Word: inmanned
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...what was one to make of his contention that New York Times columnist William Safire and Senate Republican leader Bob Dole had cooked up a deal: Safire would "turn up the heat" on the Whitewater scandal if Dole would take a "partisan look" at the nominee? Inman says he heard that from two Senators, but hardly anyone in Washington believed there was any conspiracy. "I think he was given bad information," says Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, a close friend. Others speculated that Inman had read implications of hostility into one of Dole's wisecracks. The admiral has never disclosed...
There were other explanations for Inman's behavior -- in particular, speculation that he bowed out because he feared disclosure of some damaging secret. But what could it be? Whispers have been going around Washington that Inman is a closet gay. Inman, however, has met them head on. He told the ABC- TV affiliate back home in Austin, Texas, that he is not homosexual, but "I have gay friends. I deliberately ((sought them out)) to try to understand them . . . If that starts rumors...
Commentators raised three other matters: Inman's failure to pay taxes on wages of a housekeeper; the 1988 bankruptcy of Tracor, a major defense manufacturer, after an investment group headed by Inman bought it out; and a letter to a judge defending the patriotism of James Guerin, a businessman who had been convicted of illegal sales of weapons technology to South Africa...
Safire opines that "Inman was protecting himself" against disclosures about "his defense-related business activities over the last 10 years" and that his fulminations against the press were "a smoke screen." But it is not at all certain that anything remains to be discovered. The basic facts, and Inman's responses, have long been a matter of public record. In an interview with TIME, Inman stressed his extreme reluctance to take the job in the first place -- which helps explain his hypersensitivity to criticism that someone avid for Cabinet rank might shrug off. He says he became so tense...
Only about a month ago, President Clinton nominated Bobby Ray Inman to be % Secretary of Defense. Here's what people were saying about him then...