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Angry Hillary threw book
at Secret Service agent
First lady hit her limo driver in back

for allegedly ‘eavesdropping’ on chat
Published: 06/07/2003 at 1:00 AM

WASHINGTON – In a fit of rage, former first lady
Hillary Clinton threw a book at a Secret Service
agent, hitting him in the back as he was driving her
here in a limousine during the 1996 campaign, former
Secret Service officers and agents tell WorldNetDaily.

She accused the plainclothes agent of “eavesdropping”
on her conversation with another passenger in the
back seat of the limo, the agents say. The missile she
hurled was a painful message for him to mind his own
business.

“The book hit him in the back, and it wasn’t lobbed –
she was angry,” said a retired uniformed Secret
Service officer familiar with the incident.

“She was under the impression that he was
eavesdropping on her conversation,” he added. “Here
he’s the driver, but he was eavesdropping? I don’t
know how you get around that.”

He said there was no center divider in her vehicle.

“It was in a limo,” he said. “There’s no separation in
hers, not the one she was in.”

The veteran officer, who helped coordinate security in
advance of President Clinton’s trips, says the book
was in the back of the limo. “It was something that
she was carrying.”

He said both Clintons viewed Secret Service personnel
as “Republican spies,” since many of them worked in
the previous Republican administrations. And they were
“very skeptical of us.”

Another retired Secret Service veteran, a plainclothes
agent assigned to Clinton’s security detail,
corroborated the book-throwing account. “Yeah, it’s
true,” he said, without elaborating.

Though retired from the service, both White House
veterans have found jobs in the Homeland Security
Department, and they asked that their names be
withheld. Attempts to reach the driver assigned to
Hillary’s protective detail, also retired from the
service and working in another federal agency, were
unsuccessful.

A Washington Metro Police detective also recalled
hearing of the incident at the time, adding that the
former first lady “was pretty sh–ty to the Secret
Service guys.”

Phone calls to Clinton’s office were not returned. The
New York senator is on a book tour.

The Secret Service officer who did presidential
advance said she often spoke in “unacceptable language
to officers and to agents.”

He said the lack of respect stemmed in large part from
an overriding suspicion allegedly held by the Clintons
that agents doubled as Republican plants, relaying
dirt to the first couple’s political enemies.

Cutting security posts

“When they came into office, because the Republicans
were in for so long, they thought everybody in the
Secret Service was a Republican spy,” said the Secret
Service veteran, who calls himself an Independent.

Soon after they took over the White House, the
Clintons had agents removed from sensitive areas and
permanently eliminated their posts, he says.

“They requested specific posts be removed so that
agents in the uniformed division were out of earshot
of the conversations,” he said.

“For instance, inside the mansion itself, I know of at
least two [posts] that were relocated,” the former
agent added. “One was relocated away from the
residence; one was relocated away from the Oval
Office.”

He said Secret Service brass told agents to keep an
“arm’s distance,” as much as they could, from the
Clintons.

“Even on details, they wanted us where we weren’t
visible,” he said.

“We were all spies, all spies. I mean, it was a big
joke,” he said. “We were giving each other secret
names, like ‘Agent X, it’s time for you to be relieved
from your post for right now,’ as if we were Soviet
agents or something.”

The former first lady is said to be considering a run
for the White House in 2008.

Her alleged book-throwing tantrum does not fit the
cool and controlled demeanor the freshman senator
conveys in public.

But early in the Clinton administration, Newsweek
reported that Hillary had thrown a lamp at the
president in a fit of anger. She later denied the
incident took place while suggesting, ironically, that
the Secret Service spread the story.

http://www.wnd.com/2003/06/19172/