Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 9  Num. 89
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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THE HELICOPTER GOLFER
=====================
 
David  Watkins  was  fired from his high-level White House job by
Bill Clinton who was shocked --  shocked -- that Watkins had used
a helicopter assigned to the White  House  to  go  golfing.   The
January  1997  American  Spectator  gives the big picture of what
seems to have really happened.
 
According to the  article  by  Rebecca  Borders  ("Hell to Pay"),
Watkins, a boyhood chum of Bill Clinton, helped  work  a  special
financial  deal  during  the  future-President's  1992  campaign.
Watkins  allegedly  set  up  a  scheme  with World Wide Travel of
Little  Rock  whereby   the   travel  agency  billed  journalists
traveling with the Clinton entourage *in*  *advance*,  the  money
was  then funneled to the Clinton campaign, and World Wide agreed
to not request payment until after the election. 
 
Early in the Clinton presidency,  Watkins says, he was stuck with
the job of firing Billy Dale and other White House Travel  Office
personnel.   Says  Watkins:  "Hillary [Clinton] wanted the Travel
Office guys fired, so there  was  no  question  that I had to act
upon her wishes."
 
The firing of the  Travel  Office  employees resulted in scandal,
and Watkins appeared set up to play the role of fall guy.   Under
pressure, he seems to have broken the code of *omerta* -- silence
--  when he testified that Hillary had "urged the action be taken
to get 'our people' into the  Travel Office."  (Hinted at is that
"our people" may have been  campaign-funders  World  Wide  Travel
and/or associates.)
 
In what looks like revenge  for  fingering Hillary, about a month
after his testimony Watkins' White House office was relocated  to
the Old Executive Office Building.  It is almost certain that the
Clinton  gang  next leaked damaging information on Watkins to the
Wall Street Journal, which  information  was then printed on page
one.
 
The punishment for Watkins'  breaking  ranks  had  its  *coup  de
grace*  with the helicopter golfing episode.  Watkins says he was
only scouting territory for  Clinton  as  a  means to lure him to
Camp David.  Supposedly, there was a morale problem at Camp David
because President Clinton rarely went there.  Watkins'  objective
reportedly  was  to find a way to bait Clinton and reel him in to
Camp David, with good golfing being the bait.
 
After the helicopter golfer  story  made big news, Clinton phoned
Watkins to ask his side of things.  Watkins says he asked to meet
personally with the President to tell  his  side  of  the  story.
Clinton  reportedly  agreed  to  meet  after  an  imminent  press
conference, but then *during*  that  press conference stuck it to
Watkins when he surprisingly announced that Watkins had resigned.
 
At  that point there was no turning back.  But lucky for Watkins,
worse than that didn't happen to him, as it has to others who get
on the wrong side of the yuppie President.
 
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9