WEB Hubbell blew it. Here's a guy who, while sitting in prison, knew that all of his phone calls were being tapped and chose to talk about actual real life stuff instead of making up junk about his enemies that would have had the FBI scurrying all over creation searching for evidence. Life on the worldwide
Web HubbellHubbell is Bill Clinton's Arkansas buddy who was appointed one of the highest- ranking law enforcement officers in the country assistant attorney general based apparently on his experience as a, well, apparently on no experience in law enforcement at all. In fact, it turns out that Hubbell was working the other side of the law enforcement street, that is, illegally over-billing clients, which is a nice way of saying he was stealing other people's money.
But even Hubbell's brief brush with law enforcement should have wised him up to the ways federal investigators collect evidence. There are all kinds of ways, but the easiest is simply to listen in on private phone calls with hopes that someone will say something incriminating.
I think having to listen to hundreds of hours of other people's inane conversations would get suicidally boring after the first couple of minutes. But I guess that's better than sitting in a closed, unmarked sedan on the waterfront with a cigar-smoking, gas-passing partner waiting for some low-level Mafioso to unload a container of black-market Viagra.
JUST in case Hubbell wasn't clear about the wily ways of federal investigators, prison officials actually posted signs telling prisoners that their calls were being not only listened to, but recorded. Unfortunately, similar signs were not posted in the Hubbell household for the benefit of his wife, who apparently has a short-term memory problem. When she started blathering about the need to protect Hillary Clinton from any Rose law firm legal fallout, Hubbell attempted to remind her in every possible way, except pig latin, that the calls were being recorded. Talk about your worldwide Web.
Knowing that your calls are being monitored, I think, would provide the opportunity for untold hours of mischief by anyone wanting to launch a thousand different federal investigations against anyone who has ticked them off in the past.
Here's the type of transcript that should have come out of the Hubbell recordings:
"Hi, honey. Yeah, I'm doing fine. I heard in the yard this morning that Dan Burton's big load of cocaine should be getting in from Canada this week. Yeah, the guys are looking forward to it. There hasn't been a big party here since Newt Gingrich managed to smuggle in a bunch of his prostitutes a few months ago. Personally, I thought he was being stingy. I mean, when you run a 20-state prostitution ring right out of your Capitol Hill office, you should be able to supply more than 40 girls to your buddies in the joint. But I understand. It's hard to concentrate on supplying prostitutes while you're negotiating with the Chinese to provide a container load of fully-automatic AK-47s to inner-city street gangs.
"How are the kids? Great. Well, put the word out to our friends to keep their kids out of that private school secretly owned by Trent Lott. According to the grapevine, it's a white-slavery operation supplying girls to Middle Eastern princes.
"Heard a funny story in the showers. Turns out Jesse Helms' huge casino debt is being forgiven in return for a favorable vote on some gaming bill.
"Well, honey, got to run. Give my love to Hillary. We all know she hasn't done a thing wrong. She's the most honest person I've ever met. I just wish I could tell someone in the FBI that."
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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