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                         Sept. 22, 2000 | The end of the affair held few surprises for
                         anyone who has been paying attention to the Whitewater
                         nonscandal over the past several years. Independent counsel
                         Robert Ray's five-page statement announced essentially the
                         same conclusions that were foretold by his predecessor,
                         Kenneth Starr, in testimony before the House Judiciary
                         Committee during the impeachment hearings of 1998: more
                         than six years and $50 million expended to compile "insufficient
                         evidence ... to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt" that
                         the Clintons or any of their aides had committed a single
                         prosecutable offense related to an old Arkansas land development.

                         More than precious time and money was forfeited in this
                         enormous fiasco. A promising presidency was damaged and
                         distracted from the outset. Lives and reputations were ruined,
                         in both Arkansas and Washington, by partisan prosecutorial
                         abuses. Democracy was disserved by a media culture that
                         eagerly made "scandal" the overriding theme of politics and
                         journalism. And to date there is not the slightest sign of
                         accountability or remorse at the national news organizations
                         that stirred up all this pointless turmoil.

                         The wording of Ray's brief announcement
                         was as significant for what was omitted as
                         for what he chose to include. Possibly
                         chastened by harsh and widespread criticism
                         of his decision to issue this statement only
                         weeks before the New York Senate
                         election, and of his tendentious statements
                         earlier this year about the White House
                         Travel Office case (in which he hinted at
                         misdeeds by Hillary Rodham Clinton), the
                         independent counsel wisely avoided any
                         blatant insinuations of guilt concerning the
                         president and the first lady. But in the process of rehashing
                         each and every accusation against them and their aides, Ray
                         also declined to mention any of the voluminous evidence that
                         exculpated them of wrongdoing.

                         It may be too optimistic to expect that Ray will examine both
                         sides of the Whitewater evidence when he files his final report
                         someday. (He has put off that task until various ancillary
                         matters are concluded, which makes his decision to release
                         yesterday's statement all the more curious.) But in the meantime
                         his repeated mantra of "insufficient evidence" left Clinton
                         antagonists with ample excuses for the scandal that failed. Just
                         as predictable as the investigation's desultory ending was the
                         immediate outcry from certain quarters against interpreting that
                         result as the exoneration of its targets. The presumption of
                         innocence usually afforded to anyone not convicted of a crime
                         -- let alone those who are never even indicted -- apparently
                         doesn't extend to the occupants of the Clinton White House.

                         Editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post,
                         both of which pursued and promoted Whitewater in
                         commentary and news coverage as if convinced that it was
                         another Watergate, greeted Ray's announcement in precisely
                         that grudging spirit. "The Clintons themselves are largely
                         responsible for the late delivery of Mr. Ray's statement," the
                         Times complained, going on to argue that "they and their
                         political confederates in the White House and the executive
                         branch went to puzzling lengths to hobble legitimate
                         investigations. Instead of laying out the facts of the matter, the
                         Clinton apparatus instead stonewalled the investigators and
                         defamed the Clintons' critics. All this gave rise to suspicions
                         that the Clintons had something to hide, and prolonged the
                         investigation."

                         In similar tones, the Post pronounced that "there is plenty of
                         blame to go around for the way Whitewater came to hang over
                         Mr. Clinton's terms in office," and then laid most of it on the
                         White House. (The same editorial also chided unnamed
                         "congressional and other critics" who were "quick to presume
                         all of the worst allegations true," without so much as a hint of
                         the paper's own culpability in that rush to judgment.) And
                         although the Post declares that Ray's statement marks a
                         "welcome end to this part of the saga," its editorial also warns
                         that "to evaluate the Clintons' behavior we will have to wait for
                         Mr. Ray's final report."

                         Whatever institutional arrogance may be detected in those
                         butt-covering pronouncements seems almost mild in
                         comparison with the wacky reaction of the ideological partisans
                         at the Wall Street Journal. The Journal, which at last count had
                         issued four fat volumes of dubious Whitewater material
                         reprinted from its editorial pages, instantly brayed that Ray's
                         statement proved nothing in a lead essay titled "The Coverup
                         Worked." The excuses offered in this text ranged from the silly
                         to the outlandish -- such as a suggestion that Ray decided not
                         to prosecute the president for perjury because any jury in the
                         District of Columbia would include too many sympathetic
                         African-Americans and government employees.

                         The ill effects of scandal fever, it seems, can linger long after
                         the scandal in question is dead. A healthier journalistic
                         response to the conclusions laid out by Ray would be to
                         reassess earlier coverage and commentary in light of these new,
                         inescapable realities. However clumsily the Clinton White
                         House handled Whitewater in its early stages, and however
                         insistent the Clintons were in defending themselves against a
                         partisan prosecution, the final resolution of this nonscandal has
                         never been in serious doubt. Only the reluctance of nationally
                         influential news organizations to acknowledge that obvious fact
                         prolonged a probe that ought to have been wrapped up years ago.

                         As early as the winter of 1996, when the law firm Pillsbury
                         Madison & Sutro submitted its wholly exculpatory findings to
                         the Resolution Trust Corp., the most important issues in this
                         case were settled. Far from profiting in any illicit fashion from
                         the Whitewater land investment or its relationship with Madison
                         Guaranty Savings & Loan, the Clintons were swindled out of
                         their stake by their partner, the late James McDougal.

                         The Pillsbury Report also demonstrated in
                         painstaking detail (with 12 volumes of
                         documentation) that Hillary Clinton never
                         misused her husband's authority to protect
                         McDougal from federal or state banking
                         authorities, that she never made more than a
                         pittance from representing Madison and that
                         she testified truthfully about those matters.
                         The Pillsbury investigators reiterated those
                         findings after examining the lost-and-found
                         billing records of the Rose Law Firm, which
                         confirmed her truthfulness and confounded
                         any notion that she had willfully hidden them.

                         Moreover, the accusation that the White House had attempted
                         to derail or discourage investigations of Whitewater by the first
                         independent counsel, Robert Fiske, and later by the RTC, was
                         shown to be without foundation -- first by Fiske himself and
                         later by the Pillsbury Report. And all the wild accusations of
                         David Hale, the crooked Little Rock judge who claimed then
                         Gov. Clinton had "pressured" him to make an illegal loan, and
                         of L. Jean Lewis, who said that the president had orchestrated
                         a coverup of Whitewater, proved entirely false.

                         The media organizations that trumpeted those charges so
                         credulously bear a heavy share of the responsibility for this
                         costly charade. (It's worth remembering that Whitewater came
                         to public attention the same way wrongly imprisoned nuclear
                         scientist Wen Ho Lee did -- thanks to the New York Times.)
                         As they did with Ray's statement, they continued to ignore the
                         evidence that contradicted their own prejudiced investment in a
                         story that went nowhere. And as of today, they show few signs
                         of acknowledging their role in one of the most disgraceful
                         episodes in modern American journalism.

                         Even if many in the national media continue to obsess about
                         Whitewater, the public rendered its own verdict long ago.
                         Millions of voters were at first bamboozled by partisan
                         hysteria, particularly during the congressional elections of 1994,
                         when doubts about Whitewater contributed to the historic
                         Republican victory. But by 1996, when Clinton was easily
                         reelected despite the prolonged Senate and House Whitewater
                         hearings, the American people had apparently learned to
                         disregard the scandal rhetoric recited by politicians and
                         pundits. In 1998, two of the loudest Clinton critics in the
                         Senate, Alfonse D'Amato of New York and Lauch Faircloth of
                         North Carolina, were unceremoniously dumped by voters in
                         their home states.

                         And on the same day that the New York Times headlined
                         Ray's announcement, another story appeared on the paper's
                         front page that suggests that New York's electorate no longer
                         puts much credence in scandal allegations about the Clintons.
                         A new poll taken by the Times and CBS News showed Hillary
                         Clinton pulling ahead of her Republican opponent, Rep. Rick
                         Lazio, with a decisive lead.