Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 13, 1998
Hale's accuser was a Clinton delegate
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Caryn Mann, the Hot Springs psychic and tarot card reader who set off an investigation into claims that David L. Hale was supported by a conservative foundation at a time when he was cooperating with the Whitewater investigation in Little Rock, was a 1992 Clinton delegate to the Florida state Democratic convention.
New details of Mrs. Mann's background have emerged since the controversy developed last week.
Mrs. Mann, who now works for an undertaker in Bentonville, Ark., was employed by a private investigative firm headed by two former Arkansas state troopers who undertook a 1996 photo-surveillance assignment for the National Enquirer of a Little Rock woman, not identified, seeking to learn whether she was having a romance with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
The private detectives of the Mid-South Safety Council Inc. discovered that the woman was actually going out with an FBI agent who worked for and looked remarkably like Mr. Starr.
Before she moved to Bentonville, Mrs. Mann gave psychic readings at the Golden Leaves Bookstore in Hot Springs. She once confided to her boyfriend, Parker Dozhier, that she knew where Jimmy Hoffa was buried. She also boasted that she could turn the rain on and off, and had guided U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf war through mental telepathy.
At the time, she was living with Parker Dozhier, a stringer, or part-time correspondent, for American Spectator magazine and owner of Dozhier's Bait Shop and Rainbow Landing on Lake Catherine near Hot Springs. She moved out of the house the couple shared behind the bait shop in 1996.
"I had some very strong feelings for this woman and tried to help her as much as I could," says Mr. Dozhier. "I took her in as a crippled bird and in the end, all I had was a crippled bird. I gave her $3,000 and told her to get some help with her mental problems."
Mrs. Mann was not available for comment. Her attorney, David Matthews, has said she would cooperate with the investigation of the allegations about David Hale, but Mr. Starr should refer the matter to the Justice Department "to avoid even the appearance of a conflict."
Mr. Dozhier is the focus of accusations by Mrs. Mann that her son, Joshua Rand, then 13, saw him give Mr. Hale money while Mr. Hale, a former Little Rock municipal judge, was cooperating in the Whitewater probe. She said that the cash came from a conservative foundation that publishes the American Spectator magazine, and that Mr. Hale received it during visits to a lake cabin owned by Mr. Dozhier.
"I never gave David Hale any money, not a single dime," Mr. Dozhier says. "No one ever told me to give him money. Never. Not once. And no one ever saw me give him money, because it never happened."
Mr. Dozhier, who says Mrs. Mann lived with him from July 1994 to July 1996, says he and Mr. Hale talked only once about the Whitewater investigation: "He told me, 'Parker, this is going to get big, really big,' and we never spoke of it again."
The American Spectator Educational Foundation is a tax-exempt group that funded a four-year, $1.7-million project to seek information on Whitewater, with substantial assistance from two foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, a Pittsburgh newspaper publisher and philanthropist. The Scaife foundations discontinued their support in November 1997.
Last week, the Justice Department asked Mr. Starr to investigate the Mann accusations. Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the independent counsel's jurisdiction "specifically encompasses obstruction and witness tampering matters arising" out of his investigation, but he left open the possibility that Mr. Starr could refer the case to Justice.
Mr. Dozhier, a resort owner, fur trapper, free-lance writer and former television reporter, says he received $1,000 a month in stringer fees over a four-year period -- beginning Jan. 1, 1994 -- to serve as the magazine's "eyes and ears" in Arkansas. He says the contract expired Dec. 31, 1997, and that he was paid $48,000 overall.
He says he mostly clipped articles from Arkansas newspapers to send to the Spectator and monitored Arkansas radio and TV stories for items about Whitewater.
His pay came from Stephen S. Boynton, a Virginia lawyer and part of the American Spectator research project. Terry Eastland, the magazine's publisher, says there was no evidence that any money from the so-called "Arkansas project" went to Mr. Hale.
Mr. Dozhier says Mr. Hale visited him "six to eight times" over a two-year period, making the 200-mile drive from Shreveport, La., where he had been relocated by the government, to Little Rock to meet with the independent counsel's office. He says he let Hale stay in the cabin and later use a car because "David's my friend."
"In fact, Mr. Boynton once questioned me about the car and said it might not look appropriate for me to let him use it," Mr. Dozhier says. "At the time, Hale had no other way to get around and was going through a pretty rough time. He eventually bought the car for $1,200."
In an interview earlier this year with Salon, an on-line magazine, Mrs. Mann said she saw Mr. Dozhier give money to Mr. Hale, in payments ranging from $40 to $500, on occasions in 1994 through 1996. Later, she told FBI agents and Newsweek magazine she did not see the transactions, that her son had.
Mr. Hale, who served 19 months after pleading guilty to unrelated fraud in the Whitewater investigation, was the government's chief witness in the first Whitewater trial, leading to convictions of Jim Guy Tucker, then the governor of Arkansas, and the Clintons' business partners, Susan McDougal and the late James McDougal. Mr. Hale denies Mrs. Mann's accusations, too.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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