Is the religious right out to get Bill Clinton?

Defending her husband against charges that he had an affair with a White House intern and then told her to lie about it, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted on NBC's "Today" show Jan. 27 that a "right-wing conspiracy" is out to discredit Bill Clinton and bring down his presidency.

"Conspiracy" is a strong word. But there is no doubt that a well organized, well funded array of groups has worked to savage Clinton's presidency from the day he was first sworn in. These groups, many of which are tied to the Religious Right or run by far-right, fundamentalist Christian activists, dislike Clinton because of Iris stands on issues like abortion, gay rights and school prayer. They publish a wealth of books, magazines, newsletters and other materials, have released numerous videos and maintain a visible presence on the Internet.

Many of the charges these organization fling at Clinton are unsubstantiated, and others are so far out that they have the ring of conspiracy theories. Among them, these groups have accused Clinton of crimes ranging from murder to drug abuse, and nearly everything in between. Many of them work together and share information. If there is anything like a "conspiracy" against Clinton, this is it.

On Feb. 4 a number of far-right organizations held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington to demand Clinton's impeachment. Two men aligned with Christian Reconstructionism were featured speakers at the event - Howard Phillips of the U.S. Taxpayers Party and Herb Titus, former dean of TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School.

Reconstructionists embrace theocracy, calling for all U.S. law to be based on the legal code of the Old Testament. They advocate the death penalty for a number of religious "crimes," including adultery, witchcraft, persistent juvenile delinquency, "unchastity," blasphemy and worshipping "false gods." The U.S. Taxpayers Party is the closest thing the Reconstructionists have to a political outlet, and Phillips and Titus ran as the party's candidates for president and vice president in 1996, after the party tried unsuccessfully to woo Pat Buchanan to be its standard-bearer.

Phillips and Titus were jollied at their Coalition for a Congressional Impeachment Inquiry event by representatives from some of the most extreme far-right groups in the country. Most of the organizations participating, with the possible exception of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, are obscure. Yet the material they produce is broadcast all over the country by right-wing talk radio and sometimes leaches into the mainstream media.

Among the speakers was John Wheeler Jr., editor of Citizen's Intelligence Digest, a publication of Citizens for Honest Government (CHG), a rabidly anti-Clinton organization based in Winchester, Calif. CHG was formed and is headed by Patrick Matrisciana, a hard-right fundamentalist Christian who takes issue with Clinton's politics. CHG is listed as a "division" of Matrisciana's Creative Ministries, Inc., which he claims is registered with the IRS as a non-profit "educational corporation."

Matrisciana also owns the for-profit Jeremiah Films, which produces a variety of far-right videos, including the infamous anti-Clinton video "The Clinton Chronicles" and several follow-up tapes. In the public mind, "The Clinton Chronicles" is closely associated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg, Va., televangelist who hawked it aggressively during 1994 and '95. But while Falwell gave the tape great visibility, he did not produce it - a fact Wheeler took pains to point out during the event.

Based in Hemet, Calif., Jeremiah Films' productions include "Gay Rights, Special Rights: Inside the Homosexual Agenda," "The Crash: The Coming Financial Collapse of America" and "Behind the Green Door," all attack on environmentalism that purports to expose "ecological extremists...forcing Americans to conform to the control of an all-powerful global socialist state."

Now in the employ of CHG, Wheeler, who resides in Chesapeake, Va., also has ties to Robertson. He is the founding editor of the Christian Coalition's Christian American publication and worked sporadically for the journal until its demise earlier this year.

(Robertson has hardly been silent about the recent allegations against Clinton. He went on several anti-Clinton tirades in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, once showcasing a news report that implied that Clinton has engineered break-ins at the offices of his enemies. He offered no proof for the charge.)

During the press conference, Wheeler, Phillips, Titus and others endorsed a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) calling on Congress to begin an inquiry to determine if Clinton should be impeached. The resolution, H. Res. 304, is not a call for impeachment per se but instead would direct the House Judiciary Committee to begin an investigation to determine if impeachment is warranted. Seventeen far-right House members have signed on as co-sponsors. (In a little-noticed move, the Christian Coalition endorsed the Bart gambit last January in an editorial in the final issue of Christian American. The editorial was subsequently reprinted in Citizens' Intelligence Digest.)

The procedure Barr is backing could take a while, and some Clinton haters simply don't want to wait hat long. At the press conference, Eugene A. Delgaudio, executive director of a group called Public Advocate of the U.S., called for a type of coup d'etat in the White House. Delgaudio said members of Clinton's cabinet should declare the president "incapacitated" under the 25th Amendment and replace him with Vice President Al Gore. He called on members of Congress to descend on the White House and physically remove Clinton from the building if necessary.

Due to its extreme nature, the Phillips press conference was sparsely attended, and most of those present represented assorted Clinton-hating organizations, not news outlets - with one exception: A lone C-SPAN camera recorded the proceedings and aired them nationwide that evening.

Where do these organizations get their money? Some fraction of it comes from contributors who believe in what these groups are doing, but the bulk of it probably comes from wealthy right-wing activists or foundations with deep pockets.

Citizens for Honest Government, for example, has been bankrolled not by small contributors but from Matrisciana's personal funds and money laundered from other sources. In a column that ran in the organization's January/February newsletter, Wheeler reported that Matrisciana has kept the group afloat with his own cash and that in the future more donations from supporters are expected. He also noted that CHG board members had given infusions of cash and wrote, "Chris Ruddy underwrote the cost of the September/October Digest."

Ruddy is listed as a "contributing writer" for CHG's newsletter, along with a veritable who's who of the Clinton-hating right. Included are former U.S. Rep. William Dannemeyer, who first issued the call for Clinton's impeachment in a Falwell newspaper; British writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard; anti-gay activist Stanley Monteith; public education basher Carolyn Stanke; Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America; Brad Phillips, former aide to U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher; right-wing journalist Joseph Farah and longtime Religious Right operative Tim LaHaye. (Less well known "writers" included John Brown, Judge Jim Johnson, Lt. Col. Tom McKenny, Chuck Missler, Col. Ronald Ray and Mason Weaver.)

Ruddy is best known for peddling conspiracy theories about the suicide of White House aide Vincent Foster and has recently branched out by asserting that there is something suspicious about the death of Ron Brown, the late commerce secretary who died in an airplane crash in Croatia on April 3, 1996. A frequent guest on Robertson's "700 Club" television program, Ruddy is in the employ of Pennsylvania billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, publisher of the Greensburg Tribune-Review; his work is funded by the Western Journalism Center, which in turn receives its money from Scaife-controlled foundations.

Cox News Service recently reported that through his three foundations, Scaife, heir to the immense Mellon Bank fortune, has plowed more than $200 million into various right-wing groups since the 1980s. Recipients of his largess include The American Spectator magazine, which first published allegations of Clinton's sexual harassment of Paula Jones; Accuracy in Media, which promotes the Foster conspiracy theory; House Speaker Newt Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC; Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation and its allied satellite network, National Empowerment Television and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which helped finance former FBI agent Gary Aldrich's book Unlimited Access, which levied salacious charges against Clinton - again without substantiation.

Ironically, all of these right-wing attacks on Clinton may be backfiring. Some political observers believe the American people have heard so many off-the-wall stories about Clinton that they tend to lump much criticism of the president together and dismiss a lot of it. Political observers were astounded that as the Lewinsky sex scandal raged, Clinton's approval rating hit 73 percent - his highest to date.

Not surprisingly, this infuriates the Religious Right. During a February convention of the National Religious Broadcasters in Washington, Family Research Council head Gary Bauer was heard to grumble, "Gee, a couple of more affairs and he will have a 100 percent rating."

Does all of this amount to a "conspiracy"? Perhaps not, but there is no doubt that for the past six years numerous Religious Right groups have been working to bring Clinton's presidency to a premature conclusion. Only time will tell if in the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton has handed them the ammunition to finish the job.