Government by Investigation

...A few minutes after 8, National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger was called at home by a subordinate...

...B-52 bombers were already headed toward their targets...

...Among the missing were seven Spanish and three British subjects, however, and that added an international aspect to Pinochet's repression...

...Last April 27 he told his favorite charity, the GOPAC fund-raising group, "I will never again, as long as I am Speaker, make a speech without commenting" on the Clinton scandal...

...In 1955, during the Joseph McCarthy era, civil libertarian Alan Barth wrote a book called Government by investigation...

...All that money and all that energy has been diverted from legislation to government by investigation...

...The earth tremors revealed a problem larger than a leader who called it wrong about impeachment as an attractive issue and the consequent inevitability of continued Republican realignment...

...In the case of Chile, though, the U.S...

...Responding to Democratic Counsel Abbe Lowell, Starr defended the objectivity of his impeachment report by saying, "We are guided by Sam Dash, who had strong views on that, who expressed those views...

...The President gave up the best chance he may ever have to attack Iraq with support of the international community in return for yet another promise—already violated—to comply with weapons inspection...

...Were it not for CNN, the bombs might well have been raining down on Iraq before President Clinton knew that President Saddam Hussein had said he was ready to yield on weapons inspection...

...The House of Lords, the ultimate British appellate authority, has upheld the detention...

...At the White House the joke dujour was, "Our Monica strategy certainly worked...

...The very next day, Clinton backtracked, saying he had no intention of normalizing relations with the dictator...

...In 1970, Secretary Kissinger said after Allende's election, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people...

...Some clichés from crises past were dusted off for the November Iraq crisis...

...Then I was going to explain that I was not talking about President Clinton, but about Thomas Jefferson, now conclusively found to have fathered at least one child by his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, who happened to be the half-sister of his deceased wife...

...Clinton went to the brink of war with Saddam, but who blinked is arguable...

...In the next half-hour, while monitoring CNN for details, Clinton consulted his security team by telephone, including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, airborne on her way to Asia...

...Well, sort of endorsed it...

...And, as Dash said in his letter of resignation, he considered Starr's conduct an unlawful intrusion on the House's impeachment process...

...That line was quickly dropped as counterproductive, however, because it would leave Saddam with no incentive to comply...

...At 8:45, with 15 minutes to go, the President called the Pentagon with orders to delay —later to abort—the attack...

...Hundreds of lawsuits were filed on their behalf without result...

...The actual decision on allowing extradition proceedings rests with Home Secretary lack Straw, and at this writing is scheduled to be made after a hearing on December 11...

...In 1962, President John F. Kennedy had the luxury of six days to deal with the Cuban missile crisis before the public became aware of it...

...That leaves the Administration in the position of having to go to the brink periodically and see who blinks...

...Never was there a more dramatic example of the "CNN effect" than on Saturday, November 14...

...She said blacks have long believed there was an extended affair between the author of the Declaration of Independence and a slave woman who did not share the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

...It is not clear how much credence the United States gave to that assessment, but there is some question whether Washington is really ready for revolution in Iraq and the chaos that might follow...

...He argued that "the most ruthless form of tyranny is legislative tyranny," and because legislators accept no individual responsibility, the result can be "the most reckless form of collective irresponsibility...

...In early October, as the House prepared to follow the Speaker's dictate and vote to open an impeachment inquiry, the polls were saying that the electorate would more likely than not vote against a Representative who voted for impeachment...

...Officials will tell you they often learn of important developments on CNN before they hear about them from U.S...

...Pinochet was certainly a dictator, but—at first at least— President Richard M. Nixon's and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's kind of dictator...

...What Republicans face in the next few years is a possibly bruising debate about moving toward the center, where New Democrat Bill Clinton has long been, because that is where the votes are...

...Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Government by Investigation The House Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry may have done some harm to President Bill Clinton's prestige, but it has damaged the prestige of Congress as well...

...Frequently, because of what citizens are seeing on television, policies must be improvised instantly...

...embassies or the Central Intelligence Agency...

...Pinochet, emblem of an era when the U.S...

...At Spain's request, the British arrested him and held him for extradition, as provided for in the Geneva genocide convention and the European convention on terrorism...

...Starr Dashed Kenneth Starr's 12-hour presentation to the House Judiciary Committee on November 19 produced one big surprise...

...Chile, like Guatemala and Nicaragua, was a country where the United States was willing to support, or even install, a dictatorial regime as long as it was reliably anti-Communist...

...To the professed dismay of his American sponsors, he presided over the execution or disappearance of at least 3,000 Chileans...

...One looks at the way Congress has attempted to deal with scandals of this era...

...It will be interesting to watch the GOP struggle to reshape itself in the post-Gingrich era...

...A hypocrite...

...That is not likely to happen today...

...Livingston, I presume—that is, Representative Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana—will be elected Speaker of the House come January 3. But I do not presume this will end the internal strife among Republicans touched off by their setback in the midterm election and the abrupt departure of Speaker Newt Gingrich...

...It has raised the perennial issue of how effective Congress can be in dealing with difficult problems of governing...

...Berger rushed to the White House, arriving at 8:15...

...Why should a party feel so insecure when it has won five of the last eight Presidential elections and controls the Congress plus 31 state houses...

...It has given us, aside from Kenneth Starr's $40 million pursuit of the President, the naming of prosecutors to investigate such petty offenses by Cabinet officers as understating payments to an ex-mistress and accepting free football tickets...

...Like President George Bush having to send troops to protect the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1991 after television showed their suffering...

...That has given us an institution spreading across all three branches of government and basically accountable to none...

...He privatized social security, introduced free-market reforms and showed little patience with opponents...

...He had said publicly, though, that if ever the Independent Counsel rejected his advice on an issue of ethics, he would resign...

...Curiously enough, Jefferson wrote in 1791 that "deep-rooted prejudices" against blacks will "produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other...

...Watergate provided the impetus for campaign funding reform, which gave us the innovation of "soft money," vastly expanding the abuse of money in politics...

...Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and now Chile, are examples of reaching across borders to enforce treaties on genocide, terrorism and human rights...

...Watergate also led to the concept of Special Prosecutor—later Independent Counsel—meant to relieve the Attorney General of possible conflict of interest in investigating high Administration officials...

...Our global village is also a global intercom for communication among leaders...

...Clinton has publicly endorsed the toppling of Saddam Hussein...

...His ambivalence was first shown in January 1993, a week before his inauguration, when he said that "if he [Hussein] wants a different relationship with the United States, all he has to do is change his behavior...

...Gingrich authorized a pre-election blitz of TV ads focusing on the President's character...

...Because many Republicans came to realize that "values" do not replace a concrete agenda, and that a zealous minority is not a majority...

...Working as a $400 an hour ethics consultant, capped at $118,000 a year, Dash had often defended Starr against conflict of interest and other charges...

...For Dash, who helped to draft the Independent Counsel statute, had strenuously objected to Starr's appearing before the Judiciary Committee in an accusatory role...

...And, if you're like me, you will worry a little bit when powerful people make snap decisions, trying to keep up with the information curve...

...What was exposed was an underlying San Andreas fault line between Republicans divided roughly—sometimes very roughly—between social conservatives and economic conservatives, between those who would sacrifice anything for a moral principle and those who would rise above principle to where the voters are...

...Brinksmanship" was one, referring to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' proclaimed willingness in 1956 to go to the edge of nuclear war in order to cow the Communist adversary...

...The attack was set to "go" at 9 a.m...

...A little history on what led up to DDay (Debacle Day) for Gingrich may be in order...

...has been strangely reticent...

...The GOP After Newt Mr...

...Suggesting that he had been guided by Dash was either misleading or a serious mistake...

...He contrasted this with the more neutral stance of Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski in 1974...

...He talked of strengthening our political support "to make sure that the opposition—or, to do what we can to make the opposition a more effective voice...

...And because the "dehumanization of blacks, which began with slavery, haunts us to this very day, distorting our historical perspective...

...Who Blinked...

...Cold War Leftover In recent times there has been more state-sponsored killing within borders than across borders...

...Part of the Family I planned the following cute opening for this concluding section: "An investigative reporter broke the story of the President and his sexual liaison...

...Pinochet is part of the legacy of the Cold War...

...But, ah, there is something new...

...Think about the communications age we live in and the way nail-biting officials must make fateful decisions without time to think...

...A zealous Spanish magistrate, who spent more than two years tracking the aging ex-dictator, saw his chance when Pinochet turned up in London for a minor operation...

...In the interest of humanitarian intervention, the international community has found it necessary to place limits on the sanctity of national sovereignty...

...In the words of Walter Lippmann, a columnist of another time, "Since it is impossible for assemblies to govern a country, they exercise their usurped power by preventing the Executive from governing...

...For a billion dollars or so each time...

...Orlando Patterson of Harvard, also an African-American, wrote in the New York Times that he now feels less alienated from Jefferson, whom blacks will come to see as "part of the family...

...He said the best way to address the Iraqi threat is "through the government in Baghdad," hastily adding, "a new government...

...Or did he not see a sexual relationship with a woman he owned as a matter of "deep-rooted prejudices...

...That is what I planned, until a friend of mine told me I was missing the real story...

...CNN correspondent Brent Sadler was on the air from Baghdad with word from an Iraqi official that Saddam had responded "positively" to an overnight letter from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan appealing to him to let the weapons inspectors come back...

...troops having to be pulled out of Somalia after television showed an American airman's body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu...

...Now it is "extremist...

...Or, in the words of an older authority, "All the king's horses and all the king's men, they marched up the hill and they marched down again...

...An attentive listener to the President's brief televised appearance before reporters this past November 15 could hear how, short of sleep, he made revealing verbal slips...

...embraced what were called "moderately repressive dictatorships," has become an emblem of the era where we must deal with the bitter fruits of "moderate" repression...

...During the week that Hussein was proclaiming his defiance, Kuwait's Deputy Chief of Staff, General Fahad al-Amir, flew to Washington, bringing word that Iraq was on the verge of a revolution— which, he said, might be triggered by an American air strike...

...More recently, in March of last year, Secretary Albright said the sanctions would stay on as long as Saddam Hussein was in power...

...Eastern Standard Time...

...General Augusto Pinochet came to power in a military coup in 1973 after the CIA organized a campaign to destabilize the Left-leaning, yet democratically elected, Salvador Allende...

...Or U.S...

...I know now what I didn't know before —that Professor Annette Gordon-Reed of New York Law School, an AfricanAmerican, tried for years to gain scholarly acceptance of the Jefferson-Hemings liaison, but the scholars who fashioned Jefferson's image were unwilling or unable to weigh the matter objectively...

...Attorney General Janet Reno has found the Independent Counsel Act an enormous burden, not a relief...

...Gingrich, in effect, was impeached for leading his Republicans into disaster...

...Think about how CNN may have altered the course of history...

...The most damaging label you could pin on a politician used to be "liberal...

...Since then Iraq has shown signs of renewed resistance to inspection, but the Clinton Administration has evinced no inclination to carry out its threat of attack without warning...

...A much better story than the one I was going to write...

...A Global Intercom Media analysts call the way breaking news affects foreign policy decisions the "CNN effect...

...The President denied it, but DNA evidence proved he was a liar and a hypocrite...

...The reason, says Gordon-Reed, is because Americans find it hard to accept black-white sexuality...

...Another was what you might call "blinksmanship," referring to Secretary of State Dean Rusk's remark at the end of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev hadbeen eyeball to eyeball, then "the other fellow blinked...

...Senate and House investigations of Clinton campaign funding have accomplished little besides disputes with the Administration about lack of cooperation...

...Unwilling or unable to change course...

...The outcome we know...