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I just happened to read Blood Sport, a book about the Clinton admin from 1996, by James Stewart. Stewart was a writer who was recruited by the Clinton admin to do a book. He would be given access to the WH, the idea being that he could be an independent voice to provide a counterweight to bad press from the MSM. Stewart said the while the access never really materialized, he decided to do the book anyway. The result was Blood Sport (a great read btw).
While reading it dawned on me Hillary's fingerprints were all over 90% of the scandals of the admin. Bill Clinton was interested in only two things: a)politics, and b)skirt chasing. He had little use for or interest in money or even in intrigue. That was Hillary's department.
A good example was the 'Travelgate' scandal. David Watkins was an ad exec from Arkansas who had run several of Bill's campaigns. He was brought to the WH as a senior aide. He hired a 25 yr-old Clinton cousin named Catherine Cornelius as his secretary. She wanted something bigger and better, so he got her a job in the WH travel office. Harry Thomason was an ad production guy from Arkansas, who had moved on to Hollywood and become a successful TV sitcom producer. Thomason planned the inauguration, and stayed on at the WH. He had an office, but no official job. Watkins, Thomason and Bill Clinton had all known each other since high school days.
Vince Foster was a lawyer who had worked with Hillary in Arkansas, and became WH deputy counsel. On May 12, 1993, Watkins, Foster, Thomason, and Cornelius met to discuss the travel office. Cornelius said that the office was corrupt and mismanaged, and she wanted the staff fired and new people brought in. And she wanted to be in charge of the new operation.
Foster was unenthused, and said they should get the facts before acting. Harry Thomason, who was part owner of a Cincinnati travel consulting firm, had tried to get the travel office to use his firm, and was rudely rebuffed. He went to Hillary Clinton, urging that Cornelius's plan be executed. Hillary was receptive. After a February incident where a Secret Service agent had leaked about a lamp-throwing incident, she was all in favor of replacing careerists with loyalists. "We need to stay ahead of this," Hillary told Thomason.
The next day, May 13th, Hillary met with Foster about her health care task force. She brought up the travel office. According to Foster's notes, she asked, "What's going on? Are you on top of it?" Later that same day, she again asked about it. Foster said that an outside auditor, Peat Marwick, would be brought in. Foster asked David Watkins to attend to it.
On Friday, Watkins told Hillary that the travel office "record keeping is terrible." Hillary responded: "I think we should get our people in there. I've been advised...you have to have your own people..." Watkins took it as a reference to the lamp-throwing leak by the Secret Service.
"With the added impetus of the first lady's interest," writes Stewart, "the White House staff all but worked itself into a frenzy." Lawyer and WH associate counsel William Kennedy contacted the FBI about the travel office. The FBI said that there was insufficient evidence for a criminal probe. Kennedy threated to go to the IRS instead, and so the FBI agreed to investigate after all.
Watkins wrote a memo to Chief of Staff Mack McLarty recommending that the travel office staff be fired, to be replaced by Catherine Cornelius and a Little Rock travel agency called "World Wide Travel." On May 18th, Watkins went to the Travel Office and terminated everyone. He said they would get two weeks of paid "administrative leave," and then be done.
The next day the Post's lead editorial blasted the admin: "Now it tuns out that three of President Clinton's principal aides, including the White House counsel, caused an FBI official to alter a press release...." The FBI had issued a press release on the Travel Office that had been made more pointed at the behest of press sec'y Dee Dee Myers.
Bill Clinton, in the dark, was befuddled. When asked, he said, "The only thing I know is we made a decision to save the taxpayers and the press money. That's all I know."
Vince Foster was stunned. He hadn't anticipated the turn of events, and all the bad press. He met with Watkins and told him that now their job was to protect "the client," meaning Hillary. A few days later, the WH announced an internal investigation of the affair to be undertaken by McLarty and John Podesta. When Podesta interviewed Watkins, he noticed that the first lady had been cc'ed on a memo. He asked why. Watkins said that it was just routine. Watkins later relayed the conversation to Vince Foster, who asked "what did you say?" "I fell on my sword," Watkins replied.
McLarty decided that Watkins, Foster, and Kennedy would all be reprimanded. Watkins drafted an angry memo which later became a book title: "Hell to pay." Watkins never sent the memo, but gave a copy to his assistant Patsy Thomasson, and it somehow became public.
Foster went on a downhill slide. He had anxiety problems, and began taking anti-depressants. Within 2 months he committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park, Washington DC. Watkins was fired about a year later over misuse of the presidential helicopter. Clinton fires top aide who flew to golf course - Baltimore Sun
Hillary, traipsed on, consequence-free. She went on to be elected NY Senator, then to become Secretary of State, and now is poised to be the Democratic nominee for 2016. Will all the scandals from the 1990's finally come back to bite her? Should they, or is it all just old news that should be forgiven and forgotten?
you know, my guess is probably not. I don't trust her or Bill and I doubt they are the picture of the happy, middle aged (actually old) couple with high moral values we like to see in our leaders, but for some reason, this just doesn't seem to make a difference to many. My biggest problem with her: she stuck with Bill knowing how many times he cheated on her. I would have been so humiliated I would have walked out and never turned around.
Sorry for the length of the post, but the travel-gate affair was convoluted, and I left too much out as it is. If you read the account by James Stewart, you are left with the impression that the WH was not so much an evil cabal, but a group of bumblers, a gang that could not shoot straight.
But IMO there is no way to paper over the Bill Kennedy moment. William H Kennedy is barely described in the book, but according to Wikipedia he was a Rose law firm guy. He was associate counsel to the President, working under Bernard Nussbaum. Rose law firm was the AR law firm where Hillary and Vince Foster worked. Also according to wiki, "Kennedy was the only one [of Rose law firm partners] to return to Little Rock without a scandal," which I find laughable.
Kennedy was the guy who enlisted the FBI in an effort to oust the travel office workers, and install the loyalists. When the FBI said that there was not enough evidence for a criminal investigation, Kennedy threatened to go to the IRS (some things never change). Kennedy later denied saying that, but according to Stewart, "both FBI agents, Tom Carl and Howard Apple, recalled the comment...."
This was no bumbler, this was a liar and cheat who would gladly railroad people and lock them away to get what he wanted.
"On the first lady, he describes her as aloof, someone who didn’t say “thank you†to agents while the president and former first daughter Chelsea typically did. He told Secrets, “she was not as out-going or cordial.â€
"It would have been nice if, in his celebratory puff piece of an interview with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, Steve Kroft of “Sixty Minutes†had shown an interest in the substance of Mrs. Clinton’s views, goals and accomplishments in foreign policy. That, after all, is what secretaries of state in challenging times do: They promulgate doctrines. They come up with grand strategies for defeating, containing or subtly undermining America’s enemies. They come up with brilliant plans for winning the peace, by supporting nations and factions that share our values of democracy and open markets. They think about the big picture and work towards making it real...Had Mrs. Clinton been serious, she might have, in the course of her million miles on the plane, told an audience what our goals were for post-war Iraq and Afghanistan... [/b]The Egyptian people, and anyone else who roots for freedom, are disappointed with the incompetent, repressive regime of Mohammed Morsi, the longtime Muslim Brotherhood leader who now rules Egypt. It would be nice to know what the administration thinks. How about a coherent explanation of this administration’s goals for Syria, as the regime massacres its people and unnamed insurgents with unclear goals fight back? Has Mrs. Clinton formulated any kind of consistent guidelines about when the United States should get involved, and when it should not?"
"The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes. Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career. Why? “Because she was a liar,†Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.â€
"A memorandum by a former Presidential aide depicts Hillary Rodham Clinton as the central figure in the 1993 travel office dismissals, a politically damaging episode that the aide said had resulted from a climate of fear in which officials did not dare question Mrs. Clinton's wishes. The newly released draft memorandum, written by David Watkins, the former top administrative aide at the White House, also sharply contradicts the White House's official account of Mrs. Clinton as merely an interested observer in the events that led to the dismissal of the White House travel staff and their replacement with Clinton associates from Arkansas."
Then there's her assessment of "Assad the Reformer" or her joy about the Arab Spring.
"Hillary Clinton heaped praise on Morsi, suggesting he has stepped up to the plate to rebuild Egypt's pivotal role in the region. During the same week, after months of on again-off again negotiations, the International Monetary Fund signed a preliminary agreement to lend $4.8 billion to the cash-strapped country. But Morsi capped the week by making a power play to wrestle control of the constitutional drafting process by issuing a decree giving him unchecked powers."
TWO MONTHS after commencing the Whitewater scheme, Hillary Clinton invested $1,000 in cattle futures. Within a few days she had a $5,000 profit. Before bailing out she earns nearly $100,000 on her investment. Many years later, several economists will calculate that the chances of earning such returns legally were one in 250 million. Said she learned from the Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market (the Wall Street Journal didn't cover the market back then)
"Vince Foster: After her friend, former Arkansas law partner and White House lawyer Vince Foster killed himself, Clinton said she had no idea why her White House Chief of Staff, Maggie Williams, who's now her campaign manager, had removed documents from Foster's White House safe. "I don't know that she did remove any documents," Clinton said. It was later revealed, however, that White House lawyer Bernard Nussbaum, a close ally of Clinton, had removed files and handed one labeled "Whitewater" to Williams, who took it to the Clintons' White House residence. It also was revealed that Williams had acted at Clinton's direction."
Then there is the extreme radical Saul Alinsky thesis she felt a need to hide from the public.
But what we all want to know is what was in the documents in Sandy Berger's pants when he was caught red handed smuggling them out of the National Archives. Must have been something good.
I think Ms Cranky Pants should jump into the presidential race late because I don't think her personality will wear well over a long campaign.
The NYT link from Laura is a good summation of David Watkins' 'hell to pay' memo. WH disputed the accuracy of the memo, but it was probably the most accurate thing to come out of the whole affair. It was written by Watkins in a fit of pique after he learned that he was to be formally reprimanded for his role in travelgate. He never sent it to Chief of Staff McLarty, the intended recipient, doubtless not for lack of accuracy, but for a surplus of accuracy.
In any case the memo is not necessary to make the case that Hillary was behind it. It comports w/ Vince Foster's notes, and with everything else we know about the travel office affair.
It will be interesting to see how much of this is brought up in the Dem primaries if Biden and/or Warren get in. Some candidates have baggage, Hillary has a veritable freight train stretching back to 1993 and even back to her Arkansas days.
you know, my guess is probably not. I don't trust her or Bill and I doubt they are the picture of the happy, middle aged (actually old) couple with high moral values we like to see in our leaders, but for some reason, this just doesn't seem to make a difference to many. My biggest problem with her: she stuck with Bill knowing how many times he cheated on her. I would have been so humiliated I would have walked out and never turned around.
Marriages of power couples are different than common folk's marriages. Examples abound in both parties of marriages that should, by all accounts, have fallen apart right from the beginning, but last forever.
Bob and Elizabeth Dole. James Carville and Marty Matalin. Both are examples, and there are many, many more that are less famous. Most often, if the couple divorces, it's only after one or the other leaves the political arena for various reasons.
The Clintons were attracted to each other in deeper and more complicated ways than most of us are, and they obviously know more about each other than most of us will ever know about our spouses. These power couples are truly different different than most of us. Most things fade in importance for us as the years pass, but political ambition seems to be permanent, and very few couples have this in an equal share.
I don't make the mistake of thinking Bill was all that laid back. His personality may be warmer than his wife's, but both fully share everything that continues to burn in their cores, and always will. Anyone who becomes President of the United States didn't get there by refusing to do critical deals or doing a lot of late night conniving. Every President has a certain amount of cold blood running in the veins. It's part of the job description.
Hillary, traipsed on, consequence-free. She went on to be elected NY Senator, then to become Secretary of State, and now is poised to be the Democratic nominee for 2016. Will all the scandals from the 1990's finally come back to bite her? Should they, or is it all just old news that should be forgiven and forgotten?
I would guess these events will be seen as old news by most people, but the bigger problem for the Clintons is being seen as old news themselves. Back in 2008, many Democrats wanted to turn the page on the Clintons and decided to go with Obama. Now here we are coming up on 8 years later in 2016. The younger party members don't have any connection with the Clinton years and others would like to move on. So I don't think Hillary's a sure bet for the nomination by any means and will likely get a strong intraparty challenge....IF she even decides to run.
Anyway, it all promises to be quite fascinating for political junkies.
Marriages of power couples are different than common folk's marriages. Examples abound in both parties of marriages that should, by all accounts, have fallen apart right from the beginning, but last forever.
Bob and Elizabeth Dole. James Carville and Marty Matalin. Both are examples, and there are many, many more that are less famous. Most often, if the couple divorces, it's only after one or the other leaves the political arena for various reasons.
The Clintons were attracted to each other in deeper and more complicated ways than most of us are, and they obviously know more about each other than most of us will ever know about our spouses. These power couples are truly different different than most of us. Most things fade in importance for us as the years pass, but political ambition seems to be permanent, and very few couples have this in an equal share.
I don't make the mistake of thinking Bill was all that laid back. His personality may be warmer than his wife's, but both fully share everything that continues to burn in their cores, and always will. Anyone who becomes President of the United States didn't get there by refusing to do critical deals or doing a lot of late night conniving. Every President has a certain amount of cold blood running in the veins. It's part of the job description.
I still have little respect for anyone that would put up with what she did. As for Mary Matalin and Carville, they are just both really weird!!! Whatever there is about Bob and Elizabeth Dole it isn't anything like the Clintons. Very few have been as open and as the Clintons or as demoralizing in my opinion.
I would guess these events will be seen as old news by most people, but the bigger problem for the Clintons is being seen as old news themselves. Back in 2008, many Democrats wanted to turn the page on the Clintons and decided to go with Obama. Now here we are coming up on 8 years later in 2016. The younger party members don't have any connection with the Clinton years and others would like to move on. So I don't think Hillary's a sure bet for the nomination by any means and will likely get a strong intraparty challenge....IF she even decides to run.
Anyway, it all promises to be quite fascinating for political junkies.
I agree, I think it's 50-50, or perhaps even less, that she will run in 2016. As a Republican, I would prefer to see Corey Booker as the D nominee. I wouldn't vote for him, but if I had to live w/ a Dem as POTUS in 2016 it would be Booker.
Well I didn't think she would run, then I did and now I just don't know what to think. What I do know I am leaving for a week in Vegas tomorrow and I will not be betting any money on her running.
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Whatever there is about Bob and Elizabeth Dole it isn't anything like the Clintons. Very few have been as open and as the Clintons or as demoralizing in my opinion.
