Ben-Veniste was Barry Seal's attorney

The Cover-Up Filibuster
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
March 11, 1996

    While the Republicans have been grabbing headlines battling in
primaries, Democrats have quietly unleashed a filibuster to close down
the Whitewater hearings, asserting that the hearings are merely a
partisan exercise uncovering nothing new.

    Despite such surprises as the sudden appearance of Hillary
Clinton's billing records, filibustering Senators manage to keep a
straight face most of the time.  Also despite the start of Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr's trial of Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker and
others, after which important new witnesses would become available to
the committee.  And as we pointed out recently, the hearings have
already established that Webster Hubbell was at the same time
negotiating a plea bargain with Mr. Starr and being paid by Indonesian
billionaire Mochtar Riady, a Clinton buddy.  Democrats object to asking
such innocent questions as how big a fee the former associate attorney
general received from Mr. Riady's Lippo Group and for what work, if
any.

    The Democrats got their chance to filibuster such questions because
the D'Amato committee needs to have its authorization renewed. 
Democrats are blocking a vote, and a cloture motion comes up Tuesday. 
The Republicans will not have the 60 votes needed to break a
filibuster, assuming all the Democratic Senators will enlist in the
Whitewater cover-up.

    In addition to covering up for the Clintons, the Democratic
Senators have a special reason to cut off the next round of hearings. 
They're expected to deal with Arkansas, and particularly with Dan
Lasater, the Little Rock bond magnate convicted of cocaine
distribution.  Richard Ben-Veniste, Watergate prosecutor and Democratic
counsel in the Whitewater hearings, astonishingly turns out also to
have been an attorney for the late Barry Seal, the cocaine smuggler who
operated out of Mena airport in Arkansas.  According to minutes
obtained by Dow Jones News Service of a high-level Resolution Trust
Corp. meeting, Mr. Lasater "may have been establishing depository
accounts at Madison and other financial institutions and laundering
drug money through them via brokered deposits and bond issues."  So one
of the big questions in the impending round of hearings ought to be
whether there were connections between committee witness Lasater and
former Ben-Veniste client Seal.

    We called Mr. Ben-Veniste to chat about this Friday, after learning
of the link from the book "Kings of Cocaine," by Guy Gugliotta and Jeff
Lean.  He blamed Republicans for our inquiry, and called it "a pathetic
indication of how little gas is left in the other side's tank."  But
yes, he did represent Mr. Seal when he was convicted in a drug case in
Florida.  But, he added, "I didn't know anything about Barry Seal's
connections to Mena airport and this fellow Lasater."

    Mr. Ben-Veniste says he did read reports of a possible Seal-Lasater
link as he was preparing to sign up to defend Whitewater for the
Democrats, though he "thought the reports were part of the lunatic
fringe."  But, he told us, "for the sake of appearances, and out of an
abundance of caution, I told Senator Sarbanes that I simply would not
have anything to do with the Lasater part of the inquiry."  This is
news to us, and we wonder how Senator Sarbanes expected to explain it
if the hearings are authorized and Mr. Lasater testifies.

    Mr. Seal's retention of Mr. Ben-Veniste is especially ironic in
light of the recent attacks on the former associations of David Bossie,
the most energetic and successful Whitewater investigator on the
Republican side of the aisle.  Mr. Bossier started poking into
Whitewater in 1993 for Citizens United, run by Floyd Brown, author of
the independent Willie Horton commercial in the 1988 presidential
campaign.  When Mr. Brown put out a fund-raising letter bragging about
giving Mr. Bossie his start, Democrats went ballistic, especially
Senator Carol Moseley-Braun.  Heaven forbid a staffer should have
worked for Floyd Brown, a political heavy.  But no problem, what passes
for logic runs, to have worked for Barry Seal, a notorious cocaine
smuggler whose ghost lurks on the fringes of the committee's inquiry.

    Mr. Ben-Veniste told us one other intriguing thing.  To wit, "I did
my part by launching Barry Seal into the arms of Vice President Bush,
who embraced him as an undercover operative."  And indeed, after his
conviction, Mr. Seal contacted the South Florida Drug Task Force then
run by Vice President Bush, and went on to become a spectacular
informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and flew at least one
mission to Central America for the CIA.  He was murdered by Medellin
cartel hitmen in 1986, leaving many questions about Mena, drugs, the
CIA and law enforcement in Arkansas.  Mr. Ben-Veniste's remark is an
implicit warning that if pushed far enough Whitewater will start to
implicate Republicans as well as Democrats.

    Fine by us.  Much of the American public already has a bipartisan
distrust of all of Washington, as Ross Perot's voters made clear in the
last Presidential election.  In particular, presumptive GOP nominee Bob
Dole carries the burden of an insider image.  But as Senate majority
leader he has the power to make Democrats pay dearly for a filibuster
joining the Whitewater cover-up.  If he wants to be a "comeback adult,"
one of the best things he could do is to make sure dirty linen is
appropriately washed.