It’s hard to know if one should be happy it’s over or sad that it dragged on interminably for a full decade.
Yesterday, a full 10 years after getting started, the most expensive waste of time in U.S. history — the Independent Counsel’s Office investigation into Whitewater — officially ended operations. I consider myself fairly well-informed, but I didn’t realize the stupid thing was still ongoing.
As of two years ago, the investigation into a scandal that no one can explain, dealing with an alleged crime that no one can identify, had cost the taxpayers $73 million. Of course, the OIC has been open since that figure was ascertained, and the office presumably has had some staff over that time, so it’s probably cost a bit more.
UPI, a conservative wire service owned the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, noted that the investigation kicked off looking into “alleged financial improprieties at the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan in Little Rock.”
The UPI apparently forgot to mention that Bill and Hillary Clinton, the final report concluded, were completely innocent of the accusations that started the “scandal” in the first place.
As Salon’s Joe Conason noted two years ago:
It is likely by now that most Americans have forgotten what, exactly, Kenneth Starr and his persistent assistants were attempting to prove. The Whitewater allegations were vague and constantly shifting, as each headlined accusation quietly evaporated. The few clear and pertinent questions about the defunct development deal were answered with finality at least seven years ago.
Did the Clintons abuse their political authority to help their real-estate partner James McDougal keep afloat Madison Guaranty, his insolvent savings and loan, as the original Times article suggested? No. The investigation quickly revealed that then-Governor Clinton ordered his appointees to treat McDougal no differently than anyone else. Did the Clintons profit illicitly from McDougal’s manipulations? No. Investigators learned within a year after the probe began that the president and first lady were swindled by McDougal and had lost about $40,000. Did Bill Clinton play any part in obtaining an illegal loan from the crooked businessman David Hale? No. The only testimony to that effect came from Hale and McDougal, both sources that the OIC knew were bereft of credibility.
There was never, in short, a plausible case that the Clintons had committed a single illegal act.
And now the damn thing is over. Which is more offensive: the fact that the investigation into this nonsense was launched in the first place, or that it went on for a decade and cost all of us tens of millions of dollars for no particular reason?