|
||||||||||||||||
ISSUESRELATED STORIESReviewsFrank Rich
Interviews
Paul Krugman The Smoke MachineIn a way, it's a shame that so much of David Brock's "Blinded by the Right: The conscience of an ex- conservative" is about the private lives of our self-appointed moral guardians. Those tales will sell books, but they may obscure the important message: that the "vast right-wing conspiracy" is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality, and that it works a lot like a special- interest lobby.
Salon.com Arkansas Project CoverupSmearing David Brock Ted Olson's defenders say that former right-wing journalist David Brock had nothing to do with the Arkansas Project. But the project's own records prove they're wrong. Conservative writer David Brock received nearly $40,000 from the American Spectator's Arkansas Project, project records show, despite claims by Spectator editors that Brock had nothing to do with the controversial Clinton-bashing project.
William Safire Coverup Picks Up SteamIn an Op-Ed accusing Senate Democrats of violating the first amendment by pursuing Republican/Conservative Movement Lawyer Theodore Olson's lies about his work for the American Spectator, columnist and former Republican speechwriter William Safire equates political hit men working with tax-exempt monies to journalists. Read Safire's column. It is an excellent example of how Republicans within the mainstream press echo and reinforce the Republican/Conservative movement line using tactics like obfuscation and irrelevant comparisons.
|
ISSUE: Arkansas ProjectArkansas Project[From Consortiumnews.com,Robert Parry, May 6, 2002] David Brock & the Watergate Legacy[EXCERPT] David Brock’s tell-all Blinded by the Right parallels another account by a young man who came to Washington and found a home in Republican circles. That confessional book was Blind Ambition by Richard Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean, who described how his drive to succeed led him to join the crimes of Watergate.
This continuum of Republican attack politics from Watergate to W. is the unacknowledged back story of Brock’s book, which is its own back story to the last third of those three decades. While missing the larger historical context, Brock’s book still ranks as a valuable guidebook explaining how the conservative attack machine worked in the 1990s and who had become its key players. The book’s value in dissecting the dirty tricks – along with detailing the raging hypocrisies of many right-wing operatives – has prompted a new campaign by conservatives to discredit Brock personally and thus his book. They have denounced him as an admitted liar in the past who allegedly is lying still, a reaction reminiscent of the Republican fury directed at Dean when he shifted from helping Nixon’s Watergate cover-up to exposing it... ...Getting lost in the shouting matches about Brock’s credibility is the solid historical foundation underpinning Brock’s account. While Brock adds color and texture to the grotesque portrait of the Republican attack machine, its outlines have been known for years, reported in books, such as The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, and at a few Web sites, such as Consortiumnews.com. Brock’s experiences as a right-wing media hit man in the 1990s also didn’t occur in a historical vacuum. The genesis of the modern Right-Wing Machine dates back to the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon saw the need for an infrastructure to attack – or in his view, counter- attack – his enemies. With his chip-on-the-shoulder pugnacity, Nixon wanted to punish Vietnam War protesters and Eastern liberal Democrats who Nixon believed looked down on him. He also lashed out at Jews. Parts of Nixon’s strategy were recorded by his loyal chief of staff H.R. Haldeman whose notes were published posthumously in The Haldeman Diaries in 1994. On Sept. 12, 1970, for instance, Haldeman wrote that Nixon returned to his pet plan for creating a conservative infrastructure. That morning at Camp David, Nixon was “pushing again on [his] project of building OUR establishment in [the] press, business, education, etc.,” Haldeman wrote... ...Under Nixon’s direct supervision, a special group of operatives, known as the “Plumbers,” went to work...The Plumbers broke into the office of [Daniel] Ellsberg’s psychiatrist looking for dirt to discredit Ellsberg [who Nixon suspected of leaking the Pentagon Papers]. The Plumbers operations then merged with a broader secret operation to spy on and neutralize the Democrats before the 1972 election. The Plumbers planted electronic listening devices in the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, but the operation went awry on June 17, 1972, when the White House burglars went back in to replace malfunctioning bugs and were arrested. Nixon immediately launched a cover-up, drawing Dean and other White House officials into a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. Dean helped contain the scandal for the months before the November election, but the cover-up unraveled in 1973 and Dean warned Nixon that the cover-up was becoming a “cancer on the Presidency.” Dean later became the star witness before a Senate committee investigating Watergate. Dean detailed the criminal actions of Nixon and his inner circle. Nixon and his loyalists countered by trying to pin the Watergate blame on Dean, essentially making the same argument now being used against Brock – that since Dean had lied earlier in Watergate, his testimony about the cover-up couldn’t be trusted. Only the release of Nixon’s White House tapes, under order of the U.S. Supreme Court, made clear that Dean’s testimony was truthful and that Nixon was the one lying. On Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon resigned the Presidency. Though the evidence against Nixon was overwhelming, his followers continued to blame the “liberal” news media for hounding Nixon from office and for “losing” the Vietnam War, another charge that even Pentagon historians concluded wasn't ... Still viewing themselves as the victims, Nixon's supporters redoubled their work on building “OUR establishment.” Taking the lead was Nixon’s treasury secretary, William Simon, a Wall Street financier who also was president of the John M. Olin Foundation. In the late 1970s, Simon pulled together executives of other conservative foundations to coordinate their efforts to build a network of think tanks, media outlets and attack groups. Millions of dollars were soon flowing to conservative organizations that vied with each other for the biggest bucks by demonstrating how effectively they could undermine liberals, Democrats and other “enemies.” The tougher the attack strategies, the more likely the organizations would get fat checks from the foundations. In the 1980s, this expanding conservative apparatus gained additional strength from its close alliance with the Reagan-Bush administration. The machine’s goal was, in effect, to ensure that another Watergate didn’t happen – and to give Reagan a free hand in carrying out his military policies in Central America without fear of Vietnam War-style opposition. The conservative media highlighted favorable stories about Ronald Reagan while joining with the the administration and conservative attack groups in trying to discredit mainstream journalists who reported information that put Reagan’s policies in a negative light. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History.] When events spun out of control, as they did in fall 1986 with the disclosures that led to the Iran-contra scandal, the conservative apparatus only battled more fiercely to protect Reagan’s political flanks and contain the damage. ...Brock seized his first big opportunity: the 1991 confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas who had been nominated by President George H.W. Bush to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Given Thomas’s thin qualifications and his hard-line conservative views, he already was facing stiff opposition when a former aide, Anita Hill, testified that Thomas had subjected her to crude sexual harassment, a charge Thomas angrily denied. The Thomas confirmation hearings deteriorated even further, into a tawdry exchange of ugly charges with Republican senators depicting Hill as delusional and scaring off another potential woman witness who claimed to undergo similar experiences with Thomas. With the conservative attack apparatus in full gear, Thomas eked out a narrow victory in the Senate. Still, Thomas’s reputation was in tatters, a situation that gave Brock the career opening he needed. In an article for the conservative American Spectator, Brock trashed Anita Hill as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.” He followed that up with a best-selling book, The Real Anita Hill, which further denigrated Hill and portrayed Thomas as a wronged man. Brock skyrocketed to fame and fortune as the exemplar of conservative investigative journalism. With Bill Clinton’s electoral victory in 1992, the conservative apparatus changed roles, though not techniques. From playing an aggressive defense – attacking those perceived as threatening the Reagan-Bush agenda – the conservative machine switched to playing aggressive offense – doing all it could to destroy the Clinton Presidency... ...Though living in a relative obscurity during these years, Nixon continued to give strategic advice to Sen. Bob Dole and other Republican leaders, according to Nixon aide Monica Crowley who chronicled the last years of his life in her book, Nixon Off the Record. On the Whitewater controversy, Nixon again was egging on the Republicans. On April 13, 1994, in one of his last political remarks, only four days before the stroke that would kill him, Nixon told Crowley, “Our people must not be afraid to grab this thing and shake all of the evidence loose. Watergate was wrong. Whitewater is wrong. I paid the price; Clinton should pay the price. Our people shouldn’t let this issue go down. They mustn’t let it sink.” Though Brock might not have been aware of the lineage of the conservative attack strategy, he soon became a lead figure in the drive to settle Nixon's score. In the first year of Clinton’s Presidency, Brock cobbled together a bizarre set of allegations from state troopers who had guarded Clinton. Again writing for the American Spectator, Brock turned the tales about alleged sexual misbehavior by Bill and Hillary Clinton into another national media frenzy in December 1993. The so-called Troopergate charges – some which proved to be false or highly unlikely – smashed the modern taboo against prying into the private life of a sitting American president. Brock became a hero to the American Right...The increasingly powerful conservative apparatus was determined to oust Clinton over one charge or another. Nixon’s political legacy – mixing dirty tricks, “rat-fucking,” character assassination and cover-ups – had become the everyday tricks of the trade for America’s conservative movement...
|
RELATED STORIESMT's Scaife Foundations page
Crossfire on CNN David Brock: Ted Olson lied under oathCARVILLE: Did Mr. Olson tell the truth under oath? [about not being involved in the Arkansas Project] BROCK: He did not. He was up to his ears in the Arkansas... CARVILLE: So wait, he is the current -- so listen, he lied under oath? BROCK: He did.
Atlantic Monthly The Life and Death of The American SpectatorThe conservative magazine survived and prospered for twenty-five years before Bill Clinton came into its sights. Now the former President is rich and smiling, and the Spectator is dead.
Salon.com The Arkansas Project wasn't journalismTed Olson's defenders say the Clinton-bashing effort was protected by the First Amendment -- and besides, Olson didn't know much about it anyway. They're wrong on both counts. ...In short, the Arkansas Project was a dirty-tricks operation more than a journalistic investigation. It's easy to understand why an attorney of Ted Olson's great reputation would rather say he had no connection with such unsavory people and practices. But is he telling the truth?
Salon.com Potential Bombshell:Did Movement Lawyer Theodore Olson, Nominated Now for Socilitor General, Engineer a Coverup of Richard Scaife's Notorious Arkansas Project? "In perhaps the summary's most controversial allegation, Brock [David, former writer 'hit man' for the Spectator, in a an interview with congressional Democratic staff] is said to have "suggested that Mr. Olson helped 'engineer' the firing of the Spectator's original publisher, Ronald Burr, who urged an open investigation of payments to David Hale." According to the summary, Brock told Democratic staffers that the credibility of Hale, represented by Olson and the key witness against the Clintons in the Whitewater investigation, would have been damaged if it had been revealed that he received money from the Arkansas Project."
The American Spectator's funny moneyThe conservative magazine wanted to bring down President Clinton with its Scaife-fundedArkansas Project. Instead it may have opened itself to charges of tax fraud
|
||||||||||||||
