LIMBAUGH COMMENTARY: LIBERAL MEDIA HELP CLINTON AVOID HIS PERSONAL DESTRUCTION

Now, this should be interesting. It seems that Bill Clinton has decided to turn his politics of personal destruction on his own executive branch.

Where are Woodward and Bernstein when you really need them?

The president is a little peeved that the FBI is beginning to make headway in its investigation into his campaign finance shenanigans. Or maybe he's angry because in the process they are blowing the whistle on his institutional guardian, the Justice Department.

On Sept. 22, FBI agents assigned to the campaign-finance task force told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that Justice Department officials blocked their efforts to pursue crucial investigative leads-including information that Charles Yah Lin Trie was bringing in duffel bags full of cash to the Democratic Party.

According to the Washington Times, the FBI agents described Justice Department lawyers overseeing the campaign-finance probe as "nonaggressive prosecutors who sought to impede or delay the investigation with ludicrous restrictions."

Ivian Smith, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Little Rock field office, wrote to FBI director Louis Freeh to complain about the Justice Department's interference with the investigation.

Though Freeh didn't personally reply to Smith's letter, we now know that, within three months of receiving it, he sent a memo to Bill Clinton's consiglieri Janet Reno recommending that she seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the campaign finance scandal.

Oh, in case you forgot, Reno declined to follow Freeh's suggestion, and to this date has never released his incriminating memo to her.

If you think this is outrageous you ought to hear the particulars. Smith and three fellow agents testified to the committee that their Justice Department supervisor, Laura Ingersoll, prevented them from getting a search warrant to conduct a search of Trie's office where they believed Trie's assistant was destroying evidence that had been previously subpoenaed.

Ingersoll said she didn't believe the agents had established probable cause that a crime had been committed. We need to find out where she went to law school!

How much is it going to take before the liberal press starts to do its job? Remember how this same Justice Department refused to authorize an FBI wiretap on suspected Los Alamos spy Wen Ho Lee?

The ordinarily unflappable Clinton is more than a little defensive about this inquiry -- as well he should be, considering he knows all the sordid facts related to this scandal.

Clinton went so far as to ban from the White House a reporter from Investors Business Daily simply because he asked him when he was going to have a press conference about the illegal money from China and the campaign-finance scandal.

But even more bizarre than Clinton's banishment of the reporter was his response to the reporter's question. Obviously still fuming from the FBI's testimony to the Senate committee last week, Clinton turned his sights on that pesky agency. "The FBI wants you to write about that rather than write about Waco," he snapped.

With that response, Clinton revealed that anyone, even his own FBI, is expendable if they come close to implicating him in the course of their duties. With Clinton, it is always someone else's fault.

His impertinent remark is designed to make us believe that these four FBI agents are lying about the Clinton Justice Department's obstruction of justice to divert attention from their own misdeeds at Waco. To quote rock-and-roll philosopher Chubby Checkers, "How low can you go?"

The Clinton retort is interesting for another reason. We all know about his reputed gift for compartmentalization, but this takes the cake. Does he still fail to grasp that as president he is accountable for all these agencies? Whether it's the Justice Department's malfeasance with Chinagate or the FBI's with Waco, he is the chief executive.

We should have known that Clinton's visceral contempt for law enforcement would surface eventually. When they are no longer of any political use to him he drops them like hot potatoes.

Alas, we've come to expect this behavior from Bill Clinton. But a scandal of equal magnitude is the mainstream media's astounding apathy and conspiratorial silence in the face of such overwhelming corruption by their ideological soulmate.

~David Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.