AN ANALYSIS WORTH READING
by Dick Morris, former political advisor to President Bill Clinton
Time 1996 September
If you happen to see the Bill Clinton five minute TV ad for Hillary in which he introduces the commercial by saying ...he wants to "share some things we may not know about Hillary's background."
Beware as I was there for most of their presidency and know them better than just about anyone, I offer a few corrections:
Bill says: "In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor."
The facts are: Hillary's main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent.
She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.
Bill says: "Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children's rights project for poor kids."
The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party.
She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an interndship with him.
Bill says: "Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers."
The facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam, yes, flunked, it is a matter of record, and only passed the Arkansas bar.
She had no job offers in Arkansas , none, and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there.
She did not join the prestigious Rose Law Firm until Bill became Arkansas Attorney General and was made a partner only after he was elected Arkansas Governor.
Bill says: "President Carter appointed Hillary to the Legal Services Board of Directors and she became its chairman."
The facts are: The appointment was in exchange for Bill's support for Carter in his 1980 primary against Ted Kennedy.
Hillary then became chairman in a coup in which she won a majority away from Carter's choice to be chairman.
Bill says: "She served on the board of the Arkansas Children's Hospital."
The facts are: Yes she did. But her main board activity, not mentioned by Bill, was to sit on the Wal-Mart board of directors, for a substantial fee.
She was silent about their labor and health care practices.
Bill says: "Hillary didn't succeed at getting health care for all Americans in 1994 but she kept working at it and helped to create the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance."
The facts are: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP.
It was included in the budget deal between Clinton and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott.
I know; I helped to negotiate the deal. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals' tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with either source of funds.
Bill says: "Hillary was the face of America all over the world."
The facts are: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House.
Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them.
Bill says: "Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children's and women's issues."
The facts are: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she has passed only four substantive pieces of legislation.
One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives through Alzheimer's or other conditions. And two were routine bills to aid 911 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation.
FLASHBACK: HILLARY CLINTON FIRED FROM WATERGATE INVESTIGATION FOR ‘LYING, UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR’
Sam Donaldson with Hillary Rodham, chief counsel John Doar (left), bringing impeachment charges against President Nixon 1974..
Hillary Clinton fired for lies, unethical behavior
By DAN CALABRESE - Bet you didn't know this.
The retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary Rodham (married Bill Clinton in October,1975) when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.
Why? ...“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.
Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.
The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.
“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader) Gerald Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.
The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?
“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.
The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.
