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by **admin** » Wed May 18, 2016 10:49 pm

20/20 Monica Lewinsky Interview
by Barbara Walters
March 3, 1999

by **admin** » Tue May 24, 2016 4:42 am

The Mena Coverup
by Micah Morrison
Wall Street Journal
October 18, 1994
Updated: March 3, 1999

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

MENA, Ark. -- What do Bill Clinton and Oliver North have in common, along with the Arkansas State Police and the Central Intelligence Agency? All probably wish they had never heard of Mena.

President Clinton was asked at his Oct. 7 press conference about Mena, a small town and airport in the wilds of Western Arkansas. Sarah McClendon, a longtime Washington curmudgeon renowned for her off-the-wall questions, wove a query around the charge that a base in Mena was "set up by Oliver North and the CIA" in the 1980s and used to "bring in planeload after planeload of cocaine" for sale in the U.S., with the profits then used to buy weapons for the Contras. Was he told as Arkansas governor? she asked.

"No," the president replied, "they didn't tell me anything about it." The alleged events "were primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. The local prosecutor did conduct an investigation based on what was in the jurisdiction of state law. The rest of it was under the jurisdiction of the United States Attorneys who were appointed successively by previous administrations. We had nothing -- zero -- to do with it."

It was Mr. Clinton's lengthiest remark on the murky affair since it surfaced nearly a decade ago, in the middle of his long tenure as governor of Arkansas. And while the president may be correct to suggest that Mena is an even bigger problem for previous Republican administrations, he was wrong on just about every other count. The state of Arkansas had plenty to do with Mena, and Mr. Clinton left many unanswered questions behind when he moved to Washington.

Anyone who thinks that Mena is not serious should speak to William Duncan, a former Internal Revenue Service investigator who, together with Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch, has fought a bitter 10-year battle to bring the matter to light. They pinned their hopes on nine separate state and federal probes. All failed.

"The Mena investigations were never supposed to see the light of day," says Mr. Duncan, now an investigator with the Medicaid Fraud Division of the office of Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant. "Investigations were interfered with and covered up, and the justice system was subverted."

The mysteries of Mena, detailed on this page on June 29, center on the activities of a drug-smuggler-turned-informant named Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal. Mr. Seal began operating at Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in 1981. At the height of his career, according to Mr. Welch, Mr. Seal was importing as much as 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month.

By 1984, Mr. Seal was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency and flew at least one sting operation to Nicaragua for the CIA, a mission known to have drawn the attention of Mr. North. By 1986, Mr. Seal was dead, gunned down by Colombian hitmen in Baton Rouge, La. Eight months after Mr. Seal's murder, his cargo plane, which had been based at Mena, was shot down over Nicaragua with Eugene Hasenfus and a load of Contra supplies aboard.

According to Mr. Duncan and others, Mr. Clinton's allies in state government worked to suppress Mena investigations. In 1990, for example, when Mr. Bryant made Mena an issue in the race for attorney general, Clinton aide Betsey Wright warned the candidate "to stay away" from the issue, according to a CBS Evening News investigative report. Ms. Wright denies the report. Yet once in office, and after a few feints in the direction of an investigation, Mr. Bryant stopped looking into Mena.

Documents obtained by the Journal show that as Gov. Clinton's quest for the presidency gathered steam in 1992, his Arkansas allies took increasing interest in Mena. Marie Miller, then director of the Medicaid Fraud Division, wrote in an April 1992 memo to her files that she told Mr. Duncan of the attorney general's "wish to sever any ties to the Mena matter because of the implication that the AG might be investigating the governor's connection." The memo says the instructions were pursuant to a conversation with Mr. Bryant's chief deputy, Royce Griffin. In an interview, Mr. Duncan said Mr. Griffin put him under "intense pressure" regarding Mena.

Another memo, from Mr. Duncan to several high-ranking members of the attorney general's staff in March 1992, notes that Mr. Duncan was instructed "to remove all files concerning the Mena investigation from the attorney general's office." At the time, several Arkansas newspapers were known to be preparing Freedom of Information Act requests aimed at Gov. Clinton's administration.

A spokesman for Mr. Bryant, Lawrence Graves, said yesterday that he was not aware of the missing files or of pressure exerted on Mr. Duncan. In Arkansas, Mr. Graves said, the attorney general "does not have authority" to pursue criminal cases.

From February to May 1992, Mr. Duncan was involved in a series of meetings aimed at deciding how to use a $25,000 federal grant obtained by then-Rep. Bill Alexander for the Mena investigation. In a November 1991 letter to Arkansas State Police Commander Tommy Goodwin, Mr. Alexander urged that, at the current "critical stage" in the Mena investigation, the money be used to briefly assign Mr. Duncan to the Arkansas State Police to pursue the case full time with State Police Investigator Welch and to prepare "a steady flow of information" for Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who had received some Mena files from Mr. Bryant.

According to Mr. Duncan's notes on the meetings, Mr. Clinton's aides closely tracked the negotiations over what to do with the money. Mr. Duncan says a May 7, 1992, meeting with Col. Goodwin was interrupted by a phone call from the governor, though he does not know what was discussed. The grant, however, was never used. Col. Goodwin told CBS that the money was returned "because we didn't have anything to spend it on."

In 1988, local authorities suffered a similar setback after Charles Black, a Mena-area prosecutor, approached Gov. Clinton with a request for funds for a Mena investigation. "He said he would get on it and would get a man back to me," Mr. Black told CBS. "I never heard back."

In 1990, Mr. Duncan informed Col. Goodwin about Clinton supporter Dan Lasater, who had been convicted of drug charges. "I told Tommy Goodwin that I'd received allegations of a Lasater connection to Mena," Mr. Duncan said.

The charge, that Barry Seal had used Mr. Lasater's bond business to launder drug money, was raised by a man named Terry Reed. Mr. Reed and journalist John Cummings recently published a book -- "Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA" -- charging that Mr. Clinton, Mr. North and others engaged in a massive conspiracy to smuggle cocaine, export weapons and launder money. While much of the book rests on slim evidence and already published sources, the Lasater-Seal connection is new. (Thomas Mars, Mr. Lasater's attorney, said yesterday that his client "has never had a connection" with Mr. Seal.) But when Mr. Duncan tried to check out the allegations, his probe went nowhere, stalled from lack of funds and bureaucratic hostility.

Not all of the hostility came from the state level. When Messrs. Duncan and Welch built a money-laundering case in 1985 against Mr. Seal's associates, the U.S. Attorneys in the case "directly interfered with the process," Mr. Duncan said. "Subpoenas were not issued, witnesses were discredited, interviews with witnesses were interrupted, and the wrong charges were brought before the grand jury."

One grand jury member was so outraged by the prosecutors' actions that she broke the grand-jury secrecy covenant. Not only had the case been blatantly mishandled, she later told a congressional investigator, but many jurors felt "there was some type of government intervention," according to a transcript of the statement obtained by the Journal. "Something is being covered up."

In 1987, Mr. Duncan was asked to testify before a House subcommittee on crime. Two days before his testimony, he says, IRS attorneys working with the U.S. Attorney for Western Arkansas reinterpreted Rule 6(e), the grand-jury secrecy law, forcing the exclusion of much of Mr. Duncan's planned testimony and evidence. Mr. Duncan also charges that a senior IRS attorney tried to force him to commit perjury by directing him to say he had no knowledge of a claim by Mr. Seal that a large bribe had been paid to Attorney General Edwin Meese. Mr. Duncan says he didn't make much of the drug dealer's claim, but did know about it; he refused to lie to Congress.

Mr. Duncan, distressed by the IRS's handling of Mena, resigned in 1989. Meanwhile, the affair was sputtering through four federal forums, including a General Accounting Office probe derailed by the National Security Council. At one particularly low point, Mr. Duncan, then briefly a Mena investigator for a House subcommittee, was arrested on Capitol Hill on a bogus weapons charge that was held over his head for nine months, then dismissed. His prized career in law enforcement in ruins, he found his way back to Arkansas and began to pick up the pieces.

Mr. Duncan does not consider President Clinton a political enemy. Indeed, he feels close to the president -- a fellow Arkansan who shares the same birthday -- and thinks Mena may turn out to be far more troublesome for GOP figures such as Mr. North than any Arkansas players.

These days, Mr. Duncan struggles to keep hope alive. "I'm just a simple Arkansan who takes patriotism very seriously," he says. "We are losing confidence in our system. But I still believe that somewhere, somehow, there is some committee or institution that can issue subpoenas, get on the money trail, find out what happened and restore a bit of faith in the system."

by **admin** » Wed May 25, 2016 7:25 pm

Bill & Hillary Clinton: A Life of Violating People
by Robert Morrow
February 1, 2012

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Bill Clinton was a 1980's cokehead governor; brother Rogers says he "has nose like a vacuum cleaner" for coke

Roger Clinton, Bill’s brother who went to jail for dealing cocaine -– was caught on a police videotape in April, 1984 -– with undercover police detective Travis Bunn, saying he (Roger) needed to “get some [cocaine] for my brother [Bill]; He’s got a nose like a vacuum cleaner.” Dan Lasater, Bill’s very close friend and contributor was also a major drug dealer. Both Roger and Lasater went to jail on drug charges. Governor Bill corruptly gave Lasater a full and complete pardon in November, 1990. Lasater only served 6 months of a 30 month sentence.

Gennifer Flowers said Bill told her he was using so much cocaine that his head itched. Sally Perdue, another girlfriend, said “he had all of the [cocaine snorting] equipment laid out, like a real pro.”

Bill has very bad sinuses (a possible result of coke abuse), no doubt caused by his life as an out-of-control 1980’s cokehead. Sharlene Wilson said that she once saw Bill so high on cocaine that he fell against the wall and SLID INTO A GARBAGE CAN!

Sharlene says:

Sharlene says:

Sharlene, who was once sexually intimate with drug dealers Roger Clinton and Dan Harmon, says she and her friends would go back to the Arkansas Governor’s mansion and party until the early morning hours. Sharlene says:

Jane Parks claims that in 1984, when she was the resident manager at the Vantage Point Apartments, she could hear parties in the unit next door where Bill, his brother Roger and druggie friend Dan Lasater held parties, did drugs and chased women, some as young as a 16 year old high school girl. Parks says she could hear all this through the walls. They were giving cocaine to high school girls! Witnesses report the ashtrays were filled with cocaine, supplied by Lasater. Patricia Anne Smith says “I was introduced to cocaine by Dan Lasater when I was 16 or 17 years old and a student at North Little Rock Old Main High School … I was a virgin until two months after I met Dan Lasater. Lasater plied me with cocaine and gifts for sexual favors.” [Insight on the News, 11-6-95]. Cokehead Gov. Bill was partying with other cokeheads and high school girls. Teenager Patty-Anne (back in the 80’s) says that on several occasions she saw Gov. Bill use cocaine and Bill sure wasn’t acting like a governor; she says “[Bill] was doing a line. It was just there on the table.” [p.290, Secret Life of Bill Clinton].

Bill, Hillary and Roger went with their party boy friend and contributor Dan Lasater (who got teenager Patricia on cocaine) on his private Lear jet to the 1983 Kentucky Derby. Biographer Roger Morris says “cocaine was available in ashtrays and literally every seat on the private jet -– as well as in the box at Churchill Downs.” [Carl Limbacher, NewsMax, 6-17-01]

According to Sam Houston, a respected Little Rock doctor, in the early 1980’s Bill Clinton was admitted to the Univ. of Arkansas Medical Center for emergency treatment for cocaine abuse and overdose and had to be cared for at the hospital on one, possibly two occasions.

Christopher Ruddy says, “When Mrs. Clinton arrived, she told both of the resident physicians on duty that night that they would never again practice medicine in the United States if word leaked out about Clinton's drug problem. Reportedly, [Hillary] pinned one of the doctors up against the wall, both hands pressed against his shoulders, as she gave her dire warning.”

Larry Nichols says that Betsy Wright, Gov. Bill’s Chief of Staff, told Larry that Bill –- totally a cokehead and just as addicted as Roger -– had to enter drug treatment programs three times! As Governor! No wonder drug smuggling was running rampant in Arkansas in the 1980’s: Governor Bill was a cokehead. Witt Stevens, brother of Jack Stevens, told Bill he would give him $100,000 for his 1982 campaign if he would “get off the white stuff.” [Larry Nichols, very close aide to Bill, on the KIEV George Putnam radio show] Here is a good web link: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCH ... caine.html

Sally Perdue, Bill’s lover from 1983, said Bill used cocaine in her presence and seemed very expert in its use, “He had all the equipment laid out, like a real pro.” L.D. Brown, Bill’s very close aide, suspected Bill of snorting in a bathroom stall while they were on vacation in Boca Raton. Bill was saying, “Yeah, yeah, L.D. these damn sinuses are killing me,” as he apparently was snorting cocaine.

Monica told Linda Tripp that Bill “sometimes seemed to ‘zone out’ on her.” When Linda asked why, Monica said, “I think he’s on drugs.” [NY Post, 10-3-98]

An editorial in the Investor’s Business Daily (“What did he Snort and when did he Snort it?”) on 10-30-96 gives a good summary of the proof of Bill’s cocaine use.

“I remember going into the governor’s conference room once and it reeked of marijuana,” said Democratic State Representative Jack McCoy, a Clinton supporter.” [Clinton Chronicles, p.170]. Gennifer also said that Bill smoked marijuana in her presence and Gennifer says, “By the way, he most certainly did inhale.”

Bill even asked trooper Larry Patterson if he should make his very, very close friend drug dealer Dan Lasater as his chief of staff! [More Than Sex: the Secrets of Bill and Hillary Revealed, audiotapes, NewsMax 1999] Pathological liar Bill later says he hardly knew Dan Lasater, with whom he used to go to coke parties with high school girls.

by **admin** » Wed May 25, 2016 7:34 pm

What did he snort and when did he snort it?
by Investors Business Daily - Editorial
October 30, 1996
Copyright 1996 Investors Business Daily 10-30-96

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

What did he snort and when did he snort it? Americans well might wonder what to make of the stories that Bill Clinton's drug use went far beyond just puffing on a joint or two. The stories are easy to disregard -- except insofar as they provide the missing motive for an unquestionable scandal: the president's terrible record in fighting drugs.

Two years ago, Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., said: ''If any credible evidence surfaces concerning drug use by President Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas, it would be a national scandal.'' A lot of testimony has bubbled up. But is it credible?

Sally Perdue, a former Miss Arkansas and Little Rock talk show host who said she had an affair with then-Gov. Clinton in 1983, told the London Sunday Telegraph that he once came over to her house with a bag full of cocaine. ''He had all the equipment laid out, like a real pro.''

Gennifer Flowers says she saw Clinton smoke marijuana and carry joints with him when he first began visiting her in 1977. Clinton was Arkansas' attorney general from 1977 through 1979. His first term as governor ran from 1979 through 1981. He was governor again from 1983 through 1992.

Two Arkansas state troopers have sworn under oath that they have seen Clinton ''under the influence'' of drugs when he was governor.

Sharlene Wilson is a bartender who is serving time on drug crimes and has cooperated with drug investigators. She told a federal grand jury she saw Clinton and his younger brother ''snort'' cocaine together in 1979.

Jack McCoy, a Democratic state representative and Clinton supporter, told the Sunday Telegraph that he could ''remember going into the governor's conference room once and it reeked of marijuana.''

Historian Roger Morris, in his book ''Partners in Power,'' quotes several law enforcement officials who say they had seen and knew of Clinton's drug use.

On a videotape made in 1983-84 by local narcotics officers, Roger Clinton said during a cocaine buy: ''Got to get some for my brother. He's got a nose like a vacuum cleaner.''

One-time apartment manager Jane Parks claims that in 1984 she could listen through the wall as Bill and Roger Clinton, in a room adjoining hers, discussed the quality of the drugs they were taking.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor of American Spectator magazine, has tried to track down rumors that Clinton suffered an overdose at one point. The incident supposedly occurred after the young politician lost the governorship in 1980 and fell into an emotional tailspin.

Tyrrell asked emergency room workers at the University of Arkansas Medical Center if they could confirm the incident. He didn't get a flat ''no'' from the hospital staff. One nurse said, ''I can't talk about that.'' Another said she feared for her life if she spoke of the matter.

The president himself has helped fuel suspicions of an overdose or some other drug problem by refusing to make his full medical records public.

It's easy to see the weak spots in these accounts. Some are just hearsay, and many come from very questionable characters. Few prosecutors would try to use any of them as evidence in court. This may be why the scandal of which Faircloth spoke seems to have such a long fuse.

Yet President Clinton himself has done as much as any critic to keep the issue alive.

In carrying out his presidential duty to enforce drug laws, he has waved the white flag. In hiring White House staff, he has shown extreme tolerance for recent drug use. In talking to the young about drugs, he has spoken irresponsibly.

In short, its not at all clear, even now, if our president takes the issue of drugs seriously.

Consider how he dodged the drug question over the years. In 1986, when asked if he had ever used drugs, Clinton responded he hadn't. In 1989, when asked if he had used illegal drugs while an adult in Arkansas, he said he ''never violated the drug laws of the state.''

The question was narrowed in 1991 to whether he had tried marijuana in college. ''No,'' he said, adding: ''That's the question you asked, and I'll give you the answer.'' That same year, Clinton told the National Press Club he hadn't violated state or federal drug laws.

Only in 1992, when asked directly if he had smoked marijuana while in graduate school or if he had violated international drug laws, did Clinton finally fess up. ''I've never broken a state law, but when I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale it, and never tried it again.'' So why didn't he just say that in the first place? ''Nobody's ever asked me that question point blank,'' he said.

These mealy-mouthed explanations and non-denial denials are mirrored in White House policies that were negligent or worse. The Secret Service reports that more than 40 staffers brought in by Clinton had such serious (and recent) drug problems that they had to enter a special testing program for security reasons.

Clinton himself has equivocated on the issue. Through his first three years in office, he was nearly silent on the subject of illegal drugs. And in his now-infamous appearance on MTV, he joked about them. Asked if he would ''inhale'' if he had all to do over again, he said, ''Sure, I would if I could. I tried before.'' We doubt if he would make such jokes about children smoking cigarettes.

The real tragedy here is that Clinton inherited a successful anti-drug strategy. In the '80s and early '90s, former drug czar Bill Bennett notes, ''America saw an astonishing reduction in drug use: down more than 50% between 1979 . . . and 1992, with a reduction of almost 80% in cocaine use between 1985 (the peak for cocaine) and 1992.''

Yet candidate Clinton blasted President Bush for not fighting ''a real drug war.''

After winning, Clinton showed what he meant by a ''real'' war: Downgrading enforcement of drug laws and treating the use of illegal drugs as a medical, not a moral, issue. On the books, drugs like cocaine were still illegal, but his enforcement amounted to de facto legalization. Treatment and tolerance became his watchwords.

The ''Just Say No'' days were over. Instead of working to harden social attitudes against illegal drugs and discouraging first-time use -- the great achievement of Reagan-Bush drug policy -- Clinton decided to pour money into treatment for hard-core addicts. His failure to police the first-use gateway ensures that there will be plenty of addicts to treat, for a long time.

''I have never, never, never seen a president who cares less about this issue,'' said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Clinton has since buried an administration-sponsored drug study that declared his policy a failure. He also has buried a memo from Drug Enforcement Agency head Thomas Constantine and FBI director Louis Freeh that blasted White House drug policies.

The two top cops warned that the country is ''lacking any true leadership.'' Worse, ''if firm new action isn't taken soon,'' we will face ''a national nightmare that will kill and maim and terrorize our people in perpetuity.''

The numbers back them up:

Monthly drug use among teenagers is up 78% since 1992, jumping 33% last year alone.

Marijuana use has increased 37% between 1994 and 1995 and more than doubled since 1992.

Monthly cocaine use by teens has exploded, rising 166% in the last year.

The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study, which tracks drug use among teens, found that they don't believe drugs are a dangerous as they did in the '80s. High school seniors who see ''great risk,'' for instance, fell from 78.6% in 1991 to 60.8% in 1995.

This comes at a time when two highly dangerous and addictive drugs, heroin and methamphetamine, are back in vogue.

As the election drew near, Clinton had one of his convenient conversions -- up to a point, at least. More drug enforcement funding, renewed White House drug testing and tough talk from the new drug czar are all welcome steps. But can they make up for the attitude problem that Clinton has done so much to create?

And how long will Gen. Barry McCaffrey stay as drug czar? Will he get the needed support -- fiscal, political, moral -- from the Oval Office after Nov. 5? Judging from Clinton's past record on election-time promises, McCaffrey should not plan on a long stay.

Election-year flip-flop aside, Clinton has failed to use his great rhetorical gifts -- and the persuasive power of his office -- to good effect here. Even teen-agers listen to what the president says. When the president jokes about smoking marijuana, they take the whole issue of drugs and drug laws much less seriously.

Wayne Roques, a former DEA agent, said, ''Since Clinton took office, I haven't gone to one school where some of the kids didn't laugh at drugs because of the president's comments.''

For a president who prides himself on feeling the people's pain and grasping their needs, in this area he has been woefully out of touch.

On this front Clinton has, conspicuously, failed to protect kids -- who don't know any better -- and to support parents.

by **admin** » Wed May 25, 2016 7:37 pm

USA JOURNAL ONLINE
by Jon E. Dougherty
July 23, 1998
©1998 USA Journal Online.

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

WASHINGTON -- Information passed to a talk radio program by a reporter for the USA Radio Network late Wednesday night indicated that Secret Service agents testifying in a Grand Jury hearing separate from the Lewinsky hearings have alleged drug use within the White House.

According to USA Radio correspondent Jack Christy, the "bombshell" report was based on other information Christy and others had been gathering on the issue to the agents' testimony yesterday.

"We are hearing allegations that what the Secret Service is testifying about is drug use within the White House," Christy said during a phone call to the George Putnam Show on KIEV-AM in Seattle.

Christy indicated that Larry Cockell, the lead Secret Service agent in charge of protecting President Clinton until the White House reassigned him last week, was involved in the testimony.

During the on-air conversation, Putnam added that he had been told by Larry Nichols -- a former Arkansas State Trooper and guardian of Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas -- that the trafficking of cocaine into the White House was being carried out by "a select few" personnel who had special passes.

Both Putnam and Christy said that Monica Lewinsky, currently embroiled in a 'sexgate' controversy which may have involved Clinton, has one of the special passes.

Those passes, Christy revealed, "do not require the holder of that card to be inspected upon entering the White House."

"Monica Lewinsky had one of those passes," he said, "and she still has one today, by the way."

Putnam challenged Christy to verify the information during the interview "without giving up" sources. Christy said, "I can tell you, George, that this is the scuttlebutt here on the street in Washington, DC."

Christy added that he believes former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta also knew of the drug use, which is "why he left the White House" and later chose not to run for a governorship.

"He did that for a reason," he said.

Christy also said that "Ken Starr knows" about the drug use, which is why "those Clinton supporters" who have been "asking Starr to let us go" are being so vehement in their criticism of the Independent Prosecutor.

They "want this stuff to come out so they can get on with their lives," he added.

At that point, Putnam said that "we also know" about the alleged drug use by Clinton and those close to him in Arkansas because of an expose about the Clinton administration written by former FBI agent Gary Aldridge. Aldridge's book charged, among other things, that the immorality in the Clinton White House was rampant. Those charges included lax security measures for who he described as dubious people.

Both Christy and Putnam cited a story which appeared in Investor's Business Daily on October 6, 1996, entitled 'What did he snort and when did he snort it.' That story also depicted alleged drug use in the White House.

During the conversation, Christy reminded listeners that the brief Starr filed with the Supreme Court, which sought to compel Secret Service testimony over the objections of the administration, "contained sensitive information." Christy appeared to be tying that description into the story regarding the drug use.

At one point, Putnam asked, "How high does it [the drug use] reach?"

"All the way to the top," Christy said. "I mean, we're talking about the President of the United States here."

Christy also said that the Secret Service agents which have been compelled to testify before Ken Starr's grand jury "are decent, honorable people, but they witnessed the president in a compromised position." That, he said, put them in a very delicate situation.

Christy suggested that Starr's final report to Congress regarding his four-year investigation will be "all inclusive," and that there may be nothing left for legislators to do "except impeach the guy, unless he resigns for medical reasons beforehand."

by **admin** » Wed May 25, 2016 7:42 pm

Another Agent Speaks Out
by Micah Morrison
Wall Street Journal
October 4, 1996
Copyright © 1996 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, Va. -- For more than two years, Congress has been trying to get straight answers from the White House on drug-related issues. After Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.) complained in March 1994 that more than 100 White House staffers had failed to get final security clearances and permanent passes, the White House set up its own drug-testing program. This June, news emerged from congressional oversight hearings that the man in charge of issuing passes, White House personnel security chief Craig Livingstone, had his own FBI clearance held up because of past drug use.

Today "there are still many unanswered questions about the White House drug-testing program," says Ned Lynch, a spokesman for the House Civil Service Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.), which has been probing White House compliance with the Drug-Free Federal Workplace order. "Evidence presented in recent testimony about the drug experiences of White House employees continues to give us great concern," Mr. Lynch adds.

None of this comes as a surprise to retired FBI Special Agent Dennis Sculimbrene, who was the senior agent at the FBI's liaison office in the White House from 1986 to April 1996. His job was to conduct the background interviews that provide information about the suitability of individuals to have access to the White House complex. He retired in August, citing "unjustified changes in my professional assignments and assaults on my career" after he appeared as a defense witness in the 1995 trial of former Travel Office head Billy Dale and testified this summer before House and Senate committees about White House drug use and Travelgate. The White House and its surrogates have denounced Mr. Sculimbrene as a mentally unbalanced liar, a man "whose hatred of the administration is well documented, as is his ongoing employment dispute with the FBI," in the words of White House Whitewater spokesman Mark Fabiani. Mr. Sculimbrene, for his part, has been unflinching in his congressional testimony, describing an atmosphere of moral squalor at the White House and alleging serious abuses of power by the Clinton administration and the FBI. This is his first conversation with a reporter.

"Drug use was an obvious problem from the beginning" of the Clinton administration, Mr. Sculimbrene said last week at his home in a remote stretch of the Shenandoah Valley, far from the Beltway wars he has left behind. "Because [the Clintonites] were younger than the previous administration, I expected we would have more people saying they used drugs more frequently, more recently. But what I didn't expect, and what I found personally intolerable - -though I kept my mouth shut -- was the superior attitude, the attitude that there was nothing wrong with it. Some of the people I interviewed said things like, 'Well, Bill Clinton used marijuana himself.' One of the first young kids I interviewed said something along the lines of, 'I can't believe you're asking me these questions about marijuana, because, heck, the president himself used it.' That's a total, 180-degree opposite viewpoint from the previous administration about the usage of drugs."

'No Big Deal'

Because of Privacy Act considerations, Mr. Sculimbrene often spoke in careful generalities and declined to identify individuals by name or specific position. But he clearly is troubled by the character of the Clinton White House. "It was not just young people who used drugs," Mr. Sculimbrene says. "There were senior people as well, senior aides and advisers to the president who used drugs recently -- people in policy positions, or, say, a director of an office. Some of them had the attitude: No big deal; it should be legalized. Some senior people even said they had used drugs as recently as the Inaugural."

Mr. Sculimbrene says that around June 1993 he reviewed his case files for an informal estimate of White House drug use. "I estimated that about 25% of the incoming administration, about one out of four cases, had a problem with illegal drugs. Not just casual experimentation, but a pattern of usage, which to me indicated a lack of good judgment and a disregard for the law. And not just marijuana, but cocaine, amphetamines, amphetamine-derived 'designer drugs' such as Ecstasy, hashish, mushrooms."

In January 1994, Mr. Sculimbrene, a former pilot for the Air Force and the FBI, suffered a severe head injury while working on an airplane. The injury resulted in some vision, hearing and balance problems, which were largely corrected through physical therapy, though some deficits remained. He returned to work in October. "The FBI rallied around me at the time of my accident," Mr. Sculimbrene says, "and for that I'll always be grateful. I wasn't ready for duty as a street agent, but I could and did perform my White House duties well. Things also had improved somewhat at the White House by the time I got back, though there still were problems. It was around that time that I heard about what was being called 'the Livingstone Rule'" -- presumably for Craig Livingstone. "The Livingstone Rule was: Drug use of more than 50 times was now a disqualifying factor for a permanent White House pass. It was around that time, as I recall, that several people called us and said they wanted to recant their previous interview; they hadn't used drugs 100 times, only 50 times. It's public information that Craig Livingstone lied during his FBI interview about drug use, and he wasn't the only one."

Drugs weren't the only problem Mr. Sculimbrene observed at the White House. He says he began to suffer severe career repercussions from both the White House and the FBI after he became entangled in the Travel Office affair. Travel Office head Billy Dale and five other employees were fired in May 1993, and Mr. Dale was charged by the Justice Department with embezzling funds.

Top White House officials had begun inquiring about the Travel Office staff, their lifestyles and political affiliations, "only a few weeks into the administration," Mr. Sculimbrene says. The officials were then-Deputy White House Counsel William Kennedy, then-Director of Administration Patsy Thomasson and presidential aide Jeff Eller. "I told them I thought Billy Dale was an upright, honest guy and that there was no trouble there," Mr. Sculimbrene recalled. "Those firings were strictly a fabrication."

During the FBI investigation of Mr. Dale, Mr. Sculimbrene says, he made his opinion known to an FBI supervisor. But despite Mr. Sculimbrene's familiarity with the case and the players, he was never interviewed by the FBI. "No one ever came to see me about the case," he says.

Within the FBI, tensions began to mount over the impending trial. "Around August of 1995, I had a shouting match with the supervising agent on the Dale case, David Bowie," Mr. Sculimbrene says. "Bowie told me Dale would have pled guilty long ago 'if it weren't for those rich Republicans giving him money.' I told him that was a wrongheaded remark and that I should have been interviewed for the investigation. Bowie told me I had nothing relevant to say, and then threatened me with an [FBI] Office of Professional Responsibility investigation. We were really going at it."

Shortly after that encounter, Mr. Sculimbrene says, he was told by the FBI that he had to take a random drug test. "I'd never had one before, and I'd never heard of anyone in my age group having to take a drug test -- I was 51 at the time. I thought that was quite a coincidence after my argument with Bowie."

In what Mr. Sculimbrene describes as another "coincidence," the possibility of a prestigious job lofted his way shortly before his testimony at the Dale trial. The incident raises questions about the nature and timing of an offer that could be construed as an attempt to buy his silence. Mr. Sculimbrene says that he was approached by a mid-level member of the presidential personnel office from Arkansas and encouraged to apply for a job as inspector general at the Department of Veterans' Affairs. "The official told me he had talked to Patsy [Thomasson] about the offer," Mr. Sculimbrene says. Ms. Thomasson, a Clinton intimate and former associate of Arkansas cocaine convict Dan Lasater, ran the personnel office. "After I testified at the Dale trial," Mr. Sculimbrene recalls, "I ran into the official again. He told me the job was out of the question, now that I had testified."

Mr. Sculimbrene had been subpoenaed as a defense witness at the Dale trial; he testified in October 1995. On Nov. 16, after deliberating less than two hours, a jury acquitted Mr. Dale of all charges. But Mr. Sculimbrene's troubles were just beginning.

In February 1996, he was notified that the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility was investigating him for alleged misuse of a government parking pass. "I thought it was some sort of sick joke," Mr. Sculimbrene says. Within a few weeks, he was interviewed by OPR investigators and presented with a new notice of more serious charges: An anonymous letter had been received charging him with making racist comments, speaking to the media and "time and attendance fraud." Mr. Sculimbrene says the FBI rank and file is demoralized by the FBI leadership and its misuse of such OPR investigations. "The OPR process causes terrible injury and is a burning issue for agents," Mr. Sculimbrene says. "It's being used as a personal management tool to control agents. Sometimes a case can hang over an agent for years, causing terrible stress."

Mr. Sculimbrene eventually was cleared in the OPR probe. But behind the scenes, a dramatic clash was shaping up, one that eventually would lead to Mr. Sculimbrene's resignation. In January, Mr. Sculimbrene's former partner, Gary Aldrich, had submitted the manuscript of his book to the FBI for review. The FBI general counsel, Howard Shapiro, promptly shipped a copy to the White House, it was revealed at House oversight hearings this summer. Mr. Sculimbrene says that he was also notified to expect a visit from Mr. Shapiro, who in the end sent two agents to question him about Mr. Aldrich and the FBI's White House liaison office. "In January, I imagine right after learning of the manuscript, Director [Louis] Freeh ordered the liaison office shut down immediately. Cooler heads prevailed at the time, but not for long, as it turned out."

Largely True

Mr. Sculimbrene says that before the agents visited him at Mr. Shapiro's direction, "I had no idea that Gary was writing a book about the White House. But after reading it, I can tell you it is largely true." A scathing critique of White House mores, "Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House," became No. 1 on the bestseller lists and created a firestorm when it was published in June. It also probably spelled the end of Mr. Sculimbrene at the FBI.

In April, he was relieved of his responsibilities at the White House. His White House pass was revoked in May, his work assignments were taken away, and he was ordered to undergo a fitness-for-duty exam, prior to reassignment to street duty. Mr. Sculimbrene filed an administrative complaint with the FBI alleging he had been denied "reasonable accommodation" for his disability in his job transfer and new duty assignments. It later emerged in congressional oversight hearings that at the same time, Mr. Livingstone, still at the White House, had ordered Mr. Sculimbrene's FBI background file, saying it was required for a reinvestigation of the agent.

In July, after the Aldrich book appeared and Mr. Sculimbrene testified before House and Senate committee investigators, FBI Counsel Shapiro sent two agents to Mr. Sculimbrene's home to question him about notes he had taken in a 1993 interview with then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum that suggested that Mr. Livingstone -- suddenly famous in the wake of Filegate revelations -- had been hired at Hillary Clinton's urging. "I viewed that visit as highly improper," Mr. Sculimbrene says. "Mr. Shapiro should have been taking no action in the matter, as it had been turned over to the independent counsel."

In late July, expecting to resume duties after medical exams, Mr. Sculimbrene says he was "stunned" to learn he had been ordered to go to Chicago for a psychiatric examination. "This seemed to confirm all I had learned from White House sources about ongoing efforts to discredit me," he says. In August, Mr. Sculimbrene quit the FBI. A few weeks later, the FBI liaison office at the White House was shut down. Agents conducting background investigations now work out of an FBI field office in Washington.

"That's a damn shame," Mr. Sculimbrene says. "The public is not well served by such a move. It's one thing to remove me; its another to shut down the whole office."

Mr. Morrison is a Journal editorial page writer.

by **admin** » Fri May 27, 2016 11:42 pm

Heartbreaking Crimes: Kids Without a Conscience? Rape, murder, a baby dead at a prom: A look at young lives that seem to have gone very, very wrong
Why are kids killing? Coincidence -- or scary trend? A spate of murders allegedly committed by teens leaves experts, family and police seeking answers
by Maria Eftimiades, Susan Christian Goulding, Anthony Duignan-Cabrera, Don Campbell, Jane Sims Podesta
People, 06/23/97, Vol. 47 Issue 24, p46. 8p. 16 Color Photographs, 2 Black and White Photographs.
6/ 23/ 97

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

ACCUSED: Daphne Abdela, 15, of a Central Park murder
ACCUSED: Jeremy Strohmeyer, 18, of killing a 7-year-old
ACCUSED: Corey Arthur, 19, of murdering Jonathan Levin
ACCUSED: Amy Grossberg, 18, of killing her newborn
IN TROUBLE: Melissa Drexler, 18. Her baby was found dead at the prom

DURING THE PAST DECADE THE NUMBER OF murders committed by teenagers has leaped from roughly 1,000 a year to nearly 4,000. Worrisome as that trend may be, a fleeting glance at recent headlines -- announcing that, in Texas, a teenage couple, formerly students at U.S. military academies, will soon stand trial for the carefully plotted murder of a girl who interrupted the smooth course of their love affair or that, in New Jersey, an 18-year-old high school senior delivered a baby while attending her prom, left the infant in the trash and returned to the dance -- suggests some teens these days are also committing crimes of incomprehensible callousness. "The young people involved in some of these violent acts are without the capacity to make the connection with another life," says Dr. David Hartman, the director of neuropsychology at the Isaac Ray Center for Psychiatry and Law in Chicago. "They need have no more reason for hurting another human being than they have for peeling an orange."

How they get to that point is a matter of heated debate. Poverty, broken homes and physical, psychological and sexual abuse are frequently cited, and clearly such factors do play a role. But New York psychologist Michael Schulman, the author of Bringing Up a Moral Child, observes, "Given the fact that most people who suffered similar kinds of abuse don't do these kinds of things, the explanations feel a little hollow." Indeed, as the following cases illustrate, kids accused of acts of casual violence come from a variety of backgrounds. For Schulman, the solution to the problem is both straightforward and daunting. "You need to teach the child that the family stands for goodness," he says, "not simply for comfort and intellectual achievement, but that moral excellence is honored."

Melissa Drexler, 18

Among members of the class of '97 at Lacey Township High School in New Jersey, Melissa Drexler, 18, was known as a quiet, diligent student—an aspiring fashion designer who dreamed of becoming the next Donna Karan. She seemed shy and opened up only to a few close friends. "When you get to know her, she can be exciting," says Jim Botsacos, 18, a longtime friend. "She likes to have fun."

But Drexler concealed more from her classmates than a desire to enjoy herself. Although it now appears that she was pregnant for most of her senior year, Drexler managed to hide her condition—from her classmates, parents and boyfriend, John Lewis, 20—by wearing baggy, loose-fitting clothes.

On June 6 she went to her senior prom. Dressed in a floor-length, black sleeveless velvet gown, Drexler arrived in a limousine at the Garden Manor banquet hall in Aberdeen, N.J., at about 7:45 p.m. with Lewis. She immediately retreated to the rest room with a classmate to freshen up. When her friend grew concerned that she was taking so long in one of the stalls, Drexler, Monmouth County prosecutors say, told her she was having a heavy period and to let their dates know she would be a while.

The girl returned to the rest room about 15 minutes later, and Drexler emerged, zipped her dress and touched up her makeup. A few minutes later, after asking the deejay to play a Metallica song, she hit the dance floor with Lewis, a Wal-Mart stockroom worker she had been dating for about two years. "She seemed normal," says fellow student Jeff Diab, 18. "All smiles." Meanwhile, a cleaning woman, summoned by school officials to clean up a blood-streaked stall in the ladies room, discovered the lifeless body of a 6-lb. 6-oz. baby boy in a tied garbage bag in a trash basket. After learning that Drexler was the last to use the rest room, teachers began questioning her. "She was not upset," says Monmouth County prosecutor Robert Honecker. "She indicated that she had delivered an infant." Such a blank response, though bewildering, is not unheard of, says Dr. Phillip Resnick, a professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "[With] mothers who deny their pregnancy and don't form a bond, it's like a foreign body going through them—like a peach pit."

The incident has left Drexler's middle-class hometown of Forked River in shock. By all accounts, the teenager—who could face murder charges if prosecutors can prove the baby was alive at birth—was an indulged only child whose parents, John, a computer worker, and Marie, a bank employee, provided ample love and support. But Debbie Jacobson, a classmate's mother, says Melissa "is a child emotionally. She didn't make decisions on her own about things." Adds Botsacos: "Her family is almost too nice. They didn't want her to have a job. They bought her a car, paid for her gas, bought her clothes. She got what she wanted when she wanted it." This time it seems Drexler got something she didn't want—and cast it away.

[x]
Arriving at the prom with John Lewis, Drexler seemed untroubled

[x]
Melissa Drexler left her newborn in a trash can, then danced at her senior prom

Jeremy Strohmeyer, 18

Shortly before 4 a.m. on May 25, a security camera in a Primm, Nev., casino captured 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson-on her own as her father gambled nearby—playing hide-and-seek in a video arcade with Jeremy Strohmeyer, 18, a college-bound high school senior from Long Beach, Calif. Moments later, when Sherrice dashed into the women's room, Strohmeyer followed. There, allegedly, he raped and strangled her. He then continued celebrating the Memorial Day holiday weekend with best friend David Cash Jr., 18, and Cash's father. Police say the younger Cash had trailed Strohmeyer into the rest room but left after failing to persuade him to let the little girl alone. On his return to Long Beach, a friend says, Strohmeyer told him he'd had a great time.

Little in Strohmeyer's apparently ordinary, middle-class background—his mother, Winifred, is a marketing executive; his father, John, a well-to-do real estate investor—seems to account for the callousness of the murder of which he is accused. When a Los Angeles TV station aired the surveillance tape on May 26, several stunned classmates recognized him and told their parents, who tipped off police. Two days later, Strohmeyer was arrested. (Cash, who turned himself in, was released and has not been charged in the killing.) Jean Matz, a neighbor of the Strohmeyers', was shocked. "The mother was working all the time. She is very successful," Matz says. "[John] ran the house." Once a top student and volleyball player at Woodrow Wilson High School, Strohmeyer dropped off the team two months ago and, friends say, began losing weight. His grades had plummeted. Volleyball coach John Crutchfield suspected he was using methamphetamines, but Strohmeyer denied it. Around the same time, his father threw him out of the house—for disregarding curfew, police say—though he was living at home again prior to the crime. "He would drink too much at parties to impress people," says one classmate. "Most of the time he seemed nice, but he could get obnoxious." And there was one other hint of a darker side. A friend, Andy Edling, says that earlier this year, Strohmeyer had showed him an extensive collection of pornographic photos culled from the Internet. "What struck me most was the little children," Edling says. "I thought it was gross, and he just laughed."

[x]
Strohmeyer (in custody May 30) "wanted no rules" at home, says a police officer. " Jeremy thought that he should have total independence after he turned 18."

[X]
Jeremy Strohmeyer allegedly killed a little girl playing hide-and-seek "Sherrice had her life plucked from her without having a chance to fulfill her destiny," says Carol Croghan, who sang at the little girl's funeral.

[x]
"We thought he was a great kid," says a family friend of Strohmeyer (modeling last year). "It's incomprehensible."

Daphne Abdela, 15
Christopher Vasquez, 15

For all the thousands of New Yorkers who venture into Manhattan's Central Park by day, few are aware of the hidden world that flourishes in the park after dark. That's when teenagers like 15-year-old Daphne Abdela, daughter of a millionaire businessman, come in their Tommy Hilfiger jackets and baggy pants to share the night with other would-be rebels in an odd subculture of privileged kids playing "gangstas."

On May 22 the playacting stopped; now, Abdela and her new boyfriend, Christopher Vasquez, 15, stand accused of one of the grisliest crimes in recent New York history. Police say Vasquez attacked Michael McMorrow, a 44-year-old real estate agent with whom the two had been drinking, stabbing him 30 times, almost cutting off his nose and a hand. Then, Abdela allegedly told police, she instructed Vasquez "to gut" McMorrow so "it would sink" when they heaved his body into a lake.

Since their arraignment on murder charges, a portrait has emerged of two troubled teens, adrift and desperately seeking acceptance. Abdela was known as a quiet rich kid who got loud once she started drinking. "She always tried to act like she was from a bad neighborhood," says a friend. Vasquez, meanwhile, slight and bespectacled, attended the exclusive Beekman School but hoped to prove his toughness by joining a gang. A longtime friend says that in the past year, Vasquez suddenly changed. "He was never in school," he says. "He punched my friend in the face at this party...for no reason."

Both teens have a long history of emotional problems. Vasquez was taking Zoloft, an antidepressant, and Lorazepam, an antianxiety drug. And Abdela has undergone treatment for her drinking. Clearly her parents—Angelo, an Israeli-born top executive in an international food company, and Catherine, a French-born former model—had an inkling she was once again heading for trouble. Only one week before McMorrow's murder, they had withdrawn her from the competitive Jesuit-run Loyola School she attended and wait-listed her at the Day Top Village drug treatment center. Still, friends and teachers of both teens find the violence of the crime unfathomable. "If you're looking for some pattern of behavior," says Richard J. Soghoian, her former headmaster, "it's just not there. In fairness, it's not."

[x]
"McMorrow" was a real sweetheart," says Glenn Golub, a coworker. "Everybody loved Mike."

[x]
Christopher Vasquez is charged with knifing a man, then gutting him on orders from Daphne Abdela

[x]
"Once in a while he would flash a knife to be macho, but he wasn't a tough guy," a friend says of Vasquez (center, in court on May 28). "When [Abdela] asked him to do something, he'd do it."

[x]
"[Abdela] had a drinking problem," says a friend, "but she wasn't a violent person."

Alex Baranyi, 18
David Anderson, 18

In Bellevue, Wash., a comfortable Seattle suburb, it's easy to miss the pockets of despair amid the prosperity. Yet the likes of Alex Baranyi are more common than some would admit. Baranyi, now 18, whose parents had separated when he was 8, had been taken to Pennsylvania by his father, Alex Sr., a software consultant, then sent back to Washington to live with his mother, Patricia, an educational assistant. Last November, Baranyi and his best friend, David Anderson, 18, who had left home and moved in with friends, dropped out of high school. At night they hung out with other kids at a local bowling alley and at a Denny's, where they would sit drinking coffee and killing time.

The void in their lives was filled with fantasy games. In recent years, Baranyi and Anderson had become followers of so-called goth—for gothic—subculture, in which devotees dress in black and wear white makeup to give themselves a spectral look. Baranyi was also a fan of Highlander, a TV series about an immortal sword-wielding hero; he owned a sword collection himself and talked often of death. "Sometimes I thought he might be sort of suicidal," says Dawn Kindschi, 17, an acquaintance who had filed a complaint against Baranyi last year after he allegedly beat her.

Despite his antisocial appearance, that was Baranyi's only serious brush with the law—until this year. On Jan. 5 the body of Kimberly Ann Wilson, 20, was found in a Bellevue park. She had been clubbed with a baseball bat and strangled. When police went to the Wilson home to deliver the news, they found Kim's parents, William, 52, and Rose, 46, and her sister Julia, 17, bludgeoned and stabbed to death.

Acting on a tip, police brought Baranyi in for questioning. He allegedly confessed to murdering Kim, a friend of Anderson's, then to killing her family in the belief they might have known she was meeting them. Later, authorities arrested Anderson as a partner in the crime. The choice of Kim Wilson as victim may have been arbitrary. Police say Baranyi told them he simply wanted to kill someone because he was "in a rut." According to King County prosecutor Norm Maleng, evidence suggests that Baranyi and Anderson, who will go on trial in October, had committed the murders "for the sheer experience of killing." To Kevin Wulff, principal at Bellevue High, the local outcry over the slayings is a case of too little, too late. "We ignore [these kids] and hope they go away," says Wulff, "and then we are horrified when they commit these crimes."

[x]
Alex Baranyi and David Anderson may have killed for the thrill of it

[x]
Blood was found at the Wilson home that apparently did not belong to the victims.

[x]
Like Baranyi, Anderson liked playing the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons.

[x]
"She was nonjudgmental and caring," says one friend of Kim Wilson. "She never noticed anything wrong with anyone."

[x]
Now being held on $10 million bail, Baranyi (in court in January) and best friend Anderson face life in prison without parole if convicted of killing Kim Wilson, her parents and her sister.

Corey Arthur, 19

Kids like Corey Arthur were the reason Jonathan Levin got into teaching, so the irony was heartbreaking when New York City police arrested him for Levin's murder on June 7. Since Levin, 31, was the son of Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin, some thought his family's wealth had played a role in his death. In fact, police say Arthur, a dropout who was often absent from Levin's English class at William H. Taft High School three years before, chose his former teacher as a victim without knowing who Levin's father was.

Raised in New York's harshest neighborhoods, Arthur, 19, barely knew his own father, who died in April. An aspiring rapper, he had, by the age of 16, been charged with heroin and cocaine possession and had been sent to a boot-camp program for young offenders. "He felt nobody cared about him," says ex-girlfriend Crystal Jacobs. "The only love he got was from people [on the street]. He would tell me, 'You got to do right.' " A friend told The New York Times, "He always wanted to have money, but he never wanted to get a job."

Levin had a reputation for helping students in need. According to police, he was at his modest Manhattan apartment on May 30 when Arthur phoned asking to see him. Police say Arthur and Montoun Hart, 25 (who had seven arrests on his record), went to Levin's place late that afternoon and tortured him with a knife until he revealed his PIN number; they also say Arthur killed Levin with a bullet to the head and that $800 was withdrawn from his account at a nearby ATM machine.

Police began an intensive pursuit that ended when one of Arthur's ex-girlfriends turned him in. Charged with first-degree murder, Arthur could face the death penalty.

[x]
A teacher who took needy kids under his wing, Levin apparently welcomed Corey Arthur to his apartment.

[x]
A large delegation from William H. Taft High, where Levin taught, attended his June 4 memorial service in New York City.

[x]
Arthur's fingerprints were reportedly found on tape used to restrain Jonathan Levin.

[x]
Corey Arthur is accused of preying on his former teacher Jonathan Levin, killed for his bank card and PIN number

Amy Grossberg, 18
Brian Peterson, 19

To their parents and neighbors in the suburban enclave of Wyckoff, N.J., Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson are simply a couple of kids who got into trouble, then made a tragic mistake. Of course the "mistake" the then 18-year-old sweethearts are accused of making involved nothing less than the murder of their newborn son and the depositing of his body in a Dumpster outside a Delaware motel last Nov. 12. Nevertheless "there's enormous support for the couple," says Joyce Harper, owner of a Wyckoff toy store where Peterson often buys Beanie Babies for Grossberg.

In an apparent attempt to explain themselves nationwide, Grossberg and her parents, Sonye and Alan, appeared on ABC's 20/20 on June 6 with interviewer Barbara Walters. "I would never hurt anything or anybody, especially something that could come from me," said Amy. Her mother, an interior designer (her husband is a furniture store owner), praised Amy's "very special" relationship with Peterson, who works part-time for his parents' wholesale video sales business and sees Amy weekly. Though Amy said nothing about her pregnancy all summer while she was home, and her parents were apparently unaware of it, Sonye characterized her relationship with her daughter as very close. "She's always so giving and caring," she said of Amy, who volunteers as an art teacher for children at Wyckoff's Temple Beth Rishon. "I can't believe that people don't see that about her."

What many viewers thought they saw instead was the Grossbergs' apparent detachment from a deeply disturbing crime. While defense lawyers argue that mitigating circumstances will become clear in court, Jerry Capone, a Wilmington, Del., attorney who represents many disadvantaged clients, says he is especially alarmed by teenagers like Grossberg and Peterson. "These kids from strong family backgrounds should have the proper moral background," he says. "That really frightens me. It means this lack of respect for human life cuts across all economic classes."

[x]
New Jersey sweethearts Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson stand accused of killing their baby, then placing his body in a Dumpster

[x]
Peterson (with his mother, Barbara Zuchowski) reportedly told a college staffer that he disposed of his newborn son.

[x]
For months, Amy Grossberg hid the pregnancy that ended with the death of her baby

[x]
Brian Peterson lives a mile from the Grossbergs' Wyckoff, N. J., condo ( above).

[x]
Sonye and Alan Grossberg (leaving court with their daughter in March) borrowed to post Amy's $300,000 bail.

MARIA EFTIMIADES in Forked River, SUSAN CHRISTIAN GOULDBING in Los Angeles, ANTHONY DUIGNAN-CABRERA in New York City, DON CAMPBELL in Bellevue, JANE SIMS PODESTA in Washington, and bureau reports
© Time Inc., 1997.

by **admin** » Fri May 27, 2016 11:43 pm

New Jersey Charges Woman, 18, With Killing Baby Born at Prom
by Robert Hanley
June 25, 1997

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

FREEHOLD, N.J., June 24— The New Jersey teen-ager who gave birth in a bathroom stall at her senior prom was charged with murder today after the authorities concluded that she had delivered a healthy boy, cut the umbilical cord, choked him and put him in a plastic bag that she knotted and threw away.

The woman, Melissa Drexler, 18, of Forked River, was charged after an autopsy determined she had choked the baby and smothered him either with her hands or with the plastic bag, said John Kaye, the Monmouth County Prosecutor.

In the midst of it, Mr. Kaye said today, a girlfriend who had heard sounds from the bathroom stall asked Miss Drexler if she felt ill. The Prosecutor said she replied: ''I'll be done pretty soon. Go tell the boys we'll be right out.''

A few minutes later, leaving blood on the floor of the bathroom stall, Miss Drexler went to the dance floor with her boyfriend and prom date, John Lewis, ate a salad and danced one dance.

The case -- which recalled that of another New Jersey teen-ager, Amy Grossberg, and her boyfriend, Brian Peterson, who were charged with killing their newborn son in a motel and discarding his body -- stunned Miss Drexler's friends and relatives and attracted headlines across the country. Those who knew her said they had no idea the high school senior was pregnant.

In her hometown in southern New Jersey, there was little sympathy for Miss Drexler. Most people agreed with the sentiments of Michelle Donally, a 20-year-old neighbor, who said, ''My heart goes out to her parents, but not to her.''

On June 6, the night of the prom, Miss Drexler initially denied giving birth when teachers came up to her and others who had been in the women's bathroom to ask about the blood in the bathroom stall.

Miss Drexler replied that she was having a heavy menstrual flow, Mr. Kaye said.

A few minutes later, after the baby's body had been found in an outside trash bin at the prom site, the Garden Manor in Aberdeen, Miss Drexler told teachers she had given birth.

Mr. Kaye said Dr. Jay Peacock, an assistant county medical examiner, had established the cause of death as ''asphyxia due to manual strangulation and obstruction of the external airway orifices.''

Dr. Peacock was unable to determine if the baby was dead or alive when he was placed inside the bag and a knot was tied at the top of the bag, Mr. Kaye said.

''We are certain the baby was alive after it was born,'' Mr. Kaye said. ''When it ceased to be alive, we cannot say.''

Besides the murder charge, which carries a sentence of 30 years to life, Miss Drexler was accused of endangering the welfare of a child, a second-degree crime in New Jersey with a penalty of 5 to 10 years.

Mr. Kaye dismissed suggestions that the endangering charge was a fall-back position for his office, and said it would be merged with the murder charge when the case was presented to a Monmouth County grand jury in about a month.

Mr. Kaye said it was unlikely that his office would seek the death penalty, because of Miss Drexler's age, her lack of a criminal record and what he called ''the stress and extreme emotional disturbance'' of the birth.

In early afternoon today, Miss Drexler, a senior at Lacey Township High School, made a five-minute appearance in State Superior Court and was released on a $50,000 property bond by Judge John Ricciardi. She said little as the judge explained her legal rights.

After Miss Drexler left the courthouse with her father, her lawyer, Steven Secare, said his client was not guilty.

He declined further comment because, he said, his own investigation was not yet complete. He said Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist in New York, had conducted a separate autopsy on the baby's body at the request of the Drexler family. In addition, he said, a Pennsylvania psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Sadoff, had examined Miss Drexler. Mr. Secare said he is awaiting both reports.

Dr. Baden said in an interview later today that ''the autopsy findings are ambiguous as to whether the baby was alive, because of all the resuscitation that was performed.''

The resuscitation efforts caused changes in the baby's body, he said, and the birth process might have caused additional changes. ''It's a very difficult type of death to determine, whether a baby was born alive or not,'' Dr. Baden said.

Miss Drexler, an only child, arrived home with her parents shortly before 4 P.M. A crowd of reporters, some with television cameras, on the otherwise quiet street of neat ranch houses called out to her. But Miss Drexler, wearing a sun dress and dark glasses, merely threw her hands in the air, then went inside, bending down to pet her dog on the way.

At a news conference this morning, Mr. Kaye said Dr. Peacock was satisfied that the baby was alive and breathing after the birth because Dr. Peacock had found air in the baby's lungs and intestines.

''The doctor says this is a very significant finding, amongst others,'' Mr. Kaye said of the air in the intestines. The Prosecutor said the medical findings were critical to the state's case, because investigators had not found any witnesses who saw the birth, heard any screams from Miss Drexler or cries from the baby, or saw who placed the bag containing the baby in the bathroom's trash receptacle nine feet from the stall where the birth occurred.

Mr. Kaye said he was convinced that only Miss Drexler knew of her pregnancy. He said the baby was born at full term, without any congenital defects or deformities.

While driving to the Garden Manor with her boyfriend and another couple, Ms. Drexler complained of stomach cramps, the Prosecutor said. He said she went to the bathroom at the catering hall as soon as they reached it about 7 or 7:30 P.M. and gave birth almost immediately, 20 minutes after she had complained of the cramps in the car.

''She got no assistance,'' Mr. Kaye said of the birth. ''She did this herself.''

A girlfriend was in the bathroom during some of the time Miss Drexler was in the stall, heard sounds of scraping metal and saw Miss Drexler trying to wipe her foot across blood on the tile floor, Mr. Kaye said.

Exactly how the child's umbilical cord was cut is uncertain, the Prosecutor said. But he said the authorities suspect that Miss Drexler dislodged a metal container for sanitary napkins from a wall in the stall and severed the cord with the container's serrated edge. He said the cut in the umbilical cord was jagged.

The authorities suspect that the scraping noises the friend overheard were caused by Miss Drexler's removing the napkin container.

After Miss Drexler and her friend left the bathroom, a matron cleaned the bloody stall, placed soiled towels in a plastic bag in the bathroom's trash receptacle and took the bag to an outside trash bin. As she carried it, she noticed that it was heavy and called a maintenance worker. He looked inside the bag and found the knotted bag containing the baby's body.

If the matron had not been curious about the bag's weight, Mr. Kaye said, the body might never have been found.

''No one knew this woman was having a baby,'' he said.

[x]
Photo: Melissa Drexler and her lawyer, Steven Secare, entering a courtroom at Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold yesterday. She was charged with murder in the death of her newborn boy at her senior prom June 6. (Associated Press)(pg. B4)

by **admin** » Fri May 27, 2016 11:45 pm

The Picture of Ordinary: Before Prom Night, a Suspect Was the Girl Next Door
by Abby Goodnough and Bruce Weber
July 2, 1997

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J., June 29— A month ago, 18-year-old Melissa Drexler was just a quiet, somewhat introverted high school senior who wanted to graduate from Lacey Township High School here, get on with her summer job at a retail store on the beach and hang out with her boyfriend. By all accounts, hers was an undistinguished life, she an ordinary girl. ''Really mellow,'' one friend called her. She'd gone to dancing school. She wanted to be a fashion designer. She liked club music. She was looking forward to the prom, trying on dresses with her friend Rebecca.

But on the evening of June 6, shortly after she and her boyfriend, John Lewis, arrived at the Garden Manor in Aberdeen, some 40 miles north in Monmouth County, Melissa gave birth to a boy who was found shortly afterward by a maintenance worker in a bag of trash. At that moment she ceased being a normal teen-ager and began her new life as the focus of an agonizing mystery.

Was the baby born dead, as friends of Miss Drexler said she had told them, or alive, as John Kaye, the Monmouth County prosecutor who has charged Miss Drexler with murder, contends?

It is also unclear who, if anyone, knew Miss Drexler was pregnant. Her parents have said they did not. Her boyfriend, Mr. Lewis, who is the likely father, has said he did not. There are even some friends of Miss Drexler's who wonder whether she herself knew.

''As far as I know, she did not know she was pregnant,'' said Sarah Dorrick, who, like Miss Drexler, graduated from Lacey Township High School last month and said the two ate lunch together daily. ''She never said anything, and there was no change in her behavior in school to indicate she was.''

Lynn Ganelli, the mother of Miss Drexler's friend Rebecca, said that Rebecca had suspected nothing when the girls went shopping for Miss Drexler's prom dress a few weeks before the event.

''She was trying on small sizes,'' Mrs. Ganelli said. ''There's no way she looked eight and a half months pregnant.''

And finally, the prosecutor's account of what happened on June 6 has been disputed by friends of John and Melissa's. According to Mr. Kaye, the six-pound baby was born alive, then was either strangled by Miss Drexler or suffocated after being tied up in a plastic garbage bag. He says that afterward, Miss Drexler returned to her table, ate a salad and danced at least one dance before school officials questioned her about the bloodstained bathroom stall.

The Drexler family, Mr. Lewis and everyone connected with Lacey Township High School declined to comment on the case. But Tim Hoban, a close friend of Mr. Lewis's who also knew Miss Drexler well, said that according to what both Mr. Lewis and Miss Drexler told him in the days after the prom, she had no idea she was going to deliver a child that night.

''She went into that bathroom to go to the bathroom,'' Mr. Hoban said.

Both Mr. Lewis and Miss Drexler told him that the baby had been born dead, he said, and that Miss Drexler had disposed of the tiny corpse in a panic.

''The reason she did what she did was the color of the baby really scared her when it came out,'' Mr. Hoban said. ''She told me the umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck when it came out and the baby was blue.''

Still, even Mr. Hoban, obviously shaken by the events and speaking in full support of his friends, indicated that neither version satisfied him. In the prosecutor's account, an unnamed friend of Miss Drexler's accompanied her to the bathroom, waited for her outside the stall, then left when Miss Drexler assured her she was fine. But Mr. Hoban, along with some others, wondered how she could have delivered the baby on her own.

In any case, Mr. Hoban said, ''John told me nobody would ever really know the truth, except Melissa, and someone else, if someone else was in there with her.''

It is this combined sense of horror and incredulity that has gripped the residents of this unassuming, pleasant and ordinarily friendly town of 23,000, where teen-agers are hard to find on the street because they are in supermarkets and fast-food shops working summer jobs. Ambiguity reigns; though it is not hard to elicit pro-Melissa or anti-Melissa sentiment, the majority of people seem to be simply thunderstruck. And the reporters and television cameras that have overrun the place have made many people withdraw in disgust.

The Drexlers, by all accounts, are decent, ordinary people, stunned by the events of June 6 and their sudden notoriety.

''My heart goes out to these people,'' said their lawyer, Steven Secare. ''This is their first encounter with the criminal justice system.''

The case is to go to a grand jury in a few weeks. If Miss Drexler is indicted, goes to trial and is convicted, she could face 30 years to life in prison.

''These are very unsophisticated, very humble people,'' Mr. Secare said. ''These people don't have a disingenuous bone in their bodies. There is nothing special about them. They are religious, they are well liked in their neighborhood. Now they are prisoners in their own house. They just don't understand what has happened to them. They are bewildered.''

Melissa Ann Drexler, an only child, has lived most of her life in a cedar-shingled ranch-style house on a shady street.

Until the night of June 6, nothing about the Drexlers made them stand out, friends say. Mr. Drexler works as a shipping clerk at an importing company in Lakewood, about 15 miles up the Garden State Parkway. His wife works in a local bank. The family belongs to St. Pius X Roman Catholic Church, although friends said they do not attend regularly.

''There is nothing intriguing about them, nothing mysterious,'' said John Parker, who has known Mr. Drexler for years. ''They are absolutely wholesome.''

By all accounts, Miss Drexler is an even-keeled, quiet young woman who expresses her feelings with smiles and frowns, nothing more. Friends describe her as sensitive and supportive, willing to listen when they have a problem and offer soothing advice. ''She was always there for me,'' said Miss Dorrick. ''She was a caring person.''

Miss Drexler herself, though, was not one to bare her soul, according to friends.

''Nothing got her upset much,'' Miss Ganelli said. ''She was really tough like that.''

Miss Drexler did not mix with the popular crowd at Lacey Township High School, clinging instead to Mr. Lewis and a small circle of friends. One of them was Miss Ganelli, who said she befriended Miss Drexler in fourth grade. They became inseparable, Miss Ganelli said, spending weekends at each other's homes and taking dancing lessons together. Rebecca liked ballet because it was graceful. Melissa liked jazz because it was fast.

They quit dancing lessons when they started high school, turning their attention to shopping and boys, Miss Ganelli said. They would comb the Ocean County Mall in Toms River for stylish jeans and T-shirts, she said. They would go bowling, paint their fingernails and occasionally wander the boardwalk in Seaside Park, a resort town nearby. On nights when there was nothing to do, they would sit at the Ganellis' kitchen table and chat.

On one of those nights, when Miss Drexler was in 10th grade, Miss Ganelli introduced her to Mr. Lewis. He was two years older, and he lived down the highway in Barnegat. He was quiet, like her. They started spending all their time together.

''They were alike, and they just started hanging out,'' Miss Ganelli recalled. ''I don't think it was love at first sight. They liked each other.''

Miss Ganelli and others described Miss Drexler's relationship with Mr. Lewis as steadily affectionate. Mr. Hoban said the couple would bicker and sometimes even call it quits for a day or two.

''They would get into a fight for one day, break up for six hours, then they'd be back together,'' Mr. Hoban said. They loved each other, he said, adding that while they had apparently never discussed marriage, Mr. Lewis began to talk about it after the traumatic prom night. He remains a frequent visitor to the Drexler house.

Miss Drexler wanted to design clothes, and mornings she attended fashion merchandising classes at Ocean County Vocational-Technical School in nearby Brick Township. She would occasionally, though not often, show her drawings to friends.

''She wanted to get her future together, go somewhere, instead of staying in Lacey or Barnegat,'' Mr. Hoban said. ''She wanted to go up to New York and leave her fashion statement on the catwalk.''

Mr. Hoban said she spent most of her free time during her senior year with Mr. Lewis. She would finish her classes around 1 P.M., then spend the rest of the day at Mr. Lewis's house, he said. When Mr. Lewis left to work the late shift at Wal-Mart, around 8 P.M., Miss Drexler would go home, he said, where her lawyer said she ate dinner with her parents every night. If she went out during the week, she was expected to be home by 10 P.M., Mr. Hoban said.

The only indication that something was out of the ordinary, Mr. Hoban said, came in November, when Mr. Lewis confided in him that Miss Drexler's period was late. But a few days later, he reported that it had been a false alarm.

Mr. Lewis was unaware of his girlfriend's condition, Mr. Hoban said, until the night of the prom. He was sitting alone at a banquet table when school officials approached him. ''He was waiting for her to come out of the bathroom and the principal pulled him aside into a room,'' Mr. Hoban said. ''He said, 'John, your girlfriend just had a baby.' And he said 'What are you talking about?' ''

Mr. Secare, the Drexlers' lawyer, said that Miss Drexler's parents learned about the pregnancy only on the night of the prom, when the authorities called to inform them that their daughter had been admitted to Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel. Friends of the family said that Miss Drexler was close to her parents and that John and Marie Drexler would have helped their daughter if they had known the truth.

''It seemed like Marie and Melissa shared everything,'' said Mrs. Ganelli, who said the mother and daughter would visit shopping malls and amusement parks together. ''Marie must be dying inside.''

For the most part, the few townspeople who are still willing to discuss the case say that while they find it hard to believe that Miss Drexler played no role in the baby's death, it is not so hard to feel compassion for her. Over nine months, they say, she lost her way.

''She was not a violent girl, not a nasty girl,'' said Mrs. Ganelli, who added that her family would support Miss Drexler no matter what a jury decides. ''Something had to go wrong in her little brain.''

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