The sleaze factor hit a new low last month with the publication of the Hyde affair. The official White House internet magazine, Salon, showed the world just how well yellow journalism could be written. At the center of this controversial article is David Talbot, co-founder and Editor of Salon. Talbot, whose Hollywood dreams are based on the number of visitors he can con to his site, hit a home run with his Hyde story. Previous attempts by Talbot to legitimatize his internet site as a serious independent news outlet has failed miserably.
While the Hyde story created a frenzy of hits on Salon’s visitor counter, it did nothing to lift Talbot out of the Left Wing mire. On Friday the 18th after the Hyde article hit the main stream press, Salon’s downtown 2nd floor San Francisco offices were evacuated after a bomb threat. Earlier, the leftist publication was hit with a barrage of hate e-mail, amid death threats. Black faxes were sent in an attempt to cripple their operations. The once tranquil entrance to Salon’s headquarters now brandished a security guard. Talbot’s dream of 100,000 hits a minute materialized, if only for a moment, but not without serious consequence as we shall see.
Talbot’s Clintonian obsession with sex may not be well known, but should be. Sex sells and Talbot takes no exception to this fact. Their recent article “Unzipped” which focuses on fascinations with oral and anal sex will attest to this. A quick look through their archives would make a seaman blush. Talbot himself is a co-author of a book on the subject, “Burning Desires: Sex in America”. So it comes as no surprise that Talbot authored the thirty year old extra-marital affair article of Henry Hyde that no one else would touch.
Aside from the obvious political timing of the story itself, the Zone has learned of several latent motivations behind the release. Salon, just prior to their bombshell, signed a deal with America Online to become one their anchor tenants. This will allow AOL’s 13 million members access (children too) to Salon’s smut without ever leaving the AOL domain. In addition, the boost in readership caused by the Hyde story leaves Salon’s marketing department in euphoria. Seems that Talbot is ready for the big boys on Wall Street and wants to go public. Their 75% increase in readership will solidify their public offering with p/e ratios going through the roof. Talbot’s money hungry evil is only rivaled by that of Larry Flynt.
THE WHITE HOUSE CONNECTION
“The White House had nothing to do with the Hyde story. Salon is an independent publication. We are not an “ally” of the White House”. This was Talbot’s latest declaration of independence. A declaration he has felt compelled to make time and time again. Talbot is a hopeless and pathetic pathological liar when dealing with this issue. The fact is, Salon was an ally of the White House and continues to be. Salon to this date has been funded largely by wealthy fat cats of the DNC. As reported in our June 1, 1998 article, Left wing Salon Magazine Uncovered, the principle investor of Salon is William Hambrecht, of Hambrecht & Quist law firm. Hambrecht is a large contributor to Democratic candidates and organizations. Adobe System is another investor in Salon. Hambrecht is also on Adobe’s board of directors. The second major company backing Salon is Apple Computers. Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, is another major contributor to the DNC. Jobs also played host to the Clintons in his home during a fundraiser earlier this year.
Beyond Salon’s financial ties to DNC fat cats, White House spin master, Sidney Blumenthal is in bed with two of their reporters. Jonathan Broder and Joe Conason are longtime chums of the Chief Propagandist. Blumenthal uses Broder often to feed White House leaks and disinformation to Salon. Such copy and paste reporting comes easy for Broder as his journalistic ethics are in the gutter. Broder was caught red handed and fired by his old boss, The Chicago Tribune for plagiarism.
If one hunts long enough through Salon’s archives, the name James Carville keeps surfacing. Sure enough, Clinton’s chief political strategist and former campaign manager was once a regular columnist for Salon. Carville should have been an early clue to those that questioned Salon’s alliance to the White House. This seedy character went on to become one of the main defenders of the President in the talk show circuit. Reported by the Zone in Big Mouth Carville’s Last Stand, he also started the Education and Information Project. A website war machine who’s sole purpose was to discredit Ken Starr.
It was on July 15, 1998 that NBC’s Tim Russert confirmed our report of June 1st, 1998, that Salon Magazine was tied to the White House. Russert’s commentary on the “Today” show that he had heard “people close to Starr” were saying the prosecutor wanted to know if a secret service agent was “an accomplice in trying to cover up a relationship with Monica Lewinsky.” Russert stated that his source did not come from anyone in Starr’s office. Within a couple of hours, Russert was surprised to get a call from Salon magazine demanding to know if Starr was leaking to him. Perhaps Salon would like a transcript to see what I really said, Russert suggested. Nope, no need, he was told – Salon already had a transcript. Russert burst out laughing since at that time, Sidney Blumenthal was the only person who had called NBC to get a transcript.
SALON’S FABRICATED
STORY TO DESTROY STARR ON
BEHALF OF THE WHITE HOUSE
David Hale is a key witness in the Whitewater scam. Hale alleges, under oath, that then-Governor Clinton pressured him to help secure an illegal $300,000 Small Business Administration loan. $50,000 to $60,000 from the illegal loan was funneled into the Clinton-McDougal cash-strapped Whitewater real estate development. The late Jim McDougal, one of Clinton’s Whitewater partners, corroborated Hale’s testimony.
Now comes Salon with their March 17, 1998 “Road To Hale” article. Salon charges while under FBI custody, Hale allegedly received payments from a bait-shop owner, Parker Dozhier. Dozhier received monthly payments as a stringer for the American Spectator magazine. The American Spectator Education Foundation, a non-profit group associated with the American Spectator magazine, received contributions from the Scaife Foundations. Richard Mellon Scaife is the head of the foundation. The fairy tale ending to all this of course, is that Richard Mellon Scaife bought Hale’s testimony against Clinton.
The basis of Salon’s story is an eyewitness account from a Caryn Mann. Mann is a disgruntled ex-girl friend of Parker Dozhier. She gave Salon eyewitness details of the money being transferred between Parker and Hale. However, when interviewed by Newsweek magazine, Mann recanted her story. She now believes that her then-13-year old son, Joshua Rand, witnessed the payments. Moreover, Mann was a 1992 Clinton delegate at the Florida State Democratic convention, which could help explain her motivation. She was also employed by a private investigative firm headed by two former Arkansas state troopers who undertook a 1996 photo-surveillance assignment for the National Enquirer of a Little Rock woman, not identified, seeking to learn whether she was having a romance with independent counsel Kenneth Starr. It turned out that man just looked like Starr. In a letter to the Justice Department, Hale’s lawyer also claims that Mann was a “psychic, tarot card reader, and fortune teller” who claimed “to have knowledge of the last resting place of the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. Other than Mann’s son, who would have been 13 years old at the time, Salon comes up empty handed in the creditable witness department for such serious allegations. Salon’s two other concocted witnesses want to remain anonymous.
Credible or not, U.S. Attorney, P.K. Holmes sent FBI agents to interview Mann. Mann told several news outlets, including the Washington Post, that the FBI visited her after a reporter for Salon Magazine contacted retired Senator David H. Pryor (D-Ark.). Salon contacted Senator Pryor on her behalf for assistance in getting the attention of Arkansas law enforcement officials. Former Senator David Pryor is the head of Clinton’s legal defense fund.
If the reader is still with us at this point and confused by the above, we shall clarify all of this in the next sentence:
Here, we have Salon Magazine creating a story and then colluding with the head of Clinton’s legal defense fund, former Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, to improperly instigate an investigation of fabricated allegations of witness-tampering!
Salon was also given a free pass by the White House to the Clinton Justice Department. The department investigators were just a phone call away and bingo, they had the inside information on the progress of the Hale investigation. The investigation that they themselves orchestrated. Now Salon could run another exclusive to keep Talbot’s hit counter running. So, on March 27, 1998, Salon reported in part:
Sources said the FBI had recommended to the Justice Department that several witnesses be interviewed in coming days, and that a financial analyst be assigned to review complicated financial data to determine the trail of funds that might have been provided to Hale.
“There are some jurisdictional questions to work out,” said a senior Justice Department official. “And then we are going to decide how to proceed.”
The senior official also said, “This one is going to be a political hot potato, so we’re going to make sure that all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed. But there is a real desire to get to the bottom of this.”
Salon once again has demonstrated that they are clearly a front for the White House. They do not report on news worthy events, they create them. Indeed, as reported by the Ether Zone on June 1, 1998, (Left Wing Salon Magazine Uncovered) two eyewitness sources told the Zone,”Jonathan Broder and Murry Waas met behind closed doors at the White House with Sidney Blumenthal”. The two hour meeting took place while Salon was putting together their Hale story. Broder and Waas were co-authors of the article. So, we have a clear and blatant example of how Talbot’s Salon took an activist role in undermining the Office Of The Independent Council’s investigation of the President. They also embarrassed Starr in the public forum and demoralized his key witness, David Hale. Finally, it made Talbot’s magazine a household word with every main stream press outlet spewing Talbot’s big lie in the name of Salon.
SALON DELIVERS BLUMENTHAL’S MESSAGE
“SCORCHED-EARTH POLICY”
Jonathan Broder was handed his next assignment by Blumenthal in early August. The White House would spread the word, that if GOP leaders push the impeachment issue too hard, “their own dirty secrets will be exposed”. The August 5, 1998 article read in part:
“We’re talking about the Doomsday Machine here,”one close ally of the president told Salon, alluding to the unstoppable chain of retaliatory nuclear strikes in the movie, “Dr. Strangelove.” “Once the Doomsday Machine is set in motion, there will be no stopping it. The Republicans with skeletons in their closets must assume everything is known and will come out. So the question is: Do they really want to go there?”
“Sources in the Clinton camp say they are focusing their attention not only on issues of marital infidelity but also on issues of character. Among those under scrutiny, these sources say, are House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who asked his wife for a divorce while she lay in a hospital bed stricken with cancer; and House Majority Leader Richard Armey, who, according to an article in the Dallas Observer, pressured female students for dates when he was an economics professor at North Texas State University”.
Another known target is Dan Burton, one of Clinton’s most outspoken Republican critics. “Burton’s political enemies are investigating his background, especially with regard to women,” says Harrison Ullman, editor of Nuvo, a news weekly in Indianapolis. The Clinton camp’s hunt for dirt also could extend to Henry Hyde, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the man who will be responsible for holding impeachment hearings, knowledgeable sources told Salon.
The last sentence is key to Salon’s self incrimination. This article was published six weeks before Talbot’s very own Hyde report. Yet, they somehow already knew that the White House dirt campaign would extend to Hyde. Of course they knew it, Blumenthal told them so. In fact, it was Blumenthal who gave Salon key FBI file information on Hyde to compile their story. As one Dupage county Illinois democrat told the Zone “We’ve wanted to dump Hyde for years, do you think that if we had this information it would have stayed in a shoebox for all this time? You can damn well bet that this information came from a high level classified dossier file”.
So it was, on September 16, 1998 on the day before the House would consider an impeachment inquiry against the President, Salon released their Henry Hyde article. In the same issue, Talbot published an editorial explaining how he got the story and just why he had to publish it. The biggest cock and bull tale that he has come up with yet. In his usual form, Talbot had to assure everyone that the story did not come from the White House and that his magazine is independent…blah…blah…blah. It certainly is strange that Talbot’s not guilty of partisan politics plea, has to be explained every time they run a partisan issue. More over, the timing of the article itself, hollers foul. But then again, Blumenthal told Talbot when to run it.
SALON’S POSSIBLE VIOLATIONS
OF FEDERAL LAW
Talbot’s three year drive to make Salon magazine big, fat and wealthy, at all cost, may have earned him and some of his staff a pair of handcuffs. As we have seen, Salon acts as a direct functionary of the White House. Their proliferation of the White House’s “Scorched-Earth” campaign which is designed to intimidate members of Congress who are considering issues of impeachment, could amount to obstruction of justice. His decision to publish the Hyde story itself, only pushed the legal envelope further. Salon’s collusion with top level White House staff, on this story and others, could amount to conspiracy.
A full FBI investigation has been called for by Congressman DeLay. While a worth while step, we have our doubts that such an investigation will ever materialize. The FBI may consider this too political and opt to play chicken little. Mark Levin of Landmark Legal makes a stronger case against the White House and Salon Magazine and has also asked for an investigation. Levin has written a report to the Justice Department’s criminal division as well as to the OIC. Levin provided the OIC a report because as he puts it “I am not convinced that the current political leadership at the Justice Department is capable of putting the law before Mr. Clinton’s political interests. ”
Although the truth behind Salon Magazine was stated months ago in this column, we shall do so again for the benefit of our new readers. Salon Magazine is not a news organization. Any exclusive news event that is reported by them, is either fabricated and/ or handed to them by White House operatives. They are a biased, left wing publication that serves as a mouth piece for the White House. If it were not for the fact that their smut is an internet only publication, their tabloid reporting would be found at every grocery store check out counter in America.