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June
5, 2003, 11:00 a.m.
He
Said. She Said.
So
who’s right? Sid or Hill or…?
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illary
Rodham Clinton, in excerpts from her "memoir" released by the
Associated Press this week, says that she was "dumbfounded"
when her husband told her, bedside on August 15, 1998, that he lied to
her and the world about his relationship with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
Gulping for air,
I started crying and yelling at him, "What do you mean? What are
you saying? Why did you lie to me?" I was furious and getting more
so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, "I'm
sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea."
But that's not how
Clinton-flack Sidney Blumenthal remembers it in The
Clinton Wars.
During that day
[August 17], we had driven from Florence to Rome in order to get our
flight back to Washington [the Blumenthals were in Europe for the wedding
of Jamie Rubin and Christiane Amanpour ]. I talked repeatedly with Hillary,
and Jackie and I stayed up until the middle of the night to watch Clinton
give his speech, broadcast on CNN International. About ten minutes after
it ended, my hotel phone rang: it was the President, asking me what
my reaction was. I told him that it was all right. Hillary asked me
what I thought. I told her the same. The President said that he was
pleased with it. Hillary also approved. That was the most important
thing of all. They handed the phone to James Carville and Mark Penn,
and I spoke to them too. I could hear the President and Hillary bantering
in the background. Whatever they would have to do between themselves
to get over this episode, in the challenge to their marriage and the
presidency they were still working as a team. Without that, nothing
was possible.
Earlier on, when
he first mentions Hillary's reaction to finally learning that her
husband is a liar and a cheat, an abuser of power-all supposedly news
to her-Blumenthal writes about how together the First Lady was.
I said that whatever
"issues" anyone had, and hers was worse than anyone's, we
had to think about the politics. That was her reasoning as well. She
said that the President would be "embarrassed," but that was
for him to deal with. And that was all she would say about it. Even
in a private conversation with a friend, she maintained her dignity.
It was my intention to help her do that, and through the next two days
we kept in constant contact.
He later notes that
as Bill Clinton huddled with lawyers after three and half hours of testimony
on August 17, preparing his speech to the nation that night, Hillary Clinton
intervened. Blumenthal claims:
Hillary entered
the White House solarium where this conference was going on, I learned
later, and said, "It's your speech. You should say what you want
to say." She knew what he wanted to say, and it was what he did
say.
Not quite a damsel
in distress. But a distressed wife sells better than an all-business partner
in politics when you're Senator Clinton, running for president.
Additionally, in
Thursday's Washington Post, the "Reliable
Source" column points out that the Washington Post's Peter
Baker reports yet another version of the confession in his book The
Breach. In Baker's telling of it, Bill Clinton's attorney David
Kendall was the first to break the news to Mrs. Clinton, on August 13.
Kendall, according to the Post's Lloyd Grove, is currently denying
the Baker rendition of events.
"Hillary benefits
by being softened a little," former Missouri lieutenant governor
Harriett Woods says in Thursday's USA
Today about Living
History. No doubt that's what was on the mind of a woman who has
been living in spin for more than two decades.
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