And who authored that seven-page report? Denver attorney and Clinton pal James Lyons, who took on the job when Whitewater first surfaced as a campaign issue. Lyons, an expert in banking and commercial litigation, hired the local accounting firm of Patten, MacPhee to review Whitewater's files. Their report concluded that the Clintons had invested at "considerable" risk and actually wound up losing almost $70,000.
Two months ago, when the report first came under attack, Lyons told Westword he stood behind the report and that its critics were engaging in "journalistic sleight of hand." That, of course, was before Lyons corrected himself. A letter from Lyons was released Friday along with the Clintons' tax returns, noting that the lawyer had mistakenly included in the Whitewater deal a $20,000 loan Clinton had used to help his mother buy a cabin.
Have it your way: Channel 9 planned to make hamburger of the competition with its handy travel guide, "Getting Around Denver International Airport." The brochure, distributed earlier this month at local outlets of co-sponsor Burger King, features a perky "bon voyage" from Channel 9 anchor Adele Arakawa, who notes that "we're all starting at square one" when trying to find our way around DIA. But if you follow KUSA's advice, you may never get there at all. The accompanying map indicating rental-car routes misses reality by a literal mile. Several months ago--long before the brochure was printed--the rental areas were moved away from the terminal building to the northwest side of Pena Boulevard. Now not only 9 wants to know: Who screwed up? According to KUSA's Thea Rock, the station used outdated information for its map, and even though Arakawa gives "special thanks" to the Airport Public Affairs Office for its cooperation, airport flacks failed to catch the error. The guide has since gone back to the drawing board.
Last but not East: "A year ago I asked myself why am I, a knowledge worker and a futurist, living in Denver when I wanted to live on the Chesapeake?" Gee, we don't know--except for that fact that the man who recently uttered that quote to the Washington Post was Phil Burgess, self-proclaimed "lone eagle," and head of the Denver-based (and, one would think, significantly titled) Center for the New West. But what's in a name, anyway? Burgess now lives in Annapolis.
Westword's continuing coverage of the Rocky Flats grand jury has been named as one of the "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 1993" by Project Censored. Weighing in at No. 12, "the Rocky Flats case is a classic example of how a small but aggressive weekly paper can bring an issue to national attention through its own persistent coverage.
