Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: The red herring for Mr. Walsh Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 16:56:27 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION;PRUDEN ON POLITICS \HD The red herring for Mr. Walsh \BY Wesley Pruden \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES A new poll commissioned by the Los Angeles Times finds that most Americans trust Arsenio Hall and Phil Donahue more than anybody in the news business as sources for their campaign news, and as sad as that may be it's not difficult to understand why. The media culture has an agenda, and Arsenio and Phil don't. We're getting a textbook lesson right now in Washington about how this agenda works, in the pursuit of Elizabeth Tamposi, the State Department officer who was fired for her conduct in searching the passport files of Bill Clinton; his mother, Virginia Kelly; and Ross Perot. The Washington Post reports, darkly, that Mrs. Tamposi took the files to her home overnight, and the implication, which The Post's editors certainly want you to draw, is that a coven of Republican operatives were waiting there to photograph them (no doubt with a tiny Minox spy camera) so they could . . . so they could, ummm, well, it's not clear what these lurking operatives would do with the photographs of the files. Ordinarily, you might expect that a political operative, with his Burberry slicker pulled tight against his throat and his John B. Stetson fedora pulled rakishly over one eye, would leak the photographs of the files to eager reporters waiting in the wee hours in a suburban parking garage, lusting for a good story. Ordinarily. But not this year. The Washington Post and the New York Times, which signed on early as surrogates for the Democratic candidate, would not have been interested if Mrs. Tamposi had furnished photographs of Mr. Clinton cavorting on a Black Sea nude beach with Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Hillary, Gennifer Flowers and bimbo-catcher Betsey Wright with a new supply of talent fresh from the KGB typing pool. Mrs. Tamposi says she had pulled the files in response to requests, filed by several news organizations under the Freedom of Information Act, and took them home for safekeeping after allegations were made that the files had been tampered with. She waited for further instructions from her superiors. This story is first of all an irrelevancy, and Washington reporters know it. The Bush administration was not interested, whether for reasons of ethics or fear, in helping news organizations get access to anything in government files about any of the candidates. This newspaper, for example, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Mr. Clinton's FBI file six months ago, and filed a lawsuit in October asking the court to compel the FBI to act on the request promptly. The FBI continued to stall, and under mounting pressure it finally said it would release the files if Mr. Clinton would waive objections. We put the request to Mr. Clinton and he said no. Maybe there was something outrageously damaging to hide. Maybe (and this is my view) he just didn't want anyone poking around to find the odd brassiere in his file. Fair enough. Since poking around in other people's business is what newspapers do, the request was legitimate enough. But if the Bush administration had been in a mood to help curious reporters, this was a chance to do it. Though an irrelevancy, the Tamposi-as-evil-witch story is useful to the dominant media culture's agenda. It's a very useful diversion from a real story that The Post, the New York Times and the networks have no stomach for, because Lawrence Walsh is their special hero. If, as the evidence suggests, Mr. Walsh either authorized or allowed the second indictment of Caspar Weinberger so as to blunt the Bush resurgence in the final week of the campaign, this man deserves to spend a few years in a prison cell to reflect on what it means to manipulate an American presidential election. (Perhaps he could help Clark Clifford make license plates for antique automobiles.) This story grows smarmier as each layer is peeled away. If Attorney General William Barr could find a donor for a testosterone transfusion, he would appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute the investigation of the lawless Lawrence Walsh. But you won't read much about it in the withering organs of the dominant media. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM