KINDER'S COMMENTARY: `BLOOD SPORT' IS CHILLING CLINTON PORTRAIT

Late last Saturday afternoon, I headed for a local book store in search of "Blood Sport," the sensational book on the Clintons and Whitewater affair written by James B. Stewart, the Pulitzer-prize winner and Harvard Law graduate. Calling ahead, I asked the lady who answered whether they had the book in stock. Her reply: One copy remained. Could I ask her to reserve it for me if I came right out, I asked? Sure, she said. The book had gone on sale just 24 hours before. When I got there, I asked her whether they would be getting more copies of a book that sold this rapidly. She said she had already called the warehouse, only to be told they were also cleaned out. What's going on?

It isn't just Rush Limbaugh's frequent touting of the book, although certainly that helps. The book is more than 400 pages of riveting reading. It paints a devastating portrait of the Clintons, especially First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and of the political culture of the one-party fiefdom known as Arkansas that has so long been their playpen. Author Stewart, a Democrat, draws chilling portraits of the late Vince Foster, both Clintons, Clinton pal and co-investor Jim McDougal, now on trial for criminal charges arising out of looting a savings and loan that cost you and every other taxpayer $60 million, and other cronies.

Also depicted is the sordid episode known as the infamous Travelgate affair. This last episode took us well beyond the usual pathetic bungling by the Arkies who now hold sway at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., to include the potentially criminal misuse of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. Ruthlessly, pitilessly, the Clintons turned both agencies loose on defenseless small fry, career employees who had served seven presidents for decades in the White House Travel Office. Office director Billy Dale, who had worked there for 30 years, saw his reputation dragged through the mud as he was tried on criminal charges brought by the Clinton Justice Department.

Fortunately, it didn't take the jury long to acquit Dale on all charges. He was out only about a half-million dollars in defending himself from a groundless prosecution that should never have been brought. All this in order to turn this potentially lucrative travel business over to Clinton cronies Harry Thomason, husband of Linda Bloodworth Thomason, and a 25-year-old Clinton cousin named Catherine Cornelius. Don't be surprised if, before all the dust has settled, Travelgate is an even bigger threat to the Clintons than anything that happened in the Whitewater matter.

Writing in Friday's Wall Street Journal, editor Bob Bartley neatly sums up the dirty feeling one has upon completing "Blood Sport": "The overall impression is the pervasiveness of lies -- from the draft record to the Gennifer Flowers case, to the state troopers, to the health care task force, to the Travel Office firings, to responses to investigations by, say, the General Accounting Office." Bartley continues: "Stewart's account and particularly his footnotes are littered with ... crimes. It is a federal crime to submit a false financial statement while seeking a mortgage from an insured institution. It is a federal crime to offer an Arkansas trooper a federal job as an inducement for silence. It is a crime to tell clever lies to government investigators such as the General Accounting Office. Mr. Stewart is too good a lawyer not to recognize large areas of criminal concern."

Stewart's book could change history by affecting the presidential election this year. Ask yourself: Really, does our magnificent country deserve this crowd?

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.