Roll the Tape! (Or Spin It.)

By Rick Horowitz

Said Dangerous Dan the Investigatin' Man, "I know what let's do!" And he told them.

"Let's release the tapes," he said to his gang with a gleam in his eye. "That'll fix 'em!" He meant the Webb Hubbell tapes, and the gleam in his eye meant he was hot on somebody's trail. That's the way Dangerous Dan Burton liked it.

When Dangerous Dan talked, people listened. Sometimes when they were done listening, they snickered, but that came with the territory. Dangerous Dan was used to it.

Sometimes when they were done listening, they hollered bloody murder, like the time Dangerous Dan called the President of the United States a --

Well, never mind what he called him. It's not the sort of word most people use in polite company, or even around newspaper reporters, and certainly not about the President of the United States. But Dangerous Dan said it, and they reported it. You'd have thought he kicked over a baby carriage.

He was still trying to recover from that one, trying to show the world he could keep his foot out of his mouth long enough to walk down the stairs, when he thought of the tapes. If he released the tapes, the tapes of Webb Hubbell in prison talking to his wife and his lawyers and whoever else he happened to be talking to, Dangerous Dan would be a player again. They'd have to take him seriously.

"Can we do that?" asked Nervous Ned. "I mean, aren't those conversations kind of personal?"

"It's the public's right to know," said Dangerous Dan. The public's right to know was one of Dangerous Dan's favorite rights. He talked about it all the time. It never failed to amaze him how often the public's right to know coincided with Dangerous Dan's desire to tell them.

"But we've got hundreds of hours of the stuff," Nervous Ned reminded him. Dangerous Dan knew exactly what to do.

"Just put out the good parts," he said.

He meant the bad parts, the parts that would make Webb Hubbell look the worst, and Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton, too. Especially Bill Clinton.

"But what if they find out? What if they find out you left out the parts that almost make them sound...well, innocent?"

Dangerous Dan thought for a moment.

"I'll just say we were protecting their privacy."

The gang had a good laugh over that one. (And they were laughing with him, not at him; he could tell.) But Dangerous Dan wasn't through with his scheming.

"I'll say we were protecting their privacy, and if anyone accuses us of any funny business with the excerpts, I'll say, `Fine -- then let's release them all! Every word of them!'"

"So what you're saying is..."

Sometimes the gang had trouble keeping up with Dangerous Dan.

"What I'm saying is we give them a choice: Either they can let our version of the tapes stand, which makes them look guilty as sin, or they can fight us and give up every last shred of dignity. Heck, maybe we'll release them all anyway."

The gang sat there in silent admiration. All except Nervous Ned.

"You're sure this won't backfire on us?" he asked. "I mean, I'd hate to push so hard we turn a scoundrel like Hubbell into a victim."

Dangerous Dan the Investigatin' Man just smiled the smile of experience.

"Do you think I'm an idiot?"

5/5/98