Editorials: Banes of Existence / Integrity, Anyone?
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Banes of Existence Last December there must have been moments when House Speaker Newt Gingrich wished that he simply did not exist. At some chill...
...That is how the media work in this great land of First Amendment derring-do...
...Apparently the American media deduced that the story did not exist...
...The redoubtable Sunday Telegraph of London reported on December 15, "The inner circle is beginning to crack...
...After a few minutes they claimed that they had heard enough...
...The first was Clinton's mother...
...They would call for the Speaker's resignation...
...That was the last of it...
...But apparently, The American Spectator does not exist either...
...has decided to spill some beans in the next edition of The American Spectator...
...At some chill moment he or his advisers arrived at the decision that such were the discrepancies in testimony he had given over the years about some history course that he had taught back in Podunk that now he must come clean...
...As we go to press, Watkins' revelations have been available to the national media for more than a month, and neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post have even reported his break with the administration, to say nothing of commenting on his revelations...
...He also hired a pretty young woman named Catherine Cornelius who soon attracted the president's eye, began traveling with him, and suddenly (to Watkins' surprise) was being identified by the credulous press as the president's distant cousin—some distance...
...Surely, as Speaker Gingrich contemplated the impending soap opera, he wished he could slip away into oblivion at least for a few weeks...
...His next appearance in public was during testimony on Capitol Hill regarding the Travel Office firings...
...According to the Telegraph, Watkins in ten hours of tapes explains that Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered the Travel Office firings which she has been lying about to federal investigators...
...For a few moments on December 17 it appeared that David Watkins and The American Spectator might actually exist...
...Yes, the Democrats—the party of Dan Rostenkowski, Jim Wright, the Clintons, the Hubbells, the Tuckers, the McDougals, and so many others—would demand probity in high places...
...Throughout the 1980's he was an Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...Who cares about the financing of a Clinton campaign...
...David Watkins...
...The Democrats would shriek...
...16 February 1997 • The American Spectator He does exist on talk radio, however...
...A public apology would have to be made immediately...
...I know that reporters from one of the networks asked to listen to the Watkins tapes...
...probably because, as we all know, Watkins does not exist...
...That was when a reporter (probably British) at a press briefing asked White House spokesman Mike McCurry about the Watkins revelations...
...In the first few weeks of the administration, when the newly elected president got into a row with White House operators whom he suspected of listening in on his calls, it fell to Watkins to arrange a new telephone system...
...important factor in the Clinton campaigns...
...He signed every check and managed bridge loans...
...But John Dean was a real person...
...Watkins became best known for firing government employees of the White House Travel Office...
...Such a wish is not all that fantastical...
...Naturally the networks have not reported on Watkins, but then they onlyknow what they get from the Times and the Post...
...Watkins does exist in Europe...
...Watkins' revelations of what it was like to serve in the Clinton White House and to know the Clintons for twenty years were of course published in these pages last month...
...In the Clinton White House, Watkins first served his old pal as assistant to the president for management and administration...
...Watkins notes that at Foster's funeral Hillary was separated from her husband and the Foster family during a private reception...
...He was in the headlines repeatedly until he was seen using a presidential helicopter while on a golf outing...
...He talks about his friendship with Vince Foster and the strange things that went on around the White House just before Foster's death...
...Then the president canned him...
...He has been a friend of Bill Clinton since the 197o's...
...44...
...Now he does not exist...
...Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, Michael Reagan, Gordon Liddy, and scores of other talk-radio hosts have been discussing Watkins' revelations for days...
...The media—that sanctum sanctorum of journalistic ethics that is about to enlist the peerless literary skills of George Stephanopoulos — would serve as trans-continental echo chamber for the Democrats' expostulations...
...In 1992 he was deputy campaign manager and chief of operations...
...It never was...
...Marsha Scott is unveiled as yet another of the president's lovers, and one with extraordinary influence in the White House...
...It is the first time that a member of the so-called 'Arkansas Group' has broken ranks and agreed to talk on the record...
...There are people in American public life who, of a sudden, do not exist...
...David Watkins does not exist, and we reporters certainly cannot ask him about how he financed all those Clinton campaigns in the past, can we...
...The president's chief censor responded, "I don't have any comment on that article...
...He confirms assertions by former Clinton employees that there was a longstanding love affair between Hillary and Foster, the highest-ranking suicide since Secretary of War James Forrestal...
...Their story would be broadcast on the evening news...
...and on the night of Clinton's election, after the governor acknowledged his victory on the steps of the Old State House, Watkins was the second person Clinton hugged and kissed...
...Consider former White House Director of Administration David Watkins...
...Millions of Americans have heard Watkins being identified as the Clintons' John Dean...
...He snitched on Richard Nixon...
...At the moment Speaker Gingrich made that decision, surely he foresaw that all hell was going to break loose...
Vol. 30 • February 1997 • No. 2
