Reporter who snagged Broaddrick rape account wins Pulitzer, Dorothy Rabinowitz writer for the Wall Street Journal, Bill Clinton rape of Juanita Broaddrick, After Rabinowitz’s report NBC finally broadcast 23 minutes of the five-hour account, Newsmax April 18, 2001

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From NewsMax April 18, 2001.

“Reporter Who Snagged Broaddrick Rape Account Wins Pulitzer

Dorothy Rabinowitz, star writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize Monday for distinguished commentary. As the Journal noted on its Web site, Rabinowitz earned the honor for her series on false child-abuse prosecutions and other incisive pieces she penned last year.

But in fact, Rabinowitz is most famous for a courageous journalistic coup not honored by the Pulitzer committee or even mentioned in the Journal’s online squib. The oversight is more than a little regrettable. Because in all likelihood, had Ms. Rabinowitz not taken an interest the year before in the most sensational political crime story in a generation – one already obtained by NBC’s Lisa Myers, whose bosses refused to report it – the world would have never heard the account of the woman who maintains to this day that Bill Clinton raped her 23 years ago next week.

NewsMax.com was well aware of Juanita Broaddrick’s distress and anguish at the prospect of finally going public to NBC – only to have the network decline to air her story. She confided as much exclusively to this column six days after her sit-down with Myers.

Aware that the sensational story could change history – Clinton’s impeachment trial on Sexgate charges was then at its apex – the Journal dispatched Rabinowitz to Van Buren, Ark., in early February 1999.

After Rabinowitz gained her trust, Broaddrick decided to recount her story of a brutal rape at the hands of the then-Arkansas attorney general. On Feb. 19, 1999, the Wall Street Journal published the story on its editorial page.

It was, without a doubt, the most shocking allegation ever leveled against a sitting president of the United States.

It’s no small testimony to Rabinowitz’s journalistic integrity, not to mention Broaddrick’s credibility, that neither Clinton nor his wife has ever seen fit to personally deny the charge.

The Journal’s decision to pursue and publish the horrifying report broke the media logjam. The next day, the Washington Post went public with its own Broaddrick interview – which, like NBC, they had been sitting on.

Five days after Rabinowitz’s report, NBC finally broadcast 23 minutes of the five-hour account Myers had obtained from the Clinton rape accuser. Polls taken afterward showed that two-thirds of those who watched Broaddrick’s tearful retelling believed that the president of the United States was a rapist.

In the end, Broaddrick’s story did not change history – at least not in the sense that it altered the outcome of Clinton’s trial. The Journal published the Rapegate shocker on Feb. 19, seven days after Clinton was acquitted in the Senate.

Yet in another sense, Broaddrick’s story was indeed historic. Before viewing secret impeachment evidence that included her FBI witness statement, up to 50 House Republicans were prepared to vote against impeachment.

But after reviewing Broaddrick’s account and other still-secret material, 64 of the 65 House members who made the trip to the Ford Building evidence room voted to make Bill Clinton the first elected American president ever to be impeached.

Without Juanita Broaddrick’s courageous decision to tell her story to investigators, Clinton’s impeachment never would have happened. And without Dorothy Rabinowitz’s equally brave decision to run the mainstream media’s Broaddrick blockade, most Americans would still have no idea of the role the Arkansas nursing home operator played in the historic episode.

Interestingly, Rabinowitz won her first Pulitzer only after the committee leapfrogged over its three finalists. She had been a finalist three times before, in 1995, 1996 and 1998, but not in 2000. The Journal called her a “wild-card” choice.

We have no idea what kept her out of the running in 1997. But it’s not hard to imagine that the Pulitzer Committee’s liberal sensibilities were offended by her 1999 Broaddrick report.

Perhaps events in the interim have changed a few minds there. And Rabinowitz is finally getting the recognition she deserves as the mainstream reporter who broke the most disturbing story of the Clinton era.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20010611014749/http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2001/4/18/151017