill Clinton, only parenthetically referring to Blumenthal. Hitchens writes:

I personally became powerfully nauseated by seeing Clinton up close in New Hampshire that year. His big, red-faced frame didn't seem so much "imposing" as simultaneously needy and greedy. He lied aggressively about Gennifer Flowers and, sitting next to his wife, let her do his marital propaganda for him. He fundraised as if there were no guidelines.

Hitchens continues to vomit on his own hypocrisy. He instructs us about thinking like an apparatchik -- and who should know better?

He suggests, as he practices, that one should keep two sets of ethical books. Yes, as Hitchens did -- to get paid for his disclosures -- lying disclosures about what Mr. Blumenthal told him about Monica Lewinsky and when. And he was paid, perhaps indirectly, but his was paid with just another fifteen minutes of infamy.

When he got caught at it -- when he realized that he had perjured himself -- Hitchens backed away, using the girlie excuse that he would never testify before Congress "only" to get his "friend" Sid Blumenthal.

Mr. Hitchens is green-eyed and invidious, plain and simple. He mentions, more than once, that Blumenthal was paid handsomely for his book.

He even quotes a per-page price of $790 and suggests that part of the total must be embezzled because "a huge amount of which [the book] consists of excerpts and transcripts"

My God, where are the masters of Salem so he might be burned at the stake?

Of course, Hitchens reveals his dizzy British nature, describing in lurid detail the particulars of the Clinton-Lewinsky sexual encounter. I was surprised that he did not, as he is apt to do, add some fantasies astern as might he normally.

I laughed at loud at this next comment about Bill Clinton:

He lied about, and defamed, women. He had to say that the unfortunate but truthful females were liars, fantasists, job-seekers, and even blackmailers.

Alas, poor Christopher, himself a drunken serial husband and treacherous companion. To suppose he has never met a woman who thinks him powerful, or important enough to lie to, to fantasize about, to job-seek from, and to blackmail.

To live up to his friends on the right -- now heavily engaged in destroying Caroline Kennedy's remembrances of her Dad -- Hitchens adds this description of Jack Kennedy:

...neurotically promiscuous and, as we later learned, not above sleeping with gun molls in the White House.

How proud his mother must be of him. How proud of him are we all.

Hitchens does not rest there. He goes on to attempt to humiliate Blumenthal, writing that President Clinton

...didn't want him for these nobler purposes. He wanted him as a damage controller with a certain sneaky side, and he wanted him as an inventive loyalist. He threw away the plum and kept the pit, of which this book is the ground-up residue.

How charmingly vicious. I imagine Sidney Blumenthal weeping now, over his friend Christopher Hitchens' magnificent insight -- his deliverance. And Bill Clinton -- on the phone this very moment, begging Sidney to forgive him, telling him he wanted that plum.

Allow me a moment to puke.

The pièce de resistance, however, is Hitchens' last few paragraphs -- wherein he attempts to explain why he turned in a supposed friend -- why he, the boor of boors, the sot or sots, the liar or liars, felt he must arise above himself, and everything decent, to protect America.

Hitchens invokes the name of poor departed liberal-turned-Neocon Michael Kelly -- as if the man's death somehow excuses the fact that he too was a journalistic hit man as Hitchens is now, and was a disgrace to his profession and a fool.

Hitchens suggests that Blumenthal would have excised his comments about Kelly in this book had he known Kelly would be killed in Iraq. I doubt it. Only Hitchens would be that self-serving and pretentious. Altering history to lie about a man who should have been ashamed of his later life and the misery he caused others during it does not seem a Blumenthal trait.

Somehow Kelly became as addicted to Clinton bashing as is Hitchens, first at the New Yorker, then at the Washington Post -- where as a puppet for Kenneth Starr he, among other trespasses too numerous to recount here, accused Blumenthal of unleashing private investigators to examine the sex lives of Ken Starr and his staff.

Needless to say, Kelly was "pants" on this and other stories, and his career went nearly to shambles soon after. Later Kelly, writing in the Washington Post, called Blumenthal "Sid the Human Ferret -- a subhuman."

(In case you believe that the Washington Post is anything even remotely approaching a newspaper of record, think again. It's a yellow rag, worse than most because it pretends to be a fine newspaper.)

Kelly also spread rumors that Blumenthal and others accused prosecutors of being homosexuals. And of course, he lied for Hitchens -- writing in the Post about Hitchens' affidavit: "There you had it, a presidential aide caught out, a major Republican claim proved."

I wonder why Hitchens, who hasn't got a compassionate bone in his body, now defends the passed-on Kelly?

I regret Kelly's death, and especially that he left a wife and two young children behind. Yet, like others, I feel much as I did when I heard that Barbara Olson had been murdered by Al Qaeda thugs on September 11, 2001 aboard a plane that may well have been heading toward the White House. Olson, a political hack with absolutely no journalistic standing and under the pretense of being a pundit, appeared on one cable news show after another to whine about morality in her very seductive Midwest-girl persona. She facilitated the destruction of humaneness in America. Yet I am sad too for her family.

Nevertheless, Michael Kelly and Barbara Olson -- and Olson's husband Ted -- were responsible for some of the worst slander against Bill Clinton and his family.

Mr. Hitchens, with his usual "the lady doth protest too much" guilt, goes to great lengths to pretend that Sidney Blumenthal purposely attacks the dead in his remarks about Kelly.

He claims that Blumenthal could have "excised" or "softened" the mentions of Kelly after learning of his death. I have not asked Blumenthal if he pondered this -- but I would council him not to. Kelly's legacy, the good and the bad, are a matter of history, and not to be fooled with to appease the heartbreak of his family.

I reread Blumenthal's words about Kelly. I thought them too kind. In the end Kelly did what many do -- he went for the jugular and the gold rather than the truth. Kelly, I must add, did make great prior contributions to progressive and entertaining media before he was consumed by loathing. He deserves credit for that. He gets it here.

So much for that.

And I have digressed.

Mr. Hitchens takes extraordinary pains to promote the charade that he was only acting as Sidney Blumenthal's "friend" when he attempted to finger him falsely for neoconservative members of Congress and the odious Kenneth Starr -- simply for calling Monica Lewinsky what she appears to have been: a stalker.

What's worse is that Hitchens knows, far better than most, that nearly everything he wrote, repeated on pundit television while reveling in his self-importance, and commented about to friends about Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Blumenthals turned out to be, in my and most other's opinion, bald-faced lies.

Now, in a whining, importune go-round, Hitchens, whose credibility and future is on the line, wishes us to believe what appears on its face as a pathetically trumped up story regarding a meeting with Sidney Blumenthal in March of 1998.

In his brief Hitchens claims, today, that in March of 1998 he and his wife, Carol Blue, took Blumenthal for a "reunion snack." He declares Blumenthal as "someone who had gone to work for John Gotti. He talked coldly and intently of a lethal right-wing conspiracy that was slowly engulfing the capitol. And he spoke, as if out of the side of a tough-guy mouth, about the women who were tools of the plot."

This manner of language is the oldest hoax of a professional misinformationist: the setup.

In two sentences Hitchens links Blumenthal with a convicted murdering mobster -- wintry and absorbed, while at the same time talking of the way he once was -- so much better, the fellow Hitchens valued was gone. The violins proceed.

He tells us that Blumenthal spoke ill of Kathleen Willey -- a woman later proven to be just a bit sadly unglued. He tells us that Blumenthal highlighted Monica Lewinsky's reputation as a stalker and unstable, even though he knows Ms. Lewinsky has painted a similar picture of herself.

Even more pitiable is Hitchens' own naiveté, and let me use his words:

At the time this prompted no conclusion other than the sickening but unavoidable one that Sidney Blumenthal could be brought to believe that a President can be "stalked" in his own Oval Office (and in about three dozen incidents, according to the logs that record permission for Lewinsky to be shown in at odd moments).

Again, Hitchens displays foolhardiness. Of course Presidents are stalked, in their offices and out. In fact, powerful, wealthy men have be stalked from the beginning of time. This was the most powerful man on earth at the time. Hitchens feigns ignorance here, or is it that Hitchens has never been stalked? And of course, Hitchens adds something new -- at least to me:

There's much else about that lunch I need never disclose, but I remember that he twice hushed my questioning wife by saying, "Carol, I could go to jail for what I'm doing now." I didn't know then, and can't guess even now, what he meant by that.

Hitchens, by using this schoolboy device -- his pseudo-parenthetical "there's more, but I'm too nice a guy, and too good a friend to tell you" -- is simply revolting.

We all want to know. We all want to know.

Hitchens, of course is lying about Lewinsky and her reputation as a stalker. My own search revealed that dozens of newspaper, radio and television accounts of Ms. Lewinsky's reputation, or lack thereof, were already public record long before his March 18th, 1998 lunch with Blumenthal. It had been Monica Lewinsky's own former boyfriend who, just prior to the State of the Union, told a press conference that she was a "stalker" more than a month before the Hitchens-Blumenthal lunch.

Of course, Hitchens' plan was to feather his own nest and play a key role in "proving" that Blumenthal had lied under oath, when he told Congress that he spoke to no one, including the media, about a conversation he had with the president the year before where President Clinton described Lewinsky as a "stalker" and felt threatened by her sexual advances.

It is also well known that Hitchens was fanning the flames after he filed his affidavit, calling reporters and telling them of his affidavit.

The unanswered question is why?

Hitchens' affidavit was gutless and of course did not link the President's statements about Lewinsky to Blumenthal's remarks to the Hitchens -- and so, predictably, his wife Carol Blue later submitted her own affidavit which did -- and stated conveniently that Blumenthal had told her and Christopher Hitchens at the same lunch, that "The President" told him..."

If it were not so obvious and treacherous a fantasy, one might laugh.

One can imagine the "creepy-weepy" Lindsey Graham, then a House Manager, realizing that Hitchens had goofed -- not making that key link to the President in his affidavit -- then shrieking to his staff to get a second "updated" affidavit from Carol Blue!

The whole farce would make a great sitcom.

Graham, by the by, has now been rewarded for his pathetic performance in the Clinton-lynching by replacing Strom Thurmond as US Senator from South Carolina. His biggest contribution thus far? Demanding that antiwar protesters who act as human shields or who try to blockade US military facilities should be prosecuted as traitors. Lindsey hasn't stopped his sick attack on progressives, liberals, or peaceniks -- although his own past is said to be "liberally" checkered in entertaining ways.

Hitchens and his wife, then fearful they may have gone too far, made sure that they told others about their whimsical conversation with Blumenthal, although even Hitchens it seems, thought the meeting was a sociable talk with "friends" over a celebratory lunch. A private chat between "buddies?"

They enlisted Scott Armstrong, a former Washington Post reporter, to sign an affidavit stating they had told him about what Blumenthal told them. Hearsay upon hearsay.

Armstrong signed the affidavit stupidly, but later recanted it telling New York Newsday that the Hitchens were "using" him "to set up" Blumenthal.

Which, of course, they were.

Armstrong had been goaded into filing this silly affidavit -- which proved nothing but that Hitchens may have lied to him as well -- by Susan Bogart, an "investigator" from the House Judiciary Committee staff -- Lindsey's staff -- and then Bogart incredibly leaked the affidavit to the press even before Armstrong had signed it!

Armstrong was furious.

Hitchens also looks to have lied in his affidavit about the date of the lunch as well. So who now was proved to have committed perjury? Hitchens own signed and sworn statement is the only proof I need that it was he.

The scene that afternoon at the Occidental Grill must have been nauseating. Blumenthal describes it well -- complete with kisses from Carol Blue, the almost-always-inebriated Hitchens calling him "cousin" and the normal "tell us everything!" invitation. The trite "stabbed in the back while being slapped on the back" ruse.

Hitchens, incredibly, states today,"I had the ability to nail the lie, and when contacted by the House Judiciary Committee about the matter, I did so nail it. And I would do it again"

This sentence is stomach-turning nonsense. Does Hitchens expect readers to believe that he is propelled by God to "nail" his friends?

Hitchens further asserts that his actions in this regard are reported by Blumenthal through "a loose chain of conjecture and hearsay." He also claims that he can prove"with a given amount of labor" that he did not engage in a conspiracy -- which he describes unintelligibly as "concerted my testimony" in advance with House Republicans.

I say, "Prove it!" -- and with not so much labor.

This is an astonishing statement, coming from Hitchens, about hearsay.

Hearsay is an out-of-court statement, made by one other than the declarant, while testifying at a trial or hearing, offered as evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. It is Hitchens that was swearing, under oath as hearsay, to what Blumenthal purportedly told him. It was Hitchens that through a quick and wobbly succession of speculation decided magically and mystically that Mr. Blumenthal lied to the House Judiciary Committee -- itself investigating a series of lies promulgated by many of its own members, its investigators, Kenneth Starr and his henchman -- all in an effort to force President Clinton from office.

Click here to read part I of Jeff Koopersmith's review of "The Clinton Wars". Click here to read his reaction to the preposterous review of "The Clinton Wars" in The Village Voice!

I take it that Hitchens suggests we should believe, that from some sense of heightened righteousness, he took it upon himself to contact the House Judiciary Committee and rat on his friend.

I believe Hitchens is either lying now, or at least lied once when he related several contradictory accounts of just how it came to be that he "was contacted" by the House Judiciary Committee.

For in the end, his actions alone are the only proof one needs to label Hitchens, at best, a mastermind gone insane with envy, or, at worst, a wretched pretender so drunk with his own narcissism that he might sell his mother for yet another moment in the spotlight.

Mr. Hitchens, you are not a friend.

You are anything but -- and probably incapable.

If you had been a friend of Sidney Blumenthal's, you would have taken this chance to compliment, not do violence to, this book.

If history is reasonable, you will be cast as you should into its garbage heap along with the rest of the recitalists, poseurs and pretenders now on the shabby stage of neoconservative thoughtlessness.

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "dissident lobbyist."