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Rollcall reported last week "This isn't the first time" that Greg Craig, who was added to the burgeoning White House legal staff, had "signed on to help a famous politician survive a titillating scandal fraught with allegations of impropriety and questionable conduct."

Craig, Rollcall noted, will be a key figure in helping to "craft the White House's response to independent counsel Kenneth Starr's damaging report. He served as Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) lawyer back in 1991 when the Senator's career was nearly undone by the infamous Palm Beach controversy.

"That fiasco erupted over Easter weekend in 1991, when a vacationing Kennedy roused his son and nephew, William Kennedy Smith, out of bed to go nightclub-hopping in Palm Beach, Fla. Smith was later charged with raping a woman in the course of that evening . He was eventually acquitted -- but Kennedy's own reputation was sullied and his career endangered as the story made national headlines and he was forced to testify at the trial."

Craig is credited with helping Senator Kennedy in "his political resurrection." In a prepared Statement, Kennedy praised Clinton's choice, "Greg is a wonderful friend and outstanding lawyer with great ability, sound judgment, and an extraordinary commitment to public service." Kennedy said of Craig, who also served as a foreign policy adviser on his staff from 1984 to 1989: "He did a brilliant job as foreign policy adviser on my staff in the 1980s, and he's been a wise and trusted adviser ever since. The President's made an excellent choice."

Recently Craig has been advising Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Tibetan issues. Apparently his expertise for that roll is his long time association with the Clintons, whom he got to know while they were attending law school at Yale when he was an anti-war activist. He also was the attorney who represented John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan. His assignment is to "improve" the communications gap between Congress and Clinton.

Steve Ricchetti, a former deputy assistant to Clinton and currently a Democratic lobbyist who regularly meets with deputy White House chief of staff John Podesta, was also hired last week to "to create Clinton's response to Members and the press on the sex-and-lies scandal."

In a week which included the White House's attempt to wreck House Judiciary Committee Henry Hyde's reputation with a 30 year old story about a woman with whom he was "good friends" - at least eight years before he ever was elected to Congress- it's odd that the media has been so quiet about an episode twenty-nine years ago that involved Senator Kennedy. It is also amazing that Rollcall thought the "Senator's career was nearly undone by the infamous Palm Beach controversy" and didn't think the earlier episode even warranted a mention.

In 1969, a drinking and sex evening with Mary Jo Kopechne, ended somewhere between 11:30 PM and 1:00 AM with Senator Kennedy running his car off Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick island into a tidal pool. The Senator quickly got to shore and went back to his hotel, leaving Mary Jo clawing frantically inside the car for what may have been a couple of hours or more. He did not call the police. Instead, from 2:30 AM until almost 9:30 AM he made seventeen telephone calls to other people, trying to establish an alibi.

In solidly Democratic, Kennedy country, somehow he got away with this extraordinarily irresponsible and/or criminal behavior, kept his seat in the Senate, and, after 10 years, and a number of escapades later, even believed he could be elected President. He was wrong. In fact, journalist Roger Mudd drove the road over which Kennedy, a native of the area, claimed to have had problems driving, and had more questions than ever.

Richard Burke, author of The Senator, a longtime aide to Kennedy, also chronicled a lifestyle quite similar to the recent revelations of Clinton's lifestyle. It even involved a seventeen year old intern to whom the Senator introduced both kinky sex and cocaine. Burke wrote, "I spent much of the following summer keeping Pam, our bubbly teenage intern, under control. She fell head over heals for the Senator rather quickly and, just as quickly, became upset and jealous about his other relationships. She turned to me as confidant, freely admitting that she and the Senator had slept together, and detailing how the Senator had turned her on to coke and the joys of poppers. The only time she balked was when he tried to get her into bed with himself and another woman at the same time."

The book "Senatorial Privilege" by E.J. Gorman, noted: "Ted Kennedy was going to get a slap on the wrist. (For the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.) The details of this sordid event were never going to be fully aired. The political machine would function, the Kennedy money and lawyers would block inquiry at every turn. Between corruption, incompetence, fear, and blind loyalty to a moneyed factotum, justice was shrugged off. Reading the events surrounding that day gives the impression that they happened in some other country where normal U.S. laws and ethics don't apply."

The key points of Chappaquiddick as they happened were as follows that July night 1969:

Timeline

7/19/69 - 9:45am: Ted Kennedy gives a statement to Edgartown police chief Dominick Arena that he took a wrong turn at 11:15 AM the previous evening on the way to the ferry landing on Chappaquidick and had gone off the Dyke bridge. He returned to his hotel and contacted police when he "fully realized" what had happened (almost 10 hours later).

7/22 - Mary Jo is buried in Plymouth, PA

7/25 - Ted Kennedy pleads guilty and is given 2 months suspended sentence & one year probation by Edgartown District Court Judge James A. Boyle.

7pm on 7/25/69 - Ted Kennedy gives speech & asks voter's opinion on whether he should resign.

7/31 - Ted Kennedy returns to D.C.

7/31 - District attorney Edmund S. Dinis requests an inquest into the death of Mary Jo.

8/8 - Judge Boyle sets date of inquest for 9/3/69

8/27 - Pre-inquest hearing, Judge Boyle allows press but no questions of witnesses.

9/2 - Ted Kennedy lawyers ask for temporary injunction from Massachusetts supreme court

9/18 - Dinis petitions the exhumation and autopsy of Mary Jo, claims blood seen in her mouth and nose.

9/24 - Mr & Mrs Joseph Kopechne file petition to bar autopsy.

10/20/21 - Judge Bernard C. Brominski of Wilkes-Barre,PA presides at hearing on petition

10/30 - Massachusetts supreme court bars the public and the press from inquest.

12/10 - Judge Brominski denies exhumation petition.

12/11 - Judge Boyle sets 1/5/70 as date for inquest.

1/5-8/70 - The secret inquest is held.

2/18 - Judge Boyle files a report and transcript of the inquest with Edgartown Superior Court clerk.

3/10 - Dinis reads the report.

3/17 - Leslie H. Leland, Edgartown grand jury foreman, requests a special session to be re-convened to investigate Mary Jo's death.

3/26 - Chief Justice Joseph G. Tauro of Superior Court call special session of court for 4/6 in Edgartown for the grand jury to hear evidence.

4/6-7 - The grand jury convenes, calls only 4 witnesses, is denied access to testimony from the inquest, and returns no indictments. Dinis says the case is closed. The documents are made public.

5/14 - A closed registry of motor vehicles hearing finds Ted Kennedy to have been speeding and at serious fault in the accident.

11/4/70 - Ted Kennedy is re-elected to the senate.

11/27 - Ted Kennedy's license is re-instated

Notes:

John Farrar, Captain of Search and Rescue Division of Edgartown Volunteer Fire Department, was the diver who found the body. The car was upside down and turned around from the direction it left the bridge. The rear end was angled toward the surface of the water, the front window was cracked and the side windows smashed from the impact with the water. The body of Mary Jo was found locked in the position she died in, trying to breathe the air remaining in the rear footwell.

A handbag in the car contained a driver's license for Rosemary Keough of D.C. & 2 keys for room #56 at the Katana Shores Motor Inn of Edgartown. Rosemary Keough was Mary Jo's roommate at the inn & one of 6 women (former Robert Kennedy staffers) attending a party with Ted Kennedy & 5 other men at a cottage rented by Joseph Gargan. Joseph was a childhood friend of Ted Kennedy. Gargan's recollection was that Ted Kennedy left party at or before 11:50 PM. Sometime later Gargan was called outside and informed by Ted Kennedy of the accident. They drove in another car down to the bridge where Ted Kennedy pointed out the car in the water. At this point, Gargan estimated 45 minutes, at the most, had passed since the accident.

Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham, another attorney, took turns diving, trying to reach the car, but were prevented from doing so by the current. Joseph Gargan wanted to report the accident but Ted Kennedy suggested that when he (Ted) had returned to Shiretown Inn, Gargan could discover the accident and report to police that Mary Jo was the driver of the car. Urged to report the accident, Ted Kennedy demurred and argued. Ted Kennedy lost his temper and left the car. He jumped into the channel to swim across. Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham did nothing and returned to cottage.

When one of the girls (Mary Ellen Lyons) asked them where they'd been, they said down at the ferry landing. JG told girls Mary Jo had returned to the Katana Shores on the last ferry. At this time it was after 2:30 am. Gargan supposedly thought Ted Kennedy would report the accident. That morning, Joseph Gargan took Markham, Charles Tretter,Rosemary Keough,& Susan Tannenbaum into town. When they arrived at the Shiretown Inn, Rosemary Keough remembered seeing Ted Kennedy on the porch outside the room. Ted Kennedy supposedly thought Gargan would report accident as he had suggested. After an argument about not reporting the accident, Gargan insisted Markham accompany Ted Kennedy to the police station to report the accident.

When Ted Kennedy made his statement to the police, Ted Kennedy did not have a license and claimed it was elsewhere. An initial check showed it was expired in February of the current year. Later, a driver's license mysteriously turned up at a registry headquarters that supposedly had been mis-filed for 5+ months.

Chief Arena never asked Ted Kennedy if he had been drinking. Ted Kennedy refused to answer questions.

Dinis (pg 121) told Kennedy supporter Jimmy Smith to tell Ted Kennedy he wasn't going to prosecute, although policy in his district was to charge with manslaughter "all defendants accused of operating (DUI) when such operations resulted in a death".

Mary Jo's blood alcohol was .09, Ted Kennedy's will never be known.

It's been twenty-nine years since that event occurred. Over the years Ted Kennedy's womanizing, drinking and drug problems were well known in Massachusetts. Over the years Bill Clinton's womanizing, and drug problems were well known in Arkansas. And, they didn't appear to keep many from voting for them.

Over the last 35 years, the American people have overlooked perjury, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and corpses which appear to have accompanied the sex life of Jack and Ted Kennedy as well as Bill Clinton. This quite possibly is why is it that they think by hiring the right spin-doctor to manipulate the Congress and the media that America will overlook similar behavior, while being scandalized over much milder sexual behavior of Dan Burton, Helen Chenoweth or Henry Hyde that did not result in perjury, obstruction of justice, abuse of power and corpses?

I guess we'll know when the votes are counted in November.