Pubdate: Thu, 16 Sep 1999
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 1999 Mercury Center
Contact:  http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Marie Cocco
Note: Marie Cocco is a columnist for Newsday.

RUMORS VICTIMIZE HILLARY, GEORGE W.

WHAT do the frenzies over Puerto Rican terrorists and George W. Bush's 
youthful indiscretions have in common?

All assumption, all the time. That old newsroom saw about never letting 
facts get in the way of a good story has roared into real life.

None other than Cokie Roberts, diva of the political talk circuit, declared 
her astonishment at the flip-flop that had Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the 
end, disagreeing with President Clinton's grant of clemency to 16 Puerto 
Ricans convicted of terrorist-related activities in the 1970s and early 1980s.

"The first lady opposing the president's call for commuting the sentences 
of some Puerto Rican terrorists, something we thought he was doing for 
her!" Roberts breathlessly announced at the height of the furor.

That's the way it's gone. For weeks the media assumption -- promoted and 
encouraged by Republicans in New York and Washington -- has been that the 
so-called sudden clemency grant must have been made to help Hillary Clinton 
win support among Latino voters for her upcoming New York Senate campaign.

And where are the facts that underlie the assumption? Nowhere.

One journalist who did delve into the history of the clemency offer was 
Newsday's Ken Fireman, who discovered that the clemency petition had in 
fact been filed on the convicts' behalf back in 1993, that it was the 
subject of countless meetings by the White House counsel's office 
throughout the mid-1990s and that it finally was handed to the president 
for a decision only recently because former White House counsel Charles 
Ruff had been sidetracked by the task of handling the president's 
impeachment. Ruff had promised the groups supporting clemency to have a 
decision before his departure in August.

Now, this could be complete hogwash.

Just more spin from a White House that whirls incessantly. The cynicism is 
enticing but for the most nit-picking of matters: No one has come up with 
any facts to the contrary.

The same forces behind the nagging that George W. Bush got a few weeks ago 
about whether his period of youthful irresponsibility included sniffs of 
the white stuff. Texas reporters and other journalists have been on the 
cocaine case, but none has come up with evidence Bush used it. No one has 
come forward claiming to have seen Bush snorting, to have snorted with him 
or to have sold him the stuff to snort.

Yet Bush was hounded about past cocaine use until he finally stumbled all 
over himself trying to convince us he could pass a federal-employment 
background check. This set the time frame for possible past use at more 
than 25 years ago -- enough to shut everyone up, for now.

Polls overwhelmingly show real people don't care about Bush and coke. By 
next November, there's bound to be more on voters' minds than a couple of 
dozen Puerto Ricans who have gone back to the island. In fact, those most 
likely to suffer long-term public disdain aren't in campaign war rooms. 
They're in newsrooms.

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