Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! by Andrew Breitbart Page B

return. Goodies, apparently, like being buried in Arlington National Cemetery sacred land.
    But that wasn’t the real story. The
real
story was that Larry Lawrence wasn’t even a Merchant Marine.
    Norma Nicolls told Arianna that back in the early 1990s, Lawrence asked her to research the history of the Merchant Marine at a San Diego library. Then, Nicolls said, Lawrence started writing checks to the Merchant Marine. All of a sudden, the Merchant Marine started giving him awards, because he was giving them money. He started claiming that he had served aboard the USS
Horace Bushnell
, a Merchant Marine ship torpedoed during World War II, and that he had been thrown into the Arctic Ocean as the ship sank.
    And Arianna was onto both scams: Clinton’s culpability in selling an Arlington burial slot, and Lawrence’s culpability in falsifying a pseudomilitary record in order to gain entrance.
    On November 24, 1997, Arianna started revealing the story to Americans:
The more we delve into Larry Lawrence’s last years, the more he looks like the poster child of President Clinton’s Make-A-Wish Foundation for big-time donors….
    Lawrence’s only military link was his service in the Merchant Marine during World War II. “I was surprised anddisturbed,” Norma Nicolls, his executive assistant from 1979 to 1993, told me, “to learn that Larry was allowed to be buried at Arlington. I was a Navy officer’s wife for 24 years, who lost many good friends in the Vietnam War. I believe that should be a privilege accorded only to those who have given up something for their country. I worked as his personal assistant for almost 15 years before he was appointed ambassador to Switzerland, and as far as I know, he never expressed a desire to have a military funeral.”
    It appears that the driving force behind the effort to bury Lawrence at Arlington was his fourth wife, whose petit-bourgeois appetite for honors and distinctions seems to have no limit. Whatever the truth about his Merchant Marine service, can anything—other than political services rendered—explain multiple medal winners standing in line awaiting admittance to Arlington while Lawrence is allowed to cut ahead? Way ahead. 3
    The response was swift and brutal from the mainstream media. Maureen Dowd, a charter member, ripped Arianna, writing in her syndicated column, “The Clintonites have hidden behind double-talk so often, it was tempting to believe the Republicans’ sinister allegations. But the GOP case began to melt…. What you need to know about the Republicans is that the charge was disgusting.” 4 White House special counsel Lanny Davis told the press that Lawrence “was thrown overboard and suffered a serious head injury. Had he been in the Navy and the same incident would have occurred, he would have received a Purple Heart.” The late Richard Holbrooke, former assistant secretary of state, said, “I’m dumbfounded that there would be the slightest question about the appropriateness of Larry Lawrence being buried at Arlington.” Army Secretary Togo West said there was no political motivation toLawrence’s burial. “I am the responsible person…. Just not done. Not possible… He deserves to be there.” 5
    But Arianna was just getting started. She was responding to attacks on her credibility with calm and composure, knowing that she had the goods, and reacting with utter serenity as she watched a phalanx of media swarm around her, looking for their pound of flesh. She fed them the story, bit by bit. And I was helping. There was a moment in my research when I personally realized that everything Arianna was saying was true. I was spelunking and spelunking, and finally I came across something big. I ran down to Arianna’s office yelling: “Arianna, Arianna! He didn’t serve in the Merchant Marines. I’m positive.” It was a piece from the
San Diego Union-Tribune
dated January 19, 1993. The story talked about how Lawrence had been honored by the