Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas (22 page)

Bill was determined not to let the president and his men get away with making Hillary the scapegoat. He was aware, of course, that Hillary faced serious legal and political problems on Benghazi. Legally, she was certain to be summoned to appear before the House and Senate committees investigating Benghazi and made to testify under oath. The committees could also subpoena State Department cable traffic and interoffice memos relating to the lack of proper security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Bill had no idea what was in those papers.

Politically, if the mainstream media planted the idea in people’s minds that Hillary was the villain in the Benghazi tragedy,
that impression would be almost impossible to erase. It could leave a permanent stain on her record as secretary of state and undermine her chances of becoming president.

Bill needed to find a stain remover.

With that in mind, he assembled a team of legal experts to advise him on the best course of action. After members of the team had a chance to review the State Department cable traffic between Benghazi and Washington, as well as the interoffice memos, they came to the conclusion that, from a legal point of view, Hillary could put together a plausible defense that might allow her to escape personal blame.

In their legal opinion, the paper trail showed that Hillary had kept the Benghazi mission open, despite security concerns, because the Obama administration had asked her to. She was following orders from the president’s National Security Council. The State Department outpost was a vital part of the CIA’s secret arms shipment operation to opposition fighters in Syria. What’s more, Hillary had taken the appropriate steps to deal with the security issues when she struck a secret agreement with the CIA: in return for providing diplomatic cover for the classified CIA operation, the CIA would take responsibility for the security of the small State Department mission.

In other words, Hillary had had every reason to believe that the CIA would keep her State Department people safe. That things didn’t work out that way, the legal experts said, was not Hillary’s fault. She had no way of knowing that when militiamen linked to al-Qaeda attacked the mission, the members of the CIA team in Benghazi hesitated to respond to the attack because they were under standing orders to avoid violent encounters.

“If the CIA hadn’t ordered its men to stand down, [Ambassador] Chris Stevens might still be alive,” Bill informed Hillary during a phone call from Little Rock. “The CIA’s on the hook. You’re free and clear.”

“That’s good news,” Hillary said. “But I’m still going to be hauled before Congress to testify.”

“I see that as an opportunity for you to look big,” Bill said. “You can’t be seen to be shaking off responsibility. Bobbing and weaving—that’s what Obama does, not you. You want to look more presidential than he does. You go tell those fuckers: ‘The buck stops here!’”

Hillary didn’t always take Bill’s advice, which made him fifty shades of angry. But this time she did.

“If they ask me,” she said sarcastically, “I’ll say, ‘It wasn’t my fault, but as secretary of state, I take responsibility.’”

The Clinton Library was a swirl of activity when Bill was around. And no sooner had he finished dealing with Benghazi than he turned his attention to assembling a team of political advisers for Hillary’s White House campaign.

He was intent on gathering the greatest political minds and movers and shakers in the country and bringing them to Little Rock. As a lure, he invited them to give lectures at the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas. He was determined to make the school equal in stature to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in Massachusetts.

As one famous person after another arrived to speak at the Clinton School, the Bill and Hillary Clinton Airport in Little Rock was chockablock with private jets. Among those arriving to deliver talks were Colin Powell (diplomacy and military matters), Donna Shalala (education and health issues), Robert Rubin and Robert Reich (tax and economic policy), James Carville (politics), Al Gore (the environment), and Caroline Kennedy (education).

“Caroline toured the library,” a Clinton friend said. “There is no question but that Bill is reaching out to the Kennedy family. He thinks his relationship with them is important, as does Hillary. And he very much wants them to use their Kennedy magic to help get Hillary the nomination and win the election.”

In addition, Bill reached out to important Democratic Party officials in various key states. He sent private planes to bring them to Little Rock for a VIP tour of the library and backslapping get-togethers.

Most of all, however, Bill concentrated on wooing unions and union money. As far as he was concerned, the unions were key to a Hillary victory in 2016. He had a strong personal relationship with the AFL-CIO’s president, Richard Trumka, who poured millions of dollars into the Clinton Global Initiative. In return, Clinton acted as a virtual lobbyist for Trumka in Washington on such issues as card-check legislation, which would make it easier for unions to organize.

“Bill advises Trumka on strategy, takes his phones calls, is always available to the guy,” said a member of Clinton’s inner circle. “It’s amazing the power it gives a union leader to have a politician with Bill’s contacts, with the sea of favors that Bill can
call in. Clinton is extremely valuable as a partner, but that comes at a high price. Bill is the consummate deal-maker and poker player, and he gives nothing away for free, and Trumka and these other union guys have to know that. He expects the union army to take the field for Hillary and for the cash to follow.

“President Obama certainly has union support, and Trumka often sounds like Obama, spouting off about greedy Wall Street types and the need to spread around the wealth,” this person continued. “But the unions don’t
love
Obama. They were upset, for instance, that Obama didn’t show up in Wisconsin, where the unions led a failed recall election of Governor [Scott] Walker. Bill showed up for a rally, and they loved him for it. That’s the difference with Bill. These union people will march into hell with Bill.”

Some of the meetings that Bill held at the Clinton Library with Trumka and others were as formal as White House Cabinet meetings, while others were more like college bull sessions, which was Bill’s preference. In decent weather, he liked to meet on the rooftop garden of his penthouse. While he talked, he would chip golf balls into the Arkansas River. When there were women at the meeting, he would cut yellow roses from his garden and hand them out. He considered it a nice, flirtatious touch.

He had his chef at Forty Two send food and drink up to his apartment to keep everybody well fed and lubricated. He was doing everything he could to make his apartment an important political salon so that A-list advisers and thinkers would want to visit and share their views.

In all of this, Clinton had one goal—slowly but surely to take over the Democratic Party.

Clinton’s legion of friends had little doubt that Bill could put together a powerhouse organization and mount an effective presidential campaign for Hillary. But privately, they worried that Bill’s and Hillary’s personalities did not mesh and that 2016 could turn out to be a replay of 2008, when Bill did more harm than good for Hillary with his out-of-control behavior.

“They clash on every other issue,” said one of Hillary’s oldest friends. “It’s a question of personality. Bill relishes going for the jugular and beating his enemies up. Hillary viscerally wants to be loved, not hated. It’s true that she’s a fighter and has been since high school, but the difference is that, while Bill thinks all is fair in love and politics, Hillary doesn’t like to say things and do things that will cause people to turn against her.

“Bill’s ‘fairy tale’ remark about Barack Obama in 2008 [saying Obama’s purported consistent opposition to the Iraq War was a “fairy tale”] made Hillary cringe,” this person continued. “She knew it would come back to bite them. She fought with him over the remark, even becoming physical, pushing him away when he defended the remark. She warned him that his comparison of the Obama campaign to Jesse Jackson’s would be called racist.

“Over the course of past political campaigns, they have fought almost daily. They call each other names and pound on tables. Occasionally, missiles are launched across hotel suites. When Bill was the candidate, Hillary was capable of backing off and letting him—in her opinion—screw things up. His outsized personality and over-the-top rhetoric made up for a rosary bead’s worth of sins.

“But I honestly don’t think Bill can be the one to gracefully bow and let her have the floor, without a fight. The fear is that the fighting over this final try for the presidency will dissolve into one long, simmering domestic battle.”

Other sources fretted that Bill’s notorious temper had only grown worse with age. As one of his legal advisers said: “I’ve known Bill for decades, and he has always been hot-tempered. His physical fights with Hillary are well known to the Clintons’ inner circle. Now, I have to say, it’s even worse. Some of us get mellower with age. Bill is the opposite. He’s my friend, and I have great affection for him, but he can’t control his anger when he feels betrayed, or when someone he counts on lets him down.

“What I’m hinting at,” he continued, “is that if Hillary fails to live up to his expectations during the presidential campaign in 2016, he’ll explode at her. She will push back just as hard. And it would be disastrous if that happens, say, in the middle of debate preparation or other key moments. The political game has ratcheted up since Bill was in office. I question whether he and Hillary are temperamentally suited to the task at this point.

“During the past five years they have lived separate lives and haven’t had to deal with each other hour to hour and day to day. When they start this campaign, the stakes will be unbelievably high for them. The strain will be immense. Honestly, I worry it could kill him and send her into a mental tailspin.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A PACK OF LIES

N
o one had been featured more often than Hillary Clinton on Barbara Walters’s
Ten Most Fascinating People of the Year
program. The former first lady had made Walters’s list in 1993 and 2003, and her selection yet again in December 2012 meant that she continued to pull in solid Nielsen ratings. Walters had an unerring instinct about such things, for in addition to being the longest-lasting broadcast journalist in the business (she became a TV personality on
The Today Show
in 1962), she was one of the shrewdest—and richest—producers in the medium.

Barbara was a personal friend of Hillary’s. But that was not the reason she had Hillary on her annual show. However you felt about Hillary—whether you loved her or hated her, whether or not you thought she deserved all the accolades that came her
way—she was the feminist movement’s success story par excellence. She had been co-president with her husband for eight years, a U.S. senator for another eight, secretary of state for four, and the “Most Admired Woman” in Gallup’s poll for the past eleven years. And now, as she prepared to leave the State Department, she was the odds-on favorite to become the Democratic Party’s next presidential nominee.

Barbara started the interview by asking Hillary the obvious question: “What would it take for you to run [for president] in 2016?”

“I’ve said I really don’t believe that that’s something I will do again,” Hillary replied. “Right now, I have no intention of running. . . . But I want to make a contribution.”

“Will it be political?” Barbara asked.

“I don’t think so,” Hillary said. “I think it will be philanthropic, it might be academic. . . .”