Author says Hillary and her staff have been stabbing Chuck Schumer in the back.
Posted on 04/28/2003 5:05:18 AM PDT by kattracks
Author Steven Brill says New York Sen. Hillary Clinton made up stories of meetings with 9/11 victim families -- meetings that never took place -- and a furious Brill is demanding that Hillary release him from a confidentiality agreement so he can make public records of their private conversations that will corroborate his claim.In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com this weekend, Brill bristled at statements made by Hillary Clinton's office challenging his bombshell allegations, charges he made after the release of his new book, "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era."
Brill said he can prove his bombshell account of Sen. Clinton's attempts to take credit for 9/11 service that she doesn't deserve.
"If Hillary Clinton will simply release me from my pledge to keep those conversations off-the-record, I will be delighted to tell everybody in chapter and verse exactly what she said to me," the journalist and one-time Clinton defender said.
On Thursday Sen. Clinton's office attacked Brill, with spokesman Phillipe Reines telling Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, "Brill's accusations are completely false and an obvious last ditch effort to jump-start anemic book sales."
"It's hard to understand why Mr. Brill would choose to exploit such a horrible tragedy in this manner," Reines added.
But Brill told NewsMax that he has "contemporaneous notes" of an hour-long conversation with Clinton, conducted at Ground Zero on the first anniversary of the attacks, that will clearly show who is telling the truth.
Hillary 'Denigrated' Schumer
Brill insisted to NewsMax: "Anyone who wants to look at those notes or who wants to even hear what I told people who I was talking to in my office after I came back from my conversation with Hillary - that off-the-record conversation - it will be plain as day that she went out of her way to denigrate Chuck Schumer so that he wouldn't come off in my book as the person who was responsible for helping New York City."
The Brill-Hill brouhaha started a week ago Sunday, when the founder of "Court TV" and "American Lawyer" magazine told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg that Clinton had attacked Sen. Charles Schumer in off-the-record remarks designed to downplay his role in serving 9/11 families.
The author said that when word got out that Schumer would play a major role in his book, Sen. Clinton's office contacted him and said, "What about Hillary?"
But according to 9/11 families interviewed by Brill, Sen. Clinton made herself almost inaccessible, while Schumer devoted hours of private time and personal attention to their plight.
The author told Malzberg about 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."
Another scene from Brill's book is sure to rankle Sen. Clinton. Brill recounts events just two days after the attacks where Schumer and Clinton met with President Bush in order to secure $20 billion in reconstruction money for Lower Manhattan.
"As they walked into the Oval Office, Clinton told Schumer that he should do the asking, which had been his intention all along," the author reports.
After an emotional scene where the two New Yorkers commiserate with the president about the national tragedy, "Schumer turned to Bush and said he'd heard that the nation needed $20 billion to recover."
"'Well, Mr. President, New York needs $20 billion, too,' he said, ticking off some key expense items, such as the rebuilding of the subways."
Bush seemed to hesitate at first, Schumer told Brill. But after a moments pause for reflection, the president said, "New York needs $20 billion? You got it."
In the scene Hillary appears to have been little more than a spectator.
Apparently concerned that the truth about her minimal efforts performing 9/11 victim service would come out, Sen. Clinton had her staff supply Brill with bogus evidence that she had done much more.
"They gave me documents and phone calls and things like that which just plain never happened," Brill said.
The author said that when he checked Clinton's story out, "None of it turned out to be true."
In his comments to NewsMax, Brill dared Clinton's press aide to release him from the their confidentiality agreement.
"Someone ought to ask her press secretary, Karen Dunn, if she'll allow me to put on the record the conversations I had with Karen Dunn and other people on her staff who were who were just unbridled in the way they tried to malign Chuck Schumer."
Despite the vicious attack by Sen. Clinton's office earlier in the week, Brill said he stood by his account 100 percent.
However he did take issue with NewsMax.com's initial characterization that the former first lady "fabricated" records of meetings with 9/11 victim families.
Still, he did not dispute quotes attributed to him saying that Clinton's office "gave me documents and phone calls and things like that which just plain never happened." Nor did Brill challenge comments where he was quoted as alleging that Hillary's staffers provided him with "an elaborate subtext of memos and phone calls - a long, long story" that turned out to be false.
Of those revelations, Brill told NewsMax this weekend, "I'm very careful about what I say. I will stand behind what I say."
He seemed more concerned, however, with Sen. Clinton's charge that he was trying to gin up sales for his book with the new controversy.
"This is a book about a lot of people who I think are unsung American heroes - and I do not want anybody to go out and buy this book because they think it's a book about Hillary Clinton," he insisted.
Still roiled by Clinton's response, he added, "I spent a year and a half of my life writing this book and I poured my heart into it. If you know anything about my life you know that my next meal doesn't depend on whether or not I sell books."
It would seem to me that Brill has every right to forget his "pledge" when it comes down to hillary calling him a liar.
If it's just a "he says-she says" argument, shoot...let 'er rip Brill and let it all hang out, 'cause that b*tch ain't ever gonna release you from any "confidentiality agreement"...certainly from anything that would implicate her heinous.
Just change the name from "Mr. Brill" to "senator Clinton" (lower case "s" is deliberate) and you have the real story.
If Clinton believes that Brill is wrong, then she should publicly release him from the agreement. Otherwise, it has the "appearance" of impropriety.
Hillary is a media grubbing whore, but then, I tend to sugarcoat things.......
It's called spittin into the wind
Brill would be justified in going on-record.
Think it's a matter of ethics...(g)
For example, who gave all of the gory details about the Hillary, Schumer, Bush meeting? It'd have to be Schumer, whose antipathy toward Hillary is common knowledge -- or one of his lackeys. Would Chuckie shade the truth when it comes to a pissing contest with Hillary? You bet he would.
Author says Hillary and her staff have been stabbing Chuck Schumer in the back.
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