Speaking of Sidney Blumenthal: For all that most working journalists in Washington professed to loathe their former colleague when he went to work for Bill and Hillary, they sure did allow themselves to be manipulated by him last February.
Subpoenaed by Kenneth Starr, Blumenthal disingenuously whipped up a frenzy over endangered civil liberties in America -- and most of the press uncritically took his word for it. Thanks to Blumenthal's agitprop, the White House had one of its few good PR weeks. The New York Times headlined its story "President's Adviser Ordered to Divulge Contact With Press" and quoted Blumenthal as saying his subpoena represented "an outrageous attempt to silence all reporting that might be skeptical or critical of Ken Starr." Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry weighed in that Starr's questioning of Blumenthal was "potentially dangerous."
And Blumenthal poured it on when he emerged from his grand-jury testimony on February 26. "I never imagined," he hyperventilated, "that in America I would be hauled before a federal grand jury to answer questions about my conversations with members of the media. But today, I was forced to answer questions about conversations, as part of my job, with the New York Times, CNN, CBS, Time magazine, U.S. News, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, and there may have been a few others."
It was a lie. Blumenthal was asked before the grand jury if he had ever distributed White House talking points on Monica Lewinsky to "anyone outside the White House." Lawyers typically advise their clients to give "yes" or "no" answers under oath. But Blumenthal was warming up for his fascism-in-America press conference later that afternoon, and so volunteered this gratuitously loquacious answer: "If reporters called me or I spoke with reporters, I would tell them to call the DNC to get those talking points, and those included news organizations ranging from CNN, CBS, ABC, New York Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, New York Observer, L.A. Times." Yes, Sidney volunteered the names of all those news organizations. He wasn't "forced to answer questions about conversations" with any of them.
It's easy to sympathize with the anger of grand jurors when they saw Blumenthal's dishonest performance after his February questioning. When he returned on June 25, the foreperson took the unusual step of rebuking him:
The work that we are doing here is very serious, and the integrity to our work as representatives of the people of the United States is very important to us.
We are very concerned about that fact that during your last visit an inaccurate representation of the events that happened was retold on the steps of the courthouse.
We would hope that you will understand the seriousness of our work, and not in any way use it for any purpose other than the purpose that is intended, and that you would really represent us the way that events happened in this room.
Blumenthal responded: "I appreciate your statement." Yeah, right. But that's Sid: dishonest to the last drop.