Lewinsky-Clinton-Travolta
Primary Colors Pandora's Box

[March 12, 1998]

Did Clinton trade national security in exchange for reversing the adverse impact Primary Colors would have had on his image and on the Lewinsky and Jones affairs? Did John Travolta run a sting operation on President Clinton for his Scientology cult? Will the March 20th movie release of Primary Colors be a huge deception of the movie-going public? These are just a few of the questions that have been swirling since George Magazine opened the Pandora's Box of this new Clinton controversy. What follows is background on just part of the growing controversy.

The Primary Colors Book -- Background

A recent article by reporter Fintan O'Toole provided a concise summary of the Primary Colors book:

"Most people will remember Primary Colors, the novel by Anonymous (later unmasked as the journalist Joe Klein), that became a huge international best-seller in 1996. In America, partly because it is an extremely good read and partly because its release was brilliantly timed to coincide with an unusually dull 1996 primary season and to ensure saturation coverage, it sold 1.2 million copies...

Its attraction was obvious. It had thinly disguised portraits of Clinton (Governor Jack Stanton), his wife Hillary, his campaign manager, James Carville, and other members of the inner circle. And because its author was unknown, it was assumed to be the work of an insider. Within a broadly accurate account of the 1992 Clinton campaign, it dropped a number of salacious sexual details. These, naturally, were read as the inside dope, the stuff that the political elite knew about but wouldn't tell.

Once you had read it, it became, at some semi-conscious level, part of what you "knew" about Clinton. It conditioned you to believe that most of what was thrown at Clinton - Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and the rest - was undoubtedly true." [Irish Times, February 27, 1998].

The Primary Colors Movie -- Current Events

Last April, John Travolta, already chosen as the star of the movie, addressed a big conference on volunteer work in Philadelphia on behalf of the cult he belongs to, Scientology. At the same conference, he met Clinton.

Travolta told George magazine, "The next day, I met with Clinton. He told me: `Your program sounds great. More than that, I'd really love to help you with your issue over in Germany with Scientology.' I was waiting for the seduction that I had heard so much about. I thought, `Well, how could he ever seduce me? And after we talked, I thought, `Bingo!' He did it. Scientology is the one issue that really matters to me."

According to George Magazine, "[Clinton] went to the extraordinary length of assigning his national security advisor, Sandy Berger, to be the administration's Scientology point man." Berger even briefed Travolta as he would a senior senator. George also reported that compared to the book it is based upon, the film is much more sympathetic to the Clinton character.

Clinton was reportedly incensed with the Kennedy clan (fellow democrats) for the George article; John Kennedy, Jr. runs the magazine. In an effort to stop the George story from going to press, the usually reclusive leader of lawsuit-happy Scientology met with the editors of the magazine. But David Miscavige was unsuccessful. Later, in a seemingly desperate action to protect his cult, Travolta began denying he made the implicating statements, but George was still unmoved. The interview is reportedly well documented on tape.

The Events That Follow

For months after the April 1997 Clinton-Travolta meeting, the State Department uncharacteristically chided Germany in human rights reports and public forums for Germany's treatment of Scientology. The Meet the Press television show addressed the growing Cultgate controversy in an interview with national security advisor Sandy Berger in February.

Host Tim Russert asked Berger, "Did you or the president hope to influence Mr. Travolta, and make `Primary Colors' more favorable to the president?" and "But isn't it unusual for the national security advisor to brief an actor from Hollywood?" Berger told Russert, "Uh, it sounds to me, Tim, like you're getting, you're getting uh, developing your own conspiracy theories here."

As Fintan O'Toole wrote, "Even before he was re-elected, Clinton knew that a slick, big-budget film of a novel that purported to reveal the secrets of his sex life would be released half-way through his second term. Clinton and his advisers set about the task of doing to the film fiction of Primary Colors what they are so used to doing to real life. They seduced and charmed and finessed it into the shape they wanted." [Irish Times, February 27, 1998]

Will The Primary Colors Release Flop?

Normally controversy is good for a film's publicity. Unfortunately for Primary Colors, this may not be the case. What is controversial about the film is not what's in it, but what's not in it.

The Primary Colors movie took a highly critical and embarrassing best selling Primary Colors book and whitewashed it into what now appears to be a Clinton infomercial. Adding insult to injury, the Primary Colors stars have been on the promotion circuit trying to convince the media and public that this movie might hurt or upset Clinton.

Therein lies a big Primary Colors deception. For more on how Clinton procured Primary Colors and how the Primary Colors people may have helped sell out the content of the Primary Colors book, see Fintan O'Toole's full article at the Irish Times' web site.

What's Next?

As if turning the movie from political commentary to commercial were not enough of a disaster for the Primary Colors studio, investors, and promoters, the controversy deepens. John Travolta's appeasing Clinton through the movie was his way of using the movie as a perverse bargaining chip for the defense and promotion of one the world's most dangerous cults. Clinton's offer to 'help' Scientology in Germany contradicts the US's national security interests.

The last time a cult tried to manipulate a movie, the Moonie Inchon movie, it became a box office disaster despite big names and big money. Did Primary Colors creators forget that? Or did they just make a very bad decision in allowing a celebrity employee to use their business as a vehicle for his cult's political agenda?

To understand the severity of how bad a decision it may have been to assist Scientology, it is necessary to briefly review some of the vast public record on Scientology.

a.) Scientology's headquarters in Los Angeles was the object of the biggest FBI raid in U.S. history, involving almost 150 agents.

In this raid the FBI discovered many secret policy documents authored by Scientology's founder laying out Scientology's real political goals. For example: "The vital targets on which we must invest most of our time are: (T1) Depopularizing the enemy to the point of obliteration. (T2) Taking over the control or allegiance of the heads or proprietors of all news media. (T3) Taking over the control or allegiance of key political figures. (T4) Taking over the control or allegiance of those who monitor international finance... Intelligence is not concentrating on what they should be - the WFMH [World Federation of Mental Health], the NAMH [National Association of Mental Health] - These are the groups I want destroyed." [Scientology's Secret Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, January 14, 1969].

Other secret documents found by the FBI indicate that Scientology uses its status as a religion as a facade to hide its true political and commercial objectives.

b.) Another widely available public document clearly stated the dangers of Scientology. A U.S. federal prosecutor's memorandum to a judge urged stiff jail sentences for nine top leaders of Scientology who had pleaded guilty to burglaries, forgeries, infiltration, obstruction of justice, and other crimes against more than 100 U.S. federal agencies including the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, and the IRS. The memo stated, "The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No building, office, desk, or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials and any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial schemes." [U.S. v. Heldt et al. 688 F.2d. 1238. (D.C. Cir 1980) Cert. Den. 456 U.S. 926 (1982)].

How Primary Colors (and US intelligence agencies in not protecting the President from the Travolta sting operation) have been caught so off-guard by this cult's covert operation is baffling. Especially as more stories are aired describing Scientology's mysterious cult member deaths, outrageous human rights abuses, bizarre UFO cosmology, and para-military structure. Time Magazine's cover article [May 6, 1991] quoted a cult expert who described Scientology as "the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen."

It is this infamous history of Scientology's that begs the question: did Travolta disclose Clinton's Scientology-Primary Colors quid pro quo because Clinton did not deliver the promised German protection for Travolta's cult? Was Travolta's subsequent denial of that disclosure just another Scientology ruse to divert attention from Scientology's notorious vindictiveness toward those who cross it or do not deliver?

The Consequences

It remains to be seen if moviegoers worldwide will boycott Primary Colors because of John Travolta's involvement in a Scientology covert operation to leverage the President of the world's most powerful country. Or whether they will avoid the film because no substance remains. At the least, Primary Colors promoters should consider correcting the deception by placing a warning label on their film. Perhaps:

Warning: the Primary Colors movie differs greatly from the Primary Colors book. The film you are about to see is a Clinton infomercial.

Will Hollywood studios and investors learn something from the Primary Colors scandal? Maybe they will learn that celebrities like John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Kirste Alley, Ann Archer, Lisa Marie Presley, Jenna Elfman, and Nicole Kidman cross the line when they use studio promotions, investments, and business to promote their cult's bizarre political agenda for world domination. Such promotions done on their own time, with their own funds, is the celebrities' constitutional right. But using the time, money, and tacit support of Hollywood not only inculpates the industry but also jeopardizes its interests. Maybe the movie and television industry will think twice before again allowing its investments and interests to be colored by one of the world's most dangerous cults.

Other Media Comments On Primary Colors

"Primary Colors is a 'celluloid valentine' to the president..." --George magazine.

"But the prospect of a wide screen valentine became ever more probable as Mr. Clinton took the moment to feel Mr. Travolta's pain. And told him he would try to make it go away." --The Wall Street Journal

"For it is now clear that Bill Clinton has just pulled off an extraordinary feat of image-making. He has ensured that a major fictional film about a president whom everyone assumes to be Clinton will, instead of being a damaging attack, convey a favorable impression of its subject... And so, Primary Colors, when it is released in a few weeks' time, will be anything but the devastating satire on the President that was widely expected." --Irish Times

"You have to be dead not see that the film favors Clinton. More than anything, it promotes what a decent person he is." --John Travolta as quoted by the New York Post

"As if President Clinton doesn't have enough to worry about these days, his administration is now being accused of pandering to prominent Scientologist and actor John Travolta, in order to influence his portrayal of the president in 'Primary Colors.' " --Contra Costa Newspapers

"Still reeling from the Zippergate scandal, Bill Clinton has been hit with yet another 'seduction' charge--this time by Hollywood hunk John Travolta!" --National Enquirer

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