Mr. Insider, the Ultimate Assassin, Doesn't Have a Clue

One thing about reading a Bill Safire column, it's unlikely you will be bored. The man knows how to put pen to paper (or, be it as it may, fingertips to computer keyboard), and every once in awhile when reading his column, as a bonus, you are treated to a front row seat at an assassination.

You see, Safire's specialty is the hit piece. If you are a political pro and you need someone taken out, who ya gonna call? Safire. Oh there are other hit men. I'm keeping an eye on Lew Rockwell's hit man J. H. Huebert. He just took out Mark Skousen. But it will be ten to 20 years before we will know if Huebert truly has the fire in the belly, the ability to survive, the ability to match Safire's deadly aim and the ability to pull off the Big Hit.

No, Safire is in a league of his own. The former speech writer for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew has the ultimate column to kill ratio.

In his nearly three decade long perch at The New York Times, he has scored hit after hit. The Koreagate scandal? Safire single-handedly blasted that wide open. The Bert Lance takedown? Safire again. And who can forget Safire's hit on Bobby Ray Inman?

In the New York Times column that ultimately resulted in Inman pulling his name from consideration for Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration, Safire, a frontline soldier for the amen corner, was ruthless: "Here is someone I know from personal experience to be manipulative and deceptive . . . . As an executive he's a flop . . . . As a judge of character he is a naif . . . . As a taxpayer he is a cheat . . . ."

Safire is the ultimate insider, which is why his column this week would have caused me to explode out of my socks and shoes, if it wasn't for the fact that I was already barefoot outside by a pool when I read the column.

Safire's column was an easy going, rolling commentary on the manner in which various executives have exited the Bush administration. He was giving them grades for their exits, no hit assignments this week. He gave Harvey Pitt a B "in quitmanship," William Webster got an A, Dick Gephardt a "solid B." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill got a B plus, and then Safire had this to say:

"Henry Kissinger, who stood the gaff for a long generation, refused to take further flak from unforgiving editorialists as he approached octogenarianhood. I give my friend Henry a D for judgment in putting clients' privacy above the opportunity to put a historic capstone to his career with a brilliant commission report, but a B plus for quitsmanship in cutting his losses promptly and with relatively little recrimination."

Bill, you have got to be kidding! Despite the fact that Kissinger had your phone tapped and that he is considered by many to be an international war criminal, perhaps with key knowledge of why an American journalist was killed in Chile, you still don't have any clue as to what kind of character he is.

". . . putting clients' privacy above the opportunity to put a historic capstone to his career . . . . ", huh? Henry was putting Henry's privacy above any opportunities "to put a historic capstone to his career." Forget about Chile, forget about Vietnam, do you have any clue as to what Henry has been up to for the last 20 years, since he left government "service"? Or are you just getting your information from Henry's Ultimate Full Disclosure web site? I think you need to spend a little time perusing STR. Jim Rarey has an excellent column here explaining Kissinger's connection to Acxiom and why there is no chance in hell Henry would ever come clean with his client list. (Axicom is the software spy group hired by the Information Awareness Office. It is the Poindexter operation you so brilliantly attacked!)

After you are finished perusing this site, make sure you sign up for my free newsletter. It's chock full of inside dope. Last week I sent out an email to my subscriber list explaining that at one time I had my offices in New York City in the same building as Marc Rich.

I explained to my subscribers that this was one hell of a building, 650 Fifth Avenue. It was owned by the Shah of Iran's Pahlavi Foundation, that Rich occupied about six floors of the building and that after Marc Rich high-tailed it to Zug, Switzerland, Ivan Boesky took over Rich's space in the building, before he was arrested in the Michael Milken affair. The latest on the building is that it is now owned by and now houses the $100 million Alavi Foundation, which the City of New York is claiming is a front for the government of Iran and is used to send funds to Hezbollah and Hamas. The amen corner should really keep up on this stuff.

But specifically to the Kissinger point, I wrote to my subscribers that I used to hang out with some of Rich's traders after work, at the Rendezvous Bar in the Berkshire Hotel, which is just across the street from 650 Fifth. I stayed in touch with some of these traders well into the '90s, and in the early '90s, it was common knowledge among these traders that years before Clinton pardoned Rich, while Rich was an international fugitive, he had Kissinger on regular retainer!

What Henry really deserves is an A in balls or stupidity. To think that for a moment, he was going to run the 9-11 investigation without anyone asking a little bit of "Hey Henry, what ya been up to these last 20 years?", or that Henry thought he was somehow going to smooth over these questions, is amazing or just plain stupid on Henry's part. I have always been of the opinion that his diplomacy skills have been way over-rated and convoluted. And convoluted is the only way to view his attempt to get to chair the 9-11 commission.

Acxiom, Marc Rich, yeah I'd love to see the dirty little details of the jobs Henry has pulled off for these guys. It truly would put an "historic capstone to his career."

back to Strike The Root