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
1997:
April
"Is it racist to say that it is legally and morally wrong for government to force a mixing of the races to produce a mongrel?" -- Council of Conservative Citizens, Spring
- April 10: In an interview on a radio talk show, Hillary Clinton compares the right wing's obsession with Whitewater with "some people's obsession with UFOs and the Hale-Bopp comet." (Washington Post)
- April 14: Jim McDougal, convicted of crimes related to his handling of Madison Guaranty, is sentenced to three years in prison. He originally faced up to 84 years in prison before agreeing to cooperate with Kenneth Starr. Starr appears at the sentencing to speak on McDougal's behalf; the two leave the courtroom arm in arm, smiling for the cameras. Starr's personal appearance may have been prompted by the statement made days earlier by Hillary Clinton calling the OIC investigation "a never-ending fictional conspiracy that honest-to-goodness reminds me of some people's obsession with UFOs." (CNN, Washington Post, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- April 14: The Starr investigators grill gay activist and former White House employee Bob Hattoy about whether he had helped find gays and lesbians employment in the Clinton administration. Democratic consultant James Carville writes, "What in the world could the relevance of such questions have been in the first place? The answer lies only in the twisted mind of the dogged inspector [Starr]." (Boston Globe/James Carville)
- April 29: Republican senator Alfonse D'Amato, who crippled his political career by conducting a year-long witch hunt of the Clintons as the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has had enough of the entire Starr/Whitewater debacle. He says the OIC's investigation "has dragged on too long.... The American public has just grown sick and tired of it." He says that Starr's credibility was destroyed by Starr's flirtation with a post at Pepperdine University, and says, "I don't have too much faith in the whole thing. ...People come up to me and say, 'Why are we still doing this?' It goes on and on and on.... It's become very politicized. People don't have any great confidence in it." (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
