RUMORS VICTIMIZE HILLARY, GEORGE W.

WHAT do the frenzies over Puerto Rican terrorists and George W. Bush's
youthful indiscretions have in common?

All assumption, all the time. That old newsroom saw about never letting
facts get in the way of a good story has roared into real life.

None other than Cokie Roberts, diva of the political talk circuit, declared
her astonishment at the flip-flop that had Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the
end, disagreeing with President Clinton's grant of clemency to 16 Puerto
Ricans convicted of terrorist-related activities in the 1970s and early 1980s.

"The first lady opposing the president's call for commuting the sentences
of some Puerto Rican terrorists, something we thought he was doing for
her!" Roberts breathlessly announced at the height of the furor.

That's the way it's gone. For weeks the media assumption -- promoted and
encouraged by Republicans in New York and Washington -- has been that the
so-called sudden clemency grant must have been made to help Hillary Clinton
win support among Latino voters for her upcoming New York Senate campaign.

And where are the facts that underlie the assumption? Nowhere.

One journalist who did delve into the history of the clemency offer was
Newsday's Ken Fireman, who discovered that the clemency petition had in
fact been filed on the convicts' behalf back in 1993, that it was the
subject of countless meetings by the White House counsel's office
throughout the mid-1990s and that it finally was handed to the president
for a decision only recently because former White House counsel Charles
Ruff had been sidetracked by the task of handling the president's
impeachment. Ruff had promised the groups supporting clemency to have a
decision before his departure in August.

Now, this could be complete hogwash.

Just more spin from a White House that whirls incessantly. The cynicism is
enticing but for the most nit-picking of matters: No one has come up with
any facts to the contrary.

The same forces behind the nagging that George W. Bush got a few weeks ago
about whether his period of youthful irresponsibility included sniffs of
the white stuff. Texas reporters and other journalists have been on the
cocaine case, but none has come up with evidence Bush used it. No one has
come forward claiming to have seen Bush snorting, to have snorted with him
or to have sold him the stuff to snort.

Yet Bush was hounded about past cocaine use until he finally stumbled all
over himself trying to convince us he could pass a federal-employment
background check. This set the time frame for possible past use at more
than 25 years ago -- enough to shut everyone up, for now.

Polls overwhelmingly show real people don't care about Bush and coke. By
next November, there's bound to be more on voters' minds than a couple of
dozen Puerto Ricans who have gone back to the island. In fact, those most
likely to suffer long-term public disdain aren't in campaign war rooms.
They're in newsrooms.