Sam Smith - As Sir
Walter Scott noted in his poem "Marmion," about the 1513 Battle
of Flodden Field, "Oh
what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
In neither
of the Republicans’ two favorite scandals about Obama – Banghazi and his birth
certificate – is there any evidence pointing to significant misdoings or
constitution problems. What there is in both cases, however, is evidence of
Obama and his crew attempting to manipulate a story in a way that ultimately
badly backfired on them.
As I wrote in 2011 of the birth certificate controversy:
If you
want to insist that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii then you not only have to
believe that Governor Abercrombie is a liar but that the notices in the newspapers
of the time were false. And why? Could it be that Obama’s parents were
launching his presidential campaign that early?
Unfortunately,
however, one hard fact makes this story more complicated, namely that the state
of Hawaii, citing its laws, will not release the president’s full birth record and Obama has failed to asked it to do so.
While
the first problem can be written off to legalistic obstinacy, the second is, to
put it gently, curious. Why does a Harvard lawyer let such a claim continue to fester in public without taking the simple steps
necessary to quash it?
The
state has produced what might be called a certificate of the certificate, giving the basics of what
the original document purportedly says. CNN has suggested that the original
certificate no longer exists since all such records were discarded in 2001 but
the state denies it. Hawaii is, in effect, denying the absence of something it
can’t or won’t produce.
No one
has come up with a good answer for all this, but several explanations spring to
mind: perhaps the original birth certificate has disappeared. Perhaps there is some
other information on the form that might embarrass Obama. Or that perhaps that
natural born problem, Rahm Emmanuel, told Obama to screw it and let the
complainers go to hell.
Certainly the way Obama handled the matter during the
campaign was strange.
After going through the legal
and historical evidence supporting Obama’s right to be president, I concluded: “The
matter, however could be far more easily resolved if someone would just come up
with that damn birth certificate. Hawaii, for example, could change its law to
permit it, or Obama could simply request that it be released. As it is, he has
hurt himself and provided a feast for fools.”
One year later – and four since
it had first became an issue – a copy of the full certificate showed up but
Obama is still paying the price for trying to manipulate the story.
The Benghazi saga has some of
the same feel. There is no evidence that anything unusual happened real time in
that incident. Probably equivalent miscalculations are made weekly in
Afghanistan and nobody even notices.
But, once again the attempt to reorganize
and reinterpret the story after the fact has come back to haunt Obama and
Hillary Clinton. When you have a long term admired State Department veteran
blowing the whistle, you know something may be wrong.
To
understand how this happens, it helps to remember that Obama, the Clintons, and
their ilk consider themselves extremely clever. They also are post-modernists
who believe that reality is just another thing to be repackaged.
Only
sometimes it doesn’t work.
I was, in
fact, trying to ignore the Benghazi
story as a waste of time. And then I heard, as CBS noted, “Greg Hicks, the
former deputy chief of mission in Libya, said lawyers from the State Department
told him not to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Sept. 11
attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi.”
And this in
the Washington Post: “In two blockbuster bits of testimony, Hicks stated that
Cheryl Mills, Clinton confidante (and her husband’s impeachment lawyer) called
him to instruct him not to speak with a congressional delegation and
specifically Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah); meanwhile, Nordstrom indicated that
State’s Accountability Review Board never interviewed the top decision makers
in the department.”
Below are
some clips from the Progressive Review that mention Cheryl Mills in the past.
Note the similarities in the tangled webs she and Hillary Clinton weaved to
accomplish their ends back then and are apparently still doing.
So far,
however, Hillary Clinton has shown that, if clever enough, one can practice to
deceive and get away with it, but the Benghazi incident is a healthy warning of
what lies in wait if she runs for President. Such stories may be exaggerated
and distorted, but they are seldom buried.
1998
Report of The House Committee on Government Reform And Oversight:
The
committee believes that there is substantial evidence that in September 1996
then-Associate (now-Deputy) Counsel to the President Cheryl Mills, with the
knowledge and concurrence of then-White House Counsel Jack Quinn, knowingly and
willfully obstructed the investigative authority of this committee by
withholding documents that were plainly responsive to the committee requests
for documents and information. Moreover, when this obstruction was brought to
light in a hearing before the committee, Ms. Mills lied under oath about the
documents and the circumstances surrounding their non-production. Ms. Mills's
actions, withholding responsive documents from the committee, delayed the
committee for more than a year from obtaining important evidence . . .
Moreover, the failure to produce these documents when they were discovered in
September 1996 had the effect of delaying the committee's investigation long
enough to allow memories of relevant witnesses to fade for more than a year
until they could plausibly testify that they could no longer remember the
meetings or conversations reflected in the documents. The committee believes
that Ms. Mills was fully aware of these potential effects and deliberately
engaged in the withholding of documents for that purpose. In the second term,
she was promoted from Associate Counsel to the President to Deputy Counsel to
the President.
Newsmax,
2000: In an affidavit sworn by former Freedom of Information Act division head
Sonya Stewart, Stewart details the efforts of the administration to withhold
secret documents demanded under the FOIA by Judicial Watch and Congress. In her
affidavit Stewart voiced fears of retribution for coming forward with her
explosive charges.
"I come
forward to present my declaration to this Court with great trepidation and
grave concern about retribution and retaliation which may be directed at me,
both professionally and personally, as a result of this affidavit," she
wrote. "Nevertheless, I present this declaration out of my obligation to
uphold the interests of justice as I swore to do upon my installation as a
federal employee. I hope, believe, and expect that the Court will protect
me" . . .
As head of
the FOIA offices Stewart said she was aware of the political manipulations
involved in the administration's attempts to hide documents subject to the act.
Among those named by Stewart as having been involved in the cover-up was former
White House Deputy Counsel to the President Cheryl Mills, one of the lawyers
representing Clinton in his Senate impeachment trial . . . "I know that
Ms. Mills, in her position as Deputy Counsel to the President, advised Commerce
officials to withhold certain documents. In my many years working for the
federal government on FOIA and other matters, and in my experience gathering
and responding to FOIA and Congressional requests for information, I have never
known or heard of a federal agency collaborating or discussing releasing or
withholding documents with White House officials . .
Progressive
Review - We reported the other day that former White House lawyer Cheryl Mills,
called to testify in the e-mail scandal, couldn't remember key facts and
instead lectured a House committee on the issues it should be looking into
rather than the missing correspondence. We have proposed a neologism for this
sort of non-responsiveness: "to Hillary," after the president's wife
who once told a House committee "I don't recall" or its equivalent 50
times in 42 paragraphs.
Since the
media gave scant or no coverage to Mills' appearance, however, we were unable
until now to find the full citation. Here is Mills hillarying the committee in
all its glory:
CHERYL MILLS
(upon being asked about the missing e-mails: "[Your investigations will
not] feed one person, give shelter to someone who is homeless, educate one
child, provide health care for one family or offer justice to one
African-American or Hispanic juvenile . . . You could spend your time making
the lives of the individuals you serve better, as opposed to tearing down the
staff of a president with whose vision and policies you disagree."
Remember,
however, that Mills is a highly trained professional. The average reader should
not attempt such a reply in a court of law or before a congressional committee.
Mills
performance was not reported by major media, which had lionized her during the
impeachment trial. Among the slobberers was NBC's Tom Brokaw: "When Cheryl
Mills, an African American lawyer, speaking to a mostly male, mostly white
audience, concluded her arguments with a forceful defense of the President's
record on civil rights, the note taking stopped and she had their complete
attention, many of the Senators rushing up afterwards to congratulate
her."
On Today,
Pete Williams spoke of "A devotion that led her to conclude her defense
with an emotional tribute to the President as a champion of civil rights."
Said Newsweek: "A star is born."
Lost in the
praise was the fact that on November 6, 1997, Mills had admitted to the House
Government Reform and Oversight Committee that she and White House Counsel Jack
Quinn had withheld documents for 15 months, including a memo suggesting Clinton
wanted the $1.7 million White House Office Data Base shared with the DNC. A
House Committee report declared her testimony to be false.
Marc
Ambinder, Atlantic, 2010 - The authors [of
Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann] write on page 50 about
the "war room within a war room" that Hillary Clinton put together to
deal with questions about her husband's "libido." The circle of trust
included media strategist Howard Wolfson, lawyer Cheryl Mills and confidant
Patti Solis Doyle. The war room within a war room dismissed or discredited much
of the gossip floating around, but not all of it. The stories about one woman
were more concrete, and after some discreet fact-finding, the group concluded
that they were true: that BIll was indeed having an affair -- and not a
frivolous one-night stand but a sustained romantic relationship. . . For
months, thereafter, the war room within a war room braced for the explosion,
which her aides knew could come at any moment.
Progressive
Review, 1995 - A burglar breaks into the car of White House lawyer Cheryl Mills
as she was preparing to testify before a Senate committee on the Whitewater
affair. Taken, according to a friend, were her notes on handling Vince Foster's
papers after his death.
