THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1994
July
- July 1: Attorney General Janet Reno writes to the three-judge Special Division panel,
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
empowered to name an independent counsel to continue the investigation of Whitewater, asking them to name Robert Fiske to the position as a continuation of his efforts. Fiske has already released his report, which finds no criminal wrongdoing in anything related to Whitewater, and conservatives are mobilizing to have Fiske removed. Led by radical right-wing senator Lauch Faircloth, they level a barrage of accusations of conflicts of interest at Fiske, all of which are specious at best. Judge David Sentelle, a well-known Clinton hater who leads the panel, meets over lunch with Republican senators Faircloth and their mutual mentor, Jesse Helms, in late July. The three deny discussing the appointment, which would have been illegal, though most knowledgeable observers believe that Helms and Faircloth push for the appointment of conservative ideologue Kenneth Starr. Instead, the three insist that they spent their lunchtime discussing mutual acquaintances, clothing, and their prostates. (Faircloth was a vehement opponent of Fiske, who in his view was wrong to conclude that Vince Foster committed suicide; both Faircloth and Sentelle are members of Helms's conservative National Congressional Club and a longtime Helms supporter who was first sponsored for the federal bench by Helms. Sentelle was one of the judges who overturned the conviction of Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North. Five months after Starr's appointment, Sentelle's wife will begin working for Faircloth as a staff member in an apparent quid pro quo. See the above items for more information.) - Sentelle was named to the panel in 1992 when Chief Justice William Rehnquist ousted senior judge George MacKinnon. MacKinnon, a moderate Republican, named Lawrence Walsh to investigate the Iran-contra scandal. Sentelle will later acknowledge that he sought out Republicans "who had been active on the other side of the political fence" to carry out the investigations of Clinton and his administration, and admit that the subject of the independent counsel "might" have come up. (Consortium News, H.R. Clinton, James Carville, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- July 29: Abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard, retired Air Force colonel James Barrett, are murdered by anti-abortion extremist Paul Hill in Pensacola, Florida.
Domestic terrorism
"There's no question that what I did was a relatively new concept," Hill will say, predicting that others will continue his violence. "someday it will be commonplace and generally accepted as normal." Hill's defense: justifiable homicide. The judge and jury do not buy Hill's arguments that he was morally impelled to murder the two, and on September 3, 2003, Hill will be executed, the first person in the US to be put to death for anti-abortion related crimes. - 15 months before the killings, Hill abruptly turned from advocacy of using "the weapon of the spirit," as he termed it, to advocating the "justifiable homicide" of abortion providers, but his friends say they didn't believe he would actually do such a thing himself. "He has a frightening...grin plastered on his face all the time," recalls Dallas Blanchard of the University of West Florida, author of a book on the Christian antiabortion movement. "The combination of the grin and this little gleam in his eye seemed to say, 'Here's a dangerous person'.... But I thought he was a...coward." Hill had been coming to protest outside Britton's clinic, The Ladies' Center in Pensacola, Florida, on a daily basis for about a year. On the morning of July 29, Hill, at his usual post, fired a shotgun through the window of Britton's truck as Britton, his wife, and Barrett were pulling up to the clinic. Both men were killed by a point-blank shotgun blast to the head, and Mrs. Britton was severely wounded. Police immediately arrest Hill, who is taken into custody without incident, telling the arresting officer, "I know one thing, no innocent babies are going to be killed in that clinic today." Because of Hill's shaky finances, it is believed by some that he received funding from anti-abortion groups such as Defensive Action, of which he was a local leader, though the organizations associated with Hill deny the allegations.
- President Clinton denounces the murders as "domestic terrorism," but many abortion opponents blame the media, groundlessly accusing media figures such as Phil Donahue, who interviewed Hill in 1993, of making extremists like Hill more visible than the less violent opposition leaders. Hill first gained national attention when he formed Defensive Action after Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola in March 1993; in media interviews, Hill compared abortionists to Hitler and said their murder was morally justifiable. Abortion activist Roy McMillan, executive director of the Christian Action Group in Jackson, Mississippi, says of Hill's murders, "It seems apparent that Paul has terminated a terminator.... I don't find it a sin to kill some one who is fixing to exterminate children." Many abortion rights advocates charge that the antiabortion movement bears responsibility for tolerating extremists such as Hill: "We believe a significant portion of the blame for this murderous act rests with the leadership of the anti-choice movement, which has been unwilling or unable to control the violent extremists within their midst," says James Wagoner, vice president of the National Abortion Rights Action League. (CBS, Washington Post, Washington Post, Washington Post)
- July 31: Reporter Michael Kelly writes an influential condemnation of Bill Clinton for the New York Times Magazine that reads in part,
Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"
"What threatens this president seems to be much larger than mere partisanship. There is a level of mistrust and even dislike of him that is almost visceral in its intensity. In Washington, where power is generally treated with genuflecting reverence, it is no longer surprising to hear the president spoken of with open and dismissive contempt.... Clinton is routinely depicted in the most unflattering terms: a liar, a fraud, a chronically indecisive man who cannot be trusted to stand for anything -- or with anyone." Though Kelly's article includes some criticism from the left, Kelly's primary sources, and the sources of the "visceral dislike" and "open and dismissive contempt," are not Washington insiders, but a group of Arkansas conservatives and political opponents of Clinton, many employed by radical right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Kelly even goes so far as to say Arkansas itself "is not really a democracy," but, in the description of Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, "a benighted rural fiefdom where a tiny, incestuous elite 'holds sway over a small and politically disorganized middle class and large, but well-beaten population of the poor." Conason and Lyon's dismissal of Kelly's vituperative and badly informed characterizations as "melodrama" is quite restrained. (New York Times Magazine/Joe Conason and Gene Lyons) - Late July:
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
During a tour by Hillary Clinton and others to promote the Clinton health care plan, their appearances are disrupted by well-organized and sometimes violent protests. (In one appearance in Seattle, the police took two guns and a knife off of arrested protesters.) The protests are sponsored and organized by the Committee for a Sound Economy, which has ties to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and is funded by right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (H.R. Clinton)
