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Summary: HILLARY WAS RIGHT: IT WAS VAST AND RIGHT-WING
Review: This book proves conclusively that there was indeed a vast, right-wing conspiracy to topple the president. And it started long before Clinton even made it to the White House. Meticulous research on the part of the authors ties all the players together, including members of the judiciary and the press. The notion of the liberal press is thoroughly debunked (not only WSJ but also ego-driven NYT journalists crossed the line in aiding the Clinton-haters) and the hidden role of Richard Mellon Scaife is exposed. Perjury to a federal grand jury by Linda Tripp and to a congressional hearing by L. Jean Lewis of the RTC were never reported by the press, much less prosecuted. And the American public's dim view of "independent" prosecutor Ken Starr is vindicated: he is a truly bitter, hateful partisan who subverted the judiciary process to advance his own political agenda. His crimes included leaking scores of documents to the press, in violation of judicial gag orders, and lying to Congress about aspects of his years-long $50 million+ vendetta. A few heroes, such as Susan McDougal, emerge along the way. But the real heroes are the American public who instictively knew that there was something very wrong with a never-ending investigation that began with a decades-old real estate venture but somehow veered into a witchunt involving a consensual relationship between two adults.
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Summary: Media Owes Clarification for its Half-Truths
Review: The media has treated half-truths as truths. And now that THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT provides well-researched truth, the media should expose its errors to the public. We need not expect clarification from those Scaife-poopsheets, but the WSJ, NYT, and others of their ilk could show responsibility for their own errors thus lifting themselves out of that Scaife category. For example, David Broder who coined "Troopergate" but failed to tell us how how the officers were paid to lie, might like to air the details of who took the payola and which officers said it was wrong, how much cash they were paid to rat and other luxuries provided. Breaking the silence might help. Without it the Arkansas Project and Scaife/Melon funds continue to pollute minds and fulfill the mandate given to Lee Atwater.
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Summary: A scary story
Review: this book follows three threads. One is the political story, abiet under the radar politics. The second thread is greed, both greed for money and geed for notoriety. The third thread is the debasement of the American Judicial System. Any American who reads this book with the third thread in mind will never feel safe in the courtroom. Not as a plaintiff, a defendant, or a witness. Not in a civil court or a crimminal court. Why? When one reads about the decision making process of the judges illustrated in this book one will find that impartiality is not a part of the process. If a judge does not like you do not expect the judge to rule based on law, the judge will rule based on his/her prejudices. When one reads about the tactics used to obtain information by the prosecuters one will find that obeying the laws they are suppose to inforce is not a requisite. Do not expect a prosecuter or a law enforcement agenct to treat you with respect if they think you have information they want. They will instead ride roughshod over you. Although President Clinton was a tough individual who could and did ultimately withstand the heat. I do not think that the average American could. I would not recommend reading this book before bedtime it is really scary.
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Summary: Unethical reporting by the NY Times
Review: Unethical Reporting by the NY Times The review by "a customer from New York" entitled " Anger" ( 4/10/00) expressed feelings that are similar to mine . I also was a long time fan of the NY Times . I was introduced to the Times as freshman at Columbia College in 1940 and have been a regular reader for the last 60 years I have always felt it deserved its reputation as the news paper of record. This book charges the Times with willfully inaccurate stories that violates the basic ethics of reporting. There are documented stories of unethical action by reporters, editorial writers , columnists and bureau chiefs. ` The story that helped start the Whitewater investigation was written by Times reporter Jeff Gerth. Lyons and Conason have a large amount of material that indicate that Gerth was engaged in biased and untruthful reporting. One of Gerth's major sources was a Resolution Trust Corporation investigator named L .Jean Lewis. Lewis supplied Gerth with much of his material . When she was called before Senator D'Amato's committee investigating Whitewater it was demonstrated that she had been lying and inventing charges and the stories that Gerth had been filing were false . These are serious charges against the Times and if they are false there is adequate documentation in sources like the files of the Republican controlled Senate Committee to refute the charges of malfeasance by the Times . The Times has been silent . The paper of record is ignoring the record .The only mention of these charges by the Times are in The Times book review of THOTP. The review is not written by a neutral observer but by a colleague of Gerth's in the Times Washington bureau. The reviewer,Neil A. Lewis, dismisses the book as not worthy of serious consideration . On pages 206 and 207 of THOTP Conason and Lyons quote Richard Massey's testimony in detail clearly absolving Mrs. Clinton of any wrongdoing in her work for the Rose Law firm. The Times reviewer , Mr. Lewis ,says that Mr. Massey accused her of wrong doing at the same hearings but gives us no quotes . The record of Massey's testimony is available in the committee's transcripts but Mr. Lewis does not quote any of it. He just claims that he right and Lyons and Conason are wrong . Why won't he paper of record give us their version of the record ? This is a serious book , making serious charges . Some of your reader reviewers dismiss it as being written by Communists. They can not be taken seriously . If the charges against the Times are false they deserve a serious rebuttal . Lacking a rebuttal one has to question whether the New York Times can be taken seriously
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Summary: Conason and Lyon's 'How to Hunt a Snipe"
Review: Rumor and intrigue abound in this surprisingly funny Southern gothic thriller. After their regular swamp guide dies unexpectedly of a brain tumor, characters from a William Faulkner novelette take gullible coastal residents on an old fashioned Southern snipe hunt. Urged on by the Hearst newspaper chain of 1890, Cotton Mather, Sir Oswald Mosley, and Marie Antoinette become obsessed with catching the legendary Great Snipe. Cotton becomes convinced that someone is hiding the snipe and hires the famous snipe quide David Hale. Aided by a generous bounty provided by Sir Oswald, Cotton skins every living creature in the Ozark plateau in his quest to find a snipe. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the situation has turned desperate. Financed by Sir Oswald, Marie and Hearst secretly help Cotton trap a spaniel. The book ends at this point. Although published first, Jeffrey Toobin's 'A Vast Conspiracy' is the second book in this series. 'AVC' is highly recommended to readers who wonder what happened next. (Plot capsule: Thinking that it would spark vigilante support , Cotton and Hearst leak word of the 'snipe' capture and arrange a public vivisection. Millions of Americans, who can generally recognize a dog when they see one, are horrified and quietly leave to go bowling.) The book suffers from uneven writing and preposterous plot twists. The reader is asked to believe that a mayoral candidate would run on a "I am not a lesbian" platform, the National Enquirer has editors with more savvy and native intelligence than those at the New York Times, and the prestigious Wall Street Journal was taken by a simple real estate swindle. Great for the beach bag or bait shop, 'The Hunting of the President', is must reading for anyone plotting their own political adventure in America's vast 'fly-over'.
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Summary: A Cautionary Tale
Review: Well researched, well written and very scary. If you have ever wondered how mass hysteria could cause the Salem witch hunts and thought our "enlightened age" is beyond such madness, think again. It's all here; petty jealousies and spitefulness, political opportunists, and inquisitors who will save your soul if you confess and implicate others.
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Summary: Impartial & Pragmatic
Review: As an Englishman, I have precious little invested in the matter of Clinton and his pursuers, either for or against. Certainly, we had in England, just as in much of the rest of the world, been bombarded with these matters from the day they broke into the national American consciousness, and discerning fact from fiction became an increasingly difficult job. As a Thatcherite Conservative myself, I had a pre-disposition to believe and hope that my political soulmates across the Atlantic were right, and that they would manage to despatch this President, apparently so odious. And yet...... And yet, it began to bother me that for all the accusations slung so energetically at President Clinton, there never appeared to be any concrete evidence of wrongdoing, and that no convictions on any serious charges of any of those indicted seemed forthcoming. Furthermore, for a President so voluminously accused by so many, and condemned so widely in the press for so many misdeeds, the total lack of indictments against Clinton began to bother me greatly. An enthusiastic, partisan investigator, backed by a partisan Congress in both Houses, with unlimited access to funds and surrounded by a large, ideologically committed staff had, after some five to six years, found.........absolutely nothing! How could this be? When Hillary Clinton spoke of a "...vast right-wing, conspiracy...", I shuddered silently. I did not wish to believe her, but something did not add up, and when the President was impeached and survived, I wondered if Starr and his team were simply monumentally incompetent, or if maybe - just maybe - Mrs Clinton was right? And then this marvellous book. Marvellous not just because of the way it is written, but marvellous because it is so obviously wholly impartial, and utterly objective. The prose style is one which Sir Winston Churchill would have admired had he been alive; concise, precise and clear, but fully descriptive. "The best English is the simplest English..." Sir Winston often opined, a dictum to which he adhered religiously and with geat success throughout his professional life as a journalist, author and politician, and it won him a Nobel Prize for literature. Lyons and Conason have resisted the temptation to become emotionally involved in their remarkable story, and this is a marvel too, especially in this day and age. They have set forth their findings calmly and unemotionally, and their book is the better for it. I have consulted a few times with your Library Of Congress, and I have taken the time to contact friends and colleagues in the United States, for some of the more pertinent source material relevant to some of the more obscure and controversial events in this narrative, and Lyons and Conason check out completely. Indeed, in my opinion, there are further allegations they could have made against prominent Republican figures, of an even more sensational nature, but they appear to have avoided them because the source material is not wholly corroborated. A remarkable research standard. I would finally observe that we used to live in a political climate throughout the English-speaking world, where we respected the decision of the majority, and formed our opinions of a political leader based on his competence and professional integrity, rather than out of blind, partisan political emotion. I think we - regardless of whether or not we are American - shall all have to realise that not everyone is a Nixon. This book goes a long way to inspiring rational rather than emotionally based judgement of what I shall grudgingly have to admit is a remarkably able President. Bravo.
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Summary: A fair and balanced history
Review: As a lifelong Democrat and Clinton supporter I picked up this book with trepidation. I fully expected a white wash, a blithe dismissal of the President's clearly proven follies, and a thundering assault(long on noise but short of substance) on his "persecutors". Instead what I found was a well written examination of the actors and action of this American tragedy. Mr. Clinton does not escape unscathed. On page 276 alone his sexual liasons with Monica Lewinsky are termed (quite rightly) "adolescent" and "brainless". When and where the Clintons were wrong they are clearly branded. Their "trading out" of the Lincoln bedroom and Presidential coffees for politcal contributions are termed "gross". But what develops is a stunning examination of what is actually several small, interlocked right wing conspiracies to damage William Jefferson Clinton. From Richard Mellon Scaife (who makes me ashamed of being a fellow Pittsburgher) to the petty machinations of Linda Tripp we are introduced to a seamy underside of American politics that should repel all elements of the political spectrum. The story of the Office of the Independent Counsel speaks volumes for why this misbegotten child of Watergate should be buried deeply and permanently. This story should be required reading in this day and age. It is a cautionary tale of the vile depths that our society may sink to if we do not more carefully watch our own government. It is also a warning that we must all demand greater depth of reporting from the media. Mr. Clinton is not sanctified by the authors. He is shown with all his foolish flaws and shortcomings. But equally his opponents are shown in the same unflattering glare.
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Summary: failure of the media in the interest of a scoop
Review: a superb exposition that a conspiracy did exist and that it was aided and abetted by a media too willing to take the easy pap provided them and a rush to judgement without the traditional journalistic investigation of sources and ax grinding that we should expect and deserve to have. The media's failure cost the taxpayers unreasonably, diminished the respect for the presidency and all we finally proved was that Clinton is a man with normal urges and that he failed to contain them. God forbid that we all should be judged in the press and the courts for failures of a like nature. He should have been forgiven, not pilloried. A well research tome. Much appreciated.
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Summary: What journalism was meant to be
Review: This well documented book is journalism at its best. There are no allegations by unnamed sources, no innuendo, no slander. The writers back up their stories with credible evidence and verifiable facts. I just wish the mainstream news media would follow their standards of journalism.
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