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The Clinton Wars by Sidney Blumenthal

 

Rating: (Recommended)

 

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You may have to be something of a political junkie to truly enjoy reading the 800 pages of Sidney Blumenthal’s new book, The Clinton Wars. For some readers, the Clinton memories remain too fresh to want to revisit them, especially over the course of 800 pages. I found Blumenthal’s book both refreshing and fascinating. As a journalist, Blumenthal’s writing style presents stories and anecdotes in a well-written manner that can entertain. As a soldier in the Clinton wars himself, Blumenthal weaves his personal story into the context of what else was happening.

Here’s a long excerpt (fitting for an 800 page book) from the beginning of Chapter 7, “Mine Canary”, describing key events on Blumenthal’s first day working at the White House:


On the night before my first day at the White House, I shined my shoes. It reminded me of shining a new pair of shoes on the night before I started high school more than thirty years before. I had expected then to enter a large building filled with hundreds of people I had never met and to be swept up into a new life. But in high school one is a member of a class, all of whom share the same experience and are starting at the same time. Now, the entering class consisted of two: Paul Begala and me.

Begala had been heavily involved in Clinton's 1992 campaign as a War Room veteran and a political adviser during the first two years of Clinton's first-term administration. A spirited partner of James Carville, he had worked in Dick Gephardt's office on the Hill and had a gift for phrasemaking and tactics. Our impending entrance into the White House naturally provoked a round of conservative punditry. Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote that we were "the bash brothers," hired for scandal, and that Republicans should be "alert for foul balls." Gigot's column was an excuse to raise the then-receding specter of Clinton scandals and to tarnish us a bit even before we turned up for work. Jokingly, Begala and I called each other "Bash."

Begala and I talked a lot before we went in about how the months after Clinton's reelection differed from the first term's uncertain beginning. We had no interest in being pulled into the operation dealing with so-called scandals; that was a small outfit, consisting basically of one lawyer, Lanny Davis. We were gearing up to work on the main politics of policy. Paul even wanted to be engaged in space policy. We were hopeful, but agreed we didn't know where this new venture would lead us. Paul said he felt that we were like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid standing on a cliff, holding on to the ends of a belt and jumping into the rushing river below.

Coming to the White House was not exactly like entering an unknown land. I knew many people in Clinton's White House—some friends, some of whom I had interviewed on various political campaigns, and some friends of my wife. But knowing them was not the same thing as being one of them. Being on the outside in whatever capacity was never the same as being in. Glimpses behind the curtain could not give the unobstructed view of being there day after day.

My title was Assistant to the President. Within the formal rankings of the White House, this is the highest level. The national security adviser, the chief of staff, and the legal counsel, for example, are assistants—and everyone at that rank is also considered a senior adviser. About a couple of dozen people held this title in the Clinton White House. Franklin D. Roosevelt began the institutionalizarion of presidential aides, and when asked what was required of those in the position, he remarked, "A passion for anonymity." In a gesture toward this sentiment, I asked to have the tide with nothing added to it, such as "for communications." "Assistant" was traditional, clean, and succinct. In anticipation of the day when I would enter public service, there were long conversations with friends. Those already in the government whose advice I sought warned me about the contrast between being a presidential aide and being anything else. They wanted me to accustom myself to the strange rituals of the staffer without too much abrasion. Obviously, I wanted to be accepted by my new colleagues, to learn quickly how to operate within the government, and to be effective. When anyone new is introduced, anxiety over turf and the question of one's proximity to power always arise. I was intent on doing nothing to provoke petty competitions. Having been in the press, I was not interested in its further attention. I had no need to be quoted or to appear on television. (During my tenure in the White House, I accepted only one invitation to appear on television, on CNN, to discuss the growth of progressive politics in the United States and Europe.) The less visibility outside, I thought, the more impact inside.

I came to the White House with high expectations of being able to contribute. I was eager to work on government policy and to help create a new political consensus around it. The Clinton presidency was the culmination of a generation of struggle to reorder national priorities, and I knew that its early harsh battles and setbacks reflected the difficulty of achieving these goals. This opportunity and moment would not appear again.

Of course, I expected static. Like Gigot, the conservative columnist Robert Novak attempted to foment a little mischief. Several months before I was scheduled to start work he wrote that Clinton's press secretary, Michael McCurry, was "particularly depressed by the prospect of Blumenthal joining him in the White House mess." But the last thing I wanted was to set myself up as a kind of rival press secretary. The conflict Novak wanted to provoke was more grist for his column than anything real. McCurry and I respected each other, worked well together, and never had any clashes. Gigot's and Novak's columns were predictable programming from conservative pundits, a constant low-level drone in Washington that one could ignore.

Jackie, my wife, had joined the White House more than a year earlier as the director of the White House Fellows program. When I had met her in 1974 she was an editor at a division of Yankee Magazine in Boston, and she had gone on to run a community-based foundation. When we moved to Washington, she became the media director for People for the American Way, an advocacy group devoted to promoting tolerance and separation of church and state. Then she became a direct-mail marketing strategist for nonprofit groups ranging from Planned Parenthood to Amnesty International to Habitat for Humanity. At PFAW, she had worked with Melanne Verveer, who became Hillary's chief of staff, and through that connection she was recruited to run the White House Fellows program. Started by President Johnson in 1964 as something like Rhodes scholars for public service, the program annually selected fewer than twenty extraordinary people, mostly in their late twenties and thirties, to work in the executive branch with cabinet secretaries and senior White House officials. The alumni were a remarkable group, including then-CNN president Tom Johnson, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Colin Powell.

For the first time in twenty-one years of marriage, the next morning, Jackie and I would go to the same place of work, or at least nearly the same. I didn't yet have an assigned parking space. So she would drive me to her office, a townhouse on Lafayette Park across from the White House, to get me there in time for my first meeting at 7:30 a.m.

 

We had spent a lot of time discussing what might happen when I went to work in the White House. Jackie was rightly concerned about the constant attacks and worried about my becoming a target. We had watched many people we knew as they were burdened with legal bills, had to cope with stress and depression, and became exhausted. We had few resources to fall back on. In fact, with these two government jobs we would be earning more income than we ever had before. Jackie cautioned, half-jokingly, "The minute you have to get a lawyer, you're out of there." But we were encouraged, for the storms seemed to be subsiding as my start date of August ii approached.

It was about 10:30 at night on August 10, and Jackie was already in bed reading. I was still tinkering around. I had developed a habit of checking e-mails and surfing the news on the Internet before I turned in. I checked CNN.com, the Associated Press's latest stories, and the Drudge Report. Drudge was a real person, not just an ideal Dickensian name. His site wasn't quite the news, but a romper room of right-wing phantasmagoria.

On the blank screen, in inch-tall block letters, a headline slowly formed:

 

CHARGE: NEW WHITE

HOUSE RECRUIT

SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL

HAS SPOUSAL ABUSE

PAST

I blinked. The cliche "I couldn't believe my own eyes" suddenly came true for me. I was astonished and bewildered. I put the cursor on the headline and clicked to try to get to the underlying story. Nothing. I clicked again and again. Nothing. There was just the headline.

"Jackie!" I called out.

"What?" she replied, slightly irritated. "What is it?"

"Come here!"

"Why?"

"Just come here."

"Just stop playing on the Internet and come to bed."

Reluctantly, a bit exasperated, she came into my study. Wordlessly I pointed to the screen.

"Is this a joke?" she asked.

"No, I don't think so."

She peered behind my computer. "Did one of your friends put it in there?"

"No."

"It's a joke. Are you sure one of your friends didn't do this? Come on." She asked me to click on the headline.

"I've done that already." I did it again. Nothing.

It seemed to me that this was not an attempt at humor, but a smear timed to my first day in the White House. I imagined that Drudge had no idea who I was. It was probable that he had never even heard my name before. He must have been fed this lie. I knew he was a Clinton hater, an unreliable scandalmonger living on the fringes of Los Angeles.

He would be a perfect channel for others with a political agenda. "I'm going to have to sue him," I said.

"Nobody sees this," Jackie said. "It's a joke. Just try to forget about it.

Come to bed. You have to get up early."

For a last time, I clicked on the headline. Nothing. I shut down my computer and went to bed. The next morning, driving to the White House, we talked about what my day would be like and what meetings I would have. The Drudge Report was forgotten. It was a weird headline without a story. What was that about?

Jackie parked at her office and I walked down Jackson Place, which runs alongside Lafayette Park, crossed an empty Pennsylvania Avenue, and passed through the Northwest Gate, where I was given a pass with a large "T," for "Temporary." It would take two months before I was issued my permanent badge, the blue pass, with my picture on it, which would arrive after an FBI investigation into my background. Soon, I was in the West Wing.

I made my way to my office, a small windowless room on the ground floor, across the hall from the Mess and the Situation Room, and near a short flight of steps up to the Oval Office. One entire wall was covered with mirrors. Like every nook and cranny in the White House, this room had a history. I would soon befriend the curator, Betty Monkman, who showed me the secret hieroglyphic signs chiseled into the foundation stones by the original masons and the blackened inner archway charred when the British torched the building. I came to know where all the burn marks were in the White House. My office had once been the barber- shop. It once had a chair nailed to the floor in the middle of the room on which the presidents had gotten shaves, haircuts, and manicures. Michael Beschloss, working on a three-volume series based on the Lyndon Johnson White House tapes at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, dug up for me a photograph of the tiny room as it had looked in Johnson's glory days. It resembled the famous scene of the crowded stateroom in the Marx Brothers' Night at the Opera. LBJ had a barber and manicurist in attendance, while his aides, Jack Valenti and Joe Califano, hovered. But now the room was barren. There was a desk, a table, a computer, a couch, a chair, and a television. On the desk lay a copy of the White House News Summary, a thick collection of articles from the morning's newspapers assembled overnight by the press office.

I walked up the stairs to the Roosevelt Room for the senior staff meeting held every morning. Under its skylights in the center of the West Wing everyone clustered around a long table. The Roosevelts—TR in his Rough Rider uniform, on a rearing horse, over the mantel; FDR, pen in hand, on the wall; and a bust of Eleanor (added by the Clintons), perched on the mantel below her uncle—gazed down.

Erskine Bowles, the chief of staff, called the meeting to order. He was a courtly North Carolinian, a banker with a long lineage in Tarheel state politics—his father had nearly been elected governor in 1972 and had inspired a cadre of New South reformers. Bowles had supported Al Gore in 1988 and came to the Clinton administration through that avenue. He was a negotiator, a manager, and a New South Democrat. The President had hired him to wrangle with the Republicans in the Congress, organize the staff efficiently, and represent his own views. Behind his seemingly remote, pin-striped demeanor, Bowles was compassionate and decent.

He cared a great deal about policy outcomes. While he negotiated a balanced budget, at the same time he pushed for children's health insurance for die poor and for health care programs. (His own son suffers from juvenile diabetes.)

Erskine crisply swung around the room. The President's schedule for the day was laid out. Every department presented what it would be doing that day—the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, the National Security Council, the Press Office, Communications, the Science Adviser, the First Lady's Office. Then Bowles introduced Paul Begala and me. We were now on the team. "Anyone else? Anything else?" Erskine asked. Everyone bolted. Erskine quietly took Paul and me aside and asked us in the future to join the early-morning senior staff meeting in his office that preceded this one.

Then there was the message meeting. This took place across the narrow hall in the office of John Podesta, deputy chief of staff. Mostly, we discussed the policies that the President would propose before he departed on his summer vacation: an announcement on tobacco, a welfare-to-work event in St. Louis, new labeling on pediatric dosages. The political atmosphere was unusually calm, while people spoke up as it was decided what messages the White House would issue that day. Podesta closely assessed what others said and quickly made his own arguments. He was constantly alert, his points invariably incisive and lawyerly. He had, after all, been a law professor at Georgetown University. But he also had a long history in political campaigns; had worked on the Hill, notably for Senator Patrick Leahy; and had previously been the White House staff secretary. His brother, Tony, had been president of People for the American Way and a Democratic campaign consultant; he now ran his own consulting firm, of which the original partners were Tony, John, and, through its first year, Jackie.

By now it was a little after nine in the morning and I had to rush to a third meeting, a staff meeting, presided over by Ann Lewis, director of communications, a seasoned political veteran, sister of the voluble Congressman Bamey Frank of Massachusetts, and a prominent feminist. Her office was decorated with posters highlighting women's history, and some staffers referred to it as "Suffragette City," as in, "We're meeting in Suffragette City." I had six other meetings scheduled that day, including one I had called myself to help prepare for the President's announcement of the White House Millennium Program on Friday. In addition I had to figure out when to take my drug test and be interviewed by the FBI. I had also scheduled meetings for the next day on global warming and with the communications operation of the National Security Council, and I'd been asked to participate in other meetings—on Fast Track trade negotiating authority, a divisive issue among Democrats, and on the State of the Union address.

I had been in the White House less than two hours. It was a typical day, untroubled by any crisis, but it was also like being at the receiving end of a fire hose. The torrent never stopped and, to change the watery metaphors, like everyone else I was always swimming upstream. Events happened swiftly, but affecting events would require patience. Nobody could do everything. One had to perform an essential triage. I had to decide where to put my energies. I had the luxury of moving around fluidly since I had no bureaucratic line responsibility. My job was to be free-ranging. With just a dip into the pool, I was already paddling away and preoccupied.

I dropped by my office on my way to the next meeting. Jordan Tamagni, a friend and speechwriter, was adjusting a picture she was hanging on the blank wall, the first decorative touch. It was a large framed photograph of Bill Clinton shaking hands with Tony Blair in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street, which she had expropriated from its old place in the corridor. These big photos of the President were hung throughout the West Wing and changed every week or two, as though it were a gallery. "Perfect in here," Jordan said, alluding to my having brought Blair and Clinton together, and then she dashed off. I noticed that paper had begun to materialize on my desk: the President's schedule; the draft of a speech he was to deliver, requesting that my comments be directed to the speechwriters by a certain deadline; and a card listing my meetings on the left side and the President's on the right. There was also a sealed manila envelope. I opened it and read a cover note written by Jackie. "Read this and call me," it said. One of my assistants told me that Jackie herself had dropped it by and seemed upset.

I lifted up her note and read the sheet underneath:

DRUDGE REPORT (8/11/97 12:30 AM)

GOP: THE BLUMENTHAL OPTION?

**Exclwive**

Republican power player Don Sipple was blinded last week when Mother Jones magazine reported that he had knocked a few of his wives around. Sipple, who has helped top GOP candidates like Bush, Dole and Wilson take on the gender gap with attack ads that exploit women's fears of violence, is alleged to have beaten two ex-wives himself, the magazine roared. As word of the story spread, Sipple began losing face and losing clients. He immediately quit the congressional race of New York Republican Vito-Fossella—the Molinari seat—telling the campaign in a letter that he did not wish this to be a distraction for Vito. The Bush Boy [George W. Bush] and San Diego's [Mayor Susan] Golding are now likely to take a pass on Sipple's media advice.

But more importantly, the wife-bearing revelations in Mother Jones by George magazine senior editor Rich Blow could be unsettling long held establishment secrets in the capital city. Some are calling it the "Sipple Effect."

The Drudge Report has learned that top GOP operatives who feel there is a double-standard of only reporting republican {sic] shame believe they are holding an ace card: New White House recruit Sidney Blumenthal has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up.

The accusations are explosive.

"There are court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife," one influential republican {sic], who demanded anonymity, tells the Drudge Report.

"If they begin to use Sipple and his problems against us, against the Republican Party . . . to show hypocrisy, Blumenthal would become fair game. Wasn't it Clinton who signed the Violence Against Women Act?"

(There goes the budget deal honeymoon.)

One White House source, also requesting anonymity, says the Blumenthal wife-beating allegation is pure fiction that has been created by Clinton enemies. "(The First Lady) would not have brought him in if he had this in his background," assures the well-placed staffer. "This story about Blumenthal has been in circulation for years."

Last month President Clinton named Sidney Blumenthal an Assistant to the President as part of the Communications Team. He's been brought in to work on communications strategy, special projects, themeing {sic]—a newly created position.

Every attempt to reach Blumenthal proved unsuccessful.

Blumenthal is married to Jacqueline Jordan Blumenthal. Mrs. Blumenthal is also employed at the White House as the Director of the President's Commission on White House Fellows.

 

I read this and reread it. Here was the story I couldn't access the night before. Once again, I was astonished. But now I was angry, too, at the sheer brazenness of the elaborate lies.

I was familiar with the allegations about Don Sipple because I had read the Mother Jones article. Two of his former wives had testified in court documents that he repeatedly beat them, and the magazine had published photos of the battered women, their faces marked by blood and bruises. His second wife, Deborah Steelman, a Republican policy expert and Reagan administration official, had been especially forthcoming with the reporter. Democrats were not using the story politically and were not even interested in a minor figure like Sipple. It was far more a subject of conversation and concern among Republicans, who knew the people involved.

It was immediately apparent to me that the Big Lie about me was another matter. The fabricated detail about hidden "court records" slyly conveyed the false impression of factuality and of my covering something up. It wasn't just that there were beatings, but that there were "records" about them and I was concealing them. The quote from the "well-placed staffer" in the White House was patently contrived; so was the staffer.

No "well-placed staffer" would be handing out blind quotes to Drudge, and none would take potentially damaging information about a new White House hire and fail to pass it on to others, and to the legal office. If a "well-placed staffer" had received such a call the inquiry would have necessarily gone through an established chain and I would have known about it. The fillip that the story "had been in circulation for years" was another detail to suggest a damning accumulation of facts when there were none. Not a single person I knew in Washington, almost all of whom make it a habit of learning as much about each other as possible, had ever heard this lie about me before, even as a lie. Finally, Drudge had lied about trying to reach me for comment. My telephone number was listed in the Washington, D.C., telephone directory. Anyone could get it from directory assistance. (Later, Drudge said he had mistakenly called the Maryland directory assistance because he thought I lived in Takoma Park, Maryland. But I myself did that to see what happened. I was told my number wasn't available in Maryland, so I asked the operator for other listings for that name in the region, and I was given my own. "Every attempt?") Drudge's mention of "one influential republican" as a source suggested that this was obviously a political operation. He must have been given the libel with all its pieces carefully assembled for him.

An assistant told me a reporter from the New York Post was on the phone to speak to me about the Drudge Report. I rerouted the call to the press office. I could see how this might unspool across the next week or two. The conservative media would be filled with stories about Blumenthal's "spousal abuse past." I would deny it, of course, but what proof did I have that it hadn't taken place? How could I disprove a negative? It would be a he said/he said story. And weren't the. "records" hidden?

Whatever Jackie said would be discounted. After all, she was still living with a wife-beater, wasn't she? The stories would continue and turn in the direction of the Clintons. Why, as Drudge intimated, was the President—and Hillary—complicit in hiring someone who was violent toward women? The intent was political; the means were personal.

I called Jackie. She told me that the Drudge story had been waiting for her on her office fax machine when she arrived at work—faxed in the middle of the night. The cover sheet had markings showing that at 1:11 a.m. Nick Thimmesch II had sent it. I knew the name as that of a small-time Republican operative. (He had been the press secretary for the right-wing Congressman Steve Largent of Oklahoma.) Jackie sounded distressed and angry, and said she was going to leave work early.

I told her I thought I would have to sue to try to stop the defamation from being accepted in any way. Then James Carville called me. James called almost every morning

to ramble on about politics, always responding to my "Hello" with "Whazup." I had first encountered Carville at a Democratic Party retreat after the 1988 defeat. Virtually unknown, wearing tight, short jeans, white socks, and sneakers, the Ragin' Cajun had lectured the party leaders and related a long story about an old spinster schoolteacher in

Louisiana who had a pet parrot she had taught eight languages. She left the parrot in the care of Old Joe, her neighbor, while she tended to her sick sister, only to discover, upon her return, that during a poker game Joe had put the bird in the gumbo. The schoolteacher cried, "And I taught him eight languages!" To which Joe responded, "Well, why didn't he say something?" Carville turned to the Democratic leaders and yelled,

"They've put you in the gumbo! Why don't you say something?" In Clinton, Carville had found his candidate. More than anyone else in 1992, besides the Clintons, he had held the campaign together and pushed it forward. Shrewd, superstitious, and loyal, he did not like to see his friends in the gumbo.

When I explained the situation to him, he gave me the name of his lawyer. In between meetings, I called William A. McDaniel, who had left the big Washington firm of Williams and Connally to start his own in Baltimore. McDaniel succinctly walked me through the law and my options. He said he would begin by writing a letter to Drudge. But I could not make a decision to sue him until I had consulted with my new colleagues. I did not yet know what I could or couldn't do in the White;

House.

 

One person told me I should "suck it up." That was what one did im the White House: you were smeared and you acted stoic. This was a fairiy conventional approach, but not to my mind satisfactory. While the object of the attack might feel that he was sustaining a code of honor by not descending to the level of the attackers, ignoring an attack also had the unfortunate effect of leaving a shadow of a doubt about the original smear. That was something I felt I couldn't afford, especially on a charge so personal. If the accusation were only political I would have ignored it, just as I had the Gigot and Novak columns. But what Drudge had contrived and published was character assassination; a political jab would have attracted no interest, and he wouldn't have bothered with it. I believed I was operating in the very short run, the span of one daily news cycle—witness the call from the New York Post. If I didn't stamp the libel for what it was right away, I would be on the defensive about the smear for days—and years—to come. With conservative media like the New York Part ready to spread the story, undoubtedly to be picked up by Rush Limbaugh, his imitators, and The Washington Times, I couldn't simply call up professional reporters, deny the accusation, and expect that they would even write up my denial. The Drudge Report would circulate, and the denial wouldn't be news. Newspapers aren't in the business of correcting the record of allegations that have appeared elsewhere, especially when the elsewhere is an online gossip site. If they felt compelled to correct the errors of online gossips and talk-radio hosts there would be little room in their pages even for baseball scores. There was no viable platform for refuting the lie except a lawsuit. I felt I had little choice but to do something dramatic to underscore the falsity of the smear. I was also aware of my own natural emotions, the instinct for self-defense, especially when it was not just me but my family that was defamed.

John Podesta sympathetically examined the question from a variety of angles. With my interest in mind, he laid out a few cautions. Wouldn't this turn me into a story that would, as he said, "bounce endlessly around in the press"? Did I want to get entangled with "a guy who is an asshole"? On the other hand, the story was hurtful. It was my decision. He'd support me whatever I did.

I showed the Drudge Repart to Paul Begala as we raced between meetings. At first, he thought it was "a joke." Then he said, "It's up to you. But if it were me, I'd sue their ass."

I sought the opinion of Cheryl Mills, the deputy counsel. She was young, experienced in the law, from a military family, and battle-hardened by the scandal wars. She was outraged on my behalf. She said that it was my decision to sue or not. The White House could have no official position on the decision. It was a personal libel and would have to be answered personally. She explained that the law would treat the case as one involving a public figure, which might make things difficult, even if the smear was obvious. But she and the others would understand completely if I were to sue. Several days later, when I attended a political strategy meeting, both Clinton and Gore offered me sympathy and moral support. Begala told me that the story had been the talk of the White House on our first day but that no one believed a word of it. Even those who didn't know me thought it was a dirty trick. He added, "It's hurt you outside. No question."

Before the end of my first day in the White House, I had retained the services of McDaniel and he composed a letter to Drudge.

If history is written by the victors, it’s still not clear if there was a victor in the Clinton Wars. For now, Blumenthal’s account represents a valuable addition to our understanding of recent history. Whether you liked or hated Clinton, if you have a strong interest in politics, you’re likely to enjoy reading The Clinton Wars.

Steve Hopkins, July 25, 2003

 

ă 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC

 

The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the August 2003 issue of Executive Times

URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Clinton Wars.htm

 

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