Friday
April 15 2005
HILLARY CLINTON: A ROLE MODEL FOR FULL DISCLOSURE?:In
yesterday's commentary
chronicling the tempest surrounding Tom DeLay, I clipped a quote
from an aide to Speaker Hastert that appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
What caught my attention most, however, was something reporter
Jill
Zuckman wrote in the paragraph that followed. Here's the whole
thing:
But
a senior aide to Hastert said DeLay may need to make some public
explanations about the charges since the House ethics committee
has been unable to organize itself with Democrats protesting
Republican-instituted rule changes.
"I'm
not sure why he doesn't lay it out, regardless of whether the
ethics committee ever meets or not," said the Hastert official,
who spoke on condition of not being identified.
"Take
whatever there is and say, `Here it is,'" the official
said. "You have to at one point say, `Here I am, here it
is, what's the question.'"
That
strategy recalled the approach taken by former First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton in the 1990s when she was plagued by questions
about unusual profits made from cattle futures. Hastert's adviser,
however, rejected the comparison. (emphasis added)
Hillary Clinton
randomly cited as a model for full disclosure? This is bizarre.
Since Zuckman doesn't attribute it to anyone else, we have to
assume she's the one who drew the comparison. More bizarre is
that even after Hastert's aide rejected the idea, Zuckman wrote
it into the piece anyway.
So what about
it: did Hillary lay out all the facts when the cattle future story
hit the fan? That's not how I recall it. This
NR piece from February 1995 seems to confirm Mrs. Clinton
was less than forthcoming:
Has
there been any effort to suppress investigation of the transaction?
Yes. Mrs. Clinton was adamantly opposed to the appointment of
a special prosecutor to look into her and her husband's financial
dealings, including her own trading activities, during the late
1970s and 1980s. She attempted to deflect attention from the
matter by explaining away her newfound wealth as a gift from
her parents, until the Clintons' 1978 and 1979 tax returns were
made public and the actual source of her windfall profit was
revealed. Furthermore, despite our repeated and friendly requests
to both the First Lady's and the White House's press representatives,
none of our questions concerning the elementary details of Mrs.
Clinton's trades and the availability of original documentation
has been answered.
So what would
possess Zuckman to recall Hillary Clinton as a role model of "full-disclosure"?
More to the point: how does this little nugget of historical revisionism
in any way qualify to be part of a "straight" news story
on Tom DeLay? - T. Bevan 8:45 am Link
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UPDATE:
Stan
Brown fills out the rest of the Hillary story. |
