Interview with Sidney Blumenthal

[Tiger Al 0]

This is a great interview with a great man conducted by William Rivers Pitt for TruthOut.org. I read Blumenthal's book, 'The Clinton Wars,' and it was fantastic. For those who may remember, Blumenthal was one of the many targets of right-wing whacko liar Matt Drudge, who claimed, shortly after he joined the Clinton administration, that SB had been found guilty of spousal abuse. I highly recommend his book for the non-Murdoch/VRWC view of the first two-term Democratic president since Truman.

WRP: My editor and I had a series of discussions about this interview. He believes, as I do, that this administration will succeed in the upcoming election if they are allowed to use the divide-and-conquer tactics that were so successful in the 2002 midterms. He was concerned that discussing the Clinton administration would play into this tactic, since many Americans have been well-trained to hate Bill Clinton. In your opinion, how might an argument be framed that explains the reality of the Clinton legacy without playing into those divisions?

SB: The legacy of the Clinton administration serves as a marker to measure what Bush has done, his efforts to roll back the social gains made by the American people. In every single area, the accomplishments of the Clinton administration stand as a rebuke to Bush on the environment, in the law and appointments to the courts, on women’s rights, on labor rights – just yesterday, Congress voted to repeal overtime for workers, mainly the working poor.

The record of the Clinton administration should be made clear to people: Not only are we talking about 22 million new jobs, the longest expansion of economic prosperity in the country’s history, but we are also talking about the greatest rise in family income in real wages in a generation and a half, and a reduction of poverty by 25%, the greatest reduction since the Great Society brought the elderly out of poverty. This came largely through Medicare, a program Bush has begun to systematically unravel.

WRP: The Senate today just completed the process of privatizing Medicare, turning Medicare into an HMO.

SB: That was just a first step. Bush has an incremental strategy across the board on how to undo the progress that has been made, not only by the Clinton administration, but all the way back to the Roosevelt administration. For example, the undoing of Medicare by privatizing it and making it a large HMO – but one that cannot negotiate lower prices and excludes senior citizens who today receive benefits – is very similar to the strategy that is employed on abortion. The late-term abortion bill that Bush signed, which has no exemption for the health of the mother, is part of an incremental strategy that he hopes will lead to the overturning of abortion, period. He wants the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and that will require court appointments, including appointments to the Supreme Court. Karl Rove, earlier this week, spoke about applying this strategy to Social Security.

For the record, the American people did not dislike Bill Clinton. They liked Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was the most popular President since John F. Kennedy. There’s just no question about it, and he sustained this popularity longer than any President since Kennedy. The idea that people didn’t like Clinton is completely belied by all of the polls that show they approved of him as President. There was an intense minority that hated Clinton, and they still hate him, and they engaged in demonization. But the idea that Clinton is hated by a majority of the American people is a myth.

WRP: Your book 'The Clinton Wars' was highly critical of the mainstream news media across a broad spectrum, specifically dealing with the mayhem surrounding the Clinton 'scandals' and subsequent impeachment. It's been a few years since all that ended. What do you think of the quality of the mainstream news media today?

SB: Recently, there has been some recovery on the part of elements of some major news organizations, but for the most part, the passivity of much of the press is consistent with the rote hostility it showed towards Clinton, and the gullibility it demonstrated in propagating the psuedoscandals and scurrilous stories that were generated on the fringes of the extreme right and then massaged by the Republican Party. The press showed itself all too frequently to be manipulated, to become an instrument, even an arm, of repressive parts of the government. One has to remember that the Independent Counsel, Ken Starr, was the government. The idea that reporters doing his bidding somehow were acting as brave, independent characters in the tradition of intrepid reporters who have uncovered serious crimes against public office in the past is ludicrous.

Right now, the Republicans and the Bush administration are putting out the line that there is progress being made in Iraq, and that things are much better there than what is being depicted in the media. The media has gone out of its way to show what it considers progress. But what if the opposite is true? What if, in fact, the reality on the ground in Iraq is far worse than anyone thinks, in terms of being able to put together a long-term, stable situation that can lead to anything resembling a state, much less a democracy? What if it is not working out at all? Why should the press decide to follow the administration’s lead on this sort of thing? Why doesn’t it follow its own instincts and simply report facts, and let the facts stand on their own merit?

The press bears a great deal of responsibility in the common depiction of George W. Bush, in building up his image, which, as it has been projected, bears very little resemblance to how he performs as President. He was depicted as decisive, in command, somebody who completely grasped and was in synch with the needs of the difficult moment the country faced on September 11. In fact, he is manipulated by his staff, buffeted by the neoconservatives inside his administration, kept from important information, unknowledgeable about so much information, makes decisions on the most simplistic basis, never carries through on his own policies such as the Roadmap to Peace in the Middle East, operates in a closed, small circle, doesn’t seek out information independently, has fostered internecine warfare within the National Security apparatus between the intelligence agencies – including the CIA – and the Defense Department and the National Security Council.

What kind of President is that? The picture that appears in Bob Woodward’s fantastical book ‘Bush at War,’ which includes reporting that is totally at odds with the image of Bush that Woodward swallows, has done enormous mischief, and really is the basis and the foundation stone of what remains of the public esteem for Bush. If it were not for this image of Bush, which grows out of the exploitation of 9/11 and the lies surrounding the buildup to the Iraq war, and the compliance of much of the press corps, Bush would have nothing to stand on. The public actually disapproves of all the consequences of his actions, and yet it has a picture of him that is dissonant with the kind of President who would bring about those actions. Why does the public have that picture, and what is the press doing about it? The press has a lot to answer for.

WRP: A great deal of what the right puts out into the mainstream news media comes from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. They have a fearsome machine for crafting and disbursing messages. Why haven't Democrats developed the same political infrastructure the right has?

SB: In the 1980s, I studied the rise of conservative infrastructure. I wrote a book about it that was published in 1986 called ‘The Rise of the Counter-Establishment.’ When I was a reporter with the Washington Post, the Post published many of my reports about this. It was considered to be a revelation by people, but the right had already been devoting decades to this, and it’s been now decades since I first did that basic reporting. The right’s infrastructure is now far larger than, I think, all but a few people understand.

I believe they spend about one quarter of a billion dollars a year on this infrastructure. Their funding is highly centralized and coordinated; call it a ‘Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy’ if you like, but it is done through a small group of people who generally direct funds to dozens of right-wing groups including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and so on. There is nothing like it beyond the right.

The reason for this is that, for may years, people thought the right was on the margins, on the fringe, not to be taken seriously. Part of that is because there is very little genuine scholarship going on over on the right. There are a lot of polemics, a lot of ideological sharpshooting, a lot of tendentious studies done that use and manipulate statistics. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t have a single scholar of any standing. AEI is filled with the likes of Richard Perle and Robert Bork. Liberals, if you will, believe in the broad-based institutions of American society, including universities. The right wing is doing everything it can to polarize every single institution it can, from the media to the academy, and now trying to consume even religion in its ideological wars.

You can see that through the heavily-funded, carefully targeted splitting of religions by the right, such as the Episcopal Church over the gay bishop. All of that is funded and directed, part of a strategy. Do not doubt it. Now, the Methodists are targeted. The Southern Baptists convention was turned in the 1980s. Its very theology, on the question of abortion, was altered. It was altered directly by a political aide sitting in the Reagan White House as it was being re-written. Such is the priesthood of the believer.

Democrats have only lately come to this realization that there is such a conservative infrastructure, that it has an enormous impact on politics, and that it is fully integrated into, and even taken over, parts of the Republican party.

One of the glitches in the Democratic state of mind was that the accusations against the Clintons were somehow just about the Clintons. There had to be something to it, because where there is smoke, there is fire. There were so many accusations. How could it all be untrue? After all, the Clintons came from darkest Arkansas. There had to be something wrong, some dark spot in their background. And so the Democrats believed it was about the Clintons personally. Then Al Gore ran for President, an Eagle Scout. And he was transformed into a liar and an exaggerator, though the charges against him were lies and exaggerations. Then Tom Daschle, a mild person of integrity, was demonized as lacking patriotism. Then Max Cleland, the Senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was conflated with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and was too stunned and shocked even to reply. He lost his seat, the one seat that was the margin in turning the Senate.

So, the Democrats have slowly and belatedly come to the realization that the whole campaign to grab power against them may not be about individual persons and their foibles. Maybe its about power itself, and the Republican impulse and will to power.

WRP: The Clinton administration stopped a massive and coordinated series of terrorist attacks that had been planned for the Millennium celebrations. The Clinton administration had a huge body of intelligence gathered on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Could you go into some detail about the stopping of those terrorist attacks? A lot of people don’t know this happened.

SB: There were many terrorist attacks that were stopped during the Clinton presidency. There were planned embassy bombings. There was a whole series of attacks on the scale of September 11 that were stopped around the Millennium. There was, in effect, a coordinated and highly effective struggle against terrorism going on. It lacked the kind of support it ought to have had from Congress, and from certain nations that were complicit with the terrorists. Pakistan, for example. Uzbekistan was not helpful.

There was not a single Republican member of Congress who ever raised a single question or put a query to the Clinton National Security Council about its efforts against terrorism. Not one. When we left office, our National Security team conducted three extensive briefings of the incoming Bush team. Their attitude was, essentially, dismissive, that it was a “Clinton thing.” It was considered to be part of the package of soft foreign policy issues. They thought of themselves as the adults, the real men, interested in hard things like Star Wars. So they blew off the Middle East peace process. They blew up the long negotiations involving North Korea, and humiliated the South Korean president, who had won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. This has set us down the road to where we are today with North Korea, as they try to rediscover, essentially, the Clinton position.

On terrorism, they assigned the matter to Vice President Dick Cheney “for study.” Anyone who has been in government knows that when you do that, you are essentially taking it off the table and not taking it seriously. As I reported in my book, Donald Kerrick, who is a three-star general, was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration. He stayed on into the Bush administration. He was absolutely not political. He was a general. He told me that when the Bush people came in, he wrote a memo about terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The memo said, “We will be struck again.” As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings. No one responded to his memo. He felt that, from what he could see from inside the National Security Council, terrorism was demoted.

Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the national Security Council. He has since left. Clark urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Right at the present, the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told Richard Clarke that he didn’t want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible. The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke’s memos and statements were. Then the public will be able to judge exactly what this presidency has done.

WRP: Do you think September 11 would have happened under President Gore, who almost certainly would have picked up where Clinton left off on these matters?

SB: I have no idea. Clearly, the terrorists intended it to happen regardless of who was President. Gore would have paid intense interest to whatever he learned from Richard Clarke, and would have done everything in his power to coordinate the effort against this. He took this issue very, very seriously. It is hard to talk about what-ifs regarding 9/11 because the one thing that we know for certain, among other things, is the dysfunctionality of the FBI, and how it wound up suppressing the crucial information that might have prevented 9/11. Whether or not that would have happened under Gore is entirely conjectural. But the FBI operated according to its own dynamic and its own rules. If any governmental entity bears responsibility for failure, the FBI has a lot to answer for.

WRP: In what other ways do the lingering echoes of the Clinton wars affect this country today?

SB: Our politics are more polarized today than ever before. The people who tried to overthrow President Clinton, who brought the country to an unconstitutional impeachment trial, are still in power. They are Tom Delay, who is essentially running the Congress. He is essentially segregating Texas and destroying Democratic representation through redistricting there. Ted Olson, the dirty-trickster, is now the Solicitor General and is involved in packing the courts. Many of the individuals who were involved in ginning up the attacks to prevent progressive government from doing its business are in power, and are more powerful than ever, and have been invested with power by George W. Bush. What happened in Florida was a continuation of all that. What happened in 2002, the exploitation of 9/11, the recent ad we saw this week, in which the patriotism of anyone who opposes Bush policies was questioned, was produced by the Republican National Committee. All that is a straight continuation of the Clinton wars.

We can expect in 2004 that all of the divisions in the country will be widened, that the polarizations will become more intense, and that the Clinton wars should be seen as not only a warning of what was to come, but an important period in which the stakes were made clear: Progressive government, the needs of the American people, the realities of the new world, the right’s will to power, and the fact that they are willing to pursue that power by any means necessary, even if it means bending or breaking any rules, or even the Constitution.

WRP: You went into a great amount of detail about Tony Blair in your book. He was a great partner of Clinton in the Third Way movement. Why do you think Blair has attached himself so profoundly to George W. Bush, given that Bush is about as far from a Third Way politician as one can get?

SB: In the beginning, Blair acted on the idea that the enduring interests of Britain and the United States had to be upheld, regardless of who was President. He was very intent of establishing a relationship with Bush. It is necessary for a British Prime Minister to do that, and the role of Britain has always been to be a transatlantic partner, and to play a role between Europe and the United States. Blair felt he had to do that.

The problem was that Bush had his own strategies. When 9/11 happened, Blair stepped into the void initially left by Bush, and articulated the meaning of what had happened. He was widely appreciated for this by the American people. Then, Bush pushed for war in Iraq. At every turn, Blair, acting in conjunction with Colin Powell, sought to channel where Bush was going. He pushed Bush into the UN, and then sought a second UN resolution. Bush‘s disastrous diplomacy undermined, ultimately, Blair’s efforts. In the end, Blair wrung from Bush a concession whereby Bush rhetorically called for a renewal of the peace process between Israel and Palestine. Bush may believe he is pursuing it, but Eliot Abrams on his National Security Council, who is in charge of the Middle East, has been undermining that action.

Blair, now, I think, has an almost mystical understanding of the so-called “special relationship.” I wrote a column for the Guardian in which I quoted Harold McMillan, who defined early that special relationship in which, after World War II, Britain would play the Greeks to the American Romans. I pointed out that he neglected to mention that the Greeks were often slaves.

Blair recently played the host, along with the Queen, to Bush on his visit to London. Blair raised a number of very important matters with Bush. He raised tariffs, including steel tariffs. He raised British prisoners in Guantanamo. He raised the Middle East. On every single one of these issues, he was denied by Bush. I believe that Blair’s influence is diminished, because Bush does not need him as he needed him in the run-up to the Iraq war, and yet symbolically Blair stands by Bush. All that remains, though, is the husk of a relationship. How special is it? Blair, essentially, has very little influence with Bush, and yet has provided Bush with the photo-ops Bush wanted. Those photo-ops are all that remains of the special relationship.

WRP: What is your take on the current crop of Democratic candidates?

SB: I am not aligned with any candidate. I’m not with any candidate, or working for any candidate at all. I think that what is important for the Democratic candidates is to level their fire, their critiques, at Bush, and not to bite each other on the ankles. It is natural in a primary season, given the competition, to attack each other. But I have not seen, so far, any candidate advance themselves by attacking another candidate. I have seen candidates advance by focusing on Bush’s accountability for what has been going on. There is a lesson in there for all the Democratic candidates.

LINK

[DKW 86 7,448]

1) Sidney Blumenthal is Hillary's Attack dog. Nothingless. He pleaded no lo contendre to spousal abuse.

2) He started that balanced and fair reporting rag, Salon.com so the wealthy limousine liberals could feel better about themselves.

3) SB was subpeonaed many times while working for the Clinton Administration. He was basically part of the Craig Livingstone, "dig up all the dirt you can and to hell with the Constitution" crowd.

4) Sidney is such a great businessman that he has stiffed hundreds of businesses, shareholders, and his employees for millions of dollars he owes them. Really great labor policy there SB!!!!!

True Democratic hypocracy at its best!

5)I could go on about his history of false reporting jobs for the Time Warner.

[Tiger Al 0]

1) Sidney Blumenthal is Hillary's Attack dog. Nothingless. He pleaded no lo contendre to spousal abuse.

2) He started that balanced and fair reporting rag, Salon.com so the wealthy limousine liberals could feel better about themselves.

3) SB was subpeonaed many times while working for the Clinton Administration. He was basically part of the Craig Lingstone, "dig up all the dirt you can and to hell with the Constitution" crowd.

4) Sidney is such a great businessman that he has stiffed hundreds of businesses, shareholders, and his employees for millions of dollars he owes them. Really great labor policy there SB!!!!!

True Democratic hypocracy at its best!

I could go on about his historyb of false reporting jobs for the Time Warner.

5)

I'd like to see some proof of this, especially number one. That's a flat-out lie on the abuse. Prove it or rescind it!!!

[DKW 86 7,448]

Wait till this evening then and you will recieve.

[DKW 86 7,448]

First part, from THe Washington Monthly Link

It started the night before Blumenthal began his new job, when the conservative gossipmonger Matt Drudge posted an item on his Web site falsely accusing him of spousal abuse. Blumenthal and his wife sued, and Drudge retracted the report, but the suit dragged on for years, until eventually, in 2001, they dropped it so as to close a chapter in their lives. (Blumenthal doesn't say so, but he must have been galled to pay Drudge $2,500, "to prevent him from creating a false controversy" by counter-suing for legal fees.)

Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, Blumenthal and Wife paid Drudge $2500 to settle the suit!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, I know pay someone 2500 every time they lie about me...... not!

[Tiger Al 0]

That's it??? Good Lord, man, the author of your article said it himself, "Matt Drudge posted an item on his Web site falsely accusing him of spousal abuse."

The $2500 wasn't hush money for Drudge, as your article, unintentionally it seems, implies. If it were, don't you think you might have to add at least one more zero to the figure? Also, the difference between you and Sidney Blumenthal is that he was considered a public figure. This means, according to his book which cites New York Times v. Sullivan, that the burden was on SB to prove the de-famer's "actual malice" (his knowledge of falsity or his reckless disregard for the truth) as a private person he would only have to demonstrate "negligence".

If SB were to sue you for your initial remark he would have to show that you KNEW that what you said was false. To show "negligence" all he'd have to do is show that what you said was based on your recitation of false information. The latter is much easier to do than the former because you don't have a "motive" component in the charge. Cheaper, too.

This is from Blumenthal's book, page 784:

"Throughout the spring of 2001 we sought, through the magistrate appointed by the judge to settle the matter, to obtain a simple apology from Drudge. The magistrate composed one. But Drudge refused to sign it, and we decided eventually that we could not convince him to act decently. He even threatened to sue us with a lawsuit of his own to recover his lawyer's expenses for making a trip to Washington. We paid $2500 for his nuisance value, to prevent him from creating a false controversy by filing a suit, and we dropped our own suit in May."

I'm disappointed in you, David. BTW, aren't you a teacher of some kind?

[DKW 86 7,448]

More is coming tonight guy, dont worry. I have a book review where Sidneys friends defend the Republicans he slanders. They put into print that he is just wrong!

For anyone else out there SB is the guy that probably put out the now very infamous talking points memo. The one where Monica was supposed to have drafted it and called herself (are you getting the venom from Blumenthal) a deranged stalker.

Thats right folks, SB went after ML, a 23 year old intern to hack her puppy-dog in love heart up after Clinton lied and lied and lied about her. This is SB! SB wrote the talking points that said ML is a deranged stalker, and then BLAMED THE TALKING POINTS ON MONICA!!!

When you look up the term Kool-Aid Drinker you see a pic of Sid Blumenthal.

Next we see his friends, and you wont like them either.

My point about Drudge, he never apologized, he got the cash. If someone defames me I go after them with Nuclear weapons until there are no bodies left standing. You folks will see that SB is as EXTREME a LIB as ever walked.

Too bad he lied about keeping Salon going and kept his staff working for NOTHING while he was supposed to be selling the mag. It was sssooo indebt, no one would even look at it. Of course Mr. Blumenthal doesnt seem to have lost a cent in all this. Just his backers, his friends, his employees, Sounds a lot like the Clintons doesnt it?

As for the Clinton recovery crap....where to begin?

I guess the economic growth in the late 90s was really just the Clinton Administration not doing their job in Justice and Treasury, nothing new there. Bogus SEC Filings, Bogus businesses failing, the hundreds of dot.com failures, worst accounting in history and the Clinton-Gore Adm cant see a dime of it.

Bush comes in and suddenly we find out that HealthSouth, Enron, WorldComm, Qwest, Tyco was filing BS all those years. Just as bogus as Bill Clinton himself.

Clinton on top of Terrorism? Where? When? The only thing he was ever on top of was a subservient woman whether she was a campaign worker, a party hack, a state employee, or even an intern.

[Tiger Al 0]

David, you are so full of crap!!! I haven't had a chance to look over your other allegations, but the Lewinsky jab is another lie that you're telling. According to the article that YOU linked to earlier:

"In the next year, Starr's office, congressional Republicans, and sympathetic reporters wrongly renewed these and similar charges, claiming that it was Blumenthal who spread the notion that Monica Lewinsky was a deranged "stalker" or a scorned woman who invented her affair with Clinton; in fact, the "stalker" theory originated when Newsweek's Web site reported the contents of the famous "Talking Points Memo"--guidelines on how to spin the affair written, it later emerged, by Lewinsky herself--describing the former intern that way. Others, including George Will, Bill Kristol, and Tim Russert, groundlessly asserted that Blumenthal was responsible for divulging the news of House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde's affairs; in fact, that disclosure came from a Florida retiree named Norman Sommer, whose friend Hyde had long ago cuckolded."

That memo was concocted by Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and Lucianne Goldberg!!!

Too bad he lied about keeping Salon going and kept his staff working for NOTHING while he was supposed to be selling the mag. It was sssooo indebt, no one would even look at it. Of course Mr. Blumenthal doesnt seem to have lost a cent in all this. Just his backers, his friends, his employees, Sounds a lot like the Clintons doesnt it?

Exactly what is it you have against Sidney Blumenthal that makes you feel like you have to lie about him??? Did he steal one of your girlfriends or beat you up after school? Lie number three (This is from the Salon website):

Founder, Editor in Chief and Chief Executive Officer

David Talbot

This is from a short bio on Blumenthal by Evan Smith of Texas Monthly Talks:

SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL, a former assistant to President Bill Clinton, has recently written a book about his time in the Clinton White House, The Clinton Wars.

Most famous for his loyalty to the Clintons, Blumenthal received strong criticism of his book from journalists, Republicans, as well as many of the Clinton aides he mentions.

Blumenthal began his career as a journalist and worked for the New Yorker magazine, The Washington Post, New Republic and Vanity Fair.

In 1997, Blumenthal left journalism to join the White House Communications team. He first met the Clinton's during a Renaissance Weekend in the 1980s.

Blumenthal, who grew up in Chicago, had strong interest in politics evan as a child. He became a "runner" for a Democratic precinct captain when he was 12 and went door-to-door to get out the vote, according to a recent BBC News profile.

After graduating from Brandeis University in 1969, Blumenthal became a national political correspondent for The New Republic from 1983 to 1985 and then served as senior editor from 1990-1992.

In addition, he was a member of the national staff of The Washington Post from 1985 to 1989 and was Washington editor of The New Yorker from 1992 to 1997.

Following the Monica Lewinsky affair, Blumenthal joined the first lady and other Clinton supporters in defending the president. He quickly labled Independet Counsel Ken Starr's investigation and the allegations against the president as "a right-wing conspiracy."

Blumenthal was also suspected by many Washington journalists as being reponsible for a leak to the online magazine, Salon, about U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde engaging in an extramarital affair.

Blumenthal became one of three witnesses in the impeachment trial against Bill Clinton. Blumenthal’s books include The Permanent Campaign: Inside the World of Elite Political Operatives (1980); The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (1986); Our Long National Daydream: A Political Pageant of the Reagan Era (1988); Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War (1990); and The Reagan Legacy, of which he was co-editor.

He has been a commentator on NBC's Today show.

Sidney Blumenthal is a writer and has never owned a business in his life. This is pathetic, David.

And, btw, if any of his former 'friends' is David Horowitz, save it.

[CarolinaTiger 0]

well, i haven't seen TA get this animated in quite some time.

apparently you are a big SB fan, TA.

usually when i sit down to read something of substance (like your post above), i like for it to be w/o such a strong slant...but quite often, i have to just stop because the writer/speaker are so biased in their interpretation of whats going on that its hard to actually filter through all the BS to get to anything of interesting substance.

for example, is medicare really privatized now? really? just one big ole HMO?

not that i'd mind that, if it were done properly, but i just haven't read anything that says medicare is now privatized.

this piece seems more suited for someone already biased in the leftward direction, and is probably not going to be 'good reading' for someone rightward slanted, or even nonslanted.

[Tiger Al 0]

apparently you are a big SB fan, TA.

CT, I'm not really a BIG SB fan. I read his book and it was an excellent read. He is someone I'd love to talk with over drinks because he's an extremely bright, articulate and learned guy who has great insight into an administration that was thoroughly besieged with garbage from all directions. He seems like a decent fellow and if I see a lie (in this case, at least three), not a mistake or a joke, written about him, I'll vehemently correct it, as I would be corrected. If I wait for it to be done by anyone else here but a few, I'll look like this:

for example, is medicare really privatized now? really? just one big ole HMO?

SB didn't say that it was privatized now, but that the initial steps have begun in that direction.

this piece seems more suited for someone already biased in the leftward direction, and is probably not going to be 'good reading' for someone rightward slanted, or even nonslanted.

Darn it, CT!!! I posted the interview with you in mind!!! Sorry you didn't appreciate it.

[CarolinaTiger 0]

Darn it, CT!!! I posted the interview with you in mind!!! Sorry you didn't appreciate it.

a) it's too long for me to read...i develop ADD after 9:pm

it's after 9pm!

my bad on the HMO thing...it was the interviewer that spoke as if the bill did that.

SBs response, however, does appear to leave the interviewer's statement somewhat uncorrected.

[DKW 86 7,448]

Tiger AL: let me refresh your memory, or better decode English for you.

The truth on SB

Insidious Sid

Sid Blumenthal rearranges facts and besmirches the character of his fellow journalists. And he wonders why people dislike him.By Michael Isikoff

This from his liberal friends.

The point is not that Blumenthal is a hypocrite (although he seems to be exactly that). The point is that throughout this book Blumenthal seems utterly incapable of understanding how his own uncompromising, take-no-prisoners defense of the Clintons contributed to the poisonous political atmosphere that he bemoans.

But it is abundantly clear that distortion is standard fare for Blumenthal. Although there are slivers of truth in most of what he writes, the facts are dishonestly rearranged to settle scores or whitewash his and the Clintons' actions.

[DKW 86 7,448]

More on SB

Blumenthal role in gay story to be investigated

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THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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The White House said yesterday it would "look into" allegations that Sidney Blumenthal, a White House aide close to Hillary Rodham Clinton, had tried to persuade reporters to write stories that a certain member of Kenneth W. Starr's staff is a homosexual.

John Podesta, White House deputy chief of staff, was confronted on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" with published assertions that Mr. Blumenthal had told two reporters "directly of the same-sex orientation of a member of Starr's staff, and a third [reporter] said he had been present at a conversation in which Blumenthal made such a comment to a third person."

SB is just a Hillary attack diog with no scruples at all.

[DKW 86 7,448]

Read the whole devastating review. Sid Blumenthal is more than a devoted Kool-Aid drinker. He is serially dishonest. Why anyone would deign to use this book as intellectual ammunition in political arguments is beyond me. Talk about slumming it.

More on SB

then you would be the kind of person who would swallow and believe Blumenthal's drivel completely, regardless of all those nagging little facts that reveal Blumenthal's book to be one big, giant lie.

More SB

think it is only for strict party reasons that [blumenthal] fails to mention Roger Tamraz (convicted drug Lord/dealer and high dollar Clinton donor) and James Riady (multimillion dollar donor to Dems that profited by over one Billion dollars on the National Monument declaration signed during campaign 1996) and all Clinton's other thick-envelope direct donors, and concentrates instead on saying (at excruciating length) that Whitewater produced no smoking gun. This may be true, though it is not true that the Clintons ever acted as if they had nothing to hide or nothing to fear.

[DKW 86 7,448]

SB on Salon Announcing $30M Suit that he ends by paying the defendant!!!!!!!!!!!

DRUDGE NEVER SIGNED ANY APOLOGY AND GOT CASH AS WELL!!!!!!!

Libel suit tests the limits

of freewheeling Net speech

BY JONATHAN BRODER

WASHINGTON -- The $30 million libel suit brought this week by White House aide Sidney Blumenthal against America Online....The other defendant in Blumenthal's suit is Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge, who wrote on Aug. 10 in his widely read Drudge Report that Blumenthal, a senior advisor to President Clinton, "has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up." Drudge quoted one anonymous source as saying the story of Blumenthal's alleged wife-beating "has been in circulation for years." He quoted another unnamed source as saying that "there are court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife."

Blumenthal, who has been married to Jacqueline Jordan Blumenthal, also a White House aide, for more than 21 years, says he has no history of wife-beating, no such story about him has ever been in circulation and that no such court records exist.

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In the book -- which ranked #23,588 on AMAZON's hit parade Sunday night

MAG PUBLISHERS TAKE PASS ON BLUMENTHAL BOOK

No class to the end even about a dead man...

A vigorous dissection of Blumenthal nemesis, editor/reporter Michael Kelly, who died early this month in Iraq, exposes the hardcore sport of politics: raw and personal, to the end. [blumenthal declined to pull back the book from the printers to edit the blistering Kelly pages.]

Al this is really fun, still looking for the financial info on Salon. The links to him and Salon are numerous in the articles linked so far tho.

No magazine will roll out the book, so SB goes to .....Salon.com!

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Blumenthal angry at Salon, Not doing what they are told.

Blumenthal Goes Ballistic

The conventional view--especially on the right--is that the online magazine Salon is probably the nation's most Clinton-friendly publication.

Earlier this year, for example, a Washington Times op-ed writer called Salon "a favorite Web site of the Clinton White House." A New York Post editorial this year referred to "the pro-Clinton press machine, writing under the name 'Murray Waas' in the on-line 'zine Salon."

On all matters Whitewater and Lewinsky, the criticism has some basis. But when it comes to ballistic missiles, the White House wants to have Salon bombed.

Recently, top White House aide Sidney Blumenthal--angry at what he thought was a critical Salon article--threatened to cut Salon reporter Murray Waas off from all administration sources. Such strong-arm calls to reporters are not unheard of. But this one was made before Waas's article had even been published.

"I heard [blumenthal] was furious," says Salon editor David Talbot, "although I didn't talk to him directly."

The story that popped Blumenthal's cork ran in Salon on May 29. Based on Waas's access to classified documents and anonymous government sources, it maintained that between 1993 and 1996, the administration "allowed numerous exports of potential ballistic-missile technology to the Chinese government," and that, in some instances, the exports had been approved despite the Chinese government's refusal to "allow inspections to assure that the technology was only being used for civilian purposes."

Moreover, Waas reported, the Clinton White House ignored warnings from its own Defense Department that the technology China was getting could be diverted to military use.

[DKW 86 7,448]

We see Sb as a pure SOB that can still skewer and lie about a dead man. Here is still more on how he set out to trash ML in the lie machine that was the Cliniton White House as BC lied again and again about a 23 year old Intern. If the measure of a man is his friends, I dont know who I pity more BC or SB.

Hitchens v. Blumenthal

The most interesting bit of high-minded hooey to emerge from the Hitchens-Blumenthal flap can be found in Joe Conason's column in this week's New York Observer. Chris Hitchens, you'll recall, agreed to cooperate when a House Judiciary committee staffer phoned to ask about Sid Blumenthal's "Monica the Stalker" comments to Hitchens over lunch.

Christopher HITCHENS, my favorite liberal. A man that can be a liberal and an educated liberal and NOT KISS BILL CLINTON'S POSTERIOR 24/7.

Of course, that means that 99% of the Democrats hate his guts. He has convictions, and lets not let any of that get in the way of KISSING ***.

Beat goes on.

Story: SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL ACCUSED OF LYING FOR PRESIDENT

His testimony for the Senate impeachment trial may be over, but Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal may not be out of the woods yet. A group of Senators is calling on the Justice Department to investigate Blumenthal's denial under oath that he helped to spread stories about Monica Lewinsky. This comes after Christopher Hitchens, contributing editor and columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair magazines signed an affidavit in which he said that Blumenthal told him and others that Lewinsky was "a stalker" over lunch one day.

In a statement issued through his lawyer yesterday, Blumenthal denied being the source of any story about Lewinsky's personal life. He did say, however, that he spoke about Lewinsky to his friends, and said that Hitchens fell in that category. House prosecutors allege that President Clinton passed on false, derogatory information to Blumenthal so he would repeat it.

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Sidney Blumenthal brought new meaning to the word "sycophancy" (butt kisser) when he was hired to cover the Beltway and instead became an unofficial White House flack;

More BS from SB

Ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal is potentially slated to become editor-in-chief of a Guardian-run U.S. magazine, tentatively titled Smarmy ****. [Ed.—I just made that up. I don't know what the title will be.] This is almost too good to be true. Blumenthal was good Gawker fodder before he had a magazine.

Magazine plan in bloom for ex-Clinton aide [NY Daily News]

New mag for SB

[Tiger Al 0]

Tiger AL: let me refresh your memory, or better decode English for you.

The truth on SB

Insidious Sid

Sid Blumenthal rearranges facts and besmirches the character of his fellow journalists. And he wonders why people dislike him.By Michael Isikoff

This from his liberal friends.

The point is not that Blumenthal is a hypocrite (although he seems to be exactly that). The point is that throughout this book Blumenthal seems utterly incapable of understanding how his own uncompromising, take-no-prisoners defense of the Clintons contributed to the poisonous political atmosphere that he bemoans.

But it is abundantly clear that distortion is standard fare for Blumenthal. Although there are slivers of truth in most of what he writes, the facts are dishonestly rearranged to settle scores or whitewash his and the Clintons' actions.

Michael Isikoff doesn't like him. He disagrees with him. Whoopi-di-doo.

[Tiger Al 0]

More on SB

Blumenthal role in gay story to be investigated

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The White House said yesterday it would "look into" allegations that Sidney Blumenthal, a White House aide close to Hillary Rodham Clinton, had tried to persuade reporters to write stories that a certain member of Kenneth W. Starr's staff is a homosexual.

John Podesta, White House deputy chief of staff, was confronted on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" with published assertions that Mr. Blumenthal had told two reporters "directly of the same-sex orientation of a member of Starr's staff, and a third [reporter] said he had been present at a conversation in which Blumenthal made such a comment to a third person."

SB is just a Hillary attack diog with no scruples at all.

Allegations. Was it ever proven to be Blumenthal???

[Tiger Al 0]

Read the whole devastating review. Sid Blumenthal is more than a devoted Kool-Aid drinker. He is serially dishonest. Why anyone would deign to use this book as intellectual ammunition in political arguments is beyond me. Talk about slumming it.

More on SB

then you would be the kind of person who would swallow and believe Blumenthal's drivel completely, regardless of all those nagging little facts that reveal Blumenthal's book to be one big, giant lie.

More SB

think it is only for strict party reasons that [blumenthal] fails to mention Roger Tamraz (convicted drug Lord/dealer and high dollar Clinton donor) and James Riady (multimillion dollar donor to Dems that profited by over one Billion dollars on the National Monument declaration signed during campaign 1996) and all Clinton's other thick-envelope direct donors, and concentrates instead on saying (at excruciating length) that Whitewater produced no smoking gun. This may be true, though it is not true that the Clintons ever acted as if they had nothing to hide or nothing to fear.

Right wing-nuts who hate Blumenthal and take shots at his book.

[Tiger Al 0]

In the book -- which ranked #23,588 on AMAZON's hit parade Sunday night

MAG PUBLISHERS TAKE PASS ON BLUMENTHAL BOOK

No class to the end even about a dead man...

A vigorous dissection of Blumenthal nemesis, editor/reporter Michael Kelly, who died early this month in Iraq, exposes the hardcore sport of politics: raw and personal, to the end. [blumenthal declined to pull back the book from the printers to edit the blistering Kelly pages.]

Al this is really fun, still looking for the financial info on Salon. The links to him and Salon are numerous in the articles linked so far tho.

No magazine will roll out the book, so SB goes to .....Salon.com!

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUNDAY APRIL 27, 2003 19:41:37 ET XXXXX

The book hadn't even been released!!!

From Amazon.com as of two minutes ago:

Hardcover: 822 pages ;

Dimensions (in inches): 1.75 x 9.36 x 6.38

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux; 1st edition (May 20, 2003)

ISBN: 0374125023

Average Customer Review:  Based on 72 reviews. Write a review.

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,035

(Publishers & Authors: improve your sales)

Popular in: MSN.COM (#15) , Yahoo! Mail (#17) . See more

Lie number four for you, David.

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Even more detail from Hitchens on the Worm...SB

This micro-event was later to mutate into a brief macro-moment. In March of 1998, having not seen much of Blumenthal since he had joined the Clinton team (I had been teaching at the University of California at Berkeley), I was eager to catch up with him. With my wife, Carol, I took him for a reunion snack. I don't think I will or could ever forget the transformation. Where was my witty if sometimes cynical, clever if sometimes dogmatic, friend? In his place seemed to be someone who had gone to work for John Gotti. He talked coldly and intently of a lethal right-wing conspiracy that was slowly engulfing the capital. And he spoke, as if out of the side of a tough-guy mouth, about the women who were tools of the plot. Kathleen Willey, who had been interviewed on television the preceding weekend, was showing well in the polls, but that would soon be fixed. (The White House had already released her personal correspondence, prompting a federal judge later to find a violation of the Watergate-era Privacy Act. According to the Justice Department, the papers were released after a conversation between Hillary Clinton and Blumenthal.) As for Monica Lewinsky, he painted her as a predatory and unstable stalker. At the time this prompted no conclusion other than the sickening but unavoidable one that Sidney Blumenthal could be brought to believe that a President can be "stalked" in his own Oval Office (and in about three dozen incidents, according to the logs that record permission for Lewinsky to be shown in at odd moments). When asked by my wife how he could credit the stalker concept, he replied simply, "Because the President told me." There's much else about that lunch I need never disclose, but I remember that he twice hushed my questioning wife by saying, "Carol, I could go to jail for what I'm doing now." I didn't know then, and can't guess even now, what he meant by that.

Thus, when it all became a legal matter, and I began to see reports that Lewinsky was indeed a blackmailing strumpet (followed in due course by claims from the White House that it had no part in the circulation of this defamation), I already knew and was also able to confirm from other reporters where this was coming from. It may seem sordid or trivial now, but if a certain Gap dress had not been retained, Lewinsky could successfully have been denounced and humiliated as just a bit nutty and a bit slutty by a man who had once dangled the promise of a permanent relationship before her dazzled eyes. And a callous perjuror would have flouted his own legislation. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that to permit this would be to acquiesce in an offense if not a crime. I had the ability to nail the lie, and when contacted by the House Judiciary Committee about the matter, I did so nail it. And I would do it again. I wish I'd had the chance to do it for Juanita Broaddrick, whose story of rape has withstood fairly rigorous challenges. (In this book it is dismissed because David Brock didn't believe it.)

[Tiger Al 0]

Blumenthal angry at Salon, Not doing what they are told.

Blumenthal Goes Ballistic

The conventional view--especially on the right--is that the online magazine Salon is probably the nation's most Clinton-friendly publication.

Earlier this year, for example, a Washington Times op-ed writer called Salon "a favorite Web site of the Clinton White House." A New York Post editorial this year referred to "the pro-Clinton press machine, writing under the name 'Murray Waas' in the on-line 'zine Salon."

On all matters Whitewater and Lewinsky, the criticism has some basis. But when it comes to ballistic missiles, the White House wants to have Salon bombed.

Recently, top White House aide Sidney Blumenthal--angry at what he thought was a critical Salon article--threatened to cut Salon reporter Murray Waas off from all administration sources. Such strong-arm calls to reporters are not unheard of. But this one was made before Waas's article had even been published.

"I heard [blumenthal] was furious," says Salon editor David Talbot, "although I didn't talk to him directly."

The story that popped Blumenthal's cork ran in Salon on May 29. Based on Waas's access to classified documents and anonymous government sources, it maintained that between 1993 and 1996, the administration "allowed numerous exports of potential ballistic-missile technology to the Chinese government," and that, in some instances, the exports had been approved despite the Chinese government's refusal to "allow inspections to assure that the technology was only being used for civilian purposes."

Moreover, Waas reported, the Clinton White House ignored warnings from its own Defense Department that the technology China was getting could be diverted to military use.

Mmmm, a guy fightin' for his boss. You gotta hate that.