A L S O+T O D A Y [ M E D I A ] Sid and Christopher's naked lunch By James Poniewozik The Blumenthal-Hitchens flap reveals the dirty secret of Washington's elite journalists [ C O L U M N I S T ] Left Hook: Taking it out on Sid By Joe Conason The frustrated House managers are helping Ken Starr go after one of the president's aides out of revenge   T A B L E+T A L K When is censorship justified? Discuss cases where free speech and the law collide in the Social Issues area of Table Talk   Find deep discounts and great selection on the books you need to read at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y The mysterious death of Tyisha Miller By Lori Leibovich Black leaders in Riverside, Calif., insist a police shooting victim would be alive if she were white. But would she? (02/08/99) The vanilla story By James Poniewozik Our long national bad date is almost over (02/05/99) What did the president touch, and when did he touch it? By Michael Bérubé Republicans say no to more Monica, and look for a way to end the trial (02/05/99) The last plantation By Debra Dickerson The "niggardly" scandal should teach whites to watch their language, and blacks to toughen up. (02/05/99) Peace with honor? By Joshua Micah Marshall Republicans say no to more Monica, and look for a way to end the trial (02/05/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		STALKING SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Three such reporters contacted by Salon on Monday categorically deny that Blumenthal ever relayed any such story to them. Lars-Erik Nelson, the New York Daily News columnist who has been sympathetic to the White House through most of the last year, says Blumenthal never smeared Lewinsky. "I am baffled by it," he told Salon late Monday afternoon when asked for his thoughts about Hitchens' accusation. Though he had been talking with him "continually throughout the past year," Nelson said, Blumenthal had never mentioned Clinton's stalker story. Veteran New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis said the same thing. Though he had spoken with Blumenthal on only a few occasions, he said, Blumenthal had "never" relayed the stalker story Clinton had told Blumenthal in January. New York Observer and Salon columnist Joe Conason told Salon Monday afternoon that Blumenthal "never mentioned" the stalker story. Conason, who said that Blumenthal had last week "specifically released him" from any confidences related to their conversations, said that he had spoken to Blumenthal on numerous occasions regarding the Lewinsky scandal, and specifically asked him for any information that might lead him to believe that the president and not Lewinsky was telling the truth. But Blumenthal would say only that he "believed the president." In his Salon column this week, Conason revealed that Republicans had contacted other journalists, including Arkansas writer Gene Lyons, to see if they had received any "stalker" stories from Blumenthal. Those efforts came up dry. So what's going on here? Are we apt to see a Kathleen Willey vs. Julie Hiatt Steele battle of wills over who's telling the truth? Probably not. A close look at just what each man has said leads to the conclusion that the facts actually in dispute may be minimal or even non-existent. In fact, even Hitchens told Russert on "Meet the Press" that from what he saw on the deposition videotape, Blumenthal "has not lied to Congress." Blumenthal told the House managers at his deposition that he had never revealed to anyone -- save his wife -- his conversation with the president in which Clinton said that Monica was known as a stalker. He also said that he was not the source for any story that depicted Monica as a stalker. He did say, however, that he had spoken with "friends about what was in the news stories every day, just like everyone else, but when it came to talking about her personally, I drew a line." By March 17, when Hitchens says he discussed the matter with Blumenthal over lunch, more than 400 stories had been published that included some version of the Lewinsky-as-stalker story. So it seems conceivable that the two men discussed the issue of Lewinsky being described as a stalker -- and both would still be telling the truth in their sworn statements of the last week. Sources familiar with various aspects of the case, reached late Monday afternoon, expressed doubt whether the entire question would ever lead to an indictment of Blumenthal, or anything more than a perfunctory investigation of the matter by Justice Department lawyers. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr is known to loathe Blumenthal, and would no doubt love to get his prosecutorial powers around Blumenthal, but he has no jurisdiction in the matter. One staffer from the office of a conservative Republican senator, who is no friend of the president, told Salon that there had as yet been little serious discussion among Republican senators of pressing the matter with the Justice department. "It's up to the Justice Department," the staffer told Salon. "There's not much people on the Hill can do about it." House manager Henry Hyde pushed to introduce the Hitchens affidavit into the record of the impeachment trial, but the move was blocked by the Senate. Like so many peripheral developments in the course of the scandal, the Blumenthal-Hitchens episode seems -- at least at this point -- destined to live only briefly in bold headlines. But the underlying passions and bitterness the scandal has loosed, and the severed friendships and associations it has left in its wake, may turn out to be the most enduring consequences of the entire drama. SALON | Feb. 9, 1999 Joshua Micah Marshall, associate editor of the American Prospect, is covering the impeachment trial for Salon.