Would You Like Some More Coffees?
USA
Today and the New York
Times lead with the continuing furor over the White House coffee
videos. The top story at the Washington Post is a major espionage arrest. And the
national lead at the Los Angeles Times is the awarding of the Nobel Prize in
Medicine.
What's driving the White House videos story forward is the news (first
reported by the WP yesterday) that the White House is now admitting
there are still more coffee tapes. USAT reports that campaign finance
hearing chairman Sen. Fred Thompson calls this episode a deliberate effort to
"delay and obstruct." The paper quotes White House spokesman Lanny Davis as
saying the omission was "an honest overlooking of materials." And, says
USAT , the White House couldn't reach anyone at the Justice Department on
Thursday to discuss the tape issue because it was a Jewish holiday. The
NYT has this explanation as well. (Question: Is Janet Reno Orthodox or
is she merely Reform and hence could have lifted the receiver if she'd been
called at home?)
The NYT tapes story runs next to a picture from one of the videos
showing President Clinton with a bunch of unidentified people, presumably fat
cats. Question: If, as we're told, these films were shot by the military office
in charge of archiving such White House events, wouldn't those names be
recorded somewhere? And if so, isn't not making them available along with the
videotapes a clear case of stonewalling?
The Post spy story, which also is on the front at USAT ,
departs somewhat from the pattern of recent espionage cases. For one thing, the
three accused of long-term spying for East Germany are said by the FBI to have
acted out of ideological rather than material motives. For another, one of the
ring members had once held a somewhat high-level Pentagon job (and even, says
the WP , applied for a White House job.) The papers' headlines reflect
these two strands of the story. USAT : "Pentagon Attorney Among Those
Arrested on Espionage Charges." WP : "Onetime Campus Radicals Held in Spy
Case." Both will get plenty of attention in the days ahead.
The LAT continues to work a Clinton fund-raising scandal it broke and
still has all to itself: the news that a 1991 10-day Asian trip taken by
then-DNC chairman Ron Brown was designed to raise funds for the DNC from
foreign lobbyists and investors. Today's story focuses on a memo written to
Brown by a party aide pitching the trip, which contains such tidbits as that
"John Huang has offered to host an event in Hong King with a goal of $50,000,"
and "if we take the trip as proposed, we will raise at least $100,000."
The Wall Street Journal reports that attorneys general from
three states-California, New York, and Connecticut have joined the antitrust
probe into Microsoft already occupying Massachusetts and Texas. The paper
reports that the focus of the investigation is whether Microsoft is trying to
prevent personal computer manufacturers from shipping new machines loaded with
the Windows operating system from also being factory loaded with any non-MS
Internet browser. State law officials have become emboldened in the matter, the
Journal says, by the recent 40-state tobacco settlement.
The NYT front reports that Benjamin Netanyahu has put up a defiant
defense of the Israeli assassination attempt against a Hamas leader, saying, "I
take the responsibility on myself." There's also a NYT editorial today
calling for Israeli to foreswear assassination as a policy tool. But
responsibility was the last thing Netanyahu was hoping to take, and his goal
was far more than assassination. The Hamas leader was not shot (and the agents
were close enough to have done that) nor taken to Israel to stand trial.
Instead the plan was for the target to get sick and die when the Israelis were
long gone. None of the papers seem to have noticed that what Netanyahu wanted
was the result without the responsibility.
Some conditions improved immediately. According to the WSJ ,
Former Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, hired by Mitsubishi to improve plant
conditions for women, says in a deposition that she is being paid $2.2 million
for her work.
