Intermezzo: Catalog for my 20-part series on the Clinton impeachment drama and The Flynt Project (1998-1999)

Helping to save the Clinton Presidency

To establish my credentials for this MOBOLOGY site on Substack, I have created an archive of my work that details the research behind my books, articles, and investigations, hoping to earn the loyalty, respect, and trust of my subscribers as I present new content.

(Return to The Works of Dan E. Moldea)

President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore (Photo: DEM, h/t Jim Craciun, 1994)

For context, see my eleven-part series on the suicide of Vincent Foster, as well as my five-part series about Kenneth Starr and the OIC leaks.

“High noon had come for the President's enemies as the Senate trial got underway on January 7, 1999, the culmination of years of vicious allegations, wild conspiracy theories, and wholly partisan investigations—all of which had gone nowhere.  Now reduced to criminalizing the President's personal life by alleging that he had lied about sex, the Clinton haters were finally at center stage.  The time had come for them to put up or shut up.” (DEM)

     Prior to the release of my 1998 book, A Washington Tragedy:  How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm—which detailed the official and unofficial investigations of Foster's suicide, and it was a suicide—I had never published anything about President Bill Clinton or his administration, even though I had enthusiastically voted for him in 1992 and 1996. 

     The Foster case was an eye-opening, life-altering experience.  Through my research, I had collected clear evidence that a dishonest, money-grubbing cabal of Clinton-haters—who shared information, covered up each other's mistakes, fabricated evidence, and received their funding from the same source—had tried to portray Foster's suicide as a murder in a cynical effort to undermine the authority of the Clinton White House.

     It was then that I realized what the President had been up against since his first inauguration in 1993:  His political enemies were prepared to do anything—and use anything—to remove him from office.  Consequently, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted in January 1998, I decided to take sides and became an uninvited bit player in the war between the President and his enemies. 

     Upon the release of my book in April, I announced my support for the President on national television, along with my criticism of Kenneth Starr and his Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC), during radio and television appearances.

     On May 19, 1998, during a speech at the Martin Luther King Library in downtown Washington, I alleged that the OIC routinely leaked non-public information on an off-the-record basis to a selected group of journalists, many of whom had become shills and stalking horses for Kenneth Starr and the OIC.  I based these charges on my on-the-record conversations with members of the OIC staff during my research for the Foster book.  Then, after the release of Steven Brill's "Pressgate" article in mid-June, evidence evolved, showing that some of these journalists had taken information from their own sources and actually fed it to the OIC, which later identified these reporters in court records as confidential informants.

     Like me, these journalists had taken sides in the dispute, but, unlike me, they did not announce their biases, continuing instead to hide behind the First Amendment and to report for their news organizations under the false guise of objectivity.

     In late July, in response to what many considered a cooperative effort between OIC prosecutors and this group of Washington reporters—who now needed the President's removal from office in order to justify their abuses and excesses—I revealed that I had tape-recorded my on-the-record conversations with Starr's two deputies upon whom I had based my original allegations about the OIC leaks.

     On August 24, 1998—a week after the President's appearance before the sitting federal grand jury—I attached the transcripts of these two conversations to an affidavit I filed with U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, who had already ordered that Starr and the OIC be investigated for allegedly leaking secret information, illegally, to its stable of reporters. 

     I released a second affidavit about this matter twenty years later on September 3, 2018, during the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, who was a young prosecutor for the OIC during Ken Starr’s pursuit of President Clinton.

     On November 23, 1998—as the OIC leaks investigation proceeded and the President's impeachment appeared inevitable over what many considered the criminalization of his personal life—a representative of Larry Flynt approached me with an offer to investigate hypocrisy among the President's critics.  Specific targets were those who had conflicting standards of private behavior for public officials:  One for those they liked and another for those they didn't like. 

     Earlier, on October 4, Flynt had placed a full-page ad in the Washington Post, offering "up to a million dollars" to those who could provide proof of such hypocrisy.

     Even though I had never targeted the private life of any public figure, I accepted the assignment and, as Flynt’s investigator, was responsible for, among other investigations, the probe of U.S. House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-Louisiana), who, as a direct result of my work, announced his resignation from Congress on December 19, the same day as the impeachment of the President.

     In the wake of the political bloodbath on December 19 and as the impeachment matter headed for trial in the U.S. Senate, Maureen Dowd, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote:  “Ordinarily one would feel sorry for Mr. Livingston being outed.  But the Republicans have brought on themselves this sexual doomsday machine of Larry Flynt . . . by focusing so single-mindedly on Mr. Clinton’s sex life.”

      The Los Angeles Times added:  “Would it be at all ironic, then, if it turns out the white knight in this current round of sexual McCarthyism is the pornographer Larry Flynt. . . . Yet, if you believe him, Flynt would rather not publish the dirt he bought with his million-dollar reward.  In fact, he says, his intent is to stop the prying and probing into private sex lives altogether by applying his own brand of mutually assured destruction.”

     After my role was revealed by Newsweek as the Senate trial of the President began, Flynt and I were widely accused of political terrorism with our campaign. Among other members of Congress, Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) insisted:  “Intimidation is something we have to resist.  You don’t negotiate with terrorists.  This is almost a terrorist-like tactic being used here.”

     When asked what he thought about the Flynt project, Senator Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey) replied: “I think that—in fairness, if people are going to be involved in impeaching the President of the United States and the root cause is an extramarital affair—the chairman or a leader of the Congress engaged in that effort has to assume that, if they are similarly vulnerable, it will be exposed.  I think, it is relevant as a matter of hypocrisy.”

     Senator Frank Lautenberg, also a New Jersey Democrat, added, “Larry Flynt says his mission is against hypocrisy, and I think that’s a pretty good mission.”

     Bill Bennett, a self-appointed arbiter of American values and a member of the board of directors of one of Richard Scaife’s foundations, arrogantly lamented: “The American people—in their wisdom, thanks to White House spin and other things—regard Larry Flynt more favorably than they regard Ken Starr.  So much for the wisdom of the American people.” 

     Public-opinion surveys taken in the midst of the impeachment trial also gave Flynt higher approval ratings than the Republican Congress.

     Still alleging a relationship between the White House and the Flynt team, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) insisted, “I don’t know anybody who’s hiring these tough, mean investigators like has been done for the President.”  

     In fact, there was no relationship between the White House and any of us involved with The Flynt Project.

     “I don’t think there’s anybody on our team who’s getting much joy out of this,” I told the Washington Times.  “When you start hurting families, that’s something that makes you pause and think about what’s going on.  But at the same time, I just haven’t seen any mercy shown towards Clinton—I mean, none, zero.”

     Prompted by the right-wing press—the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and Fox-TV, along with televangelist Jerry Falwell and beneficiaries of Richard Scaife’s grant money, among others—the Republican National Committee and the Landmark Legal Foundation filed formal complaints with the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, charging Flynt and me with obstructing the impeachment trial, blackmail, and jury-tampering.

     Of course, Flynt and I denied the charges. And, although investigated by DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, we were not indicted.

     Defending my actions, I told the Washington Post:  "There was a right-wing attempt to overthrow the executive branch of government, and I thought I could be sacrificed. . . . This was important enough for me to risk being destroyed."

     I voluntarily left the Flynt operation on January 22, 1999, in the midst of the Senate trial—after Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) announced earlier in the day that he planned to propose a resolution to dismiss all charges against the President.  I assumed then that the President would be acquitted, which he was on February 12.

     Two days after the President's acquittal, the New York Times reported:  "The shock waves of the Livingston resignation spread far beyond the West Wing of the White House, and had a sobering effect on members of Congress of both parties who might have been contemplating calling for Mr. Clinton to step down in the aftermath of the impeachment vote.

     "Fearful of the entire government unraveling, very few members of Congress joined a clamor for Mr. Clinton's resignation."

     Carol Lloyd of Salon, who published a story about the Flynt Project, quoted me, saying:  “Since the beginning of his project Larry demonstrated restraint and compassion.  He demanded the highest standards of documentation and responsibility.  I believe that he was effective.  History will cite the resignation of Bob Livingston as well as Larry’s role in that decision as the critical moment that diffused the entire impeachment process, and I’m proud to have been associated with him.”

Other media comments on my roles:

     * In Joe Conason and Gene Lyons's bestselling book, The Hunting of the President (St. Martin's, 2000), the authors wrote:

     Apart from the Fiske and Starr Reports, the most accurate, comprehensive account of the Foster suicide and its aftermath is A Washington Tragedy:  How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm, by Dan E. Moldea.

     * In his bestselling book, And the Horse He Rode In On (Simon & Schuster, 1998), Clinton defender James Carville, speaking of the OIC leaks investigation, stated:

     One journalist finally had the temerity to step forward and explain how all this sensitive information had been coming out into the light of day.  Dan Moldea, a respected crime reporter with more than seven exhaustively investigated books under his belt, heard one of Starr’s emphatic denials and was so disgusted that he told his tale.

     * In his widely-respected business book, Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management Is Wrong (Portfolio, 2007), author Eric Dezenhall wrote:

     The Republicans' worst nightmare came when Flynt retained investigative reporter Dan E. Moldea, who had been standing up to Mafia kingpins, assassins, and corrupt union bosses for decades.  Moldea, who made no bones about sympathizing with President Clinton's struggle, proceeded to systematically expose the sex lives of Republican congressional leaders on the grounds that they were not qualified to judge Clinton's morality.  Regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum and the techniques employed on both sides of the Clinton wars, one thing soon became clear:  The strategy worked.

     * In his bestselling book, American Rhapsody (Knopf, 2000), author Joe Eszterhas published a chapter, "Larry Flynt Saves the Day," in which he declared:

     The pornographer saved the president by threatening to reveal other acts of pornography committed by—this time Republican—politicians   Larry Flynt was a hero, a self-appointed, self-financed Kenneth W. Starr. . . . He'd brought in a crack investigative reporter, Dan Moldea, who'd exposed Ronald Reagan's questionably close ties to Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman and Teamster money, to run his million-dollar project.

     Here is a catalog of the 20-part series about my role in the Clinton impeachment drama and The Flynt Project, excerpted from the third edition of my memoir, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer.

Catalog

1/20:  Exposing hypocrisy

2/20:  Trying to remove the President

3/20:  I become Larry Flynt's investigator

4/20:  Targeting Clinton's critics

5/20:  The Flynt team's first meeting

6/20:  Going after the House Speaker

7/20:  The bombshell

8/20:  Livingston resigns

9/20:  At play in the fields of scandal

10/20:  “The rule of law”

11/20:  Abortion and aftermath

12/20:  Geraldo sandbags Flynt

13/20:  Barr overplays his hand

14/20:  "Who got Bob Livingston?"

15/20:  Newsweek outs me

16/20:  The right-wing media reacts

17/20:  Flynt nearly dies

18/20:  The Byrd resolution

19/20:  Light my fire

20/20: Buried alive by the Jello Left