On the Prowl
"On the Prowl" Powell Power Senator Bob Dole may make Colin Powell an offer he can't refuse. With opinion polls showing only a Dole-Powell ticket beating Clinton-Gore in November, Dole campaign...
...Sarbanes is an alumnus of the high-powered firm of Venable, Baetje & Howard, Baltimore's answer to Rose...
...But sources within the campaign now say she was pushed, in response to pressures from Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and donors tied to that organization angry at Mr...
...Likewise Senate investigators have learned of a previously uninvestigated vein of hard documentary evidence that could impeach much of the testimony of Hillary Clinton, Susan Thomases, Maggie Williams, Bernard Nussbaum, and others who have testified about events surrounding the death of Vince Foster...
...The American Spectator May r 99 6 15...
...Jim McDermott of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee—the same committee that recommended the appointment of a special counsel to look into Speaker Gingrich...
...Feel the Rage The Senate Whitewater investigation will remain on hold until its budget is reauthorized, which may be a good thing given a spate of surprises that have committee lawyers scrambling to catch up...
...Dodd and his Democratic fundraisers have had a miserable time of it raising money for congressional campaigns this year, and were counting on Clinton's perceived rising popularity to give them several months of big-money giving...
...Christopher Dodd tried to change Clinton's mind, to no avail...
...He is said to have apologized to Burke for having to put politics ahead of friendship, but promised Burke the plum job of White House legislative director, if he is victorious—and if she keeps a low profile . Hill-Rolling Filibusterers Senate Democrats who filibustered to block the White-water committee had their own reasons for shutting down the show...
...Meanwhile, Sheila Burke, Dole's most trusted Senate aide, isn't going anywhere, which is good and bad news for her critics...
...Jost Off the Presses As many Republicans have long suspected, the supposedly self-appointed Gingrich hit man, Steve Jost, a political consultant who specializes in raising money, has been acting under the direction of congressional Democrats...
...How can McDermott be a fair judge of Gingrich if he is beholden to one of Newt's chief accusers...
...Borking Starr The media drumbeat against Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's alleged partisanship and conflicts-of-interest continues...
...After several spectacular scandals in Dodd's home state, U.S...
...One of his targets for alleged influence peddling was the Connecticut Democratic state senate president John B. Larson, who was running for governor with Dodd's backing...
...Sources say Mayer has been calling people, postulating wild conspiracy theories, and then slyly asking the subject if they will deny the baseless charges if they were to appear in print...
...No Sharing On the advice of campaign strategist Dick Morris, who wants his boy to focus on his own race, Bill Clinton will not campaign heavily for House and Senate candidates in the fall, nor will he help them raise funds...
...On paper for 1995, they claim to have raised a little more than $n million nationally, but DNC sources say $9 million is a more realistic if still inflated figure...
...Testimony about conflicts of interest at the Rose Law Firm must bring a strong déjà vu to Maryland's Paul Sarbanes, the lead Democrat on the Whitewater committee...
...Some Dolers worry that the pledge offer, especially if it were made, rejected, and leaked, would make their man look desperate...
...Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, second only to Sarbanes in obstructing the Whitewater committee, also understands the importance of keeping financial investigations from going too far...
...Whitewater reopens a lot of questions about the savings and loan debacle, and it wasn't just the Keating Five who made the Senate a major accomplice in that disaster...
...With opinion polls showing only a Dole-Powell ticket beating Clinton-Gore in November, Dole campaign insiders are saying that the deal that could be Powell's for the asking would look like this: Dole would be willing to sign a written pledge, which would be made public, that he would serve only one term, thus leaving a Vice President Powell the Republican frontrunner for z000...
...Jost has assisted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in setting up a Gingrich "war room...
...In 1987, when the Venable firm was raising 14 May 1996 • The American Spectator campaign funds for Sarbanes, it paid $27 million in a legal malpractice suit (then the second highest out-of-court settlement on record) for its role in fostering the Maryland savings and loan crisis...
...The new appointee, Christopher Droney, is the brother of Clinton's state campaign chairman...
...Chief of staff Leon Panetta, adviser George Stephanopoulos, and party co-chairman Sen...
...Will for what he said about them during the Iowa campaign...
...Larson resumed his campaign, but the voters made their own judgment...
...Meanwhile, they continue to insist that Dole, evidently undeterred by Pat Buchanan and the leaders of the Christian Coalition, remains sold on pro-choice New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman as his second choice...
...Starr's ethics counsel is Sam Dash, the liberal Democrat of Watergate fame, but that has not deterred critics...
...The two biggest shockers: On the first day of retail sales...
...But until the committee is reauthorized, subpoenas that would force the release of this data held by a private computer firm cannot be served...
...Sarbanes carried this spirit to the national S&L crisis...
...Why bother laying the elaborate groundwork for discrediting Starr unless he is about to strike at his targets...
...Starr has also drawn fire for contributing to his firm's political action committee (though he has no say in where the money goes) and for thinking about (yes, thinking about) helping out Paula Jones with a brief in her sexual harassment case against the president...
...At press time, there were pieces in the works at USA Today (the legal correspondents there work closely with PAW), the Arkansas Times, a left-wing weekly that has led the charge against Starr in Little Rock, and the New Yorker, where writer Jane Mayer is up to her old tricks...
...Clinton's decision could not come at a better time for Republicans...
...One of his first decisions was to close the Larson case...
...Morris showed Clinton polling numbers in such states as Illinois, Michigan, California, and New York that convinced the president that any effort to help lesser candidates would have little impact on their chances while setting back his own campaigning and fundraising...
...Two Women Dole campaign staffers were shocked by the sudden resignation of campaign communications director Mari Maseng Will, wife of columnist George Will...
...He also worked for former Kentucky Rep...
...The latest crop of stories, all of which rehash the same charges while adding nothing new, began with a piece in the Legal Times that appears to have been instigated by Eliot Mincberg of People for the American Way, a left-wing lobby group heavily backed by Hollywood money that led the war against Republican nominees in the 1980's (of which Starr was one...
...More than a year ago, Dole promised to give Burke a high-profile role in the '96 campaign, but that was before she was pummeled by conservative politicians and journalists as too liberal...
...Both Dabrowski and the task force fell victim to Clinton's nationwide purge of U.S...
...ON THE PROWL Powell Power Senator Bob Dole may make Colin Powell an offer he can't refuse...
...attorneys...
...Larson lost badly in the 1994 Democratic primary to an insurgent candidate, who in turn lost to the Republican...
...One Venable partner pushed through a regulation that made it easier for crooked thrift owners to loot millions at the same time that he was personal lawyer for one of the worst of the villains...
...In 1986, he voted twice on the Senate Banking Committee to hamstring the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, preventing an effective attack on the thrift high-flyers, who happened to be big contributors to Democratic campaign committees...
...Chris Perkins, currently serving a prison sentence for check kiting...
...2, Starr has been criticized for o representing the tobacco industry in a class-action suit in which several federal oagencies, including the ton Justice Department, have a keen interest...
...Citing family reasons, Maseng Will quietly quit in late March, after her boss had sewn up the GOP nomination...
...She sat out the primary campaign, and in a meeting in early March was told by Dole she also would play no role in the fall campaign...
...March 15, more than 70 copies of Blood Sport, James Stewart's chronicling of the Clintons' Arkansas dealings, disappeared from Capitol Hill bookstores into the hands of Whitewater committee staffers...
...Dodd showed whose side he was on in 1992 when he denounced the "Gestapo" methods of federal bank regulators trying to clean up the S&L mess and, like Clinton himself in New Hampshire, blamed them for the regional recession...
...So far Republicans have raised close to $22 million for their congressional candidates...
...After his mediocre performance in Iowa, Dole delayed MasengWill's departure until it would not appear that she was jumping ship...
...The state of Maryland had sued for $45o million, charging Venable with a conflict in representing both the organization that insured and regulated state savings and loans, and several S&Ls that were ripping off the system...
...What they found sent chairman Alfonse D'Amato into a rage: citations suggesting Stewarthad in his possession White House documents that have been under Senate subpoena for more than eighteen months and never delivered...
...Within a few weeks came the Nation (whose piece was duly cited in the Sunday New York Times review of Blood Sport) and the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal...
...All of which raises an interesting question: Do Starr's enemies know something we don't...
...Attorney Albert Dabrowski in late 1992 announced he was forming a financial fraud task force...
...In 1992 and 1994, Jost worked as a fundraiser for Rep...
Vol. 29 • May 1996 • No. 5
