From: "Stewart, William C (Bill), BNSVC" <billstewart@att.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 12:04:27 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: FW: More (and last) on And you thought it was Larry Flynt . . .
Message-ID: <25683280FF49D2119B480000C0AD59009DCAB1@mo3980po13.ems.att.com>
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More on the same topic

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber [mailto:farber@cis.upenn.edu] 
Sent: Monday, December 28, 1998 3:51 PM
To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com
Subject: IP: More (and last) on And you thought it was Larry Flynt . . .


Date: 28 Dec 1998 15:30:58 -0800
X-Sent: 28 Dec 1998 23:30:58 GMT
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
From: "Joseph C.Pistritto" <jcp@jcphome.com>

On Mon, 28 December 1998, Dave FarberSENT OUT

As attractive as this might be as a conspiracy theory, Flint pretty much
admitted he had the goods in this case (and claims to have similar stuff on
something like 7 or 8 other Republicans and 1 democrat).  He's investing
quite
a lot of his own funds in this particular little enterprise of his.

He's apparently quite pissed off that this one leaked before he was able to
use the content himself.  (after all, as a publisher, the reason you develop
content is to use it in print yourself primarily).  

A more interesting question is how the White House found out about the
material
a few days before it came out.  (which apparently is how Roll Call which ran
the story first got ahold of it).  There have been persistent rumors of a
White House controlled black operation to uh, bring pressure upon, certain
people that are in positions to embarrass the President.  Apparently at
least
some of this sort of activity has gone on for a long time, perhaps since the
President was in Arkansas.  

Whether the FBI would be involved in *that* is an interesting question.  
Somehow
I doubt it, because the risk of public exposure in that situation would be
enormous, and there was already an FBI-related scandal early in this
administration.  Also the Administrator over there is regarded as somewhat
of
a loose cannon by the folks in the White House.  So I kind of suspect the
FBI
would not be involved in White House led black ops.  And I doubt the
military
would be involved either (given this President's relations with them.)  So
the
reports of private detectives and other non-government people spearheading
this
squares with what would be rationally expected.

I think the FBI may merely have either just gotten lucky and dodged a bullet
on this one, -or- they had a deeper cover role in passing the stuff to
Flint's
people (undoubtably private individuals, so evidence, if it existed in FBI
files, could've been fed to someone on the "outside").  Given that no one
knew
that Livingston was going to be in the position he was in till several days
*after* the election, that's reasonably quick response if that is really
what
happened.

Don't believe everything you read in the papers...
  Cheers,
    -jcp-


--
Joseph C. Pistritto                        +1 415 706 7270
Belmont, California                        jcp@jcphome.com