This already appeared in alt.conspiracy, posted by a CN reader. I have decided to send it out on the mailing list only, for the benefit of those without access to alt.conspiracy.
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From The Sunday Times, 27 Nov. 1994
BILL LEARNS TO WALK ON EGGSHELLS
John Major may be doing a Samson and threatening to bring the temple down on Eurosceptic heads, but Atticus [this columnist] thinks that the War Hero in Washington is in even bigger trouble than the PM. The special prosecutor in the Whitewater probe is turning up the heat on two of Bill Clinton's former partners, James and Susan McDougal, and is warning former employees of Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan bank, that they will face criminal charges if they do not co-operate with the investigation. Methinks Major will survive [he has, so far, unfortunately], as will the Draft Dodger, but in Clinton's case, he will be far too bloodied to fight in 1996.
Susan McDougal has offered to tell everything she knows about the Clintons in exchange for immunity, but the special prosecutor has rejected the deal. Coming on the heels of the Republican election sweep, the upcoming Whitewater indictments will add to Clinton's political woes by refocusing attention on shady dealings while he was governor of Arkansas. Far worse, however, are the allegations that Clinton must have known about drug shipments into Arkansas while he was governor.
Briefly, they are as follows: during the 1980s the CIA was flying arms through Mena airport in Arkansas to the Nicaraguan contras, but when the planes came back, they carried drugs into the state. Arkansas was supposed to have become a mini-Colombia, with state troopers witnessing the shipments. All inquiries until now have been obstructed.
Now comes the interesting part. ABC, an American television network, was probing the story of Clinton apparently "obstructing justice" and trying to prevent a witness testifying to the special prosecutor ...until the White House intervened. Now, the executive producer of the network's news show - a Clinton pal who advised the War Hero on how to handle himself on television during the 1992 election - has been persuaded to "look at the story again".
Hillary meanwhile is enraged at Bill's decision to cut a deal with the incoming Republican Congress. "The President has to stand for what he stood for," says Hillary, but I'm afraid that she and her feminist friends just don't get it. The Draft Dodger does. If there is one thing he has been utterly decisive about throughout his life, it is on the imperative to save his hide.
Right now, the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are all that stand between him and a lifetime of poverty or worse. It is they who will decide how intensely they want to pursue their inquiries into Whitewater and all the assorted allegations of the Clintons' misdeeds. So Clinton is ready to deal.
However different the moral stature of the two men, the dilemma Clinton faces is similar to the one Nixon faced in 1973. To get Congress off his back Nixon was forced to capitulate on one issue after another. It did him no good. The House judiciary Committee voted to impeach. Hillary should know. She worked zealously for that committee. Down at the farm, they call this the chickens coming home to roost.
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"