How could Clinton survive a prima facie case of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of high crimes and misdemeanors?

To answer that question, you need to understand the way the American political system has evolved over the last 100 years, not by chance, but according to a plan. You also need to understand the special role carved out for Bill Clinton in the final stages of that plan.

The history of that plan begins in the 19th century when J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller family and other components of the financial elite hatched an idea to control both the Democratic and Republican parties.

"When the business interests ... pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally," wrote Professor Carroll Quigley in his book, "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time." "Indeed, some of them intended to contribute to both and to allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence of politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were exercising their own free choice."

Understand that Quigley was not only privy to these secret machinations, he was sympathetic to them. He revealed in his book that as part of his 20-year study of the power structures of the U.S. and Great Britain, he had an opportunity to examine their "papers and secret records."

His book was published in 1966 by Macmillan, which Quigley believed was systematically suppressed. Plates were destroyed to ensure it would not see a second printing, according to a taped interview discovered in Quigley's archives at Georgetown University by Dr. Stanley Montieth. Apparently some of Quigley's benefactors thought the secrets he revealed were better left untold.

But before the book was deep-sixed, Quigley exposed the little-understood fact that both socialist and communist movements in the United States were funded by the Morgans and the Rockefellers and other financial interests. Quigley was amused by the fact that right-wing populists in the United States mistakenly believed that Communist Party subversion was the root of the threat to national security in the 1950s. In fact, he said, it was simply a symptom of the political manipulation of foreign and domestic policies by the financial elite.

"There is, however, a considerable degree of truth behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very real power structure," Quigley wrote. "It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists. ... These misdirected attacks by the Radical Right did much to confuse the American people."

Now listen to what Quigley says about the two-party system and its one plan for control of the population: "Hopefully, the elements of choice and freedom may survive for the ordinary individual in that he may be free to make a choice between two opposing political groups (even if these groups have little policy choice within the parameters of policy established by the experts) and he may have the choice to switch his economic support from one large unit to another. But, in general, his freedom and choice will be controlled within the very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits."

So why the scam? Why the illusion?

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers," he wrote. "Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."

It should be no surprise to anyone, of course, that during his tenure as a professor at Georgetown in the 1960s, Quigley became the mentor to a young man with big political ambitions of his own. His name was Bill Clinton.

Now do you get it?

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto: A Vision for an American Rebirth," and his classic, "Taking America Back: A Radical Plan to Revive Freedom, Morality and Justice," now in its third edition and 14 printings. Farah is the former editor of the legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market daily newspapers.

Nov. 30, 1998