ROGER FRANKLIN reports on intrigue in the corridors, and lifts, of the US Senate.
NEW YORK - In certain quarters of America's rabid right, it is an article of faith that the Clintons know where the bodies are buried because, well, they put them there.
From the suicide of White House counsel Vince Foster to unsolved shootings in Little Rock and Washington, those who regard the ex-President and his wife Washington's answer to the Borgias keep themselves busy tracking victims of "Arkancide" - a list the more paranoid zealots insist runs to better than 100 names.
It is all gloriously weird and unhinged stuff, the rantings of the same folks who are apt to debate whether it is Freemasonry or fluoride that presents the biggest threat to freedom.
But the one issue on which all the nuts find themselves sharing the same branch is that the Clintons always cover their bloody tracks: when an ex-business partner drops dead, or a house burns down on top of one of Bill's girlfriends, the conspiracists nod knowingly and treat the total absence of evidence as conclusive proof that the Clintons' hit men have been at work once again.
That is why what happened recently on Capitol Hill was so unusual. For the very first time, at least in the view of those who regard Hillary Clinton as Washington's Lady Macbeth, the former First Lady was caught red-handed in the act of attempted murder. Her intended victim, at least according to the conspiracy buffs, was Strom Thurmond, the 98-year-old senator from South Carolina.
Doddering, frail, and increasingly subject to episodes of senile dementia, Thurmond is perhaps the most important politician in the country as far as George W. Bush is concerned. If the new President were to lose Dick Cheney, a prospect averted this week when the Vice-President underwent his second round of emergency heart surgery in less than four months, it would be a tragedy, but not a political catastrophe. Bush could simply select another offsider and proceed pretty much as before.
But if Thurmond meets his Maker, the consequences for Bush would be dire.
Since South Carolina's Democratic Governor could be expected to replace Thurmond with one of his own, control of the deadlocked Senate would change hands - and Hillary would become an influential voice on the vital committees that determine which bills are tabled, and how much money gets spent on what.
All this is by way of background to explain the latest whispers about Hillary's homicidal prowess. The incident that sparked them is said to have happened in a Senate hallway, where Thurmond was preparing to pose for a TV news crew. As he shuffled toward the camera, Hillary is reputed to have barrelled into him from behind, all but knocking the elderly gent to the floor.
The only thing that saved him, say the conspiracy buffs, was an instinctive response by Ted Kennedy, who grabbed the sagging senator in both arms and prevented, at the very least, a broken hip that would have ended his career.
True or not - and the alleged incident has been denied by both Clinton and Kennedy - the mere fact that the tale gathered so much attention, even being repeated on several of the nightly cable news shows, is an indication of the anxiety that surrounds Thurmond.
Up until November's cliffhanger election, Republicans could afford the luxury of indulging Thurmond's increasingly odd little ways. Now, regardless of how much embarrassment he causes his party, it is vital that he be kept alive for another 21 months, when Republicans will be able to field a healthy replacement in the 2002 elections.
He is, however, quite a worry. As the chairman of the Armed Services committee, for example, Thurmond has sowed such confusion that the Pentagon's astonished generals regularly walk away with billions of dollars more than they requested. Even the Senate's opening ceremony, over which Thurmond presides by right of his venerable seniority, has become an exercise in absurdity, with the man whom the Constitution names as fourth in line to the presidency mangling the orders of business and calling the chamber to attention before the chaplain's daily prayer.
And then there are the women, in whom Thurmond takes such an inordinate and passionate interest that legislators on both sides call him "Sperm" rather than Strom.
Scores of young staffers, even one Senator, claim to have been sexually harassed by the elderly gent in an elevator.
Even Hillary suffered his unwanted attentions last year when, at a reception to welcome new Senators, Thurmond not only slobbered on her cheek but allowed one of his hands to descend further, and linger longer, than even her husband might have dared.
"When Strom dies," the late Texas Senator John Tower once said, "they'll have to beat his pecker with a baseball bat to close the lid of the casket."
And a worried Republican staffer explained last week: "In the short term, political strategy has nothing to do with the Democratic game plan to regain control of the Senate - they're hoping the Reaper does their work for them."
Apart from Thurmond, who has been rushed to hospital seven times in five months, the Democrats are also keeping an undertaker's eye on 78-year-old Jesse Helms, who now wages his holy war on sodomites, advocates of gun control, and opponents of nuclear war from the saddle of a battery-powered scooter chair.
By contrast, the Republicans can only wonder how much time is left to Senator Robert Byrd, 80, who last week astonished a TV interviewer with a rambling, incoherent monologue about race relations in which he noted, appropos of nothing in particular, that he had met a few "white niggers" in his time.
Though Byrd, who also likes to bore the Senate with updates about his little dog's latest tricks, is mentally suspect, he is otherwise fit and vigorous.
That keeps the attention on Thurmond - and his Republican minders very busy indeed, as they were in December when a Washington radio station sent two strippers to Capitol Hill to help Thurmond celebrate his birthday. The dancers, all but naked beneath their trench coats, were intercepted by Thurmond's handlers just as they were about to barge into his office and treat him to a double-barrel lap dance.
"The excitement could have killed him," noted the Republican staffer, who wasn't joking. "We were one door away from losing the Senate!"
If Hillary is indeed the calculating, cold-blooded killer her enemies imagine, Thurmond's protectors need to monitor her mail-order purchases like a hawk.
Given the mortal danger posed by those exotic dancers, any packages of lurid underwear arriving at Hillary's Senate office from Fredericks of Hollywood can only mean that New York's senatorial femme fatale is about to take another crack at hastening Thurmond's demise.
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