Posted on 06/07/2003 9:23:37 AM PDT by judicial meanz
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.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
"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
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