President Clinton was criticized relentlessly in the media for allowing friends who made contributions to causes he supported to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House.

Now it turns out that those at the controls of the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville that sank the Japanese fishing boat Ehime Maru during a surfacing exercise were civilians (at least some who are big Texas oilman) who had contributed large sums of money at the request of former President George Bush to one of his favorite causes, the restoration and preservation of the USS Missouri.

It should be noted that the surfacing exercise these civilians were allowed to control was no ordinary surfacing maneuver but a very dangerous and violent drill in which the submarine dives to about 400 feet and then by instantly releasing 4500 pounds of compressed air into a ballast chamber (a procedure known as an “emergency ballast blow”) the submarine rockets to the surface. This was no ordinary cruise around the bay for the connected.

There were 16 civilians on board the submarine for a joy ride at taxpayers’ expense but the Pentagon is refusing to release the names of them citing privacy rights. So far only three of the 16 have gone public. We the people own that submarine and even though our votes are no longer counted, we still have the right to know who was at the controls and who was joy riding on our half-billion dollar submarine at our expense. If the average person gets into a fender bender they have their name printed in the paper.

The corporate media are doing all they can to redirect the public’s attention away from this story by relentlessly pursuing President Clinton’s pardon of financier Marc Rich. The recent Bangor Daily News headline, “Rich case steeped in secrecy,” would lead you to believe that there is some great mystery to be solved when the only question is “was there a quid pro quo for the pardon.” Of course there was. That’s the way things work in the world of the powerful and the wealthy.

So is that the stuff of headline news? Of course not, but as long as they hype it with eye-catching headlines they are hoping to keep the publics mind off the real issues.

If you are wondering where they placed the “Bush contributors crash nuclear submarine” story, well you’ll have to look else where because that was not worthy of today’s paper considering the importance of the Republicans trying to impeach Clinton (that’s right – even after he has left office). If all the conjecture in the Rich case were true it amounts to nothing more than a wealthy individual avoiding paying all of his taxes and then making contributions to a favorite cause of a powerful individual to get of the hook. Hardly in the same league with Bush’s civilian friends crashing a nuclear submarine.

President Clinton’s supporters stay in a bedroom at his house and the media spin it into a scandal but contributors to a cause supported by the Bushes’ joy ride in a half billion dollar nuclear submarine and sink a fishing boat and in is not newsworthy. How can anyone with a straight face claim the media have a liberal bias?

Peter P. Misluk Jr. lives in Belfast.