Posted on 04/20/2003 12:25:36 PM PDT by Paul Atreides
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton had her staff fabricate records of meetings and phone calls to familles of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to burnish her image as New York's leading politician on 9/11 issues, the author of a new book on how U.S. officials dealt with the aftermath of the attacks charged Sunday.
"I think [Sen. Clinton] has begun every statement she's ever made in her life about the families of the victims by saying she's met innumerable hours with the families of the victims," Steven Brill, author of the new book "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.
To support Mrs. Clinton's claims of 9/11 victim service for his book, Brill said her staff tried to persuade him that she worked overtime to help, providing "an elaborate story, with an elaborate subtext of memos and phone calls - a long, long story."
But, says the author, "None of it turned out to be true... They gave me documents and phone calls and things like that which just plain never happened."
Brill, who defended the Clintons throughout the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal, said that efforts to mislead him began after the former first lady got word he was writing his 9/11 book. She actually sought him out at the Ground Zero ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of the attacks. "I hear you want to talk to me about your book," he recalls her saying.
"We had this discussion which she insisted be off-the-record," Brill said. But he added, "She did follow up in one non-off-the-record conversation, urging me that the person responsible for aid to New York City was not [Sen.] Chuck Schumer but Hillary Clinton."
Brill said he was astonished that Clinton would go to such lengths to fabricate a phony record of 9/11 service "all in the cause, actually, of shooting down Chuck Schumer getting a bunch of pages in a book."
"It sort of takes your breath away when you think about it," he told Malzberg.
The author detailed the saga of one family in particular, the Cartiers, who lost a relative in the Twin Towers collapse.
"This family had tried repeatedly to get Hillary Clinton to meet with them," Brill said. "And always the staff said 'Write up a memo. We don't meet with any families unless they write to us first and tell us what they want to meet about.'"
"They said to me - the Cartiers, and these are not, you know, people who are political - that the only time families can meet with Hillary Clinton is if it's at a press conference."
Meanwhile, said Brill, Sen. Schumer took time out on a Sunday to meet with the Cartiers - "no reporters, no cameras, no nothing."
The former publisher of "Brill's Content" magazine said that then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Schumer worked to give the Cartier family access to Ground Zero and to Fresh Kills, the Staten Island recovery site, so they could search for their relative's remains.
The former Clinton defender also cast doubt on the authenticity of an account offered by Chelsea Clinton, who told reporters after the attacks that she was so close the Twin Towers collapse that she feared for her life.
"There are people on Schumer's staff who say that Chelsea kept moving south [towards Ground Zero] the more the press kept reporting that [Schumer's daughter Jessica] really was at Stuyvesant High School," just five blocks away from Ground Zero, he said.
Of Sen. Clinton's attempts to garner praise for helping 9/11 victims, Brill said, "What stunned me is that one person would try to steal away the credit from the other person, especially when everything I was hearing from the families is that Schumer" had helped far more.
What the heck! WHo gave it a name like that!!??
Her Presidential run will never happen. She doesn't stand a chance with the voters of New York, again, let alone the entire country
She'll be re-elected with the largest margin ever. Hillary is a known liar, she even lied about her name, said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, even though she was born before he became famous. Slick is a pathological liar. Lying and getting away with it is a plus to the mainstream media and the liberal elite.
Craig Crawford, Congressional Quarterly, is a regular guest on Batchelor and Alexander. He insists that Hillary's going to waltz into the Democrat primary at the very last second and save the day. He also thinks she would beat Dubya, and to that end, he's delusional.
My guess is this is the beginning of the end, because this is one of her own...
I suggest that this has happened because she got on the armed services committee.
The clintons, the CIA and the mob play hardball, but NO ONE, NO ONE, screws with the DOD.
Not Presidents, not kings, and not little self absorbed senators.
Getting on that committee crossed the line, she became a threat to the defense department, and these fellows deal in death, and if they think you challange the internal defenses of the United States of America, you go away.
The Department of Defense will put up with a lot, but it's like a religous organization passed down from generation to generation since the WWII....they let America and it's people pretty much do what they want, even the Mob. But don't kid yourself.
They take the defense of this country very series, and they have sent old crsuty a message, and it's:
You are never going to be our Commander in Chief
and since WWII if they don't want you, you're gone.
Cross them, and you're gone, whether you're a president or a pawn.
Yeah, maybe the rumor is true, but then again, it *is* coming from Brill and this could all be more of the same old Clintonian "float a nasty rumor that we can easily disprove" trick to garner the sympathy vote.
As in, there is no way that Schumer is going to publicly affirm this rumor, and very good odds that he will denounce the rumor.
If Schumer denounces this rumor at a crucial time in next year's Presidential election, then Hillary will gain an enormous 9/11 sympathy vote popularity boost.
Consider motive (re: this rumor). There are only two possible outcomes, too. Either this rumor is true or false. Now, Conservatives have NO NEED for this rumor to be true, as we already have enough dirt on Hillary; moreover, Hillary's national popularity is no current threat to GWB.
Thus, we stand to gain NOTHING if this rumor is true.
On the other hand, if this rumor is angrily denounced by Schumer and the media during a critical time in next year's election cycle, then Hillary and the Democrats stand to gain a TREMENDOUS sympathy backlash boost.
Thus, they stand to gain one way and can't lose even if it goes the other way. It's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.
...And it's coming from Brill, a known Clinton fan.
In the immortal words of Star Wars: "It's a trap!"
Yep, you got that right!!
The truth about DENNIS= http://www.kucinich.com "A Flip-Flopping Liberal Extremist".
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