SCRAPBOOK

...So what precisely does Blumenthal mean by the words urge and encourage and investigate...

...Henry Hyde and others...

...When I called Blumenthal, he branded the outing charges a ‘complete lie.’ When told my sources said they had heard the outing information from his lips, he reiterated, ‘They did not.’” THAT’S ACCOUNTABILITY Gordon MacDonald is one of the three pastors President Clinton now summons for weekly prayer and guidance—what he calls his “accountability group...

...Does he mean that he was the source for, or in some other way involved with, other stories on Henry Hyde...

...Presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal denies spreading nasty rumors to help the president (see above...

...Withdraw...

...A Lenzner spokesman denies it to the Examiner...

...The White House has promised to fire anyone with fingerprints on the Hyde story...

...He and his wife, Gail, found “we just might accomplish more for people” by praying “than all the speaking and writing we might have ever done...

...Salon magazine’s notorious scoop the day before had revealed the adulterous affair during the late 1960s of Rep...

...Scrapbook SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL’S PERJURY TRAP Presidential aide and ex-journalist Sid Blumenthal could conceivably be in legal as well as professional peril if it can be proved that he played a role in circulating stories about the lives of Rep...

...MacDonald quit his post and began two years of rehab on his life and marriage...

...What he did next is instructive...

...The president told MacDonald he’d read his book, Rebuilding Your Broken World...

...Go on retreat with your spouse...

...Important ones, too...

...These reputable members of the Beltway media agreed to tell me what they knew only if guaranteed complete anonymity...

...Like all carefully lawyered statements emanating from the Clinton White House, Blumenthal’s denial elicits the question, What does he mean when he uses the word this...

...Looks like the FBI has its work cut out for it...

...SEX AND THE EEOC At his press conference last week alongside Vaclav Havel, Clinton offered examples of work he’d like the government to buckle down to: One of the top items on his list was the elimination of the backlog at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...

...Was Hyde’s affair really private, for instance...

...THE BLUMENTHAL FILES, CONT...

...Three members of the media confirmed to me that Sidney Blumenthal, the White House media counselor, had indeed been spreading such stories: They’d heard him do it...

...That wouldn’t involve any urging or encouraging...

...THE SCRAPBOOK has learned that, in a deposition for his libel lawsuit against Matt Drudge, Blumenthal denied under oath talking to journalists about Hyde and other public officials...

...Spend time—months, maybe longer—in “quiet places...

...they were afraid of losing access to White House sources, and of possible reprisals...

...The FBI, at the urging of House Republicans, is considering an investigation of whether dirt is being dredged up to intimidate the members of Congress who may soon sit in judgment of the president...

...You have wrecked the whole party machine...

...One-fifth of the EEOC’s caseload in 1997 consisted of sexual-harassment cases, up from only one-tenth in 1991...

...In a fascinating article for the Nation last March, veteran left-wing journalist Doug Ireland followed up on an MSNBC report that Clintonites had been digging into the sexual preferences of Ken Starr’s prosecutors...

...Again, as Clinton made clear in his grand-jury discourse on the English language (“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” the president said at one point), words bear close scrutiny...

...His advice for the truly repentant...

...But he’s taken little of the advice MacDonald offers...

...What’s especially needed is discipline, MacDonald writes, and this “usually means restrictions: being relieved of certain responsibilities...

...Hyde is presiding over the hearings on whether to impeach Blumenthal’s boss, Bill Clinton...

...And Hyde’s liaison involved not just him but the woman herself, and was discovered by her husband...

...Matrimony, as the justice of the peace always points out, is a public institution...

...MacDonald was head of a large mission agency 12 years ago when he was caught in adultery...

...Moreover, he lied stupidly, since he might have saved his dignity and his seat as an MP by admitting his misstep...

...Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee...

...Salon has denied any White House involvement in its scoop, but that’s hardly the end of the story...

...And, while we’re on the subject, THE SCRAPBOOK supposes that Sid may be using the word private in some special Clintonian way...

...Two of the members of the media I spoke to about the Starr allegations,” wrote Ireland, “also said Blumenthal had described at least two other media figures to them as gay...

...In his statement, Blumenthal goes on to assert that he didn’t “urge or encourage any reporter to investigate the private life of any member of Congress...

...It is thus hardly surprising that Blumenthal released a statement late last Thursday specifying he “was not the source or in any way involved with this story on Henry Hyde...

...Ireland also confirmed Blumenthal’s nasty habit of going after unfriendly reporters...

...Interesting questions, these...

...So Salon confirms that Terry Lenzner was spreading stories about Henry Hyde...

...And he included MacDonald, senior minister at Grace Chapel outside Boston, for a special reason...

...He writes: “This is no hour for plotting what the politicians call a comeback...

...IT DIDN’T START WITH CLINTON Here’s a fascinatingly contemporary-sounding dispatch from the June 21, 1963, Time, on Great Britain’s Clintonesque “Profumo Affair”: Significantly, the unpardonable crime of ex-Secretary of State for War John Profumo was not that he was indiscreet and a potential security risk but that he lied to the House of Commons in initially denying any relationship with Christine [Keeler...

...As a limerick that made the rounds of Westminster last week had it: ‘What on earth have you done?’ said Christine...

...Perhaps Sid’s role in the White House—besides feeding the first lady’s fantasies of a vast right-wing conspiracy out to get her husband— is merely to play matchmaker between friendly reporters and friendly private investigators like Terry Lenzner...

...Really...

...To lie in the nude Is not at all rude, But to lie in the House is obscene...

...Just don’t expect Clinton to take any of it...

...Sound advice, for sure...

...Don’t defend yourself or complain about others...

...According to Salon managing editor David Weir (who was interviewed by the Examiner’s Matt Beer), one of the operatives was Terry Lenzner, a private eye “hired in the past by the White House to check out Clinton opponents...

...Twice...

...The San Francisco Examiner reported on Saturday that Salon rushed its story into print because it learned that two “political operatives” were “leaking details of Hyde’s affair...

...nor would the reporter himself need do any investigating, if the president’s private eyes had already done all the snooping...

...Two said that Blumenthal had told them directly of the same-sex orientation of a member of Starr’s staff, and a third said he had been present for a conversation in which Blumenthal made such a comment to a third person...

...People say that this president is too distracted from his work to be effective, but here’s one area where he really might still make a big difference...

...One of those sources, as well as other people who know Blumenthal, described him as fascinated by sexual gossip that they said he recycles as part of his defense of the Clintons...

...As both a journalist and as someone who’s gay,” wrote Ireland, “my interest was sparked, and I began making calls to determine whether the outing accusations were true...

...These cases could be resolved very quickly indeed if every defendant, not just the Perjurer-in-Chief, were permitted to use Clinton’s definition of sex...