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Saturday, August 29, 1998 Page:
Clinton’s other treemendous deceptions make us overlook foreign threat
If a tree falls in the forest and Clinton denies hearing it, did the tree
fall?
OK, the question isn’t easily answered. And cutting down a tree is not an
impeachable offense. Who would dream of spending millions trying to answer a
question that has little point?
Then again it used to be that those of presidential timber didn’t have to
be asked twice who cut the tree down. The sad fact is the days of George
Washington are long gone and when the current occupant of the White House
looks us in the eye and denies hearing that tree fall, we are left to wonder.
The half-life of a Clinton denial has been reduced to a daily news cycle,
and it wouldn’t take long for a “Treegate” scandal to run the usual course.
We would soon discover that Hillary had made a killing in lumber futures
and that her law firm’s billing records showed she did some work on
questionable timber contracts. Scrutiny of those records would uncover billing
fraud by her law firm partner, but any link between Hillary and the billing
fraud would be denied also.
Ditto for allegations that Clinton helped influence a judge’s decision to
approve a fraudulent loan to the wife of a timber baron that Bill had invested
with.
We all thought Clinton denied hearing the tree fall, but we later
discovered that he couldn’t hear it over his chainsaw.
True he saw the tree fall, but whether he saw a fall wasn’t the question
the judge directed him to answer. True, he did actually cut it down, but he
didn’t actually deny cutting it down; he just denied hearing it fall. And in
his mind that wasn’t really a lie.
Maybe you just don’t care if the tree real