|
|
|
When the revelation that President Clinton had sexual contact with White House intern Monica Lewinsky surfaced back in January, First Lady Hillary Clinton denounced it as just another fabrication generated by the vast 'right-wing conspiracy'. Bill Clinton being Bill Clinton, everyone laughed it off, without realizing that Hillary's complaint had a fairly credible pedigree. And Exhibit A in her case would have to be one of the more remarkable pieces of muckraking of this decade, "The Clinton Chronicles." Now widely discounted, the Chronicles alleged that while he was governor of Arkansas, Clinton was an integral part of a massive cocaine smuggling ring based out of a remote airfield in rural Mena. A string of supposed eyewitnesses purportedly met with untimely demises, up to and including late White House counsel Vince Foster. (Forbes magazine reportedly worked on a parallel story claiming that Foster may have been assassinated by the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, but they never published it.) Later installments in the Chronicles series reportedly alleged that Clinton had had extramarital relations with dozens of women, and was even a cocaine addict. Suffice it to say that these reports have never been corroborated by reputable sources. The heart and soul of the Chronicles was one Larry Nichols, a former Arkansas state employee who claimed that he "taught Bill Clinton how to lie," and maintained that he did not receive compensation for his participation in (and narration of) the Clinton Chronicles videos. But according to documents obtained by San Francisco-based Salon Magazine, Nichols received $89,000 from a front company called Citizens for Honest Government, a charitable organization set up by Clinton Chronicles producer Patrick Matrisciana, and Matrisciana's own Jeremiah Productions. What's more, Salon reports that three former Citizens for Honest Government employees told the magazine that his true earnings from the videos were as high as $200,000. Salon uncovered curious irregularities in the way the video was promoted, particularly by former Moral Majority president and veteran televangelist Jerry Falwell. Falwell even produced an infomercial for the video, sold by his Liberty Alliance. In their interview with Matrisciana, they record a stunning admission: During the infomercial, Falwell interviews a silhouetted individual
whom he identifies only as an "investigative reporter." "Jerry, two weeks ago we had an interview with a man who was an insider," the mystery man replies. "His plane crashed and he was killed an hour before the interview. You may say this is just a coincidence, but there was another fellow that we were also going to interview, and he was killed in a plane crash. Jerry, are these coincidences? I don't think so." Falwell reassured the man: "Be assured, we will be praying for your safety." During Salon's interview with Matrisciana, a reporter told him that his voice sounded familiar. When the reporter told Matrisciana that he sounded like the man in silhouette, Matrisciana acknowledged that he was the mystery man. "Obviously, I'm not an investigative reporter," Matrisciana admitted, "and I doubt our lives were actually ever in any real danger. That was Jerry's idea to do that ... He thought that would be dramatic." If Matrisciana is telling the truth, then Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell knowingly and deliberately lied to hawk this anti-Clinton video. (But what the heck -- he didn't do it under oath, right?) On the other hand, I had the dubious pleasure of meeting Matrisciana at the Christian Booksellers Convention in Denver. While he was hawking the video at the Jeremiah Films' booth, he boasted of his courage in taking Bill Clinton on, and spoke of how dangerous it was to do so. And based on my personal experience with Matrisciana, it doesn't surprise me that he would deny it when interviewed by Salon -- especially in light of the following report: In an interview with Salon lasting several hours, Matrisciana insisted that Falwell had no role in Citizens' payments to people who have made allegations about the president. "I have not had contact with anyone associated with Rev. Falwell for at least a couple of years," he said. However, telephone records obtained by Salon show that shortly before meeting the Salon reporter that very same day, Matrisciana had a lengthy telephone conversation with an official in Falwell's organization. Matrisciana is of course a friend of Bob Larson; grave lapses of integrity should thus be expected. On those grounds alone, I'd ordinarily give Falwell the benefit of the doubt ... if it weren't for conflicting statements offered by his own spokesman, Mark Demoss: Demoss gave conflicting accounts of Falwell's relationship
with Matrisciana and Citizens for Honest Government. Initially,
he said, "The Rev. Falwell and Pat Matrisciana have had
a relationship for over 20 years, and Rev. Falwell thought that
there might be merit to what Pat had produced." But in a
subsequent interview, Demoss said that Falwell and Matrisciana
had only "met each other about twice" in their lives. "We had no involvement with the video until long after the fact," said Demoss. "The only role of Rev. Falwell was to tell the American people about it." However, a direct-mail fund-raising appeal by Falwell suggests that Falwell was indeed involved with the video much earlier than he has acknowledged. The fund-raising appeal also shows that Falwell subsidized the production of the video as well. In the August 1994 direct-mail solicitation, Falwell asked supporters to "help me produce a national television documentary which will expose shocking new facts about Bill Clinton." The letter stated that Falwell was ready to make it available "as soon a I can raise approximately $40,000 needed to produce this video." As this article is largely a summation of Salon's work (even
though I have had dealings with Matrisciana), the only fair thing
to do is to contact the principals in this scandal, and ask them
to explain themselves. It looks as if Salon caught both with
their hands in the cookie jar, but if they do respond, I'll be
Pat Matrisciana, through companies of which he is the chairman and president, produced and released a video indicating Jay Campbell and Kirk Lane, both law enforcement officers officers, had been implicated in the deaths of two teenage boys (Kevin Ives and Don Henry) and a subsequent cover-up. Campbell and Lane responded by bringing this diversity action for defamation. A jury found Matrisciana liable and judgment was entered in favor of the officers. Because we find that the record does not support the verdict, we reverse. I. Background The video, Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection, which was released in May of 1996, portrays various aspects of a botched investigation of the deaths of two teenage boys, Kevin Ives and Don Henry. It associates various players with one another and insinuates illegal activity and complicity among assorted government entities, politicians, and law enforcement officers. The only reference to Campbell and Lane is found in a narrated graphic toward the video's end: http://www.serendipity.li/cia/duffey2.html |