16. The right-wing media reacts
Copyright © 2000 by Dan E. Moldea
High noon had come for the President's enemies as the Senate trial got underway, the culmination of years of vicious allegations, wild conspiracy theories, and wholly partisan investigations--all of which had gone nowhere. Now reduced to criminalizing the President's personal life by alleging that he had lied about sex, the Clinton-haters were finally at center stage. The time had come for them to put up or shut up.
However, their earlier high confidence for the President's removal from office had dissipated considerably after the circumstances of Livingston's resignation on December 19--and was further diminished by Flynt's continuing crusade to expose hypocrisy in the wake of his revelations about Bob Barr on January 11. In fact, other than the unmasking of Kenneth Starr as a partisan sexual witch hunter after the release of The Starr Report in September 1998 and the excellent legal work performed by the President's attorneys before and during the Senate trial, there was no single factor which had a greater impact on the impeachment process than Larry Flynt.
Had Flynt never emerged in this drama, Bob Livingston would have become Speaker of the House and the impeachment of the President would have shifted from the House to the Senate with a tremendous, even an overwhelming momentum. Instead, with Livingston's stunning resignation and the hypocrisy of the President's enemies clear and present to the American public, who kept the President's approval ratings high, the case limped to trial.
Consequently, the right-wing media, which had invested so much time and energy to bring about the downfall of the President, turned their guns on Flynt and anyone close to him, including me. And, as with their other dead-end investigations of the President--involving the circumstances revolving around the Foster suicide, Whitewater, Travelgate, and Filegate, among others--they didn't allow the facts to get in their way of a good story.
Here is a sampling of what Flynt and I were up against:
* Syndicated columnist Tony Snow, the right-wing journalist who introduced Linda Tripp to Lucianne Goldberg, declared:
Larry Flynt, abetted by investigative reporter Dan Moldea, has attempted to blackmail Republicans into cutting Clinton free.* Jamie Dettmer appeared equally delusional in his article for Insight, a magazine owned by the Washington Times. Dettmer wrote:Right and left the battle rages and good men act out of character, such as author-turned-hired-gun Dan Moldea, who has swapped his reputation for free thinking and independence to become Flynt's blackmailer in chief. . . . [M]oral equivalence or truth-seeking doesn't apparently doesn't matter to Moldea. The point again is media terrorism, scandal, intimidation--he makes no bones about it, saying publicly he'll hold back on outing Republicans who keep their mouths shut about the president. Isn't that a possible contempt-of-Congress offense and a potential breach of the federal statutes concerning obstruction of justice?* Matt Labash of the conservative Weekly Standard added:Flynt has repeatedly asserted that he hired a Washington private investigative firm chock full of ex-FBI and CIA operatives, but he declines to name it. Inquiring minds assumed he'd hired Terry Lenzner, the Clinton camp's usual private eye. But when I talked to Moldea, he denied knowing anything about this, adding, "Personally, I don't believe there is a detective firm. If there is, where's their work? I don't see their work. Who did Barr? I did Barr. Who did Livingston? I did Livingston." Moldea also denies any White House connection.* On January 14, Mark Levin of the Scaife-funded Landmark Legal Foundation filed a formal complaint with the Criminal Division of the U. S. Department of Justice, charging Flynt and me with attempting "to influence and impede" the Senate's impeachment trial and adding:Messrs. Flynt and Moldea are not free to corruptly "endeavor to influence" a congressional inquiry, such as an impeachment inquiry or an impeachment trial inquiry, by threatening, intimidating or coercing Republican members of Congress to keep silent about Mr. Clinton's conduct lest potentially embarrassing personal information involving the members and/or their families--which was either purchased by Mr. Flynt or otherwise gathered by Mr. Moldea--be made public.* The following day, Republican National Committee chairman James Nicholson issued a press release, stating that he had "joined in the non-partisan Landmark Legal Foundation's demand for a criminal probe of pornographer Larry Flynt and his investigator, Dan Moldea, for the felony of Obstructing Congress. Besides assisting Flynt, Moldea assisted Clinton's defense team, Nicholson noted. . . 'The Flynt-Carville-Moldea tactics of intimidation and blackmail aren't just wrong, they're illegal, and our Attorney General ought to take off her blindfold and begin criminal prosecutions.'"* Then, playing off the erroneous Newsweek story, televangelist Jerry Falwell wrote a column on January 15 that was absolutely false, alleging with the help of fabricated evidence:
Dan Moldea, the lead investigator for Larry Flynt's ongoing quest to uncover sexual indiscretions of Republican congressional members, has now admitted he was hired by the law firm defending President Clinton. Moldea affirmed that the firm of Williams & Connolly initially contacted him to uncover evidence that Kenneth Starr, Whitewater independent counsel, had violated rules against leaking grand jury information to the press." [Emphasis added.]* Robert J. Caldwell, an editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, published an article on January 17, repeating Falwell's false charge that I had actually admitted working for Williams & Connolly. Caldwell wrote:Moldea's former employment was with the Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly, whose lawyers are defending President Clinton in the impeachment proceedings. Moldea says his job at Williams and Connolly included investigating special prosecutor Ken Starr's investigation of the president.* On January 18, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial, entitled, "Abetting Blackmail," once again falsely charging that I had "worked for" Williams & Connolly, just as Falwell and Caldwell had claimed. Further, the Journal charged that Flynt and I were actively involved in a pattern of threats and blackmail against Congress. Joining the calls for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice to investigate us, the Journal continued:[The Department of] Justice says the complaint is under review, and surely the criminal issue needs official study. Also, of course, there is the further issue of whether Mr. Moldea dug up all this dirt himself, or whether he is being aided and abetted by agents of the President. He has, as it happens, previously worked for the President's law firm, Williams & Connolly. [Emphasis added.]From the outset, I had realized that I was going to take a ton of grief for my role in the Flynt project and already decided to turn the other cheek to almost all of it. But, after seeing this editorial in the Wall Street Journal, I was mortified, as well as angry, and wrote a letter to Robert Bartley, the executive editor of the Journal's editorial page, as well as to Falwell and Caldwell, demanding retractions, threatening litigation, and insisting that I had never "worked for" or received any money from the President's lawyers or Williams & Connolly. I also added:I have had no contact, directly or indirectly, with anyone from the White House or any of the President's attorneys or operatives during my investigation for Mr. Larry Flynt.Responding to my demands in a second editorial two days later, Bartley and the Wall Street Journal, which referred to my earlier libel case against the New York Times, published perhaps the most disingenuous retraction in the history of journalism, writing:Dan E. Moldea, official mud-miner for scatology king Larry Flynt, says we have done him wrong. . . . What is in question is the phrase "worked for." If we wanted to play Clintonesque word games, we could ask, what is "for" for? Does it not mean "on behalf of" and isn't that what happened? But we desist, because many readers would indeed take "worked for" to mean he got paid, which the public record does not currently support. So as requested, we hereby retract the word "for." Substitute the word "with." . . . Here we see in all their splendor the current point men in the Clinton defense movement. Is this how the Senate and the Democratic Party want to be represented, or will they separate themselves from the gutter inhabited by Mr. Flynt and Mr. Moldea?Having no desire for any more abuse from Bartley & company, I allowed this version of the Journal's retraction to stand without further comment. Also, refusing to be drawn into another legal battle, I ceased all further challenges to Falwell and Caldwell, who, unlike the Journal, still refused to retract--even though they could not support their charges.But, regardless of whatever the right-wingers charged, Flynt and I had absolutely no concerns about the reported investigation of our activities by the Criminal Division. Simply speaking, we had done nothing illegal.
I did have my defenders in the mainstream media, and their comments appeared in, among others, articles published by Newsday and the New York Observer. Journalist Steve Love, a long-time friend at the Akron Beacon Journal, my hometown newspaper, wrote an op-ed piece about my growing dilemma. Critical of my recent actions but concerned for my personal and professional safety and welfare, Love wrote:
[B]y becoming what Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson refers to as a "goon" for "the president's favorite pornographer," Moldea is walking a thinner line between acceptable investigative journalism and salaciousness. Nicholson and the nonpartisan Landmark Legal Foundation are demanding that the Justice Department investigate Flynt and Moldea for obstructing Congress, a felony. . . .Remarkably, I never received a single death threat either over the telephone or in person during my work for Flynt. However, a steady pattern of cars and vans, sometimes three at a time, parked daily in front of my home, as well as up and down the street.Moldea, who is single, is no candidate for sainthood. He also knows the harm he is doing to others' lives. This bothers him, but not as much as the sexual McCarthyism he sees plaguing America.
I don't know Flynt. But I do know Moldea. To him this is a holy war. He would wage it for nothing. Scorch enough beds and maybe Americans will be repulsed enough to stop this. It is the sexual equivalent of a nuclear deterrent.
I hope it works, but I doubt it will.
Escalation remains the order of the day. No one is sheathing his weapon.
Through some of my long time friends and sources, who were able to check licenses and auto registrations, no fewer than eight of these vehicles were linked to the same private-detective firm in Virginia. Another journalist who lived in my neighborhood even became friendly with one of these surveillance people, who did identify me as their target. The journalist executed a sworn statement about this conversation and gave it to me.
At one point, out of sheer frustration, I approached one of the drivers and complained about this intrusion. He only replied, "Fuck you, Moldea. I am in a private car on a public street." Knowing there was nothing I could do about this situation and fearing a possible home invasion, I simply had the doors to my apartment alarmed, among other precautions.
Realizing that I was working alone in Washington and half-expecting FBI agents to come crashing into my apartment at any second to make an arrest, Flynt brought me back to Los Angeles and placed me in a suite at a Beverly Hills hotel under an assumed name until we thought it was safe for me to return home.