With the release of Hollywood's accidental documentary Wag The Dog, lots of speculation followed about the Iraq crisis as a manufactured event, designed to take the heat off Bill Clinton for his sex scandal woes. Yet Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones have, in turn, provided useful cover for the Administration, by diverting attention from an unfolding D.C. scandal that strikes much closer to the heart of how Clinton/Gore have pioneered in the art of selling public policy to the highest bidder.

That scandal is Janet Reno's recommended outside probe (i.e., Kenneth Starr-style independent counsel) into the retail politics of Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. The immediate issue is whether Babbitt lied to Congress about his dealings with lobbyists for three Wisconsin Indian casinos. (Interior has jurisdiction over the country's Indian reservations.) In question is whether Babbitt promised to intervene on the tribes' behalf (a payout worth $25 to $30 million) in exchange for $230,000 in campaign support for Clinton.

Independent counsels, however, are not limited in their scope--which is how Starr got from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky in his drive to tar Clinton. Neither of those issues, however, speak to current policy-making in D.C. In contrast, Babbitt's auction of public resources--not just "access"--in exchange for donations speaks quite directly, with stakes that make the Wisconsin incident look tiny.

A probe could, for example, explore Babbitt's reversal of plans to reform the archaic 19th century mining laws that give away land and minerals in the West for pennies an acre--plans shelved shortly after Clinton's election and never revisited, perhaps due to over $100,000 in campaign donations from mining giants Newmount, Homestake, and Phelps Dodge (for whom Babbitt sent in the National Guard while governor of Arizona to bust a bitter copper miners' strike).

Or, investigators could look at Babbitt's efforts to help unlock Alaska's far north to further oil exploration, as well as Clinton's lifting the ban on export of Alaskan oil, and the links with the $245,000 in campaign support from these moves' largest beneficiary, Arco. Arco will get a windfall of billions for its tiny investment.

Or maybe a probe would explore Clinton and the DNC's support from companies like Noranda, a huge Canadian conglomerate which got handed a huge chunk of land during the '96 campaign in exchange for not mining far less valuable claims adjacent to Yellowstone; or Clinton's other enviro-photo op at the time, "set-aside" of Utah's Escalante Canyonlands as a new national monument--with mining leases sold after the election. Or DNC support from beneficiaries of the 1995 salvage logging rider, or even the present "No Surprises" scam (see this issue's Stump Talk). Or any of hundreds of other, lesser Clinton-era environmental sell-outs and betrayals presided over by Babbitt & Co.

Such a scandal (if pursued) actually has something to do with how Bill Clinton has run the country--and how fake greenie Al Gore wants to run it after 2000. In three years, nobody will care who Bill Clinton fucks. But a lot of people might care if more huge slices of our disappearing natural world have been sold off to benefit the Democratic National Committee.