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September 8, 2001 - WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT OTHERS, THEY TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THEMSELVES
September 8, 2001 - COMMENTS ON THE CHANDRA LEVY CASE TELL YOU ABOUT THE COMMENTATORS
September 8, 2001 - CORRUPTION THRIVES AMONG THOSE FAVORED BY THE MEDIA

WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT OTHERS, THEY TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THEMSELVES

The primary weapon of any interrogator is not torture, but time. If you want to know all about somebody, just let them talk.

A psychiatrist friend of mine read my first book and said, "Bob, I wish my patients would all write a whole book like yours, about how they view the world."

Like any good psychiatrist or any good interrogator, his specialty was finding out what he wanted to know by letting me talk about what I choose to talk about. After he read my book, I had few secrets from him.

Letting people talk and concentrating on what you want to find out is critical. It was absolutely essential to me in my career in politics. For example, one thing I learned early on was one way to spot a liar.

I found that a person who uses the word "liar" all the time is invariably a liar himself.

To those who take truth seriously, "lie" is a very big word. To them a lie is a DELIBERATE falsehood, not just a mistake in facts.

Some people respond that this is just a quibble. They see anything incorrect as the same thing as a falsehood.

If someone thinks the difference between deliberate falsehood and accidental misinformation is trivial, don't believe what they tell you. They do not take lying to be a serious offense, and that means they do not mind lying themselves.

This information has been enormously valuable to me and those I worked for. It came from my observations as I listened to people talk freely.

COMMENTS ON THE CHANDRA LEVY CASE TELL YOU ABOUT THE COMMENTATORS

I spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill, but my picture of it is entirely different from the picture drawn by the media commentators.

The media talk about Congress as a place where everybody is on the take and where there is little interest in working for what is right.

Everybody in Congress, according to the media, is in on having sex with interns and every other sleazy activity. They say that if sleeping with interns was a disqualification, ninety percent of congressmen would be out.

That's not the Capitol Hill I saw.

In all my years on the Hill and in the Administration I saw almost nothing but dedicated workaholics. I was there at night, I did a lot more than just earn my salary. When I was there late, I saw lots of other offices occupied by people just like me.

As to corruption, nobody would dare try to try to bribe a real fanatic like me.

Of course, the Capitol Hill I saw was the one I spent my time in. I didn't see others bedding down young girls, because I was in my office or writing at home. Naturally the people I associated with were doing the same thing.

So if you ask me about congressmen and their staffs, my experience is with honest ideological nut-cases like myself. The people I worked with were those like my boss John Ashbrook and Jesse Helms.

They scared the media precisely because they are so unbendingly dedicated to what they see as right.

So when someone with Hill experience says everybody they know is corrupt and sex mad, what are they telling you about themselves?

Capitol Hill is a huge place, and everybody really knows only his corner of it. What he sees will not tell you the objective truth about the Hill, but it tells you all about the commentator and the people he is used to dealing with.

CORRUPTION THRIVES AMONG THOSE FAVORED BY THE MEDIA

Homosexual Congressman Studds of Massachusetts got reelected after seducing male interns. He survived the scandal, but conservative Representative Crane of Illinois, who seduced a female intern the same year, was defeated in the next election.

What a public servant gets away with depends entirely on his constituents.

The media hated those of us who were on the right.

If they got anything on us, they would not downplay it the way they did the Studds affair. We all know that if Teddy Kennedy had been a conservative, Chappaquidick would have destroyed him.

So the right had to follow the old rule, "Don't write down anything you are not willing to see on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow." As a result, the press did a bang-up job of riding herd on us and exposing corruption on our side.

That, after all, is the function a free press is supposed to serve: keeping public servants honest.

By the same token, this also means that the media does not do its job when it comes to the left.

So one of the things Congressman Condit says is true. He is indeed getting meaner treatment from the media than Clinton did.

This is because Clinton was needed by the political left, so he got full backing from the press for anything he did, no matter how sleazy.

Condit is not leftist enough or important enough to earn the same free pass Clinton had.

If Condit finds this surprising, he must have been living under a rock.

A totally corrupt person can survive in politics if the press and his constituents give him a free pass. We all know that the left, constituents and media, will quite literally let their servants get away with murder.

So when we hear big-time paid commentators tell us that everybody they know about in politics is immoral and corrupt, they are telling you all about themselves.

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