Clinton's Long CIA Connection
An awareness of obscure connections can go some distance toward making our history comprehensible. Almost all accounts of recent U.S. social and cultural history have been written by micro scholars on someone's payroll, rather than by macro historians who accept that many facts are hidden. The 1960s still mean something to those of us who contributed, but to judge from the popular history of the period, it consisted of little more than lone nuts, hippies, drugs, and rock music. A more specific example of historical cover-up is the major media's willingness to accept the current White House at face value.
One happy exception is a biography of the Clintons, Roger Morris's Partners in Power, that made the bestseller list for several weeks during the summer of 1996. It confirmed a story that was rumored since 1992 (and appeared in Spotlight newspaper) to the effect that the CIA recruited Bill Clinton when he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. Ironically, by this time Clinton was already an admirer of Carroll Quigley, his professor at Georgetown (see the main essay for comments on Quigley [and here too --risephoenix]).
Morris was an aide to Kissinger at the National Security Council until 1970, when he resigned over the bombing of Cambodia. His is the most solid and responsible book on the Clintons so far. Morris cited three inside intelligence sources who confirmed that Bill Clinton became a CIA asset at Oxford.
By running Clinton's Oxford classmates through NameBase, another curious CIA connection pops out: Richard Stearns, who may have handled Clinton's CIA recruitment. On September 9, 1969, Clinton wrote to Stearns agonizing over his draft situation. At that time he was manipulating every angle and connection he could to avoid getting drafted.
That fall Clinton went to Norway. In December he traveled to Moscow, then to Prague in January 1970. These trips, some believe, were CIA- sponsored. In spring of 1970, Clinton and Stearns took a bus tour of Spain. By then Clinton's draft problems were over, due to the December 1969 draft lottery.
In 1967, Ramparts magazine exposed the fact that the National Student Association had been receiving CIA funds for many years [see here on this subject--risephoenix]. Stearns was international vice president of the NSA. Allard Lowenstein was a former NSA president, who was famous for the "Dump Johnson" campaign of 1967. He stated then that he had not been involved with the CIA while in the NSA. However, Roger Morris told this writer that Lowenstein admitted to him in 1969 that he had been knowledgeable and complicit in the CIA compromise of the NSA. At this time, Morris was an NSC aide specializing in Africa, and Lowenstein was a New York congressman working on the humanitarian problem in Biafra.
Richard Stearns and Edward Schwartz, another NSA vice president, issued statements deploring CIA support. Schwartz was probably aware of the CIA funding, because he tried to talk Ramparts editor Warren Hinckle out of breaking the story before the exposure. As international vice president, Stearns almost certainly was witting of the connection with the CIA: most of the CIA money was spent on the NSA's international activities. While at the NSA in December 1966, Stearns wrote to the UAW to propose a "program of aid conducted by American labor and students, for students in Spain working for the restoration of democratic government." This would have involved CIA funds from the NSA's International Commission, which was headed by Stearns. The international activities of U.S. labor were also CIA-funded at the time.
At a window of opportunity in the middle of Clinton's draft problems, we have him in a close relationship with Stearns at Oxford. Stearns had all the CIA connections anyone would have needed at that time, and the CIA was in the habit of securing exemptions for its assets. In a summer 1969 meeting with Willard Hawkins, the Selective Service head in Arkansas, Clinton agreed to "serve his country in another capacity later on" if the July 28 induction order could be lifted. Clinton was clearly working various angles simultaneously.
One approach may have been an arrangement through Stearns to do some globe-trotting for the CIA. If such a commitment was made by Clinton, he would have followed through even after he was out of danger from the draft. It's one thing to blow off someone in Arkansas after you get a high lottery number, but something else to blow off the CIA and the well-connected Rick Stearns, particularly if you want to be president someday.
In 1970-1972, Stearns played a major role in placing Clinton in the McGovern campaign, thereby nurturing Clinton's political ambitions. Today Stearns is a judge in Boston. Before Louis Freeh was selected, he was considered by the White House as a possible appointee to head the FBI.
Morris includes a chapter on Clinton's cooperation with drug-running and money-laundering operations at Mena, Arkansas during the 1980s. If Clinton was recruited by the CIA at Oxford, it explains why he would tolerate a CIA laundry in Arkansas -- he was already compromised by his past association.
Ambitious young men don't "just say no" when the CIA comes calling. The CIA knows how to plant stories, spin the media, and set up scandals that can sink a candidate. Just ask Gary Hart, a 1988 candidate who for thirteen years had questioned the official version of the Kennedy assassination. Hart's presidential campaign was instantly derailed by the Donna Rice affair. In 1992, Clinton had a more serious bimbo problem than Hart ever had, but it never became a media issue.
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