-OPINIONSrnThe Criminal Staternby Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.rn”No government power can he abused long. Mankind will not bear it.”rn— Samuel JohnsonrnThe Secret Life of Bill Clinton:rnThe Unreported Storiesrnby Ambrose Evans-PritchardrnWashington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing;rn460 pp., $24.95rnThe Strange Death of Vincent Foster:rnAn Investigationrnby Christopher RuddyrnNew York: The Free Press;rn316 pp., $25.00rnThe stereot}’pe of the British journalistrn— and stereotypes are usuallyrntrue —has an arrogant Brit arriving inrnWashington, rewriting the WashingtonrnPost and the New York limes for his dispatches,rnand spending the rest of his timernin fancy bars, where dumb natives pickrnup his tab. His disdain for America,rnhaving begun at a very high level, onlyrnincreases with time.rnAmbrose F,ans-Pritchard, perhapsrnthe best writer in contemporary newspaperrnjournalism, does not fit the stereotype.rnAs chief U.S. correspondent for thernLondon Sunday Telegraph, he too couldrnhave rewritten official handouts, receivedrneither directly or through thernnewspapers that the government controls.rnInstead, putting the American asrnwell as the British press to shame, he departedrnWashington to spend his time inrndangerous and remote places likernArkansas and Oklahoma, ^^fter direct experiencernof the Clinton administration,rnEvans-Pritchard seems to have taken thernold British saying—never believe anythingrnuntil it’s officially denied —as hisrnmotto. Certainly he has never acceptedrnthe federal government’s word for anything,rnso that in the process of turningrnLlewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is the presidentrnof the LudM’ig von Mises Institute inrnAuburn, Alabama.rnover a whole series of boulders he has discoveredrnthat modern American democracyrnhas a lot more in common with therntales of Suetonius than with modernrncivics texts.rnIn FA’ans-Pritchard’s view, the originalrnsin of the Clinton administration wasrnthe FBI’s massacre of the Mount Carmelrnparishioners at Waco, using tanks,rnpoison gas, and flames as the murderrnweapons. You have to go back to the federalrngovernment’s slaughter of 200 Siouxrnat Wounded Knee in 1890, he notes, tornfind a similar domestic eent of equal infamy.rn”Just like at Waco, the [Indian]rn ictims were demonized as sexual deviants.rnSome methods never change.”rnIndeed, ”ever}’ salient fact put forward byrnthe Clinton administration about Wacornis a lie.” Nor has he forgotten, or forgiven.rnBill Clinton’s statement that, “I dornnot think the United States governmentrnis responsible for the fact that a bunch ofrnfanatics decided to kill themselves.”rnThe Oklahoma bombing was different,rnof course. The victims were mainlyrnfederal employees, and the incident affectedrnthe American public differently asrnwell. In fact, as Clinton told reportersrnriding with him on Air F’orce One afterrnthe 1996 elections, the bombing, by temporarilyrnderailing the anti-governmentrnmovement, ser’ed to get him reelected.rnBut was the official storv of OklahomarnCity correct? To many observers, TimothyrnMcVeigh and Terry Nichols —whilernclearly guilty of something—had the airrnof patsies about them. It is in this arearnthat Evans-Pritchard does his most importantrnwork.rnThe prosecutions, he shows, resembledrnStar Chamber proceedings,rnin which evidence of involvementrnby the two Waco a g e n c i e s – t h e FBIrnand BATE-was suppressed. Evans-rnPritchard agrees with the widespreadrnspeculation that the bombing may havernbeen a government operation originallyrndesigned to test the resources of the undergroundrnparamilitaries and to discoverrnjust how far they were prepared to go. Orrnit mav have been designed to smear thernAmerican right in its entirety. Apparentlyrnthe bombers were to be caught redhandedrnat the last minute. That is whyrnthe bomb squad was seen at the MurrahrnBuilding by many witnesses early on thernmorning of the explosion. But somebodyrnmade a bad mistake.rnNot everyone paid, of course. NornBATE agents were in the building on thernday of the bombing, despite the localrnBATE head’s phony tales of his ownrnheroism. Wliy weren’t thev there? Becausernthe bombing was probably a failedrnsting operation—as a lawsuit by 300 survivingrnfamily members claims.rnWorking with Oklahoma reporter J.D.rnCash, BATE informant Carol Howe,rn24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn