Nation: Billy Carter Is Not a Buffoon

So he demonstrated as he answered the Senators' questions

"I am just an ordinary citizen from a small Southern community," said the nervous, chain-smoking witness before a Senate subcommittee last week. But little was ordinary about the fact that Billy Carter had come to the ornate Senate Caucus Room, the famed site of the Teapot Dome, McCarthy and Watergate hearings. He was there to testify under oath about his controversial relations with the government of Libya. Soft-spoken and attired in a three-piece suit, he was no longer playing his old role as the Carter family clown. Indeed, in concluding a carefully...

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