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Clinton Surveillance Scandal

The Clinton Surveillance Scandal is the October 1992 news story, announced by a Georgia State Police official, that FBI agents had been spying on presidential candidate Bill Clinton in Dahlonega, Georgia. It made Dick "The Biz" Baxter briefly "the most hated cop in America".
Type Lore (political scandal, alternate-history election event)
Aliases Bill Clinton wiretap scandal; Watergate-type story; the Clinton thing; the Clinton Polaroids
Date October 1992 (Letterman epilogue on November 1, 1992)
Place Dahlonega, Georgia
Principals The Biz; Andrew Howard; Big Bill; Georgia State Police
First appearance Appalachia 06 (the night-vision headset); Appalachia 07 (the press conference)

Overview

The scandal has its roots in a private errand. In Appalachia 01 the KGB tasks the Biz with planting a camera and microphone in room 111 of the Smith Hotel (see Spy Camera and Microphone), and he keeps the job from the rest of the team. A newspaper clipping in the same episode mentions that Clinton is giving a big campaign speech in Atlanta in the next couple of days (Appalachia 01).

The table never spells out what caused the scandal. The pieces the episodes provide are these:

  • At the start of Appalachia 06, state police officers searching the bushes outside the team's hotel find a night-vision headset. One says, "Bag it and tag it, the Secret Service fellows I want to take a look at that" (Appalachia 06).
  • In Appalachia 07 the sheriff relays what a friend at the state police told him: the Secret Service tipped them off, they found a piece of surveillance equipment, and its prints matched an FBI employee in the database (Appalachia 07).
  • In Walkers 01, Letterman asks the Biz about "the night vision goggles that the state police recovered", which they say they found in a rose bush. The Biz wants them back.

History

The press conference

Donald McManley asks the team whether they have been watching the news. A state police official has held a press conference saying the FBI is in Dahlonega surveilling a presidential candidate, and fingerprints from something "recovered from the scene" match an unnamed FBI agent. Kurt Larson, long out of the country, does not know who Clinton is, and Andre reminds the table that the Democratic nominee is about to win an election in October 1992 (Appalachia 07).

Big Bill calls Andrew Howard and berates him. He says there are only four FBI officers in Dahlonega, demands a detailed inventory of everything the team has done in the last 50 hours, and asks how many people are dead. Andrew's answer leads to a plea of "We're not surveilling Bill Clinton. We're surveilling dead Chewbacca." Bill ends the call with "Don't have surveilled Bill Clinton" (Rita (as Andrew Howard) and Andre (as Big Bill), Appalachia 07).

The players treat the story as a distraction and a possible frame-up. The Biz suggests it is someone faking a Watergate-type smear, and the team wonders whether something was stolen from their stolen car. Later, in the mine, the Biz says he wishes the "state police creeps" would come down and see it, since it is "way weirder than Bill Clinton" (Ezra (as Dick "The Biz" Baxter), Appalachia 09).

Media fallout

By Appalachia 08 the team is dodging the press. At the Spud Hut plant a Fox 5 Atlanta crew recognizes "Andrew Howard with the FBI", and a reporter asks him on live TV about "the Bill Clinton wiretap" and whether it is "the next Watergate". Andrew answers "Nothing" and then "Thank you for your time". At the table, Dante jokes that the Biz has no bug left to plant on Jan Martense because he "used them all up on Clinton" (Appalachia 08).

Aftermath and the 1992 election

The epilogue in Walkers 01 is set on November 1, 1992. It opens with Letterman's monologue, which jokes that the allegations "hit a lot harder when there's Polaroids". Letterman interviews the Biz as "the most hated cop in America". The Biz tells him none of the team knew Clinton was in town, and Letterman adds that, as he understands it, the Polaroids were taken with a Russian camera, which the Biz had not heard. Pressed on why a gold miner would spy on Clinton, the Biz offers "Maybe he's a Republican" (Ezra (as Dick "The Biz" Baxter), Walkers 01).

In the same episode President Bush tells Andrew he expects Clinton to be sitting in his chair in a couple of days. He does not believe it was coincidence that "some criminal with a bunch of ape-men" was surveilling Clinton in the same town as the task force, and calls it enemy action (see Enemy Action). Andre also tells the table that Ross Perot is polling above 45% in most polls since "the double scandal", and Bush clearly leads only in Texas (Walkers 01). In Walkers 08 Andre explains the alternate history: Perot needed "two October surprises", and both came from the same event, the incumbent caught spying on the challenger and the challenger caught in a sex scandal, "Watergate and Monica Lewinsky at the same time". See Alternate history.

The scandal follows the Biz into later arcs. At the Salt Lake City field office a staffer recognizes him as "the fella who spied on Clinton" and says Clinton "had it coming" (Walkers 02). In Ballard, the bartender says "you spied on Bill Clinton" (Walkers 03). Robert Bigelow tells the team that "a lot of interesting stories follow in your wake", and Zack (as Huell) raises the "Clinton thing" only to be told it "didn't even make the list" (Walkers 02).

How the case ended

Unrecorded session

The finale of the Appalachia arc, Appalachia 10, was never recorded. Walkers 01 is the only account of how the case ended.

According to Letterman's questions in Walkers 01, Jan Martense, described as "the illegal gold miner for the food company", was the one surveilling Clinton. Jan is by then held at the CIA black site Omaha, and the Biz's night-vision monocular was recovered by the state police in a rose bush. When Kurt visits him, Jan is the one asking why the Spud Hut corporate facility exploded after he fled it (Walkers 01).

What remains unknown

  • Which equipment was used to watch Clinton. The Biz's KGB errand and the Polaroids' Russian camera point the same way, but no one connects them aloud.
  • Why the KGB wanted a camera in room 111, and who was meant to be filmed.
  • How the Polaroids reached the press.
  • Appalachia 07 says the equipment's prints matched an FBI employee, while Walkers 01 puts Jan behind the camera. The episodes never reconcile the two.

Appearances