NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA DIGGING THE DIRT RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 22:10:00 ........................................................................ PETER MARSHALL This year's battle for the White House is a dirty business. There's a propaganda war... TIM GRIFFIN We make the bullets. MARSHALL ....and it's vicious. SUSAN ESTRICH He who doesn't throw mud ends up covered in it. PETE SLOVER It's a classic dirty tricks type of deal with everyone pointing their fingers every which way. MARSHALL Those in the way get slimed. DONNA DUREN It's just a format, a vehicle for spreading sleazy things. PAUL FRAY You're being tailed everywhere you go. Your garbage you put it out and they go through your garbage. MARSHALL And then the pornographer, they're all digging dirt on the road to the White House. It doesn't involve drugs or money? LARRY FLYNT No. MARSHALL So it's sex? FLYNT Good guess. [Broadcast] The first presidential debate for Al Gore and Texas Governor George Bush. It could be make or break... [Broadcast] 11% of eligible voters still not... MARSHALL Debate night. Vice President Al Gore is about to go one on one with Governor George Bush. The candidates are so close in the polls, their performance here could swing the election. There'll be an audience of 50 million. TIM GRIFFIN If there's something really good that we should attack then we'll attack it. MARSHALL In the Republican Party's war room, attack headquarters for the Bush campaign they're waiting for the candidates to appear on screen. GRIFFIN Everybody make sure you've got a pen and paper. You see anything that you think is a potential exaggeration, hit or whatever, just email it around. MARSHALL Tim Griffin and his colleagues do oppo - opposition research. It means they look for any slip by the enemy - Al Gore. GRIFFIN Research is a fundamental point. We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war. Research digs up the ammunition. MARSHALL You make the bullets. GRIFFIN That's right, we make the bullets. MARK CORALLO I'm ready to just respond to anything that Gore says. MARSHALL And they feed their anti-Gore research to the American press and TV. CORALLO It's an amazing thing when you have top line producers and reporters calling you and saying "We trust you, we need your stuff." PRESENTER Good evening from the Clark Athletic Centre at the University.... MARSHALL Right at the start Gore presents Griffin with his first chance to attack. PRESENTER Vice President Gore you have questioned whether Governor Bush has the experience to be President of the United States. AL GORE I have actually not questioned Governor Bush's experience. I have questioned.... MARSHALL Griffin spots the opening. It's small but to them it's a gift, an Al Gore untruth. GRIFFIN Hey, he questioned his experience on foreign policy. Grant, will you pull up that foreign policy piece. He did attack his experience didn't he. CORALLO Yes he did. GRIFFIN Alright, okay. Hey, Monica, how're we looking on that? Where's the stuff on that? MARSHALL Griffin is eager to get a story to the Associated Press Newswire - A.P. - the link with all the media. GRIFFIN In any case Mr Gore continued his theme from the morning speech that Mr Bush called for a tax cut raises the question does he have the experience to be President. That's exactly what Gore said, it directly contradicts what he just said in the debate. He just lied. A.P.s already on there. MARK CORALLO OPPOSITION RESEARCHER, REPUBLICAN PARTY The man can't tell the truth. He uses legalisms and he passes words just like his master, Bill Clinton, to get out of trouble. AL GORE And when the conflict came up in Bosnia I saw a genocide in the heart of Europe. I think... MARSHALL Having tasted blood the attack dogs want more. AL GORE Look, that's where World War One started, in the Balkans. My uncle was a victim of poisoned gas there. Millions of Americans.... GRIFFIN Hey yeah, let's check his uncle. Is that Witt Lafont? He's under investigation for drug trafficking. Check and see if it's Witt Lafont. MARSHALL This time the trail runs cold. COLLEAUGE Okay, so that is not a lie. Okay. Alright. MARSHALL What, you thought it was a lie there? GRIFFIN Well you never know with this guy - he shaves the truth. Hey, we confirm the uncle tear gas story. But in, but in, but in. Don't let him talk! Don't let him talk. MARSHALL The candidates are on a tightrope. Both teams - oppo researchers - are waiting for the other guy to slip, and with his habit of embroidering the truth, Al Gore is about to tumble. AL GORE Yes, first I want to compliment the Governor on his response to those fires and floods in Texas. I accompanied James Lee Witt down to Texas when those fires broke out. GRIFFIN Hey Jeanette, take a look at that. MARSHALL The problem is, he had been in Texas but not when he said. The researchers hunt for the facts. This they resolve is a lie and America must be told. GRIFFIN: [On the telephone] I know this would be perfect for is get one of these A.P. reporters or somebody on it for the next few days and then we get a lie out of it and roll a few days with a new lie. MARSHALL Al Gore's error makes him a liar on the front pages, an image which will stick. It's a coup for the Republican researchers. They dug the dirt and cast Mr Gore in a harsher light before the nation. SUSAN ESTRICH FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER You now have both sides with massive opposition research efforts, and the game today is both sides do it and then like school children in the yard we fight about who started it. PRESENTER The next President and First Lady of the United States...... (cheers and applause) BUSH Yes, I enjoyed that debate because it gave me a great...... (cheers) MARSHALL Next day in Pennsylvania George Bush is cock-a-hoop, his supporters exuberant. But while candidates smile and claim they're fighting a clean campaign, behind the scenes there's a network dedicated to throwing dirt at their opponents. This has been as dirty as any election year and the longer it's gone on the more negative it's got. We should have expected it. PETER MARSHALL The truth is, when it comes to it , when they're in trouble, both candidates, Bush and Gore, the more they're capable of going negative, and fairly brutally so. In fact it comes naturally to them. After all, it's how they got where they are today. As election year began, the dirt was flying. Bush and Gore were struggling to get their own party support. Both had expected an easier passage. Al Gore was raised to be president. His father, a US senator, expected it of the boy. His parents instilled a ruthlessness they deemed essential. MICHAEL POWELL SPEECHWRITER, BRADLEY CAMPAIGN He is prepared to do and say whatever it takes to be elected President. There is an old quote from his mother. I think she said attack, smile, and attack again, and I think he's followed that strategy throughout his political life. MARSHALL In January Gore was lagging behind in the polls. Many in his party, the Democrats, found him uninspired. Some were ready to dump him for Bill Bradley, his party rival, a point I raised with Gore. Mr Vice President, in view of your advantages, why are you having to struggle so hard against Bill Bradley? You should be doing rather better than you're doing shouldn't you? GORE Well... (laughing) Tell me your news organisation again. MARSHALL BBC. GORE Yes, once it became a two person race it was nearly inevitable that it would close and tighten. MARSHALL What he meant was this man, his opponent Bill Bradley, was too close for comfort, so he was about to get Gored. Al was to deal him the first dirty trick. POWELL Yesterday Gore touched a nerve by claiming that Bradley's plan to replace Medicaid with subsidised private insurance would devastate people with AIDS. He went before the San Francisco Chronicle and other gay groups and said Bill Bradley's health care plan will take your health care away. Some of these people were HIV positive, the most vulnerable people in the healthcare world, going to die a painful, in many cases lonely, deaths. And he went in there and said again, and just another boldfaced like. MARSHALL Bradley, infuriated, challenged Al Gore to his face. BRADLEY Quite frankly, I wonder whether, if you're running a campaign that is saying untrue things, whether you'll be able to be a president that gets people's trust. If you're running a campaign.... MARSHALL Gore's negative tactics were being questioned by his own party. His campaign team came to his defence. GREG SIMON I think it's fair game. MARSHALL Well Bill Bradley has called him "the elephant of negative campaigning" Bill Bradley, his own party man, has called him that. GREG SIMON SENIOR ADVISER, GORE CAMPAIGN Well I don't usually get my judgments from the losing person in a campaign. MARSHALL You think it's sour grapes? SIMON It's a little sour grapes and the Vice President was very hard on Bradley's policy about health care. MARSHALL For George Bush and the republicans there were similar troubles. Again it was a surprise. George W. Bush comes from an even stronger political dynasty than Gore. Grandson of a republican senator, son of a president, yet until six years ago he himself had had no political career. Then he was elected governor of Texas and found favour with the party's financiers who backed his run for the White House. His candidacy looked good. Then Bush lost an early vote to his main opponent in the party John McCain. He responded in classic style. [Advertisement] Last year John McCain voted against solar and renewable energy. That means more use of coal burning plants that pollute our air. MARSHALL He tried to destroy McCain with a barrage of negative advertisements. [Advertisement] Bush, he led one of the first states in America to clamp down on all coal burning... MARSHALL McCain, who'd promised to fight clean, was drawn into the mire. JOHN McCAIN: [Broadcast] I guess it was bound to happen. Governor Bush's campaign is getting desperate with a negative ad about me. His ad twists the truth like Clinton. We're all pretty tired of that. As president I'll be conservative and always tell you the truth no matter what. MARSHALL South Carolina, scene of the next big vote, was where the battle turned ugly. The negative ads were already running and it was into this viperfish climate that a new campaign controversy landed. The telephone poll is a staple of American marketing. Politicians use phone polls in election campaigns to gage their own popularity, but they can be abused. Push polling is when calls are made to slander an opponent and deter his support. It's another dirty trick. DONNA DUREN Even as they're knocking each other silly they're doing it kind of vicariously to us and in our case they actually did it to us personally, on the phone, in our home and how do you escape that? MARSHALL Donna Duren was a staunch Republican. Her family, including her son Chris, were impressed with John McCain. Eventually they told the pollsters, who kept calling, they were voting McCain. Then they got another call. DUREN Our son answered the phone and was greeting with a barrage of negative facts, or negative innuendo about the senator such that our son took the meaning of what they were him was that McCain was untruthful, that he tells lies repeatedly. MARSHALL Donna Duren was enraged, her son baffled. DUREN He was very taken back and really rather upset. He just kept saying, "But why would they do this? Why? And I said because they want to win. That's the bottom line. They want to win. MARSHALL She raised the call at a meeting with McCain. DUREN [at public meeting] He said "Mum, someone told me that Senator McCain is cheat and a liar and a fraud" and he was almost in tears. SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN FORMER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE I promised her I would not run a negative campaign so that no-one would ever receive a phone call from my campaign making those spurious allegations about anyone. MARSHALL The Bush campaign later called the Durens and apologised, but even today they denied direct responsibility blaming zealous supporters. CHARLES BLACK POLITICAL ADVISER, BUSH CAMPAIGN When you're out running for president you have thousands.. tens of thousands of volunteers and you can't control them all. MARSHALL Isn't that a convenient get out though? It wasn't us, it was our supporters, we're sorry about that. Isn't that a way of laying off the blame? BLACK No, facts are facts. The campaign didn't pay for it, didn't authorise it. Nobody who was authorised to spend money or speak for Governor Bush was involved in it. MARSHALL Whether or not the trick was authorised Bush won South Carolina. McCain responded by giving free reign to his own attack dog, a man with a long record of going negative. BLACK The media is trying to crash and they won't release where it is. MARSHALL Mike Murphy is the darling of the Republican Party. He revels in his tough guy reputation. MIKE MURPHY REPUBLICAN POLITICAL STRATEGIST I run fair campaigns that are about legitimate differences. I did learn way back a long time ago in sports that defence is the art of losing slow, and this isn't the losing business that we're in. MARSHALL George Bush's electioneering at a fundamentalist college left him open to attack by Murphy. The college had preached against Catholics, so Murphy placed phone calls to Catholic voters. [recorded phone call message] "This is a Catholic voter alert. Governor George Bush has campaigned against Senator John McCain by seeking the support of Southern fundamentalists who have expressed anti-Catholic views." MURPHY Well it's a short phone call want to get people's attention. The phone calls are almost like radio commercials. Now you call somebody up and they listen to a short.. maybe 40 second long recorded message. It's a widely used technology. "... including calling the Pope the anti-Christ, and the Catholic church a Satanic cult." MARSHALL Scare tactic though isn't it? MURPHY Well no, I don't think so. I think it was tough tactic, I don't think it was a scare tactic. McCAIN [at public meeting] We're fired up and we're going to win here. MARSHALL So McCAIN's team had got into the dirt and they duly did win the next round, but it was too late. McCAIN [at public meeting] Can I count on you to go to those polls on Tuesday? CROWD Yes. MARSHALL In the end it was Bush who took the party's crown. He'd gone negative early and often. SUSAN ESTRICH FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER The lesson of the primary campaigns this year were both Bush and Gore was that they won by going negative. Gore won by going negative on Bradley. Bush won by going negative on McCain. You had two men whose careers were saved from the threat of imminent destruction by effective negative campaigns. MARSHALL By the time of the party's summer conventions, the candidates were still promising a gentlemanly approach. Indeed, it was one of Governor Bush's pledges to Republicans and America. BUSH: [addressing public meeting] I don't have enemies to fight. I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect. CROWD (cheers and applause) MARSHALL Fine words from the Governor but they were soon to sound hollow. When the Democrats met, Gore was trailing. Then came 'the kiss'. An extravagant display for all America to see. The cameras recorded Gore's love for his wife and the passion gave him a lift in the polls. In the Bush camp the mood became defensive. We got a taste of that when a report I'd made was re-broadcast on the American cable channel C-Span. C-SPAN, WASHINGTON JOURNAL [Broadcast] We're going to show you first what it looked like on the BBC last night. PETER MARSHALL BRITISH BROADCASTING CORP. Campaign 2000 C-SPAN [Broadcast] The story of how George W. Bush got to this point is yet another of those American redemption tales. He may be hollow but at this point Americans like George W., and based on little more evidence than his smile, they deem him presidential. It seems Mr Bush himself had been washing. His reaction to the hollow description hinted he can dish out the dirt but he can't take criticism. He gave the BBC the brush off. MARSHALL Governor have you got time for a word with your friends from the BBC? BUSH No I don't. MARSHALL It went very well though didn't it. BUSH That's right. Were you at C-Span the other day? MARSHALL He smiled but didn't seem amused. A few weeks later another glimpse of the Bush behind the smile. At a rally with his running mate Dick Cheney, he spotted another reporter he didn't like, and Mr Bush forgot the microphone was on. BUSH There's Adam Clymer... major league asshole from the New York Times. MARSHALL The insult revealed things were getting tense. By the early autumn Al Gore had opened up a lead over George Bush for the first time in the race for the White House. So what happened? The Bush team went negative in a big way, only this time it rebounded all over them. [Advertisement] Ah, there's Al Gore, reinventing himself on television. MARSHALL The first sign of Autumn dirt was an ad that attacked Gore using his own speeches against him. [Advertisement] ....Al Gore raised his campaign money at a Buddhist temple, or the one who now promises campaign finance reform. Really! Al Gore claiming credit for things he didn't even do. GORE I took the initiative in creating the internet. [Advertisement] ...Yes, and I invented the remote control too. MARSHALL The ad was made by Alex Castellanos. ALEX CASTELLANOS: AD CONSULTANT, REPUBLICAN PARTY Some people say there shouldn't be any negative messages in politics, and I think what you have then is kind of an evolutionary dead end. Kind of the politics of an amoeba. [Advertisement] Gore opposed bipartisan reform... MARSHALL His next ad, attacking Gore's plan for prescriptions, was to become the subject of the biggest row so far. [Advertisement] "The Gore Prescription plan: bureaucrats decide. " Paid for by the Republican National Committee GREG SIMON In the 'rats' ad one of the Republican's campaign PR people put the word 'rats' in one frame of a commercial very briefly in a subliminal attempt to make people feel uneasy about the image of Al Gore. Now anybody will tell you that political commercials are built one frame at a time. There are no accidents in political commercials. [Advertisement] "The Gore prescription plan: bureaucrats decide." Paid for by the Republican National Committee CASTELLANOS I can't find a way to spell the word 'bureaucrats' without the letters r a t s in it. It flashes across the screen. MARSHALL For that frame bureau doesn't appear. It's just r a t s, large white letters. CASTELLANOS And again, I will tell you... Your name? MARSHALL Peter. CASTELLANOS Hey Peter. Let me see if I can say this more clearly for you. I didn't know it was there. It's a ridiculous thing. There is no secret rat strategy to win an election that I'm aware of. GREG SIMON What they mean to say is, it didn't work. Someone in Seattle, Washington caught it, told the press about it, and the fact of the matter is, it couldn't have gotten there by accident. That rat didn't crawl out on the screen by itself. It was put there. BUSH I talked to our ad man. There's one frame..... MARSHALL The final word on the subliminal rats came haltingly from George Bush. BUSH It's difficult.. it's impossible to see it.. you know.. the idea of putting subliminal messages into ads, I don't think we need to be subliminal about the differences between our views. Subliminal messages... you talk about subliminal... (laughing) MARSHALL Within weeks the arguments over dirty tricks turned surreal. The story starts here in Austin, Texas, official residence of Governor Bush. Pete Slover covers politics in Austin. He's a forma lawyer which is handy given the shenanigans that were to come. PETE SLOVER DALLAS MORNING NEWS It's a classic dirty tricks type of deal with everyone pointing their fingers every which way and suggesting that the other guys did it. MARSHALL The scandal concerns a parcel sent from this post office in Austin containing a confidential video tape with Bush rehearsing lines for his debates with Gore. It was mysteriously mailed to Gore's debates advisor. This was a potentially invaluable insight to the other side's plans. But he was uneasy. Smelling a rat - yet another rat - he gave the tape to the FBI. Meanwhile, the Bush people at their headquarters here, then accused the Gore people of either stealing the tape or of operating a mole in their camp. Moles, rats, suddenly rodents are all over this campaign. The suspect - a woman attached to the Bush camp who had been seen at the post office. YVETTE LOZANO BUSH CAMPAIGN AIDE I've offered to take the lie detector test. I've offered my fingerprints on numerous occasions. I've given them multiple samples of my fingerprints and the truth is on my side. MARSHALL The FBI are still investigating and the democrats insist they didn't' have any mole in the Bush camp stealing the tape. GREG SIMON SENIOR ADVISER, GORE CAMPAIGN We just received it in the mail. Had nothing to do with it. MARSHALL Nothing at all. So where do you think it's come from then? How do you think it got to you? SIMON Have no earthly idea. MARSHALL What do you think? SIMON I don't think at all. I have no idea. MARSHALL Reporter Pete Slover takes the long view about who was behind the mole tape episode. SLOVER If you look at the history of these sorts of tricks in the past, even the history involving the same players, typically you never know. You never get a good answer about who did these kinds of things. It can be done in a way that doesn't leave any tracks, and so this speculation hangs in the air. MARSHALL The dirty tricks had reached a new level, but there was worse to come. This year's elections aren't only for the White House. Some of the hardest fought contests are for Senate seats, none more so than in New York. It's here that Hillary Clinton, the first lady, is making history. She's running for senate; her opponent, the Republican Rick Lazio, and this fight is so down and dirty even the hacks are shocked. GREG BIRNBAUM NEW YORK POST I never thought I'd see anything like this. I've never covered a race like this in my life, and I certainly don't ever expect to cover a race like this again. HILLARY CLINTON: [addressing public meeting] I will be a strong and tireless advocate..... MARSHALL Hillary Clinton isn't an exciting speaker but she displays a kind of heroic stoicism; after the humiliations of recent years, she's had the training. But there's been nothing like the insults she faces now. [on air] Mrs Clinton, you're going to hate me. You were on television last night talking about your relationship with the President Bill Clinton. Have you ever been sexually unfaithful to him? HILLARY: [on air] Well you know Tom I do hate you for that because you know.. those questions I think are really out of bounds and everybody who knows me knows the answers to those questions. I just... [on air] Is the answer no? HILLARY: [on air] Well yes, of course it's no. MARSHALL Rick Lazio, the Republican, smiles and runs a straightforward negative campaign. His pitch to the voters is based on six words. "I am not Hillary Wadham Clinton." RICK LAZIO: [addressing public meeting] I have one advantage that she will never have. I can be myself. I am a New Yorker. CROWD (Cheers and applause) MARSHALL The whole thing has been masterminded by that veteran of the presidential race Mike Murphy. MIKE MURPHY REPUBLICAN POLITICAL STRATEGIST We're running a tough New York street campaign up there. It's working pretty well. MARSHALL A tough New York Street campaign. MURPHY Yes, New York expects a tough campaign. It's the culture of the place. It's a fair campaign but it's not high tea. [Advertisement] Compare Congressman Rick Lazio.... MARSHALL Murphy has been pushing the standard dirty business of election politics, attack axe. [Advertisement] ...Hillary Clinton is running a negative campaign because she's done nothing for New York. Her new ad contains five gross distortions in just 30 seconds. Hillary Clinton - you just can't trust her. PAID FOR BY LAZIO 2000 MARSHALL What about this line - 'Hillary Clinton - you just can't trust her' - is that legitimate? MURPHY Oh totally, totally. We find that in our polling. That's a number one thing people say about her. We ask do you have a hesitation when we interview thousands of New Yorkers in the polling system, you know.. what is your greatest hesitation about Mrs Clinton? "I just can't trust her." Why did she move here? She says it's because she loved New York. People know she held kind of an exploratory committee picking stakes. MARSHALL That's crude though, isn't it, you can't trust her. MURPHY But you can't, it's true. MARSHALL Things were to get very nasty very quickly. One of the most powerful voting blocks in New York is the Jewish population, they can swing an election. So no candidate wants to be regarded in any way as anti- Semitic. Enter Paul Fray from Arkansas. In the 60s Fray's best man was one Bill Clinton. By 1974 he was Clinton's campaign manager. The picture was taken then on election night, moments before an ugly row between Fray and Bill's new girlfriend - Hillary. MARSHALL What did she say? PAUL FRAY FORMER CAMPAIGN MANAGER FOR BILL CLINTON Well.. you know.. you heard it, "the fucking Jew bastard" and that's not typical for her I will be frank with you, but.... MARSHALL She called you that? FRAY Yes. MARSHALL The allegation of anti-Semitism was published in a book leaked first to the New York Post. In the middle of Hillary's run for the Senate it was time to do maximum damage. Greg Birnbaum broke the story. BIRNBAUM We thought this was a potential bombshell, so once we were able to confirm the story independently with Mr Fray, we decided to go to press with it, made a big splash on the front page with it. [News broadcast] Hillary Clinton was working hard today to repair whatever damage may have been done by a new book... [News broadcast] ... Paul Fray and his wife claim Hillary turns on them, cursing and using anti-Semitic... [News broadcast] ... the President jumped to his wife's defence saying the slur did not happen. MARSHALL Hillary's friends were indignant insisting nobody could believe the story. Mrs Clinton called a news conference. HILLARY I want it next to my absolutely unequivocal reputation of it so that anyone who tries to get someone else to believe this will at least have to say well, you know.. she says it's not true. You're darned right it's not true. It's absolutely false and I'm just tired of this kind of politics. HAROLD ICKES SENIOR ADVISER TO HILLARY CLINTON We felt at the time that it was a very hard-hitting charge and that she needed to address it straight on and address it publicly and only she could address it. We felt that it was useful for her to try to put it to bed and get it out of the way. MARSHALL Her opponent, Rick Lazio made hay. RICK LAZIO I don't think New Yorkers know who to believe, and therein lies a good deal of the problem. MURPHY We're not exploiting it but I will say this. Hillary Clinton's problem is people don't know if they can trust her on anything and that has been her problem in this issue. We've said that we don't think she's anti- Semitic, I said that. But... MARSHALL But Lazio hasn't said that. MURPHY Oh Rick has said that he doesn't know who to believe. MARSHALL As for Paul Fray, having been set upon by the American media, he regrets saying anything. FRAY You walk out the door, there's people there waiting to talk to you. You're being tailed everywhere you go. Your garbage you put it out and they go through your garbage. MARSHALL Paul Fray says Hillary isn't anti-Semitic but did make the insult. He took a lie detector test. Some dispute the results. Mr Fray says they're conclusive. [Lie detector test] Aug 20 2000, 6:50:14pm Did you hear Hillary Clinton call you a fucking Jew bastard? [Fray in response] Yes. FRAY It's a lie detector exam. I took the lie detector exam and I passed. MARSHALL You passed. FRAY Exactly. MARSHALL Dirt dating back over a quarter of a century has put extra venom into the campaign. Hillary Clinton's candidacy had been shaken. But in the end the Jewish issue was to take another twist. The White House released a photo showing Rick Lazio beaming with Yasir Arafat which hardly helps his hopes of winning the Jewish vote. The Clintons have trumped Lazio with what he says is their dirty trick. Mike Murphy was stumped. MURPHY Well I was completely outraged as a taxpayer to see the White House use their photographer to go try to attack our candidate with, and the truth is that that diplomatic ceremony where Rick was an observer of the PLO renouncing violence standing 15 feet away with Suha Arafat was Mrs Clinton, but miraculously that photo has never been released. MARSHALL As a yardstick for negative, nasty campaigns the events in New York take some beating. [Public meeting] Ladies and gentlemen - Al Gore. CROWD (cheers and applause) MARSHALL Back with the battle to be president, and the search for sleaze could yet be decisive. Al Gore, at a rally in Florida is still trying to shake off that liar image, still hoping to enthuse the voters. As for talk of dirty tricks or tactics, the candidate doesn't want to know. MARSHALL Mr Vice President, what about all the negative stuff? GORE I don't know what you're talking about. I don't like negative campaigning. MARSHALL In fact his opponent, George Bush, is currently the target of the dirtiest trick of all. It's nothing to do with the Gore people but it's being run by a man who's provided crucial if unsolicited help to the democrats in the past. On the other side of America it's another day, another shoot, for the country's biggest porn empire. It's a money making machine and the porn king grows richer by the minute. That's his name, indeed that's his tower dominating Beverly Hills. When he's not selling sleazy pictures Larry Flynt sees himself as the champion of free speech, the enemy of hypocrisy. His views have made him so unpopular with the far right he was once shot, it's left him paralysed. But Flynt's crusade against hypocrites - he means the Republicans - goes on. LARRY FLYNT PUBLISHER, HUSTLER MAGAZINE We're only interested when they take a position... public position that's contrary to the way they live their private life. Then I think they're fair game because that's where hypocrisy is born, and I see hypocrisy as being the greatest single threat to democracy that there is. MARSHALL And Flynt has a track record. Indeed his intervention became a turning point in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. LIVINGSTON [Speaker of the House] I will not stand for speaker of the House on January 6th and I thank my wife.... MARSHALL On the very day he was to move for Bill Clinton's impeachment the speaker of the House had to resign. Larry Flynt's investigators discovered he'd been having affairs. Flynt's revelations took the steam out of the impeachment and effectively saved the President. Now George Bush is running for President and facing the Flynt treatment. FLYNT We have an 8 month long investigation. George W. Bush.. unfortunately I'm unable to lay out the details but it doesn't involve drugs or money so you can figure what's left and... MARSHALL It doesn't involve drugs or money? FLYNT No. MARSHALL So it's sex. FLYNT Good guess. MARSHALL Back in Austin, Texas I met Flynt's two investigators. They've been digging through the dirt under orders from Flynt to prove the sex allegation. [ANONYMOUS] We've spent in some cases two weeks trying to find someone for whom we only had a first name. [ANONYMOUS] We've also geographically been back and forth across the country a number of times, been to Mexico, been to Texas. [ANONYMOUS] We've made hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and pursued many sources. Often we spent time listening to people who are on the verge of lunacy, sometimes in the hopes that they might have something that's interesting. AT one point we had to.. you know.. to visit every strip bar in a particular city looking for one person, and we finally found the right strip bar and had to spend three or four days sitting there waiting for this person to come in. MARSHALL They're focusing on Bush's so-called 'missing years', the 1970s when he says he was young and irresponsible. He was a heavy drinker and there's speculation about drugs as well. But Flynt's people are on a different tack. The dirt they've been digging is Flynt's claim that 30 years ago Bush got a girl pregnant and encouraged her to have an abortion. With Bush now running on an anti-abortion platform, it will be political dynamite if true. The 'if' is crucial. We found Larry Flynt is grossly exaggerating the strength of his evidence. In fact he has no hard evidence at all, not one bit. His case is based solely on one individual's hearsay second-hand information. The rest, the people Flynt calls witnesses, all insist the story isn't true. That's not deterring Larry Flynt. FLYNT If we're able to make this story before the election, I thin It'll have a dramatic effect on the election. I think it'll have the same effect on the election or investigation as it did on the impeachment. MARSHALL Having failed to convince first Panorama and then the mainstream US media, Larry Flynt has turned to America's talk radio. He's been spreading the dirt. [RADIO] It's Larry night, we have Larry Flynt with us. You have some interesting information I understand about a major presidential candidate. Is that true? FLYNT [on radio] For 8 months we've been investigating George W. Bush. MARSHALL This weekend he made the claim on CNN TV. In the Bush camp there's contempt for Flynt. CHARLES BLACK POLITICAL ADVISER, BUSH CAMPAIGN I think he's told some lies too, you know.. not leaking back up but he's not part of the mainstream media. MARSHALL Gore's campaign are embarrassed by Flynt. They say it's George Bush's political record that's important. SIMON One doesn't need to go into his personal life to see that he's had bad judgement as governor. MARSHALL But people are going to the personal life. As you know, Larry Flynt has investigators going in to personal life. SIMON Well I have no relationship, nor would I want one with Larry Flynt. MARSHALL You wouldn't want one with Larry Flynt? SIMON No. MARSHALL Removed from the sleaze and dirt-diggers the candidates give the appearance of debating issues. They're now in the final days before the election. Dropping the public geniality, Bush bashes Gore over White House misdeeds while he's been Vice President. BUSH I think that people need to be held responsible for the actions they take in life. CROWD Here here (cheers and applause) GORE Governor Bush, you have attacked my character and credibility and I am not going to respond in kind. MARSHALL Well not today he's not. However the candidates pose, what they present as a clean fight has turned out to be as rough and as negative as ever. From the bullets fired by the oppo research teams to the sleaze of the Hollywood porn king, the dirt mountain is still growing. There are 16 days left, days to dig dirt. Some fear democracy is getting buried on the way. ESTRICH It's terrible for democracy in the sense that negative campaigning confirms people's worst beliefs about the system, about it being a dirty, nasty, ugly, unattractive system. POWELL The great irony is that the war is turning people off, and more and more Americans are not turning up to vote. DUREN I think democracy itself is gravely wounded when we fight like this. It's not just about winning or losing, it's about really winning or losing democracy as a whole. __________________