March 22, 2002
COMMENTARY
by Steve Young
[March 22, 2002 - Los Angeles] After federal investigators spent more than $70
million, examined 10 million pages of documents and interviewed under oath more than 3,000
witnesses, independent prosecutor Robert Ray officially closed the Whitewater
investigation, saying there was no proof tying the Clintons to criminal activities. But
Ray added that the government also found no conclusive proof untying them to the crime.
"We're not really sure what all this means," Harvard professor of legal jargon
Thom Thinthith said, "but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Then again, it could
be."
This nonconclusive proof of not committing crimes, while breathing a much-needed breath of
muddled air into the already confusing legal community, has also sent a bewildering
message throughout the courts. "It's not like the legal community doesn't have a
problem with Ray's lack of a comprehensible conclusion," judicial observer Clarence
Darrow XI said. "Not finding the Clintons not responsible for not committing crimes
is the stuff of tremendous fee proliferation, just trying to explain what these decisions
mean."
Right-wing pundits, who cling to the thinnest of Clinton-bashing threads, believe they've
been vindicated. "We've never not claimed that the Clintons weren't not guilty,"
a nonanonymous source at Rush Limbaugh's Excellence in Broadcasting offices said.
"We've only said that their not being guilty is no excuse for not being responsible
for the negative results of their administration ... or not."
Clinton pal James Carville continued to profess the investigation's inadequacy and
partisanship. "It's not the inconclusivity of the investigation as much as not
disclosing how much the Clintons didn't know. This was just another one of those
Republican lies meant to hide the facts under a partisan fabrication of the nontruth. As
far as I'm concerned, it's a nonissue."
Ray said that while no charges will be filed, the allegations were "credible,"
and there was never even the slimmest hint of partisanship in his investigation. He then
headed down to New Jersey to begin his run for the Republican Party's Senate nomination.