will now allow Reno to claim she is doing a vigorous investigation of campaign financing, when in reality Judicial Watch's public depositions show she is not. Not even John Huang's secretary has been questioned by Justice investigators; nor has any other Commerce official. Commerce is at the center of the Clinton Administration's illegal fund-raising. In short, the plea agreements are sadly predictable.

The American people deserve full disclosure, and that way, they will be able to judge for themselves whether anything untoward was going on between these energy companies and the Bush-Cheney administration.

The reality of this situation is that scarce resources will have to be allocated to this liability. That's the reality and it has not sunk in.

The plea agreement negotiated by Janet Reno's Justice Department with Nora, Gene and Trisha Lum is a hoax. It allows two key players in the campaign finance scandal to plead to lesser offenses and effectively concludes a serious investigation that, if taken to a conclusion, could have seriously affected the Clinton Administration's claim that it committed no illegalities in the campaign finance scandal. Nora Lum was a close confidant of Ron Brown and remains close to John Huang. Trisha Lum, her daughter, worked for Brown at the Commerce Department and worked on trade missions.

And after Mr. Stephanopoulos made the statement, he had a series ofdiscussions ... not just with Mr. [Paul] Begala, but with Rahm Emanuel, Ann Lewis, Mike McCurry and yes, Sid Blumenthal, ... Begala, [James] Carville, all of them were in contact with each other ... a flurry of communications over Mr. Stephanopoulos' statement. We've asked to depose these people. And not unexpectedly, the government has yet ... once again ... come in to try to block the depositions.

It's a mess. What we've seen is that the standards employed by Broward County are extremely specious.