http://www.americanpolitics.com/050798DISpatch.htmlDavid Bossie, Vast Right-Wing Conspirator of the Week
by Dave "Doctor" Gonzo
May 7, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- So just who is this David Bossie character?
The Doc thought he'd fill you in on another charter member of the vast right-wing conspiracy by providing some "fun facts" about David Bossie, the disgraced and dismissed chief investigator for Hoosier Hooligan Dan Burton's House Government Reform & Oversight Committee.
Bossie started his political career (almost) innocently enough in 1988 when he served as the National Youth Director of Senator Bob Dole's unsuccessful presidential campaign.
In 1992, Bossie was working for the right-wing organization Citizens United (the group that "invented" Willie Horton). As executive director of Citizens United chairman Floyd Brown's "Presidential Victory Committee," he used taped conversations allegedly between then-Governor Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers as part of an advertising and "800" number scheme to smear Clinton. The tapes have since been discredited because they were edited and doctored. A direct mailing from Citizens United using this material was made to look as if it were an "official" mailing from Bush campaign -- and the Bush people alerted the FEC to the mailings in an effort to stop them!
Bossie spent a great deal of time in 1992 in Arkansas, digging dirt on Clinton. David Corn reports in the May 6, 1998 issue of Salon that "at one point, Bossie got into a fistfight in Arkansas with a private detective who claimed Bossie had welshed on a $10,000 payment for anti-Clinton material."
That same year, Bossie harassed the family of a suicide victim. "An anonymous and untraceable letter" was faxed to some 30 news organizations "claiming Clinton had had an affair with a former law student who committed suicide 15 years ago," an "emotionally distraught young woman, seven-months pregnant" named Susan Coleman. Only after the fact of the fax campaign did Bossie attempt to contact the family for "confirmation," and did so in a repetitive and unrelenting manner suggestive more of harrassment than fact-checking. Bossie, with help from former Washington DC police officer James Murphy, went so far as to follow Susan's mother to a hospital in Augusta, Georgia, where her husband was seriously ill and recovering from a stroke. They "burst into the sick man's room and began questioning the shaken mother about her daughter's suicide." (Source: CBS News, July 13, 1992, quoted at The Allodium web site)
Not long into the Clinton Presidency, Citizens United produced the video "Clinton Chronicles," based largely on dirt Bossie had been digging in Arkansas. The video, filled with a plethora of factual errors and uncorroborated or disproven rumors, has been almost completely discredited.
By 1994, Bossie found himself working for Senator Lauch Faircloth -- and his penchant for self-promotion was already showing. Bossie claimed that Citizens United had fed Whitewater information (much of which turned out to be misleading, incomplete or untrue) to "the top fifty major publications, networks, and editorial boards... We've provided the same material on the Hill both on the House and Senate side."
Bossie beat such Twilight-Zone GOP loonies like Bob Barr to the impeachment bandwagon by about two years: On August 10, 1994 "Director of Government Relations and Communications for Citizens United" Bossie and Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips held a press conference addressing the "Latest Whitewater Developments, Impeachment Possibility."
David Corn reports in the May 6 issue of Salon that at a party last year "Bossie promised that the Burton investigation would soon produce evidence of Chinese espionage at the highest levels of the government. He said the real story was not a campaign finance tale but a spy scandal. 'This is going to bring them all down,' he said in a melodramatic tone. 'It's the most serious scandal ever. You'll see.' I never did."
Bossie's dismissal this week was not the first attempt to have him booted from working for the Oversight Committee: in July, 1997, chief counsel John P. Rowley quit in disgust after Chairman Burton overrode his decision to fire Bossie as the committee's chief investigator, following heated arguments over Bossie's conduct with other committee staffers. Rowley was not only put off by Bossie's self-promoting behavior; he suspected Bossie of being the source of leaks about the committee.
Bossie created further bad feelings among committee members and staffers when it was revealed that he received a bonus at the end of last year that jacked his salary up to around $100,000 -- YOUR tax money in action!
Now, less than a year later, Bossie is toast for trying to pull basically the same stunt he did with the Gennifer Flowers tapes. He may be "taking the fall" for Dan Burton, but our sources report that Burton was so under the thrall of Bossie and his wacko ideas (Bossie is reputedly the man who was key in convincing Burton that Vince Foster was "murdered" by his friends Bill and Hillary Clinton) that key GOP congressmen -- including almost all the Republican members of the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee -- won't be satisfied until Burton is "retired" from his chairmanship.
Not even his "too little, too late" apology letter to his fellow Republicans can save him now, especially when his claim that there was "any intent to deceive anyone" rings so hollow.
And it's all because his chief investigator was a "dirty tricks" operative who probably could've taught G. Gordon Liddy a few new stunts!
Cue the fat lady for both of these Bozos.
'Nuff said.