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.
The republicans should be rounding up the guard (if he is still alive, that is, as strange things happen to those who might get in hitlery's way), and making commercials from his encounter with hitlery-----letting those higher ups in the police dept who shut him up know that their names will be out there if this man is not allowed to recount his injuries from hitlery's callous rush into the airport grounds.
Yikes. The FOBs are turning on their erstwhile masters.
This is precisely why I think The Hildebeaste will never run for President.
When she and THE SCUMBAG were in the White House they had enough handlers and spinners and power that all their sleazy little deals that would turn the average Joe's stomach could be hidden, hushed up and covered up.
Now that the White House is no longer their playpen (thank the Good Lord), their carefully crafted house of cards is beginning to crumble. Slowly but surely former FOBs, like Brill and Dick Morris are letting the cat out of the bag.
The Hildebeaste MIGHT have a shot in 2004 (but Dubya will beat her like the dog she is). But by 2008, too much of her sleazy side will have become well known. The pubbies will have a field day!!
Her Presidential run will never happen. She doesn't stand a chance with the voters of New York, again, let alone the entire country.
One can only hope. But, I wouldn't bet on it.
She doesn't stand a chance with the voters of New York, again, let alone the entire country.
One should never overestimate the voters of New York. After all, they gladly put her into office in the first place.
I will never vote for Chuck Schumer, but I give him credit for putting his daughter in a NYC public school, albeit the system's crown jewel. The Clintons had Chelsea in private school in DC, and Times owner Sulzberger's kids wouldn't even know what a public school is.
Her Royal Heinous!
No, Laura isn't ambitious like that. It will be 43 - 2 terms, Jeb 2 terms, and by then George P will be old enough to run.
P is good at politics, and besides, he's Hispanic. That will matter in 2020.
I'd also like to nominate our own beloved Tom (Dunheap) Harkin. Today's Des Moines Register Opinion page was full of letters of outrage at Harkin's statement of last week referring to Saddam being a "paper tiger".
The amazing thing is that that left-wing rag published the letters.
http://www.dmregister.com/opinion/stories/c2129999/21032830.html
I couldn't either.
Yet another cold-blooded Beast...
Actually, none of this seems to be in his book, except the part about her office telling the families of 9/11 to send a letter requesting an audience with Her Heinous.
My father heard this on Malzberg's show this morning, and this afternoon we went to a local B&N where I looked up the pig's name in the index and read every referenced page.
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