Posted by
Gabrielle Cusumano on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 6:55:06 PM
"...First Lady Hillary Clinton personally nixed one compromise proposal that might have helped her husband escape the humiliating impeachment indictment."
(See article below entitled "Broaddrick Case Drove Impeachment, Hillary Nixed Compromise, New Book Claims")
Excerpted from:
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/broaddrick.html
The Broaddrick Files
from National Review, 2000-Aug-2, by NR staff:
Shays Shocker
Clinton Raped Broaddrick Twice.
Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays said on a talk radio show Wednesday that, based on secret evidence he reviewed during the impeachment controversy, he believes President Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick, not once, but twice.
Talk-show host Tom Scott of Clear Channel Broadcasting, New Haven (WELI 960) asked Shays about the mysterious impeachment "evidence room," prompting the GOP moderate to say that Broaddrick "disclosed that she had been raped, not once, but twice" to Judiciary Committee investigators.
Shays, who is often hailed by the New York Times for his independent judgment and good sense, found the evidence compelling:
"I believed that he had done it. I believed her that she had been raped 20 years ago. And it was vicious rapes, it was twice at the same event." Asked point blank if the president is a rapist, Shays said, "I would like not to say that it way. But the bottom line is that I believe that he did rape Broaddrick."
And Shays voted against impeachment!
from TPDL 1999-Apr-4, from The Oklahoman:
News Behind Scandal 'C' Worth Pursuit
I WON'T say Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia just to bury Juanita Broaddrick's story -- but the thought crossed my mind.
There's a ripple quality to Clinton and bad news that helps keep any one thing from gaining traction with the national news media, which has the attention span of your average poodle puppy. Scandal "A" is overrtaken by Foreign Policy Problem "B," which is overtaken by Scandal "C" and so on.
Sometimes Clinton is lucky. Sometimes he has a hand in effecting his own escape. About to be impeached by the House? Thank goodness for Saddam Hussein and cruise missiles! In the end the press corps is exhausted, and reporters can't for the life of them see any need to pursue "that old story."
Broaddrick's account of being raped in 1978 by Clinton, then Arkansas' attorney general, likewise has slid beneath waves of ensuing events. At a journalism forum last week in Washington, Scripps Howard White House correspondent Ann McFeatters considered absolutely daft the notion that anything else could be done with the tale, as old as it is, especially with the nation at war.
But Broaddrick's treatment by the country's media elite reveals troubling truths about news providers, whose work is lapped up by the public, which speaks to pollsters who turn out the data that so closely drive elected officials these days.
Broaddrick's allegation that she was raped in a hotel room was whispered for years in Arkansas and faintly pursued by some reporters during Clinton's 1992 run for the White House. She was ashamed, didn't want publicity and wouldn't give interviews until confronted by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
NBC News was on the story more than a year ago and finally got Broaddrick on tape in January, during the heart of Clinton's Senate trial. But it was held back and Clinton was acquitted. Some think the network wanted to kill the story altogether.
Then the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz got her own Broaddrick interview and wrote a story for the paper's editorial page. That produced follow-ups in the Washington Post and New York Times. NBC, by then scooped, ran its Broaddrick interview as a segment on "Dateline."
Then, nothing, like a dead telephone line. NBC's regular news show still hasn't mentioned the story, nor has ABC's. CBS made passing mention of The Washington Post's follow-up.
Clinton, sensing a compliant media, issued a denial through a lawyer and continued dodging questions until the Yugoslavian war clouds sufficiently gathered. At his first news conference in 10 months, Clinton dismissed mild questions about Broaddrick by falling back on his lawyer's denial.
Now many, like McFeatters, say there's nothing else to be done with a story which, if true, means a rapist sits in the Oval Office. It is, as Rabinowitz said at the Washington forum, the "elephant in the living room" no one wants to acknowledge.
Why? "When a story such as Juanita Broaddrick's comes along, much about it is troubling, sensational, even lurid ... and all the worries that took hold of media organizations were reasonable," said Fox News' Brit Hume. "But are these standards being neutrally applied? The answer obviously is of course not."
Reporters plunged into allegations, unsubstantiated and most quite aged, against Clarence Thomas when he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. No one had to be begged to follow the story. Anita Hill's army of angry feminists and female legislators demanded a hearing. Likewise, charges that Oregon's Bob Packwood stole kisses from female aides caused a firestorm and gobs of press coverage.
Broaddrick, no. "There's an attitude here that when a story like this comes along and the subject is Bill Clinton, it does look different (to reporters) than if the charge is leveled against a Clarence Thomas or a Bob Packwood," said Hume. "The problem isn't that there's no place to go (with the story). The problem is no one's trying to get there."
McFeatters throws up her hands. Clinton won't talk and his spokesmen won't talk. There's a war going on. "We don't know how to prove this charge," she said.
Hume pointed out reporters routinely get answers from a stonewalling White House, but that takes persistence (lacking in much of the Clinton scandal coverage). If the press corps is "inclined to do so," he said, it will pursue a story "like the hounds of hell" until there's an answer. Not in this case, though.
One problem is a news media which, because it subconsciously favors liberal politicians and/or schmoozers, spends too much time examining its own navel instead of the man with the intern under his desk. Hume said news organizations are caught up in weighing the "impact" of what they do instead of making independent news judgments.
In the case of Juanita Broaddrick's very serious allegations of rape, newsroom self-censorship -- and his dangerous new war -- is giving Bill Clinton the biggest pass of his six-year presidency.
from the Wall Street Journal, 1999-Mar-5, by Cynthia Alksne, MSNBC legal analyst and former sex-crimes prosecutor in New York and Washington.:
Clinton Insults All Rape Victims
Women have solidly supported President Clinton through the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment trial. On balance, we thought he was good on so-called women's issues and were not willing to turn our backs on him based solely on a consensual relationship with a young intern. Despite this history of loyalty, feminists need to take a much harder look at Mr. Clinton in the wake of Juanita Broaddrick's allegations.
Here, in a nutshell, is the problem: Ms. Broaddrick says the president raped her. Her word alone should be sufficient to require a serious response from the president, particularly in light of the support he has enjoyed from feminists and female voters. Instead, the president had his lawyer, David Kendall, issue a perfunctory statement that the charges were "absolutely false"--a statement Mr. Kendall is in no position to verify--and has refused to answer any specific questions. In essence, the president is suggesting that Juanita Broaddrick's corroborated word is not "evidence" and therefore does not merit a response.
Yet one woman's word is enough to prosecute a rapist. Rape cases are routinely won or lost when a victim takes the stand to accuse the defendant of the crime. Indeed, the law explicitly permits a jury to convict a rapist on the word of the victim alone if her testimony is deemed credible. And anyone who watched Juanita Broaddrick's NBC News interview with Lisa Myers would have to conclude that, at a minimum, Ms. Broaddrick was a credible accuser.
Ms. Broaddrick's accusations are even more troubling than a classic "he said, she said," rape allegation, because there is more evidence than just one woman's word. Her story is corroborated. She immediately told a friend about the rape; this same friend saw her immediately after her visit from Arkansas's then-attorney general. Her lip was swollen and blue from the alleged assault. She saw Ms. Broaddrick's pantyhose, which were torn in the crotch area. Ms. Broaddrick also told several other people that Mr. Clinton had raped her. But still, the only word from the president himself is an arrogant no-comment.
It is true, as the president's supporters have noted, that we cannot know for sure what really happened in that hotel room 21 years ago. It is too late to obtain medical evidence. There is no police report. And we do not know Mr. Clinton's schedule on the day of the alleged rape.
Instead, we have only one source of information that could unravel the mystery: Bill Clinton. The president could help matters by answering these questions: What, if anything, happened between him and Ms. Broaddrick? Was he in the hotel room with her? Did they have any physical or sexual contact? Did he rape her? What about consent? Does he have an alibi? Does he know of any motive for her to fabricate such a story?
Even if Mr. Clinton answered these critical questions, women--and the groups that purport to represent them--should demand something more of their president: He should repudiate any suggestion that a woman's word itself is not enough to credibly support a rape allegation. Unless and until this occurs, groups such as the National Organization of Women and anyone else who has ever fought for rape victims should be outraged, and should be doing much more than issuing tepid press releases begging the White House not to trash Ms. Broaddrick.
Feminists should also be outraged that the New York Times did not have one article about Ms. Broaddrick's allegations until five days after the story broke, and then only on page A16. And every feminist who has ever fought for tougher rape laws should ask herself these fundamental questions: What kind of man is Mr. Clinton? Do we have a sexual predator in the White House? A rapist? These are issues that need to be resolved by each of us individually. And we need answers from the president in order to judge the merits of these allegations.
When I was a sex-crimes prosecutor, rapists often got at least eight years of public housing--in jail, not the White House. If these allegations are true, jail is where Mr. Clinton belongs. And the fact that the passage of time makes these allegations impossible to prove is no excuse for punishing future rape victims by raising the bar and suggesting that their word is not sufficient, credible evidence upon which to prosecute an alleged rape.
For more of this article go to: http://www.mega.nu/ampp/broaddrick.html
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Excerpted from: http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/janedoe.htm
Paula Jones' Investigators Reveal their Secrets
Are there other victims like Juanita Broaddrick in Bill Clinton's past? The husband and wife team of Rick and Beverly Lambert say the answer to that question is yes. Seasoned private investigators with a knack for success, the Lamberts were tapped by Paula Jones' lawyers in September 1997 for the Jane Doe search. for six months, they traveled between Arkansas and D.C. looking for women whose account could bolster Jones' allegation.
What they found horrified and nauseated the handful of congressmen familiar with their work product, which was turned over to the House Judiciary Committee after being subpoenaed by the Office of Independent Counsel. Arguably, President Clinton would never have been impeached had several House m;embers not switched their votes after reviewing evidence in the Lamberts' Jane Doe files.
In their first post-impeachment trial interview, the Lamberts detailed exclusively to NewsMax.com the accounts of some of the 209 witnesses they contacted; evidence about which they were bound to silence until after Clinton's trial was over. The shocking revelations are based on interviews with and leads on a series of heretofore unknown females, as well as the stories behind names that have long been in the public domain.
Among the accounts described to NewsMax.com is the interview of a once close friend of a former Miss America, who adamantly maintained that the beauty queen told her she was raped by Bill Clinton.
The Lamberts also described for the first time anywhere the significance of two names on the Paula Jones supplemental witness list, which was placed into the impeachment trial record only at the 11th hour. The two individuals were colleagues of a propective Jane Doe who died under mysterious circumstancews just days after Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit was filed.
The Lamberts' Jane Doe case files included a number of prominsing leads that had to be abandoned when the Jones case was dismissed last April. One involved a 14-year-old girl who, according to one eyewitness, was raped at a Little Rock cocaine party.
A note of caution. Much of the evidence presented here is anecdotal. It is based on Rick and Beverly Lambert's own recollections, backed by copious documentation they maintained during their half-year assignment as Jones' private investigators.
What follows is an in-depth account of the Lamberts' investigation, aspects of which were not completed before the Jones case was settled. The evidence they shared with NewsMax.com is similar in nature and kind to what one might expect to find in raw FBI files. In this case, the FBI file in question would be the president's.
First, some background on Rick and Beverly Lambert themselves.
Before entering the Jones case last year, the Lamberts had already made their mark in the field of private investigation. Rick, with years of experience in law enforcement, handles most of the leg work while Beverly fields leads, selecting those most promising and maintaining a massive database at their headquarters, their private home in Lindale, Texas.
Beverly describes their dynamic partnership, known professionally as Accuracy Investigations, Inc., as "really just a mom and pop operation." But such modesty belies their phenomenal track record. One bit of Lambert sleuthing, a case that ended up in a daring rescue of a kidnapped child who had been hidden in Jordan, has already been immortalized by Hollywood.
Paula Jones' second legal team, the Dallas firm of Rader, Campbell, Fisher, Pike & Holmes, makes frequent use of the Lamberts' unrivaled detective work. With Rick's street-smart doggedness and Beverly's natural ability to relate to female subjects, the Lamberts were a natural choice for the high-profile Jones vs. Clinton case. Rick's job was to find the Jane Does, Beverly's, to interview them.
One particularly elusive Jane Doe was former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen. Long rumored to have had a sexual relationship with Clinton, she spent late 1997 and early 1998 on the run from the Lamberts-who were trying to serve her a subpoena in the Jones case.
Published reports cited the testimony of Gracen's friend Judy Stokes, who recalled that Gracen had come to her in tears right after a 1983 sexual encounter with Clinton. Gracen said the sex was, "something she did not want to have happen," according to Stokes.
The somewhat ambiguous quote fueled speculation that Clinton had raped the onetime beauty queen, a notion dispelled by Gracen in the New York Daily News last April. She admitted to a consensual one-night stand that she regretted almost immediately.
But Rick Lambert tells NewsMax.com that Stokes was not the least bit ambiguous in the account she gave him, undermining Gracen's rape denial.
"I talked to Judy Stokes for an hour and a half. At first, she was reluctant to burn her bridges with Liz. But I finally asked, 'Do you believe Clinton raped her?' She said, 'Absolutely. He forced her to have sex. What do you call that?' Stokes was totally convinced it was rape."
Lambert had contacted Stokes in December 1997 after Gracen refused to talk to him.
"I called Liz at her stepfather's house on Christmas Eve. She answered the phone but pretended to be somebody else. She told me Liz was in Paris. I said, 'Liz, why won't you talk to me?' At that, she hung up on me."
"Fifteen minutes later, I get a call from her Hollywood agent Miles Levy. I said, 'Boy, the phones sure work fast overseas, don't they? Why won't she talk to me?'"
Levy told Lambert, "Look, that would be career suicide for Liz and you know it.'"
Careers were often at stake for many of the Clinton Jane Does. Beverly Lambert, keeper of the Jane Doe files, said that most of the women she interviewed were upwardly mobile professionals, not the stereotypical bimbos depicted by the Clinton camp.
There was the "young woman lawyer in Little Rock" described in Roger Morris' best-seller "Partners in Power," who said she kept her Clinton assault quiet "for the sake of her own hard-won career and that of her husband." Beverly Lambert had never read the book but recognized the story instantly.
NewsMax.com will not identify this woman, since she asked for confidentiality when Morris spoke to her in 1994 and rebuffed the Lamberts' attempts to get her testify. But Rick and Beverly obtained her account from other sources.
This Jane Doe bumped into Clinton at a Democratic fundraiser in the late '70's. It was held at Little Rock's popular riverfront restaurant Fisherman's Wharf (now Landreys).
Beverly Lambert learned the details of the attack:
"She offered Clinton a ride home. And once he got her alone in her car, he grabbed this woman and assaulted her. He did his trademark thing; exposed himself, asked her to 'kiss it,' and pushed her head down into his lap."
What about the Broaddrick-like biting and bruising that author Morris reports this woman suffered at Clinton's hands? Lambert was never given the specifics, but told NewsMax.com:
"It would not surprise me at all if he did that to her. She went right home and told her husband. Apparently there was some physical trauma."
Her husband was angry enough to confront Clinton, who sheepishly apologized according to both Beverly Lambert and Roger Morris. So why didn't this couple come forward for the Jones investigators?
"Right after they talked to Roger Morris, her husband was suddenly appointed to head up the Arkansas Real Estate Commission," says Beverly. "I'm sure that job pays pretty well. She works for the state, too. So at this point they're afraid for their jobs."
Beverly adds: "They were one of our first leads. The husband was cooperative when Rick first called, but said he wanted to check with someone before he talked further. When he called back he was totally hostile and started calling Rick every name in the book."
Alleged Brutal Sex and a Dead Witness
Many of the Jane Does interviewed by Paula Jones investigators Rick and Beverly Lambert were reluctant to be dragged into the high-profile case and chose not to come forward.
For one prospective Jane Doe, it was a physical impossibility. Kathy Ferguson was found dead of a gunshot would to the head just five days after Jones filed suit against President Clinton. Kathy's ex-husband, Arkansas State Trooper Danny Ferguson, was named as a co-defendant. Her death was ruled a suicide by local police.
With Kathy unavailable, the Lamberts interviewed her friends Sherry Butler and Sam Houston, who both worked at Little Rock's Baptist Memorial Hospital. Their names were submitted into evidence in the closing weeks of the impeachment trial as part of a supplemental witness list in the Jones case.
Butler was a licensed practical nurse at Baptist Memorial. She and Houston, the hospital's urologist, were just two of several co-workers in whom Kathy had confided about her own unwanted encounter with Bill Clinton.
In 1994, NewsMax.com's executive editor, Chris Ruddy, reported on the incident:
"Houston had said he once asked Kathy if she had ever been harassed by Clinton when her former husband served on the governor's security detail. She responded with an account-which is consistent with what other personnel at the hospital say Ferguson told them on separate occasions-of having been 'blocked in the kitchen' of the governor's mansion as then-Governor Clinton made unwelcome advances on her.
"Sherry Butler said that Ferguson, in speaking of that same incident to her, had said that Clinton 'shoved her against a counter' and wouldn't let her leave the kitchen.
"Butler added that Ferguson had been firm in her belief in Paula Jones' testimony. 'That girl is telling the truth,' Butler remembers her friend saying about Jones." (Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Nov. 4, 1994).
Rick Lambert confirmed to NewsMax.com that Kathy Ferguson was the reason Butler's and Houston's names were on the Jones witness list:
"That's the only connection they had-Kathy Ferguson. Sherry Butler told me about what Clinton tried to do to her. But, of course, the best witness to that is dead."
Lambert added: "I talked to Sam Houston at length about this. At the time, he was being ostracized by his cohorts for being a conspiracy theorist. You couldn't convince the man to this day that Kathy's death was a suicide."
Because much of the Jones investigation involved sensitive allegations about women who were sometimes too embarrassed to open up to a male investigator, Beverly Lambert often took the lead in face-to-face interviews. One such Jane Doe is the now famous Juanita Broaddrick, who alleged on "Dateline NBC" last week that Clinton brutally raped her 21 years ago. The Lamberts tracked her down on Nov. 13, 1997, at her Van Buren, Ark., home.
Beverly Lambert told NewsMax.com that she spoke to Broaddrick for 30 minutes. "The most significant statement she made was that 'it was a horrible, horrible situation and I don't want to relive it again.' She said that Bill Clinton was a 'vicious, vicious man' and that no one would ever be able to bring him down."
Lambert said Broaddrick refused to go into detail but described the entire ordeal as "the worst nightmare of my life." The Lamberts tape-recorded the interview and this key evidence was subpoenaed by the Office of Independent Counsel, a development that led to further interviews by federal investigators.
During the interview with Beverly Lambert, Broaddrick revealed information she had indicating that another woman had been raped by Clinton. Lambert explained: "I don't think she meant to do it. But she let it slip that a friend of Sheffield Nelson's wife was also attacked."
In 1990, Nelson made a bid for the Arkansas governorship but lost the race to Clinton. Just a month before the 1992 election, Nelson met with Broaddrick to persuade her to go public with her rape account. Broaddrick declined to do so, telling the pair, "Who's going to believe little old Juanita from Van Buren?"
Last month, Broaddrick repeated the same story to NewsMax.com, saying that Nelson told her the woman refused to come forward because she was drunk at the time of the attack and perhaps blamed herself. Reached at his Little Rock home days later, Nelson confirmed the story but would not reveal the woman's name, explaining the she "would never come forward."
Lambert revealed details of Broaddrick's ride home from the Camelot Hotel, based on her interview with corroborating witness Phillip Yoakum. According to Yoakum's account, nurse Norma Rogers drove, stopping at regular intervals for ice to apply to Broaddrick's badly swollen lips. Rogers later confirmed parts of Yoakum's story to NBC. Broaddrick told NBC last week that Clinton bit her upper lip to weaken her resistance to the assault.
Yoakum shared one gruesome detail with Lambert that debunks any notion that the sex Clinton had with Juanita Broaddrick was in any way consensual. According to Yoakum, Broaddrick's lip was "damaged to point of nearly being torn into two pieces
Beverly Lambert said she had a number of what she described as strong assault leads on Clinton.
"I can promise you," she told NewsMax.com, "that if someone calls us to gather information on Clinton's pattern of forceful sexual behavior, we have that. But no one has ever asked us about it before. There are so many, so many. They went on and on and on and they all had basically the same story. That's the nauseating part, to me."
Lambert added that if people could read the material she and her husband submitted to Ken Starr they would know that "this is not a man who is going to stop."
Tales of a Penthouse Pet and Statutory Rape
For Paula Jones' investigators, Rick and Beverly Lambert, the Jane Doe hunt ended on April 1, 1998 when Judge Susan Webber Wright dismissed the Clinton accuser's case on summary judgment. The Lamberts had been on the trail for a mere six months, yet had turned up enough evidence to compel Bill Clinton to settle even after Jones' case was thrown out of court.
The story of one such Jane Doe, alleged Clinton rape victim Juanita Broaddrick, rocks Washington today because the Lamberts tracked her down and recorded what she told them. And it was that recording, once subpoenaed by Ken Starr, which led to follow-up FBI interviews, the transcripts of which were shared with 40 undecided House members on the eve of President Clinton's impeachment.
Several congressmen were sickened by what they learned and voted to put Clinton on trial because of it.
With the House passing perjury and obstruction counts by razor-thin margins, the Lamberts' work proved decisive. The first impeachment of an elected president would not have come to pass but for the evidence gathered by this self-described "mom and pop" investigative team.
Yet the day the Lamberts got word of Judge Wright's decision their Jane Doe search was far from complete. Rick Lambert told NewsMax.com: "I'd have given anything if we'd had the entire four years that the case was in existence-because there were so many viable leads that I got, even on my last six-day trip to Little Rock."
Lambert added, "I don't mind telling you I was damn dejected to have to quit while we had so much to follow up on."
The Jones investigators described some of the leads they so desperately wanted to pursue, but not before cautioning that the information was raw and untested. In two cases, women were identified by name but will remain anonymous here, at the Lamberts' request.
One rather ominous account came from former Clinton bodyguard Barry Spivey, whose name is included on the Jones case supplemental witness list. Lambert described the ex-trooper as a Clinton loyalist still, years after his retirement from the governor's security detail.
Spivey had become something of a mystery man, who insisted on meeting Rick Lambert on a deserted road nestled deep in the Arkansas backwoods. The Jones investigator admitted he was none too comfortable with the situation.
Spivey shared a story about a conversation he had with Clinton while on a flight over southeast Arkansas. The trooper noticed a blackened patch amidst the greenery below that, surprisingly, Clinton recognized. That patch was all that was left of an estate that had burned to the ground in the mid-80's.
According to the trooper, Clinton began reminiscing about rumors of his involvement with the woman of the house, a onetime "Penthouse pet." Her husband, Spivey said, was involved in a pornography ring.
Clinton explained to Spivey, "You know that mansion just burned down right on top of them." Years later, Spivey remains struck by one thing: the eerie expression that crossed Clinton's face as he spoke those words.
For more of this excerpted article go to:http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/janedoe.htm
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Broaddrick Case Drove Impeachment, Hillary Nixed Compromise, New Book Claims
Source: NewsMax.com (article is no longer available online at this link, therefore author is " not excerpting it)
Published: 9/17/00 Author: Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
Can be found at: http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39c4f74c32ed.htm
If the House Bob Livingston was prepared to scuttle the December 1998 impeachment vote against President Clinton, but a rape charge by Arkansas businesswoman Juanita Broaddrick changed his mind at the last minute, a new book reveals.
Appearing Sunday on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, Washington Post reporter Peter Baker described how his new book "The Breach" documents the doubts that plagued leading House Republicans before the passage of two articles of impeachment against Clinton, and how the then-secret rape charge carried the day:
RUSSERT: You write extensively about the role of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Bob Livingston and Henry Hyde and suggest that there were moments during the entire inquiry where they were stepping back saying, "Do we want to go forward with this impeachment? Should we try censure?" What did you find in your reporting?
BAKER: Well, I think that's exactly right with Bob Livingston and Henry Hyde in particular. Henry Hyde was the forceful crusader out front. But behind the scenes he was very uncomfortable. He knew he didn't have the votes to win a conviction in the Senate. And he wanted to find a way to bring people together. He had secret negotiations with the White House that were arranged through Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel, and he couldn't find a middle ground.
Bob Livingston considered censure. He thought that might be an appropriate response. And, in fact, on the day, the very day that the House debate (on impeachment) opened in December 1998, he had a moment in the House cloakroom where he suddenly said, "This is craziness. We've got to stop this. Let's have a censure vote."
And an aide came to him and said, "Bob, you can't do that." He had just heard about the Juanita Broaddrick case, the allegation of sexual assault. He said, "Boss, we have a rapist in the White House. We can't do this."
And Livingston decided that the aide was right, that Clinton had committed crimes. He did deserve impeachment. But he struggled with it like a lot of the people did behind the scenes and they didn't let on in public.
The NBC host declined to explore Bakers' Broaddrick case revelation further, though it was his news division that obtained an exclusive interview with the Clinton rape accuser three weeks before the president was acquitted on impeachment charges in the Senate.
Despite the impact Broaddrick's allegation would have had on Senators who voted to acquit without viewing evidence that supported her claim, the network refused to broadcast its Broaddrick exclusive till two weeks after the Senate vote.
Baker also detailed how First Lady Hillary Clinton personally nixed one compromise propsal that might have helped her husband escape the humiliating impeachment indictment.
RUSSERT: Richard Gephardt, the Democratic Leader, according to your book tried to craft a censure resolution against the president which included the loss of his pension. And someone else in the White House spoke up.
BAKER: Well, that's exactly right. Gephardt was trying to find a way out. And he was also trying to reconcile his own sense of anger at the president, as most Democrats felt. And he came up with a plan to take Clinton's pension away for five years. And also to try to reform what he thought were the misuses of executive privilege, the White House counsel's staff, Secret Service confidentiality and so forth.
And what ended up happening was it wasn't the Republicans who killed this plan. It was the Democrats. Hillary Clinton did not want to be paying out money as a result of this. That would have cost $750,000 for the president over five years.
And the other people who killed it were the House Democrats, because the idea of taking a politician's pension away for bad behavior seemed like a bad precedent.
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/9/17/111954 (This page can not be found) therefore go to http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39c4f74c32ed.htm