Friday, May 25, 2007

Pantsuit Feared Prosecution

The Washington Post reports on two new books about Mrs. Clinton, one from Carl Bernstein, which details her fears of prosecution during the 1990s.
"A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Carl Bernstein, reports that Clinton as first lady was terrified she would be prosecuted, took over her own legal and political defense, and decided not to be forthcoming with investigators because she was convinced she was unfairly targeted. While in Arkansas, according to Bernstein, she personally interviewed one woman alleged to have had an affair with her husband, contemplated divorce and thought about running for governor out of anger at her husband's indiscretions.
The second book, "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., doesn't portray her in glowing terms either.
"Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., reports that during her husband's 1992 campaign, a team she oversaw hired a private investigator to undermine Gennifer Flowers "until she is destroyed." Flowers had said publicly that she had an affair with Bill Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas.

The book also suggests that Hillary Clinton did not read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in 2002 before voting to authorize war. And it includes a thirdhand report that the Clintons had a secret plan after the 1992 election in which he would have eight years as president and then she would have eight years, although last night a key source disavowed the story.
Naturally, the Clinton hit machine will be in hyperdrive in an attempt to discredit the authors, and leading the charge is henchperson Howard Wolfson, as unctuous an operative as there is on the political scene.
Howard Wolfson, a campaign spokesman, pointed to previous reports on some of the elements in the books to make the point that there was nothing new. "The news here is that it took three reporters nearly a decade to find no news," he said. He added: "Two overwhelming Senate victories in the toughest media market in the country demonstrated that voters have put these issues behind them."
I beg to differ on that. First of all, these issues weren't raised in either campaign, nor did any reporter ever bring them up. Since she began campaigning for the Senate with that ridiculous "listening tour," she never sat for a difficult interview of any kind out of the obvious fear such questions would be asked.

In the eight years since, I still have never seen a serious interview with this woman. The lapdog media is so fearful of being denied access to the Clintons that they dare not ever pose a tough question to Her Thighness.

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