CNN is reporting that FOX News talking head, Tony Snow, will be the next White House press secretary. When you talk about Tony Snow, talk leads quickly to Lucianne Goldberg. After all, Tony Snow was the person that advised Goldberg to contact Linda Tripp. Snow didn’t know a thing about Monica Lewinsky, but he did know that Tripp was one of the last people to see Vince Foster alive.
Goldberg first began representing Tripp on a proposed book about Vincent Foster, the White House deputy counsel who committed suicide in 1993. Goldberg had been looking for information about Foster for another client, and conservative columnist Tony Snow suggested that she meet Tripp. Tripp, who worked in the White House counsel’s office, was one of the last people to see Foster alive.
It was Goldberg who convinced Tripp to tape conversations with Lewinsky. When the scandal broke, here is what Goldberg said:
What I’m glad about is he’s getting caught,” she said of Clinton yesterday. “At something. If it took this to get him, fine.” She said she had been “furious” at newspaper coverage of Clinton for the last five years because journalists did not do enough about Whitewater, “Hillary’s phony stock deal” and other allegations of corruption.
If the president’s lawyer had attacked her credibility the way he had Tripp’s, Goldberg said, “I’d be on the lawn of the White House with a deer rifle.” She added: “I’m a hero if this thing comes out the way my, quote, agenda would like to see it come out.”
Of course, there was never anything of substance behind the Whitewater allegations or Hillary’s stock deal. As for the other allegations, it was Linda Tripp that first passed around rumors about Kathleen Willey. And it was Goldberg that pushed books on Vince Foster’s suicide, and former FBI agent, Gary Alrich’s allegations that Clinton was sneaking out of the White House at night for secret trysts.
Goldberg had a long history of dirty tricks.
She worked for Lyndon Johnson during the 1960 presidential campaign. “When you’re tall, thin, blond and have big boobs, you can have any job you want,” she told People magazine in 1992. She later worked for President Kennedy’s speech-writing staff.
Goldberg sold political intelligence to Republican operative Murray Chotiner, a confidant of President Nixon, during the 1972 election, when Goldberg was posing as a reporter on George McGovern’s campaign plane.
Ah, Murray Chotiner. Chotiner was Nixon’s original gangster.
Chotiner…managed the campaign of Richard Nixon in 1950 when he defeated Helen Douglas. Chotiner developed a reputation for running dirty tricks campaigns. Another of Nixon’s advisors, Leonard Garment, said that Chotiner was a “hardheaded exponent of the campaign philosophy that politics is war” and that “politics is shabby most of the time, filled with lies and deceptions”.
As a lawyer, Chotiner obtained a reputation for working for organized crime bosses. In 1956 Robert Kennedy and Carmine Bellino began an investigation of Chotiner. They discovered evidence that a New Jersey uniform company that had been convicted of stealing from the federal government had paid out $5,000 to Chotiner. An informant told Bellino that the money was meant for Richard Nixon to help prevent a possible prosecution by the Department of Justice. Chotiner received support from Joe McCarthy and the case against him was eventually dropped.
Chotiner’s reputation had been badly damaged by this investigation and for a while he ceased working for Nixon. However, he returned in 1968 to help Nixon defeat Hubert Humphrey. After the election Chotiner was appointed general counsel of the Office of the Special Representative for Trade Negotiations. The following year he was named special counsel to the president.
Soon after he took office Nixon established Operation Sandwedge. Organized by H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the two main field officers were Jack Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewicz. Operation Sandwedge involved a secret investigation of Edward Kennedy. Caulfield later admitted that Ulasewicz’s reports on Kennedy went to three people: Nixon, Chotiner and Bebe Rebozo.
According to Dan T. Carter (The Politics of Rage) Chotiner was involved in the attempt to blackmail George Wallace about corruption in Alabama. This played an important role in persuading Wallace to announce that he would not be a third-party candidate in the 1972 presidential election.
Chotiner had returned to private practice as a lawyer in Washington by the time the Watergate break-in took place. However, he still maintained a White House telephone. His law offices were one floor above those of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP).
Anthony Summers (The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon) has pointed out that “at least one woman working on White House dirty tricks operations was carried on the payroll of his firm”
Yes, Tony Snow runs in prestigious circles. He knows the players that make Washington tick. I am sure he will make a fine public servant and I am proud to help pay his salary.
