The Derelict Gunslinger

Witnesses to the Persecution

Derelict Gunslinger is written in a non-linear chronology in order to weave together major events that had a significant influence on the quality of journalism, my career as a muckraker, and the ups and downs of my personal life. Chapter One focuses on the Whitewater “scandal,”  a subject that has caused people’s eyes to glaze over. Skip ahead if you like. But then you will miss the story of a bogus scandal that continues to affect your life.

The farce was a bookend to the Watergate scandal two decades before. Watergate sunk a President and Whitewater sunk journalism, at least in terms of legitimate investigative reporting. I’ve been labeled a “Clinton apologist” as a result of  my Emmy-nominated CNN reports in the early stages of the inquiry. But I reported the truth. My sin was disputing the New York Times. This is a felony transgression in television, a medium that considers the Times and other major newspapers sacrosanct. Even when they are wrong.

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In August, 2004, I sat in a nearly empty movie theater in Atlanta, Georgia watching myself play the role of pompous journalism critic in a feature length documentary titled, The Hunting of the President. It could just as easily been called the Revenge of Harry Thomason, the film’s Executive Producer. A longtime Bill Clinton friend and apologist, Thomason is credited with helping compose the infamous Monica Lewinsky denial, “I never had sexual relations with that woman.”

My screen time was brief. But given my seedy and academically-deficient background, it seemed absurd to be sandwiched between prominent pundits like Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz. Daddy would have been proud of the audaciousness of his only child. For a few seconds, the film suggested I was a journalistic “somebody.” And being “somebody” was a household mantra when I was growing up―a process that took many more years than for most children.

The Hunting of the President exposed the “Clinton Rules,” a form of reporting in which political terrorists are given more credibility by mainstream journalists than irrefutable evidence contradicting their propaganda.

I was the lone television investigative reporter in the film, possibly because Thomason couldn’t find another TV guy willing to say that the so-called Whitewater “scandal” was a scam perpetrated on the news media, and the genesis of an era of complicity between journalists, right-wing zealots and partisan prosecutors. Skepticism, the best quality of good reporters, degenerated into toxic cynicism. Myths transcended logic. The travesty was a low point in responsible investigative journalism.

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My claim of Whitewater expertise began three years before Bill Clinton gave his Jimmy Swaggart impersonation. As CNN’s Senior Investigative Correspondent, I was sent to Little Rock to bring honor to the network by gathering evidence that would vault me to Watergate-like journalism fame.

To that end, I read hundreds of blurred, oil-slick microfiche documents that were supposed to tell a tale of misdeeds by the leader of the free world. But rather than revealing high crimes of Bill and Hillary, the documents disclosed the crimes of reporters in accepting as truth all that was printed in the New York Times, the original source of allegations that launched the investigation.

When I arrived in early 1994, reporters were already chasing stories in Little Rock like drunken revelers searching for beads at Mardi Gras parades. Instead of joining the pack, I decided to first read material that was the basis of the “scandal.” The documents eventually became a centerpiece of a story that I believed would blow Whitewater out of the water. But nobody paid attention.

The original purpose of the inquiry had been forgotten. Sex  obscured less titillating issues surrounding a minor league Clinton real-estate investment. Paula Jones’ portrayal of Bill’s private parts, and Monica Lewinsky’s knee calluses ultimately became a national mania.

While journalists sat around bars speculating about the President’s sex life, an out-of-control investigation expanded into one of the worst cases of partisan prosecutorial abuses in the annals of the American justice system.