textfiles/conspiracy/CN/cn11-30.txt

 
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 11  Num. 30
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                     ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD -- 10/26/97
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Abbreviated Transcript of C-Span Interview
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Portions of remarks made  by  London Telegraph newspaper reporter
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard	(AEP) during  an  appearance  on  C-Span,
October  26, 1997, appear below.  By way of introduction, here is
a partial review  by  Conspiracy  Nation of Mr. Evans-Pritchard's
new  book,  *The  Secret   Life   of   Bill   Clinton*.    (ISBN:
0-89526-408-0)

Let's  get  two  things  straight:   (1)  the  London   Telegraph
newspaper  is  *not*  a "tabloid"; it is a *broadsheet*.  It does
not feature pretty girls in bikinis  on page 3; it is a respected
British newspaper having a circulation of about 1 million readers
per day.  During the years immediately before World War  II,  the
Telegraph   sided   *with*   Winston   Churchill   and  *against*
"appeasement" of Nazi Germany  on  the march.  (The London Times,
however, sided with the Neville Chamberlain "appeasement"  policy
which,  we  know,  was  a  big  mistake.)   The  London Telegraph
newspaper has been around  since  1855,  and anyone who regularly
visits their  web  site  knows  they  consistently  do  excellent
reporting  on a wide variety of issues.  (2) Just because Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard is British does  *not*  mean he is therefore with
MI-6.

Reacting to Evans-Pritchard's book,  *The  Secret  Life  of  Bill
Clinton:   The  Unreported  Stories*,  one  Internet  commentator
called the London journalist a modern Alexis DeTocqueville.  This
is  an  apt  description:   Evans-Pritchard,  visiting  our land,
travelling through it, and jotting down his observations, gives a
keen outsider's sketch of  the  United  States,  as it is, in the
mid-to-late 1990s.  Do not be misled by the title  of  the  book.
*The Secret Life of Bill Clinton* is not about "Clinton bashing,"
*per  se*, but portrays the larger situation of an elite class --
Democrats and Republicans --  full  of decadence, corruption, and
snobbery, and stubbornly resisted by the  common  people  of  the
United  States.  The heroes of AEP's book are the ordinary people
who, against all  odds,  have  successfully "monkey-wrenched" the
plans  of  their  "betters"  to "manage" the country.  Yes, there
have been defeats.   But  AEP's  larger  point  is  that, even in
defeat, there has been a wide-ranging RESISTANCE which  has  most
definitely  slowed the enemy's advance.  And there have been many
victories in some of the  minor  skirmishes, too, detailed in Mr.
Evans-Pritchard's book.

The one critique I have of the book is in  its  coverage  of  the
Oklahoma  City  bombing(s)  case.   It carefully demonstrates the
ineptness  and  even  cover-up  occurring  in  the  so-called FBI
"investigation," but the author does not come to grips  with  one
aspect  of  the  case:   the  fact that explosives must have been
placed directly *on*  the  support  pillars  of the doomed Murrah
Building.  (We know this from expert analysis done  by  Brigadier
General (retired) Benton Partin.)  Since charges were placed *on*
the  support  pillars, the next question (not noticed by AEP) is,
"How did  the  'rogue  terrorists'  involved  gain  access to the
building?"  Unfortunately, Mr. Evans-Pritchard misses that in his
otherwise good analysis.

The  book, as is to be expected (since it is written by an author
who has achieved cult status  amongst researchers into the hidden
ways of the U.S. government), breaks a lot of  new  ground.   The
book  gets  the  "gears  turning"  in  one's  mind.   Aspects  of
revelations   Evans-Pritchard  has  surfaced  may,  circumstances
permitting, be touched on in  future issues of Conspiracy Nation.
But this underground news  outlet  can  not  possibly  cover  the
entire  eruption of previously-suppressed information provided by
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.  People  routinely ask, "Gee, Conspiracy
Nation, but what can *I* do?"  What can you do?   Buy  this  book
and keep it on the best-seller lists.

Transcript
----------
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard interviewed on C-Span, 10/26/97
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C-SPAN: Why is Oklahoma City such a focal point of the book?

AEP:   Well,  I  think something that hasn't been reported to the
American people is, many of  the  families have filed a number of
lawsuits against the federal government, alleging that  [the  OKC
bombing(s)] was a sting operation or, at the very least, that the
government  was  negligent  --  had  some responsibility for what
happened, perhaps had  a  degree  of  prior  knowledge.  It was a
broader conspiracy, and they haven't been told the full truth.
   The families [of the victims], many of them, are  very  angry.
One  family  in  particular,  Glenn and Kathy Wilburn, who lost 2
grandchildren in the daycare  center, conducted their own private
investigation for 2 years.  And they  feel  that  the  government
covered  up the true story; that it was a broader conspiracy, and
that it was  probably  a  sting  operation that went disastrously
wrong, and they've not come clean about it.

C-SPAN:  Mr. Evans-Pritchard is a reporter, based in London.   He
spent some time here in Washington.

AEP:  I did four-and-a-half years as the Washington correspondent
for  the London Sunday Telegraph.  And I've now returned, and I'm
writing about European affairs for the Daily Telegraph in London.

C-SPAN:  Last  Monday,  syndicated  columnist  Robert Novak wrote
this piece, "A Sting Operation Gone Awry."  And  he  talks  about
Andreas  Strassmeier,  "a  former  West  German  army  lieutenant
illegally in the U.S."  Who is he, and why is he important to the
bombing?

AEP:  Tim McVeigh telephoned him 2 days before the bombing, after
he  had  called the Ryder Truck rental agency.  And that's how he
got drawn into the  whole  question  of  the bombing in the first
place.  [Strassmeier] spent 8 years in the German army.   And  he
told  me  he'd  had  intelligence  training  and  he'd  done some
intelligence work in the German army.   And he came here with the
intention of working undercover for the U.S. Justice  Department.
And  he  admitted  that to me.  So it's quite significant that he
should figure as  a  character  in  the  extended McVeigh circle.
He's also been named by an undercover informant of the ATF, Carol
Howe, as somebody who's stirring up  race  war  and  a  terrorist
campaign against the U.S. government.  Now with his background, I
find  it  very  hard  to  believe  that  he's  a genuine neo-Nazi
terrorist (which is how he presented himself.)  I suspect that he
was here on some kind  of  undercover mission; whether it was for
the German government, or the United States government, or  both,
I  don't  know.   My own conjecture (I can't prove it) is that he
was a joint asset, penetrating the neo-Nazi far right.

C-SPAN:  You devote a fair amount of your time to a  lot  of  the
conspiracy theories we hear, on this network, and read about from
time  to time in different publications.  Vincent Foster:  Was it
suicide, or was it murder?

AEP:  Well, I don't answer that question.  What I say is, Kenneth
Starr's investigator, the prosecutor  he appointed to re-open the
case, came to a different conclusion.   He  told  Kenneth  Starr,
after  a  4-months  investigation,  there was serious evidence of
foul play.  His name is Miquel  Rodriguez.  He went to Starr.  He
told Starr what he'd uncovered during his investigation using the
grand jury.  And Ken Starr looked the other way!  He didn't  want
to  hear  it!   He  didn't  want  to  deal with it.  So Rodriguez
resigned and went back to California.   And that is the only time
that it's ever been seriously investigated.  After that,  it  was
all damage control.
   So  I  don't  feel that Ken Starr has the authority to deliver
the report that he's delivered.  I  don't think he answers any of
the questions; it's just a re-hash of the Fiske report, which was
incredibly weak.  And  he  selectively  uses witness testimony to
support his case.  And the  people  who  are  familiar  with  the
archive  of  documents  in  this  case  are amazed that he's just
ignored a colossal amount of evidence.  And he's ignored what the
crime scene witnesses said.

C-SPAN:  So what is your  conclusion about the Clinton presidency
so far?

AEP:  In terms of the  scandals,  or  in  terms  of  its  general
performance?

C-SPAN: Well, in terms of this book.

AEP:   My  conclusion is that he's a very, very corrupt man.  And
it's partly  a  generational  thing.   I  think  that the current
generation in power (not just in America, but in most  industrial
countries)  has  lost  its  honor code.  It's lost its integrity.
Bill Clinton is the emblem of that.

C-SPAN:  You write that, "If President Clinton eludes justice, at
least it can  be  said  that  his  destructive influence has been
checked." Checked by whom?

AEP:  Well, the good side of this book (it's not all negative) is
that the ordinary people of America have held  the  line:   we've
seen  it  with  the families in Oklahoma; we've seen it, in other
people, throughout the  book,  who  are  *resisting* the abuse of
power, in their little  corner.   Not  always  successfully,  but
they're  impeding  what I consider to be a decadent and dishonest
leadership class from  dragging  this  country  down in terms of,
into a Banana Republic.  The ordinary people are the ones who are
going to save America and not allow it to go the way  that  other
countries  have  gone  when  its democracy has been threatened by
internal decadence.

C-SPAN:  Briefly, *why* did  you  write  this  book, and who were
your sources?

AEP:  There are very few un-named sources in the book; almost all
of it has got named sources.  So people can make a judgement  for
themselves, on how they want to evaluate it.
   I  first  got dragged into this morass when I started going to
Arkansas and talking  to  ordinary  people  there.  And it became
quite clear to me that a lot of very bad things  had  been  going
on  for  the  last  10  or  15  years.   It had become a haven of
narcotics trafficking.  And the more  I looked into it, it seemed
to me the  political  machine  in  Arkansas  was  involved.   And
there'd  been  a  lot  of mis-use of the criminal justice system:
people had been  intimidated,  people  had  died.   And I started
looking into these issues and I...  Well, there was no going back
after that. I got drawn right into the middle of it.

C-SPAN:  Explain this picture [on book cover]:  why was it taken,
and why is it on the cover?

AEP:  Well, I can't answer that, because I've only just  seen  it
myself.   I  came over from London on Thursday night.  I've never
seen the book before.

C-SPAN:  The picture,  of  course,  of  First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton whispering into the ear of President Clinton.   Was  that
taken at the White House?

AEP: I must find out. It's terribly negligent of me not to know.

C-SPAN:   You,  in a number of instances, use the term, "abuse of
power." Who has the power? And who's abusing it?

AEP:  It's about...  It's more than just Clinton.  It's about the
whole power structure in the United States.

C-SPAN: But who, specifically?

AEP:  The Justice Department.  The FBI.  The political class as a
whole.

C-SPAN: So who's calling the shots?

AEP:  Very good  question.   It  appears  that [these things are]
orchestrated  by   the   highest   levels   of   the   FBI,   FBI
Counter-Terrorism in Washington.

C-SPAN:  Did anyone in the Clinton White House, either current or
former, co-operate with you on this book?

AEP:   [Slight chuckle] They stopped co-operating with me quite a
long time ago.

C-SPAN: Why?

AEP: I think they found that they couldn't really "spin" me.

C-SPAN:  You're now back  in  London.   Did  that have any direct
relation on this book?

AEP:  If I was an American journalist (and I'm pretty critical of
the American press)...  But I can see all  the  constraints  that
they're  working  under.   It's  quite difficult to challenge the
entire power structure.  (Which is  what  I've done in this book.
It's  not  just  attacking  Clinton;  I'm  pretty  tough  on  the
Republicans as well.)  You kind of "burn your  bridges"  and  you
lose your friends.  It's very difficult for a journalist to write
that type of book about their own country; they can't continue to
operate  and function, as a journalist.  If I did this in London,
about the British power structure,  I really couldn't continue to
work there. So, leaving [America] sort of made it easier.

C-SPAN: How does all of this connect to the President?

AEP:  Well, he's...  All these things  have  happened  under  his
watch.  Waco happened under his watch; it's the worst... it's the
Wounded Knee of the 20th century.  It's the worst abuse of power,
in  terms of number of people killed as a result of an act by the
government.  And he never  dealt  with  it!  He, instead of heads
rolling and people being brought to  account,  he  went  out  and
tried the victims.
   And  so  that  set  in motion the militia movement.  It set in
motion, to some degree,  the  domestic  terrorism that the United
States now suffers from (including the Oklahoma  bombing.)   This
happened under his watch!  (Although there are deeper forces that
have  been  at  work  for  many,  many years, that contributed to
this.)  I'm not sure it  would  have happened if Paul Tsongas had
been elected president.

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For related stories, visit:
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