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:
August
August 1997
- August: CIA paramilitary squads begin entering Afghanistan. (CCR)
- August: As part of the Balanced Budget Act that Clinton signs into law, CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) is enacted. CHIP provides insurance coverage to low-income children, with monies provided by the federal government and administered and augmented by the various states, on average around $3 for every state dollar spent. Most states set a ceiling for recipient families at around 200% of the poverty level, though some states set the ceiling higher in order to cover more children. Texas, under Governor George W. Bush, is a different story. Bush successfully lobbies to keep the ceiling at the far lower rate of 150%, thereby denying 200,000 poor Texas children health insurance. Bush also backs the requirement that families apply separately for CHIP and Medicaid -- as journalist Paul Waldman explains, "the concern is that too many poor families would apply for CHIP and find out that they were eligible for Medicaid, meaning that the whole family, not just the children, could be insured. If you made them apply separately then the extra burden of red tape would keep many from applying following through. With the presidential race approaching, Bush's people were reportedly concerned that if too many poor families were given health insurance, his presidential-primary opponents would charge that he wasn't successful in reducing the rolls of all forms of public assistance. All politicians are faced with choices between doing the right thing and maximizing their own political advantage. The choice that Bush made -- leaving a couple of hundred thousand poor families without health insurance for the sake of heading off a hypothetical attack in a primary debate -- was particularly coldhearted." While fighting to keep poor children uninsured, Bush simultaneously rammed through a $45 million tax break to owners of low-producing oil wells in Texas, most of which were owned by Exxon. "There's a lot of people hurting," says Bush. In the 2000 debates with Al Gore, Bush will trumpet Texas's record of insuring poor children, telling Gore and the viewers "we care about our people in Texas." (Paul Waldman)
- August: Susan McDougal is moved to the infamous Los Angeles "Twin Towers" facility for seven weeks. She is kept in solitary confinement, under such extreme circumstances that the ACLU will later term it "cruel and unusual punishment." The ACLU, with lawyer Mark Geragos, files a motion to have her transferred back to a federal prison, and calls a press conference to condemn the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for treating her so poorly. Two days later she is moved to a detention center in Los Angeles. McDougal did not initially believe that Starr and the OIC were responsible for where and how she was jailed, but she has come to believe otherwise. She notes that the OIC allowed her ex-husband James McDougal, who cooperated with Starr's investigation, to choose which facility he would spend his jail time in. She also notes that realtor Chris Wade, who had first contacted James McDougal about the Whitewater property, had been hounded by the OIC for two years, and finally managed to convict him of bankruptcy fraud on an infraction so obscure that his attorneys were unable to find another instance of it being enforced. Wade steadfastly refused to cooperate with the OIC, and was told that if he didn't start talking, he would be sent to one of the worst prisons in the country. His wife was informed by an OIC agent that "the better his memory, the better his jail location would be." Despite OIC denials, it is apparent that the commission had plenty of power over where and how a prisoner is incarcerated, and they routinely use that power to coerce people to testify for them. While in the Los Angeles prison, Susan's scoliosis is found to have gotten much worse. (Susan McDougal)
- August: Ann Coulter tells a TV Guide interviewer, "I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't." (Huffington Post)
- August 11: After months of argument and debate among Newsweek's senior editors, the magazine finally runs the long-simmering story by reporter Michael Isikoff alleging multiple sexual misconducts by Bill Clinton. The story, detailed above, is titled "A Twist in Jones v. Clinton." Isikoff, whose primary source is disgruntled former Bush secretary Linda Tripp, writes of an unwanted sexual advance made towards political volunteer Kathleen Willey. Clinton's attorney Robert Bennett publicly derides Tripp's credibility, and Willey denies the allegations. (Marvin Kalb, Executive Intelligence Review, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- Mid-August: The Jones and Clinton legal teams reach a tentative settlement agreement. Jones will forgo her demand for a public apology and drop the case; in return, Clinton (rather, Clinton's legal team and insurance policy) will pay her $700,000, the full amount originally demanded in the lawsuit. Clinton will publicly state that he engaged in no "sexual or improper conduct" against her, and would express his regret at the "damage" done by the episode to Jones and her family. The official lawyers for Jones, Gilbert Davis and Joseph Cammarata, view the agreement as a "complete victory." They know that Jones's case is very weak, that they cannot prove, as Jones asserts, any damage to Jones's reputation or status as an Arkansas state employee as a result of the so-called encounter. Her claims of defamation and false imprisonment have already been thrown out. Even if the jury finds in her favor, the likelihood of any damage award will be far lower than the Clinton offer.
- The two lawyers are shocked at Jones's refusal to take the settlement. Jones's husband, Steven, has always viewed the lawsuit less as a possibility of making money, but as a means to punish Clinton, for whom he harbors an ideological and personal hatred. And Jones's overbearing spokesperson, Susan Carpenter-McMillan, wants nothing to do with any deal; like Steven Jones, she wants to publicly humiliate Clinton. And there are the "elves." This coterie of undercover legal advisors, all hard-core conservatives, never saw the case as anything but a method of humiliating Bill Clinton and perhaps having impeachment proceedings brought against him.
- Carpenter-McMillan, a recent addition to Jones's circle, has always been viewed as trouble by the lawyers. Carpenter-McMillan took the advice of a religious-right talk show host in 1994 and struck up a friendship with Jones. Originally the lawyers liked the idea of a "minder" for Jones, who has a penchant for making inarticulate and embarrassing statements to the press; nor do they like Steven's own bent for making badly informed political tirades against Clinton. The two lawyers don't anticipate that the friendship between Jones and Carpenter-McMillan will ultimately eclipse their own authority. Jones idealizes her new mentor. Carpenter-McMillan is wealthy, sophisticated, and articulate, a product of Beverly Hills, not rural Arkansas. Moreover, she is a veteran spokesperson for the antiabortion movement, given to absolutist positions and deriding her opponents as "lesbians" and "antimoral parasites." In 1990, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the outspoken, moralistic Carpenter-McMillan had had not one, but two abortions herself, the second in 1983 while she led a local anti-abortion movement. She defends herself by saying her actions are her own business, and that after 13 years, she had all but forgotten even having an abortion. Her credibility as an antiabortion leader shot, she formed a "conservative feminist" organization, bankrolled by her wealthy husband, and lands a job as a television talk-show host. She gave up that job for the chance to use Paula Jones to vault herself to national prominence. Reporters love the bleached-blonde's feisty personality, but Davis and Cammarata find her penchant for calling Clinton "that little slimeball," among other characterizations, threatening to any chance of a settlement. Behind the lawyers' backs, she urges Jones to hold out for more money and "a real apology." In 1997, Carpenter-McMillan took over the adminstration of the Paula Jones Legal Fund, a for-profit outfit that collected $250,000 from donors who believed that they were paying for Jones's legal defense. Eventually Carpenter-McMillan parlays her status into a slot as co-host of CNN's Equal Time. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- August 16: Monica Lewinsky again tries, without success, to land a job in the White House, meeting with Clinton, who rejects her sexual overtures and tells her, "I'm trying to be good." Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Lewinsky, her "friend" Linda Tripp calls Tony Snow, the former Bush White House aide and conservative columnist, and asks him to put her in touch with literary agent Lucianne Goldberg again. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- August 17: Problems continue with Iraqi inspections; days before, an inspector is assaulted while photographing unauthorized movement at a suspect site. Other inspectors, attempting to enter a site blocked by Iraq, take video of files being moved, documents being burned and ashes being dumped into a nearby river. Inspectors are denied access to three more sites deemed "Presidential sites." (UN/Electric Venom)
- August 29: Angered and frustrated by the sabotage of their efforts to win a settlement for Paula Jones, her official lawyers, Cammarata and Davis, inform their client of their intent to withdraw from representing her when the case goes to trial in September unless Jones accepts the settlement offer from the Clinton team. "We cannot ethically pursue expensive, time-consuming litigation where a settlement now would achieve every legitimate goal, and where continued litigation would be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as primarily a matter of political hatred or spite," they write. The two have always believed that Jones has told the truth about Clinton's sexual harassment, and that her motives were aboveboard. They had sought to keep the right-wing anti-Clinton forces from infecting the case with their own partisan agenda. They regard Jones's spokesman, Susan Carpenter-McMillan, as a self-serving ideologue who does not have Jones's best interests at heart. They have been bitterly disappointed. Both now believe that the case was always about politics and the destruction of Bill Clinton, not about justice for a perceived wrong. Carpenter-McMillan triumphantly announces their departure and says that until further notice, her husband, Bill McMillan, will represent Jones. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
- Late August: Linda Tripp begins secretly taping phone conversations between herself and Monica Lewinsky. (Executive Intelligence Review)
