6/12/00 4:30 p.m.
Dead Kings, Living Conspiracies
Let’s put an end to the cycle of distrust.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

o conspiracies ever end? Do investigations into conspiracies ever end? Should they?

Following an 18-month investigation, the Justice Department determined last week that James Earl Ray most likely acted alone in killing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. For most people, the news is "Ho-hum, wasn't that decided years ago?" Well, for many people it was. However, last year a civil jury found evidence of a conspiracy to kill King, and so yet another investigation was called for.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, immediately rejected the findings, "A government that cannot apologize for the enslavement of Africans and African Americans, or offer reparations to their descendants for the institution of slavery, cannot admit complicity in Dr. King's assassination.''

After all these years, why not just dismiss Jesse Jackson, the patron saint of lost causes? Well, truthfully, the current culture supports his skepticism. Look at the opening lines of the wire report on the King story: "The U.S. Justice Department announced on Friday it found no evidence of a conspiracy behind the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr." This, of course, would be the same Justice Department that Dan Burton and other conservatives indict as irretrievably corrupt. So, if government integrity is being undermined from both the Left and the Right, why should anyone believe anything that comes from the Justice Department?

Burton announced on his Sunday morning talk-show tour that he would pursue criminal referrals of Bill Clinton and other administration officials. He said that he doesn't trust the current Justice Department on anything. Burton is right, to a point. Janet Reno has done her level best to protect this administration when it comes to campaign-finance regulations. But above that, Burton has contributed to the culture of cynicism and conspiracy. Both Ken Starr and his predecessor, Robert Fiske, investigated the death of Vince Foster — but many people still doubt that Foster committed suicide — or at least that he did so in the park where his body was found. Yet another Waco investigation is under way. But as the inquiry machine continues, suspicion actually grows rather than abates.

Burton has every right to feel outraged and deceived by Reno's actions over the last few years. But he is doing a serious disservice to himself and his party by going on television and calling for investigations into the 21st century. Burton could not adequately explain (even in a relatively friendly format such as Fox News Sunday) why Charles LaBella and Louis Freeh were not as critical in public of Reno's decision not to seek an independent counsel as they were in private.

As a society, we have come full circle. The King slaying, along with the assassinations of the brothers Kennedy, helped create the conspiracy culture that has dominated the last three decades. Mix in legitimate political stories such as Watergate and Iran-Contra, and we have a nation that trusts very little coming from either government or the media. One would be hard-pressed to find a previous president more a subject of scandal, conspiracy theory, and hyperactive speculation than Bill Clinton — Thomas Jefferson, maybe (Clinton would love such a comparison).

Calling for an investigation in a possible next GOP administration gives Democrats just the ammunition they need to promote their message that scandal has been and will be the fundamental Republican strategy. George W. Bush has been working for over a year now to create a message of substance. Burton is doing serious damage to that work.

But, beyond that, he is contributing to a wary, paranoid culture. If none of our leaders — conservative or liberal — accept the validity of certain objective facts, every aspect of our government will eventually be undermined.

While it is true that Bill Clinton is largely responsible for today's state of affairs by creating a vicious culture of deceit and dissembling which naturally produces suspicion, Republicans must consider — if they do indeed retake the White House — how far they want the cycle to continue. The aborted Talk/Miramax book deal on Ken Starr's shop shows that Clinton's friends in the media are not exactly inclined to "move on." However, a President George W. Bush would have to determine whether justice or the larger aims of the society would be served by having an official scandal investigation rev up at the beginning of the next administration.

This is not to say that the current independent counsel would not be within his rights to indict private citizen Bill Clinton for already-explored offenses. That would be an appropriate closing to this shameful era. On the other hand, a post-2000 inquiry into the fundraising tactics of the 1996 presidential campaign would send a signal that the new administration is more interested in settling old scores rather than ushering in a new political culture.

It would only further feed a distrusting, cynical culture that even today makes it impossible to allow three-decade-old ghosts to rest in peace.