Sunday, November 30, 1997

'Gravegate' scandal turns fiction to fact

By Joseph Spear

Score another one for the Clinton bashers.

This time, the accusation was particularly loathsome: The president and his gang of scoundrels were said to be awarding burial plots in the nation's most hallowed veteran's cemetery to campaign contributors who were not otherwise eligible.

The controversy started when Rep. Terry Everett, R-Ala., chairman of a Veterans Affairs oversight subcommittee, asked the Pentagon last June for its files on waivers granted for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. In November, Insight magazine, sister publication of the conservative Washington Times, reported plots may have been "exchanged" for political donations and distributed the story by fax to the right-wing talk show network.

Hoo, boy. The sludge, you might say, had hit the swirling blades of the scandal machine. Watergate conspirator cum jabberjock G. Gordon Liddy declared the Clinton administration was "defiling the sacred dead of this country." Rush Limbaugh joined in with a musical parody about the "honor you can buy." Republican lawmakers foamed at the mouth as they rose, one by one, to decry the depravity of the Clinton crew.

A Veterans of Foreign Wars officer denounced the alleged scheme as a "slap in the face of every veteran that has served." The American Legion demanded a "swift and thorough" probe.

There was only one problem.

The story wasn't true.

The Army released the names of 69 people for whom the rules had been relaxed since 1993. Four had been granted waivers by Clinton personally, including Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the widow of former Chief Justice Warren Burger. Forty-two were people buried in the same graves as their loved ones. Only one was a major donor to the Democratic Party -- an ambassador to Switzerland who died on the job last year. He was a Merchant Marine veteran who was wounded in World War II.

Truth, however, is of little import to the gaggle of excitable pols, eccentrics, flakes, loudmouths, wackos and weirdos who have dedicated themselves to Bill Clinton's deposal. The important thing with this crowd is to get scurrilous tales into the public domain, after which the truth seldom catches up. I guarantee the alleged graves-for-gifts scam is being discussed as accepted fact on talk radio even as I write these words, and that it will become part of the Clinton myth:

Like Whitewater, to which thousands of investigative hours have been devoted, to little avail, and which threatens to keep Kenneth Starr on the public payroll for another decade.

Like ex-FBI agent Gary Aldrich's allegations, in a book called Unlimited Access, that a trusted aide spirits Clinton out of the White House under a blanket to meet paramours.

Like an Arkansas cabal's accusations, in a series of videos peddled by the Rev. Jerry Falwell among others, that Clinton is connected to the murders of as many as 56 people.

Like the Arkansas cabal's charge that Clinton was tied to a drug ring that operated out of an airport at Mena.

Like the assertion of former Arkansas state trooper L.D. Brown that he was riding a bus near Leicester, England, at 2 a.m. on a day in June when a taxi flagged the coach down, and a man boarded and offered him $100,000 and a job in Moscow if he would change his Whitewater testimony. Most reporters, I dare say, would have asked Brown if he had forgotten to take his lithium tablets. The Washington Times bannered the story.

This is not to minimize Clinton's real transgressions, recorded in the popular literature as travelgate, filegate and half a dozen other gates; or to jump the gun, on Paulagate -- although I suspect that one, too, will eventually disintegrate.

But gravegate?

The audacity and mendacity of the Clinton crazies stun me. They seem to seethe with burning hatred. Their temples throb, their muscles twitch. Turn off the lights and they glow.

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