An Uncluttered Calendar
Clinton's schedules reveal curious deletions
The early days of 1996 were tense times inside the Clinton White House. On Jan. 4, the First Couple's top personal aide reported that she had stumbled upon Hillary Clinton's long-lost Rose Law Firm billing records—documents that had been requested by Whitewater prosecutors two years earlier. Ken Starr quickly subpoenaed the First Lady to testify before a federal grand jury, leading to her historic four-hour appearance at the U.S. District Courthouse in Washington on Jan. 26 of that year.
But anybody looking through Hillary Clinton's newly released White House records for clues as to how she handled this personal crisis will find … absolutely nothing. The more than 10,000 pages, released by the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, purport to be the New York senator's daily schedules for her entire eight-year tenure as First Lady—the first major "document dump" from the Clinton Library in Little Rock.
But the documents include only Hillary Clinton's public schedules, not her private calendar. And even those appear to be heavily redacted to exclude almost anything that might be of interest to historians and the inevitable posse of "oppo" researchers. The January 1996 records show Hillary Clinton appearing on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and numerous other TV and radio shows to promote her just-published book, "It Takes a Village." But they show no meetings whatsoever about the Rose Law firm billing records, no sessions with her lawyers to prepare for her grilling by Starr. The calendar for Jan. 26, 1996—the day crowds of reporters and TV cameramen gathered at the courthouse to watch Hillary Clinton enter and exit the grand jury—is totally blank. "NO public schedule," it states simply, wiping out any reference to one of the more embarrassing public episodes of the First Lady's days in the White House.
The heavy deletions are perhaps not surprising, given that the National Archives staffers who approved the release operated under guidance given by former president Clinton in a November 2002 letter recommending strict restrictions on the types of material that can be divulged. (Among the documents that should be "considered for withholding," were anything related to investigations of the White House and all but "non-routine" communications between the president and the First Lady.) The material the National Archives did decide to release still had to be reviewed and approved by Bruce Lindsey, the president's longtime loyal aide who serves as chief custodian of the Clinton archives. "This stuff has been sanitized," said Chris Farrell, the chief of investigations for Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group that sued the Archives for release of the records. "Our expectations were very low, and they didn't disappoint." (Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson said the Archives released the records under "very strict legal requirements and guidelines that they follow in their redactions as they do for every president's documents. The National Archives made the redactions." He added that Lindsey, former president Clinton's official representative, asked the Archives to "put extensive material back in" and "the vast majority" of the remaining redactions were made to protect the privacy of third parties.)
As a result, the schedules released Wednesday are filled with references to innocuous public ceremonies and tours and political events—surrounded by whited-out boxes of deleted material. On March 28, 1995, to pick one example, the schedule shows that Hillary Clinton landed in Lahore, Pakistan, and was "given flowers by a boy and girl dressed in traditional Pakistani clothes." Clinton then visited a village home where she was "served cold soda." On June 1, 2000, researchers will discover that Hillary Clinton flew to Waco, Texas, where she visited the "Audre & Bernard Rapoport Academy." "HRC proceeds to read 'Where the wild things Are' to approximately 71 kindergarten thru second graders," the schedule reads.
The schedule is considerably less revealing when it comes to more awkward episodes of the Clinton presidency. Consider the afternoon of March 9, 1995, when Johnny Chung, a businessman and soon-to-be-notorious Democratic Party fund-raiser, made a fateful trip to the White House carrying a campaign check for $50,000. For many critics, Chung later became a symbol of the campaign-finance abuses of the Clinton presidency, a mysterious Chinese businessman who managed to be cleared into the White House on 49 occasions. (He also later pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations and testified that a sizeable chunk of his illegal campaign cash came from a Chinese military-intelligence operative.) Hillary Clinton made a special trip to the Map Room that day so she could have her picture taken with Chung. "We handshake, and then she [Hillary Clinton] said, 'Welcome to the White House, my good friend'," Chung later testified, describing the encounter with Hillary Clinton. Right after that, Chung hand-delivered his $50,000 to Maggie Williams, who was the First Lady's chief of staff at the time and now manages her presidential campaign.
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Member Comments
Posted By: swebster13 @ 04/07/2008 2:30:59 AM
Comment: The Clintons, Hillary in particular, are the most despicable liars. No one can expect the truth to come from the mouths of these people. The very fact that they feel a sense of entitlement to the White House is concerning also. First, the "sniper fire" that the poor woman had to endure during a trip overseas and now it is coming out that the dead woman she was using for fodder to bolster her insurance program actually had insurance and indeed was receiving treatment for her problems from an OB/GYN clinic associated with the hospital. When will these lies stop? I am a lifelong Democrat, but she will never see a vote from me, my friends, or my family. We are appalled at her antics and lies. The best thing we can hope for is that she quits the campaigning. Can't take much more of her.
Posted By: Jezreel @ 04/04/2008 4:47:58 PM
Comment: Illinois Voter Re: Obama NAFTA-Gate: Part 2
Comment: ???The Obama campaign has tried to deflect attention from Goolsbee by making false attacks on Hillary Clinton
Canadian newspapers reported that the RCMP was involved in an investigation of Conservative Party Leader; Harper to determine if Canada???s Conservative Party ???a friend to the US Republican Party had interfered in the American electoral process. The investigation began when Canada???s National Democratic Leader; Jack Layton accused Harper of attempting to damage Sen. Obama and complicate his chances of election or to favor Republican Sen. John McCain, who strongly supports NAFTA
Mr. Layton also called for the firing of a key prime ministerial aide (Ian Brodie) for allegedly leaking a diplomatic memo that suggested the Illinois senator was saying different things in private and in public about NAFTA.
In the week after the March 4th primary the scandal widened following the disclosure that Mr. Ian Brodie originally told CTV news reporters that Sen. Clinton's campaign had contacted the Prime Minister's office using back channel communications to tell them they should not be concerned about the NAFTA rhetoric their candidate would be using in Ohio.
In my opinion, both Clinton and Obama mishandled the NAFTA-Gate scandal. When the CTV story first broke, Clinton and Obama were both mentioned in the TV spot. However, Clinton???s campaign contacted the Prime Minister???s office to deny the accusations and then used the portion of the story pertaining to Obama to frame him and possibly to win the Ohio primary election. On the other hand, Obama???s campaign apparently did not grasp the seriousness of the problem and therefore failed to respond appropriately. Consequently, Obama appeared to have lied about his camp???s involvement with the Canadian government when the meeting between Goolsbee and the Canadian Ambassador became public.
Also, Clinton, having already sown seeds of doubt in the American psyche continued to imply that Obama was saying one thing to the American public while giving the wink-wink to foreign governments when during the fallout over the Pamela Flower interview in Europe. In actuality, the problem with Flower was that she had written a book on the Rwandan genocide in which she made unflattering but factual remarks about the Clinton presidency.
SOURCES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBheLrsMh4E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75PptVEXwSg
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/the_facts_about_nafta-gate.html
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/ian_brodie.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/04/america/NA-GEN-Canada-Democrats-Trade.php
Posted By: Jezreel @ 04/04/2008 4:40:21 PM
Comment: Illinois Voter Re: Obama NAFTA-Gate: Part 2
Canadian newspapers reported that the RCMP was involved in an investigation of Conservative Party Leader; Harper to determine if Canada???s Conservative Party ???a friend to the US Republican Party had interfered in the American electoral process. The investigation began when Canada???s National Democratic Leader; Jack Layton accused Harper of attempting to damage Sen. Obama and complicate his chances of election or to favor Republican Sen. John McCain, who strongly supports NAFTA
Mr. Layton also called for the firing of a key prime ministerial aide (Ian Brodie) for allegedly leaking a diplomatic memo that suggested the Illinois senator was saying different things in private and in public about NAFTA.
In the week after the March 4th primary the scandal widened following the disclosure that Mr. Ian Brodie originally told CTV news reporters that Sen. Clinton's campaign had contacted the Prime Minister's office using back channel communications to tell them they should not be concerned about the NAFTA rhetoric their candidate would be using in Ohio.
In my opinion, both Clinton and Obama mishandled the NAFTA-Gate scandal. When the CTV story first broke, Clinton and Obama were both mentioned in the TV spot. However, Clinton???s campaign contacted the Prime Minister???s office to deny the accusations and then used the portion of the story pertaining to Obama to frame him and possibly to win the Ohio primary election. On the other hand, Obama???s campaign apparently did not grasp the seriousness of the problem and therefore failed to respond appropriately. Consequently, Obama appeared to have lied about his camp???s involvement with the Canadian government when the meeting between Goolsbee and the Canadian Ambassador became public.
Also, Clinton, having already sown seeds of doubt in the American psyche continued to imply that Obama was saying one thing to the American public while giving the wink-wink to foreign governments when during the fallout over the Pamela Flower interview in Europe. In actuality, the problem with Flower was that she had written a book on the Rwandan genocide in which she made unflattering but factual remarks about the Clinton presidency.
SOURCES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBheLrsMh4E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75PptVEXwSg
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/the_facts_about_nafta-gate.html
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/ian_brodie.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/04/america/NA-GEN-Canada-Democrats-Trade.php