March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Washington politics seem to imitate — Hollywood

Washington, at times, seems like the old Hollywood studio system in which film companies like 20th Century Fox and MGM turned out assembly-line flicks recycling the same stable of 20 to 30 contract stars. In one film, Richard Widmark or Humphrey Bogart would be the hated villains. The next movie would feature them as heroes.

Consider the intriguing role reversal of Defense Secretary Bill Cohen and former Clinton political consultant Dick Morris.

Had he remained in the Senate, Cohen would have been a major pain in the butt for the Clinton White House. Bill Cohen — not Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson — would have chaired the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearings inquiring into allegations of fund-raising improprieties by the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

History also would have compelled Cohen to rush to the defense of Ken Starr. The former Maine senator was a principal author of the Independent Counsel Act that led to Attorney General Janet Reno’s authorization of the Whitewater and White House intern investigations.

If a tabloid had not photographed him partying with a hooker on the eve of the “family values” 1996 Democratic National Convention — and more recently, making comments on a Los Angeles radio talk show speculating that Hillary Clinton was a lesbian — Dick Morris still would be part of the White House damage control team plotting to undermine Ken Starr and GOP investigators. Instead, he writes a syndicated column that often attacks the president.

In Washington, you need a playbill to keep track of who is wearing the white hats and the black hats. Dick Morris took after Bill Cohen this week for possible complicity in a White House smear campaign to discredit Linda Tripp, the Pentagon worker who secretly tape recorded her telephone conversations with the president’s favorite intern, Monica Lewinsky. As related by Morris, Jane Mayer — a writer for The New Yorker magazine — got a Pentagon aide to violate the federal Privacy Act by confirming that Tripp had been arrested 20 years ago for petty theft and did not disclose that fact in the document she completed to obtain a defense security clearance.

“What Pentagon official would make the political decision to illegally release material from Tripp’s file?” Morris asked. “The signal … had to come from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“Why has Defense Secretary William Cohen been so quiet about the issue? After Mayer’s article was published, Cohen discussed how serious an offense it is to lie on a job application — but, surprisingly, he failed to note how serious it is to violate the Privacy Act,” wrote Morris in his column last week.

As a matter of fact, Cohen has on several occasions said the privacy violation was a serious mistake.

In effect, Dick Morris, former Clinton attack dog, is accusing Bill Cohen, former GOP muckraker, of looking the other way while Clinton’s defenders employed Nixonian tactics against their political enemies. The defense secretary, coincidentally, is the same actor who voted to impeach Richard Nixon in an earlier movie.

Morris has more than his own share of acting credits. In past years, he helped elect conservative Republican senators such as Jesse Helms and Trent Lott but also has been a campaign consultant to Democratic candidates, including Maine House Speaker Libby Mitchell during her 1984 bid to unseat — you guessed it — Bill Cohen.

It was Morris who came up with the brilliant “triangulation” strategy in which Clinton portrayed himself as the sensible third force, offsetting traditional “tax and spend” Democrats and “mean-spirited” Republicans. In his new movie, the same Dick Morris is burying knives in Bill Clinton’s back with the zeal of Brutus’ legendary attack on Julius Caesar.

The Hollywood twists and turns get more interesting.

Morris now compares the illegal disclosure of Linda Tripp’s confidential Pentagon personnel records to the widely publicized 1992 election scandal in which Bush administration officials were alleged to have rummaged through Clinton’s passport files seeking evidence that the Democratic nominee wrote a letter renouncing his U.S. citizenship or petitioning for dual citizenship to avoid the Vietnam draft. No such letter was ever found.

After howls of protest about the alleged 1992 federal Privacy Act violation, former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova was named an independent counsel to investigate, among others, Bush aide Janet Mullins. At the time Mullins was dating then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. The couple had become an item for the gossip columnists because of their polar-opposite politics.

Two years later, diGenova concluded no laws were broken by Mullins. Her relationship with Mitchell did not survive the scandal, however. The former Bush aide occasionally surfaces to complain about the costly legal ordeal that came down on her head because of Bill Cohen’s Independent Counsel Act. In fact, Mullins’ legal fees were reimbursed.

On just about any day, if you own a satellite dish or subscribe to cable television, you can listen to diGenova as he makes the rounds of the talk shows defending Ken Starr against White House attacks. Maryland Republicans are trying to talk him into running for Congress.

George Mitchell recently re-emerged as the hero of the Northern Ireland peace talks. There’s talk he may be knighted by the Queen of England or nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s happily married to another woman.

This could, I think, make a pretty good flick. — WASHINGTON

John Day’s e-mail address is zanadume@aol.com


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