Impeachment
of President Clinton
Back in 1998 I was
watching BBC world news, when suddenly U.S. president Clinton
made an odd admission that he had earlier lied to the
American people about his relationship with Miss Lewinsky. That
was a disclosure which prompted me to guess outrightly that it
would lead to the president's impeachment, and perhaps his
ouster from office. Therefore, I began to prepare the defense of
the president -- partly as an intellectual exercise, and partly
as an effort to provide some humble advice to assist this great
leader with rehabilitating his image. I thus wrote a book, which
I called Ultimate Defense Against Impeachment. Written
between September 15 and October 31, 1998, it is a novel based
upon real events and real people -- the names which were then
appearing in the media. In the novella I imagined what might
have happened, beginning with the first contact of Miss Lewinsky
with the president, through the love process, uncovering the
scandal, the appointment of the special prosecutor and the
proceedings to the possible impeachment process, and finally the
way out for the president.
It was all
imaginary, but based upon the tidbids appearing in
local Indian newspapers and on BBC TV including
the entire debate in the Houses and
the president's success in saving himself from removal from
office. But time has proven that most of the events
surmised in the book did actually take place, in some form or
another. Any reader well versed in the real events related to
the scandal and the consequent proceedings thereof, upon reading
the story, would suspect as if the book had been written AFTER
the real events. But the fact remains that it was authored PRIOR
to those events. I have given a "tale of the tale" of
writing this book in the American edition, wherein I have
mentioned certain dates which can be verified by the evidentiary
record and by any investigative journalist. I had, in fact, sent
one copy of the Indian edition of the book to the president well
in time to use it in his defense, as also to the chief justice
who was presiding over the precedings and to the prominent
senators and congressmen figuring therein. I did it all while my
late father was on his death bad. This
was PRIOR to the actual impeachment proceedings that started in
the Congress.
There was an interesting
point mentioned therein on the page 79 of the Indian edition,
page 60 of the American edition in bold letters about Indian
politics. While praising the Indian democracy I mentioned, "but
in India, quite possibly in next general election or even
sooner, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi
- a lady, a widow, born and brought up in a foreign land
naturalized in India nearing her 30s, and belonging to a
religious minority - would become the prime minister of India
with the full support of masses." This
intuition, which occurred to me back in October 1998, almost
came true in 2004, with the only difference being that she
refused to accept the post with a gentle stroke of the fore-tip
of her right foot.
My destiny has also
held true to the story, as outlined in the chapter "The
Turbaned Man" about the title of the book on page 80 of the
Indian edition and the page 60 of American edition, which was
titled simply The Ultimate Defense.
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