During my three decades of muckraking, I had many encounters with memorable people—crazed conspiracy theorists, crooked politicians, drug smugglers, mafia dons, misguided preachers and an array of bizarre characters wanting me to take on missions of truth and justice as they defined truth and justice.

There was, for example, the man who came to me with accusations that his billionaire older brothers were cheats and crooks—even though the siblings had given him $500-million in spending money to just go away, have fun and leave them the hell alone. It was, by any measure, a nice size allowance for a prodigal brother, who must have listened to the story of the Prodigal Son in Sunday School. He squandered some money, but unliked the Biblical character, he held onto most of the fortune. 

The recipient of this tidy sum was Bill Koch, son of Fred Koch—founder of of Koch Industries, the nation’s second largest privately owned company behind the giant Cargill conglomerate. Bill’s brothers, his twin David and Charles, are relatively unknown by the average man (or woman) on the street compared to most American moguls. But they wield a tremendous amount of influence. Koch Industries operates oil wells, controls pipelines, and owns lumber, timber land and paper mills, and a slew of consumer product companies.

Politically, the comparative anonymity of David and Charles Koch is slipping away as a result of several recent news stories, including a lengthy profile by Jane Mayer in New Yorker magazine.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

It is a long article, but suffice to say that David and Charles Koch want be standing in line to vote for Democrats in the November elections, nor will they be supporting Barack Obama in 2012. The Koch brothers are to President Obama what billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife was to President Bill Clinton. Indeed, I had my own encounter with Scaife operatives.

http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/cov_17newsb.html

Like Scaife, the Charles and David Koch avoid the political limelight. Their activities are hidden behind lobbying groups, think tanks and foundations—the most notable in recent months being the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. David Koch started organization in 2004 and this summer it conducted a so-called summit to ”educate” political activists, many of whom are Tea Party organizers. I want go into detail in his missive. For those who are interested, read all about it in the New Yorker and other publications that have developed a sudden interest in the Koch brothers.

My encounter with them was in the abstract. In the early 1990’s, I was introduced to Bill Koch, then a very unhappy camper. His brothers were billionaires, but the $500-million they gave him made Bill only a half-assed billionaire. He felt cheated and labeled his brothers as crooks. Not so much for taking advantage of him, but rather for stealing from American Indians. Or so he alleged.

I was introduced to Bill by an exotic character named Marc Nezer—a Boston private investigator. He was also a purported spy for Israeli intelligence and an adventurer with a résumé full of wild and crazy exploits. In fact, the FBI sicced me on Marc in the mid-seventies, claiming he was a fence for art thieves and a guy with a propensity for planting illegal wiretaps.

As it turned out, the opposite was true. Marc had been hired by an insurance company to find and make a deal with burglars responsible for stealing art and antiquities from a shrine dedicated to Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Chistian Science Church. Much to the chagrin of FBI agents, he recovered the revered items by paying a middle man to negotiate with the thieves. The FBI was also wrong about Marc’s illegal wiretaps. All were court authorized and done at the behest of a local law enforcement agency.

Anyway, I’ll make a long story short. Marc eventually helped me with a couple of stories, became a valuable source on others and we became good friends. Long after I left Boston, he invited me to use his Cape Cod vacation home and I took him up on the offer. And on one of my visits, Marc ask me to have lunch with Bill Koch.

On the designated day of the meeting to my surprise, I heard the whirring blades of a helicopter that landed in the backyard. Marc and Bill had arrived in style. Moments later we were off to lunch, leaving my wife to share a meal with the helicopter pilot.  At the restaurant, Bill dazzled me with tales of his brothers criminal conduct. He claimed they were stealing oil at well heads on Native American tribal land by using measuring devices designed to under report the amount extracted from the wells. Bill wanted me to expose the scheme.

For the next two years, he sent me thousands of documents and other material to corroborate the allegations. I was interested to the extent that I flew to Tulsa, Oklahoma to read depositions and gather information from other pleadings that were part of a lawsuit filed by Bill on behalf of the royalty owners. Twin brother David, Charles and Koch Industries were defendants in teh case.

Despite building a cabinet full of background material, my effort was for naught. The story was too complex for television in short form and I was unable to convince CNN it worth a documentary. Nevertheless, Bill got his satisfaction. He prompted a congressional investigation that resulted in his brothers admitting that Indian tribes were accidentally short-changed by $31-million dollars. Depositions and affidavits by former Koch employees disputed that the short-count was accidental. However, there were never any criminal charges in connection with the scheme.

In contrast to Charles and David, Bill Koch was not adverse to publicity. In addition to his contacts with me and other reporters in his effort to publicize the Indian oil issue, he spent $60-million to win the 1992 America’s Cup. And in 1995, he spent millions sponsoring the race’s first all female crew to “man” his America’s 2 yacht.

It was during preparations for the 1995 race that I had my last contact with Bill. He called me to complain about being harassed by then NBC investigative reporter Brian Ross, a former colleague of mine back in my Miami days.

Brian was investigating stories of widespread cheating by America’s Cup competitors, who so far as to hire scuba diver spies to gather information about the designs of yachts entered in the race. My friend, Marc Nezer, was supposedly Bill Koch’s spy. Bill wanted my advice on how to react if Brian suddenly jumped from the bushes and started firing questions at him. I ask Bill if he was spying. He deflected the question by answering, “Everybody is.”  My advice was to smile and give the same answer to Brian.

For being an advisor, I was rewarded with a heavy,wool America 2 crew sweater. It arrived a few days later by Fed Ex and I’m still hoping to earn enough money to afford a yacht so I can wear the damn thing.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Many Republican politicians have a startling resemblance to Pavlov’s Dog. If Barack Obama burps, GOP leaders have a conditioned reflex to request the appointment of an Independent Counsel to investigate what food the President has consumed. In turn, the mainstream media reacts by escalating trivialities to the level of scandal in order for reporters to prove they are not kinfolk of Obama’s tail-wagging Portuguese Water Dog as often alleged by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and other loonies institutionalized in the Fox “News” asylum.

The most recent bogus scandal involves the Administration “jobs” offered to discourage candidates from running in U.S. Senate Demoratic primaries in Pennsylvania and Colorado. In the Pennsylvania race, Bill Clinton acted as an itermediary to U.S. Representative Joe Sestak, telling him that a non-salaried White House advisory position would be available if he dropped out of the campaign against Arlen Spector and remained in the House. Sestak declined the offer and eventually unseated the incumbent. In Colorado, Andrew Romanoff was contacted by a top Presidential aide and asked if he was still interested in an Administration job he applied for in November 2008. He said no. Romanoff is the challenger to Obama-favored candidate Michael Bennett in the Democratic primary.

Republicans believe these overtures should be investigated by an Independent Counsel. Maybe age has made me overly pragmatic. But having been around politicians and politics for more than three decades, I can’t imagine why anyone would not expect the titular heads of either party—Democratic or Republican—to try to exert influence over the outcome of important elections. It is called leadership. Obama critics argue that before his election, he promised to avoid politics as usual. However, I don’t believe that pledge encompasses abandoning his role as leader of the Democratic Party—except for those who consider Newt Gingrich a political deity. In fact, nobody other than partisan politicians believes it is illegal or unethical for the Administration guard its self-interest.

As I write in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger,  the Gingrich worshipers stomped on the cold body of a corpse 17 years ago to launch a costly brand of toxic politics that fell under the heading of Whitewater.        

The person most responsible for the Whitewater investigation was a dead Friend of Bill, an “FOB” as the President’s Arkansas pals were known. If Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster had conducted a news conference in July 1993 to announce his reasons for committing suicide, I doubt there would have been a Whitewater investigation, or stories of Presidential sex games, or reports of a semen-stained blue dress, or an impeachment, or the election of George W. Bush, or an endless war in Iraq. Nor would there have been sideshows like “Travelgate,” Hillary’s commodities profits, and other controversies that meant little and accomplished nothing more than costing taxpayers money. Kenneth Starr (Whitewater Independent Counsel) and his minions could have enjoyed pornography in private and spared the nation a debate over whether blow-job is one word, two words, or hyphenated.

My supposition is not a far stretch. Foster’s taste-test of the barrel of an ancient 38-caliber Colt revolver posthumously produced all sorts of sinister scenarios that were propagated by many characters I suspected of being escapees from mental hospitals. Near the top of the loony list were a few columnists of the otherwise respectable Wall Street Journal. The newspaper’s op-ed page was a repository of Whitewater disinformation, including conjecture that Foster was possibly murdered, or committed suicide because of his knowledge of dark Clinton secrets.

The Arkansas lawyer’s medically diagnosed clinical depression was disregarded as a factor in his death, although the condition has long been a cause of early exits from the living. Ludicrously, tabloid writers and conspiracy theorists suggested murder. Maybe at the behest of his former Rose law firm partner, Hillary. Maybe they were lovers. Maybe she broke off the relationship. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The rumors were nonstop.

Like horny rabbits, GOP Congressmen fathered the appointment of a warren of partisan Special Prosecutors—six to be precise—at a cost of well over $100-million. There were a few convictions for obscure crimes long forgotten and an impeachment that accomplished nothing more than making Monica Lewinsky part of the Clinton legacy.

Granted, there were highlights such as the special of Indiana GOP Congressman Dan Burton  assassination of a watermelon. He shattered the melon with a pistol shot to prove that Foster was murdered. Despite dead watermelons, the Kenneth Starr investigation concluded that Foster’s death was, indeed, the result of suicide.

Speaking of which, Chrisopher Ruddy, the most notorious of the “investigative reporters” perpetuating the Foster murder conspiracy theory, is trying to buy Newsweek. He is given little chance of succeeding in a bid to take over the nation’s second most read news magazine. While working in the Whitewater era for a Pittsburgh publication owned by drooling conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, Ruddy made a fool of himself writing dozens of articles trying to prove his murder theory. He now heads NewsMax.com, an Internet news site that is home for a bunch of wild and crazy right-wing pundits. If Ruddy fails in his bid to buy Newsweek, maybe he can revive the Vincent Foster fable.

After all, Foster’s ghost continues to have an impact on the Republican Party’s politics of wasting taxpayer money by creating a welfare program for Independent Counsels.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I have been questioned by both readers and reviewers about my decision to to begin Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger with a recap of the bogus scandal titled “Whitewater.” A simple answer is that Chapter One of my book accurately portrays what is happening today in America—diversionary politics filled with toxic rhetoric, rumors, suspicion and disinformation.

 The mainstream news media continues to display the same shortcomings that gave momentum to the Whitewater debacle, an inquiry that spanned seven years, cost taxpayers $70-million, caused congressional gridlock and accomplished nothing more than leaving the public wondering whether blow job is one word, two words or hypenated.

Worse, the premise of the Whitewater investigation was based on an err0r-filled story in the New York Times about Bill Clinton’s investment in a minor Arkansas real estate development. The story was mostly ignored until the suicide of White House lawyer Vincent Foster, a longtime pal of the Clintons. Thus began speculation that his death was tied to the real estate deal. As I write in the book, CNN dispatched me to Arkansas to uncover the real story and then expressed unhappiness about the results of my investigation.     

My assignment to join the ever-expanding horde of journalists traipsing around Little Rock in pursuit of Pulitzer Prizes and Peabody awards seemed a waste of time. Investigative reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post and other major news organizations had been digging away ever since Vince Foster left without saying goodbye. I would be gathering left-over crumbs. After all, Times and Post investigative journalists are supposed to be the best in the business.

Therefore, I was astonished to learn that a trove of official documents disputed Whitewater allegations reported in the nation’s leading newspapers. Equally remarkable, many reporters―network television correspondents in particular―were nothing more than recyclers of articles in the Times and Post. Desperate for the tiniest bit of new information to supplement their plagiarism, reporters were resorted to rumor-mongering.

It seemed to me that both television and print journalists displayed an appalling ignorance of the basics of real estate partnerships, law firm distributions of profits and functions of state government. Reporters often characterized Whitewater as too complicated for “Joe six pack”―”Joe the plumber” in 2008 parlance. Amazingly, most correspondents assigned to the story didn’t take time to understand the transactions. That required leaving Little Rock’s Capital Hotel bar―a gathering place where muckraker wannabes corroborated each other by repeating the latest rumors. Sure, I’m being judgmental. But facts support the judgment.

Anyone interested in knowing those facts need only to buy my book. Suffice to say I reached different conclusions that my reporter brethren. And I was eventually proven correct. Not that anyone cared. In fact, a high CNN honcho was so thoroughly pissed that I didn’t nail the President, he nearly blocked my Emmy-nominated story from airing. When it finally got its 30 minutes of exposure, the story had zero impact—except for me being labeled a Clinton apologist. 

When the Independent Counsel’s investigation of the real estate transactions and related issues ultimately failed to bear fruit as I predicted in my exposé, partisan prosecutors decided to engage in a few years of voyeurism. Major news organizations failed to question the relevance and expense of the investigation. Instead, they became cheerleaders for the voyeurs. For me, it was an early revelation about the direction of journalism. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Reporter skepticism was replaced by cynicism. 

The stink of Whitewater abuses lingers. Nowadays, politicians are guilty. Even when proven innocent. In many ways, the election of Barack Obama is a replay of  Whitewater. Journalists sit on their duffs while rumors and wild allegations gain credibility. The huge difference between then and now is the use of the Internet as a rumor mill. Viral e-mail floods computers across the world, giving morons like the birthers credibility. Many recipients are simply too lazy to question allegations—an effort that only requires reading newspapers and magazines. Commentators like Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck exploit the same laziness of people who are willing to accept their propaganda as gospel.

Remarkably, many voices heard during Whitewater era are again having an influence on politics. Most notorious are the propagandists at Citizens United—the organization responsible for the notorious Willie Horton fear campaign more than two decades ago. It helped undermine the Presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis by suggesting he would set black rapists free from prison to prey on white women. Given such dispicable tactics, it is ironic that Citizens United was at the vortex of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on campaign funding that paves the way for big corporations to buy and own candidates elected to public office.

So far, Obama has been able to avoid the kind of investigations that haunted the Clinton years. But that is not because of a lack of effort by political opponents. Until the congressional elections in November, I doubt there will be little, if any, let up in the diversions and lock-step partisanship that has bogged down his agenda. I wouldn’t bet on changed attitudes, but he and the American people might get a break after November.

Meantime, I hope the President keeps the door to the Oval Office open when interns enter.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.