Democrats Cry `Foul' Over Search for Clinton's Files

DUCK! The mud continues to fly.

The Democrats are charging Republican dirty tricks and demanding that the State Department fully explain its search of United States embassy files for information on Gov. Bill Clinton's years at Oxford University.

The Democrats' ire is directed at the fact that Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Tamposi, a political appointee, personally contacted two embassies to ask them to expedite the search into Governor Clinton's records. The State Department has denied wrongdoing, but vice presidential candidate Al Gore charges that the action was "outrageous and disturbing."

The inquiry into Clinton's records was not touched off by the Bush campaign, however. Ms. Tamposi made her phone calls in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Hearst newspapers, ABC News, the Associated Press and other news organizations amid rumors - denied by Clinton - that the Democratic candidate had tried to renounce his US citizenship to avoid the draft. Clinton's stock is up

Forget the polls. Look to the free market to find out which candidate will win the Nov. 3 election. On Jan. 10, the University of Iowa opened a futures exchange with students, LaSalle Street traders, and pin-stripped Wall Street types trading on who will become the next president, reports Monitor staff writer Ron Scherer.

And who do the traders think will win? Not surprisingly, it's Bill Clinton. But the margin is much closer than the public opinion polls: last week, Clinton was ahead by only 6.9 percentage points.

The markets have been extremely accurate in the past. In the 1988 election, they predicted the outcome within .2 percent. They also have accurately predicted the outcome of elections in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Turkey.

So far, there is only $63,000 wagered ... errr, invested ... on the campaign by 800 registered traders. However, as news of the Iowa market spreads, more speculators are putting down money on four separate markets: the Presidential Market; the Perot Market (how well Perot will do - currently at 14 percent of the vote); the plurality market (the odds for each candidate: 75 percent chance of winning for Clinton, 24 percent for Bush, 1 percent for Perot); and the Derivatives Market, which indicates the lev el of confidence in the predictions in the other markets.