" It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. "
??
Hitch's own link leads, via wikipedia, to the source <link> which says:
"In January, Clinton reached an agreement with independent counsel Robert Ray that suspended his Arkansas law license for five years and ordered the former president to pay $25,000 in fines to that state's bar officials" and "The Arkansas Supreme Court's Committee on Professional Conduct initially called for Clinton's disbarment last year, saying he lied about his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky."
and <link> which says:
"Clinton settled the Arkansas case three days before he was due to answer 42 questions posed by the committee -- including several on whether he gave false or misleading statements over his relationship with Lewinsky."
Neither of which gives me the impression that "what he actually lied about ... was the women", or in fact that he was actually "disbarred" by Arizona due to his misdeeds determined by a hearing; as distinct from agreeing to have his Arkansas license suspended as part of settling the case (not something one would typically fight to avoid, were one not planning on practicing law in Arkansas).
As for the women, "In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton" (as apparently detailed in the herein self-promoted book):
Kathleen Willey has an entire appendix of the Starr report devoted to why they couldn't use her testimony, culminating with "Linda Tripp's testimony that Willey had a previous romantic interest in President Clinton (and appeared to view his alleged advances positively) ... [Willey's] testimony at trial would be subject to further challenge based on the differences between her deposition and grand jury statements, as well as her acknowledgement of false statements to the Office of the Independent Counsel."
Broaddrick kept silent about her "rape" through seven years and two presidential elections, her sworn affidavit denying the allegation ("During the 1992 Presidential campaign there were unfounded rumors and stories circulated that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late seventies. Newspaper and tabloid reporters hounded me and my family, seeking corroboration of these tales. I repeatedly denied the allegations and requested that my family's privacy be respected. These allegations are untrue and I had hoped that they would no longer haunt me, or cause further disruption to my family"), her civil deposition denying the allegation, her refusal to talk to David Brock about the rumors at the height of Whitewater mania, her refusal to talk to the LA Times about the rumors, and a 1990 visit from Clinton to the nursing home she owned, which she called the paper to publicize, before her 1999 TV appearance.
Why had she kept silent?
"'This woman [Hillary Clinton], this little, soft spoken - pardon me for the phrase - dowdy woman that seemed very unassertive, took a hold of my hand and started to squeeze it.' Broaddrick recalled, 'I could have passed out at that moment. . . She was just holding onto my hand because I had started to turn away from her. And she held onto my hand.' This time Hillary spoke with emphasis, telling Broaddrick, 'Do you understand, [I mean] everything that you do.' Then, with a catch in her voice, the Clinton accuser told Hannity, 'That's the first time I became afraid of that woman.' Broaddrick said she's been haunted by her encounter with Mrs. Clinton ever since, and remains certain that Hillary knew about what had happened with her husband."
-Interview of Juanita Broaddrick by Sean Hannity, Jun. 10, 2003
I don't know which is less credible; the terror of hand-crusher Hillary, or the description of Hillary as "soft-spoken ... very unassertive". But both together? It could more easily be interpreted as the paranoid over-reading of a perfectly bland political remark, than as a veiled threat by the ruler of a vast underground conspiracy which would stop at nothing.
Gennifer Flowers? In fact Clinton did not deny a one-night stand with her in his deposition: "The answer to your question, if the definition is section one there in the first piece of paper you gave me, is yes ... once [in] 1977", and repeats the admission in his autobiography. But despite this damaging admission, he was still concealing a 12 year affair as Flowers claims?
The week after her story, for which she was paid $150,000, was printed, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter wrote: "Flowers claims she met Clinton at the Excelsior Hotel in 1979 or 1980. The hotel didn’t open until late 1982.... Flowers claims to have been Miss Teen Age America, 1967. She wasn’t—that year, or any other".
According to "The Hunting of the President", "Flowers never produced a single paragraph, valentine, or birthday card as evidence of her twelve-year affair with Clinton; no witness ever came forward who had seen them together. Indeed, she would eventually write an entire book, 'Passion and Betrayal', without stating a specific time and place where she and her famous lover were together ... Her resume falsely proclaimed her a graduate of a fashionable Dallas prep school she’d never attended. It also listed a University of Arkansas nursing degree she’d never earned and membership in a sorority that had never heard of her. Her agent told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that contrary to her claims, Flowers had never opened for comedian Rich Little. A brief gig on the 'Hee Haw' television program had come to a bad end, the agent would later confirm, when Flowers simply vanished for a couple of weeks with a man she’d met in a Las Vegas casino—and then concocted a tale about having been kidnapped. She had never been Miss Teenage America. Even her 'twin sister Genevieve' turned out to be purely a figment of Flowers’ imagination.”
Of course, we all know that Clinton's initial denials of "sexual relations" with Lewinsky were predicated on oral sex not coming under that category (which, oddly enough, the prosecution independently corroborated with their definition <link>) but, given that Lewinsky herself was denying any sexual activity with him at the time <link> this comes under the heading of a couple mutually covering up their relationship, rather than Hitch's apparent interpretation as Clinton's slandering her, demeaning her, sullying her reputation, or whatever, as she points her finger at him as her despoiler. In fact, it would seem that "mistreatment of Lewinsky" might more correctly be attributed to such things as Starr's threatening to drag her mother in to testify against her or be charged with perjury, unless she confessed. (I wonder; when he read "The Scarlet Letter", did Hitch side with the town elders, that for the good of the community Hester must be pressured to reveal the name of her lover, who hath so foully defiled her?)
It's not necessary to establish that Clinton never strayed in order to see that there is more than a little reasonable doubt regarding Hitch's assertion that Clinton, the rake, left this trail of raped and abused women, whom he then vilely and falsely smeared and maligned in order to cover up his foul doings, and that that was in fact the core of his legal transgression; let alone that he was aided and abetted in this by his wife, who therefore is guilty of appalling misogyny. Oh well, I suspect I'll have to buy the book to hear the convincing arguments in favor of that case.
