Washington, Monday
THE Republican smear campaign against Bill Clinton continues to roar
ahead. In its latest manifestation, Mr Clinton is being accused of being
a KGB agent because he visited Moscow in 1970.
He was then a student at Oxford, and took a holiday touring northern
Europe, Russia, and Czechoslovakia. The Washington Times, a far-right
propaganda sheet owned by the Unification Church (known as the Moonies),
reminded its readers today that 1297 Americans were killed in Vietnam
during the period October 1969 to February 1970 which, it claims, was
''when Mr Clinton appears to have been most involved in his anti-war
activities'' and when he visited the Soviet Union.
It says Mr Clinton went to Moscow ''six weeks after he organised a
massive anti-war, anti-US protest in London''.
What is more, the paper devotes a great deal of space to the
allegation that all tourists, particularly those travelling alone, were
subject to particular attention by the KGB which tried to recruit them
or, at the very least, manipulate them.
An anonymous ''top official of Britain's MI5 intelligence'' is quoted
as saying that Mr Clinton ''fitted the profile perfectly'' of someone
the Soviets might cultivate and recruit as an ''agent of influence''.
Having planted the idea, the paper then belabours the nastiness of the
Soviet regime in 1970, when the crackdown on dissidents was in full
swing. The paper notes that Mr Clinton attended a meeting of anti-war
activists early in 1969, then lists all the big demonstrations that took
place in the autumn.
It rather grudgingly admitted that Mr Clinton was in Oxford during
these events, including the big march on Washington in November, but
claims that he was nonetheless a leading figure in organising it.
Mr Clinton took part in an anti-war demonstration outside the American
embassy in London which the newspaper describes as ''anti-American'' and
therefore unpatriotic.
The quality of the smear may also be judged by this assertion: ''Mr
Clinton also met leaders of the International Peace Bureau and the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.'' The article then observes: ''The
British Peace Council is a subsidiary of the World Peace Council which,
according to a 1980 report, was a Communist KGB front.''
The Bush campaign is not directly involved in these efforts.
Their chief spokesman is California Congressman Robert Dornan,
probably the most extreme of all right-wing extremists in Congress. He
tells anyone who asks that Mr Clinton is a KGB agent, and spends
half-an-hour a day on the floor of the House of Representatives making
preposterous allegations against Mr Clinton.
No-one in Washington pays any attention to him. The House is empty
when he delivers his tirades to television cameras, and the film is used
by far-right television stations which suggest that the allegations are
all part of the public debate. Viewers are protected from knowing that
no-one is listening.
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