By:  Linda Bowles

July 21, 1998

It is now clear that Bill Clinton will do just about anything and sacrifice just about anybody to save himself from criminal prosecution. It is equally clear that Attorney General Janet Reno is so blinded by her desire to help her president evade justice that she has personally broken important federal laws.

Eleven judges (five of them Democrats) in three different federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have unanimously agreed that Secret Service agents must testify before the grand jury investigating alleged criminal behavior by the president. The speed of these rulings, their unanimity and their terse language suggest that the courts are fed up with bogus legal assertions litigated by the Clinton defense team.

The U.S. Court of Appeals wrote, "This court has ruled that the (protective) privilege does not exist; no judge on the court has even requested a vote." Judge Lawrence Silberman supplemented the full court's decision with a separate opinion that goes directly to the heart of the matter and drives a stake through it. He wrote: "The Attorney General is, in effect, acting as the president's counsel under the false guise of representing the United States, contrary to the whole purpose and structure of the Ethics in Government Act ... The Act. ... limits the options that the Attorney General can legally (and honorably) pursue. Litigating against the independent counsel is not one of them."

Translation: When Janet Reno appointed Kenneth Starr as independent counsel, she transferred to him all her responsibilities and powers in matters relating to the criminal investigation of the president. From that point forward, he, not she, legally represents the United States in this investigation.

This freed Reno of a conflict of interest in investigating her own boss, Bill Clinton. However, when she filed the Secret Service case against the Independent Counsel, she reinvolved herself, thus violating the letter and the spirit of the independent counsel law. Silberman, however, expressed a sympathetic understanding of the illegal activities of Attorney General Reno and her staff: "I am mindful of the terrible political pressure and strains of conscience that bear upon senior appointees of the Justice Department when an independent counsel (or special prosecutor) is investigating the President of the United States. Those strains are surely exacerbated when the president's agents literally and figuratively "declare war" on the independent counsel (can it be said that the President of the United states has declared war on the United States?)"

Let's recognize the obvious: If Clinton had been honest and forthcoming, Secret Service agents would not now be testifying before the grand jury. However, they are testifying and the question is, has the safety of the president been compromised?

We have been treated to a barrage of propaganda calculated to convince us that Clinton will surely be killed if agents are not hanging all over him all the time. In fact, the president routinely backs off his bodyguards for reasons that one would think are not worth it if his life is at risk. When he was posing for pictures on the Great Wall of China with Chelsea and Hillary, there wasn't a Secret Service agent in sight. And as I recall, when Bill and Hillary were dancing on the beach, a long range camera obviously had a bead on them, but there wasn't a bodyguard anywhere near them.

And where was the Secret Service when Clinton was rubbing shoulders in the White House with Mexican drug dealers, Chinese gun runners, Hong Kong hustlers and agents of the Chinese army?

Attorney General Reno's dereliction of duty is not confined to the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. Last November, FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote a 27-page memorandum to Reno. He sharply criticized her for failing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate credible evidence of illegal foreign contributions to the Democrat Party and to the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign.

Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson reported that in the memo, Freeh "pointed out that ... the FBI's investigation had led them to the highest levels of the White House, including the vice president and the president ... " According to Thompson, Freeh also said in the memo that "It is difficult to imagine a more compelling situation for appointing an independent counsel."

In one of many editorials criticizing Reno, the New York Times wrote, "The mystery is why any Attorney General would want his or her chief legacy to be the preservation of a cover up." The Times also had words about the president: "Mr Clinton, the alleged beneficiary of Chinese money, has an obligation here that transcends whatever trouble an investigation would cause him... "

However, nothing seems to transcend Clinton's obligation to the preservation of his own sorry hide. He will prove once again that he is too much of a coward to answer the call of duty.