Just when you thought it was safe to respect former President Bill Clinton comes a book by former FBI Director Louis Freeh – detailing how truly venal this man was, and probably still is.
One of the highlights Freeh discloses on 60 Minutes this Sunday night is that – instead of demanding that his friends in the Saudi royal family allow the FBI to interview the Saudi Islamic fundamentalists suspected of blowing-up Americans in 1996 – Bill Clinton merely took the opportunity to hit them up for money for his presidential library.
As his former trusted aide, George Stephanopoulos, chronicled in his memoir of disillusionment and disaffection with the former president, Bill Clinton is All Too Human. And, despite his good intentions (and good deeds), he is really just a petulant, spiteful, egocentric, greedy, manipulative, unfaithful, impeached and pathologically self-righteous redneck!
But don’t take my word for it. Read former FBI director Louis Freeh’s eyewitness accounts of this man’s treachery in his (rebuttal?) memoir, My FBI (2005). And, for good measure, I would recommend Lani Guinier’s equally revealing memoir, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice (1998).
She, you may recall, is the Black Ivy League law professor and personal friend who Bill publicly stabbed in the back. He did so just to pander to ‘right-wing conspirators’ who were smearing Lani as a quota queen, merely for recommending a voting system that would allow fairer representation of Blacks in government. Their cynical aim was to prevent Bill from appointing her to a key position in his Justice Department. It worked.
Note: So diabolical is his charm that, despite his public betrayal of Guinier, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison hailed Clinton as “the first black president of the United States.” If she has any integrity left, however, Morrison too will soon publish her memoir of disillusionment and disaffection with Bill Clinton….)
News and Politics
Raul Merlo, Jr. says
Bill Clinton has been out of office now for five years yet you right-wingers can’t let go of your obssession with him. There’s no logical explanation for this hatred; I guarantee you that Republicans fared much better financially during the Clinton era than Democrats. You can’t defend this current administration’s cronyism, bungling of the war on terror, and incredible fiscal recklessness. All you can do is harp on Clinton. Try defending tax cuts in the midst of a war coupled with massive spending or the culture of corruption that’s taken over Washington as a result of one-party rule. You can’t. The only thing left to do is bash Bill Clinton. You people are morally bankrupt and bereft of ideas. The incredible mess the Right has made of this country will take decades to undo. Of course, by that time you will have achieved your socialist aims: one-party rule, an incredible redistribution of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthy, and the turning over of our national security to Communist China. Bush calls himself a “conservative”; I think the “Manchurian Candidate” is a more appropriate label.
Anonymous says
so, mr merlo,
are you saying that the fbi director is a liar when he accuses clinton of selling out american soldiers for saudi money; or that his trusted aide did not condemn him in his book; or that he did not stab that black woman in the back as alh ipinions documents?
and by the way, just browse his site a little and i think you’ll see that he’s not some partisan hack, like you seem to be, but an equal opportunity basher – which is why i’m such a dedicated reader of his blog.
jennifer
Anonymous says
I wonder if Freeh will have anything to say about the Chinese spies Clinton invited into the White House to hit them up for campaign contributions.
Lupin says
Nicely put, Mr. Merlo. The republican obsession with Bill Clinton has driven them to the very ends of reason. And if the few insider accounts of the Bush II administration that have already appeared (by John DiIulio and Paul O’Neill, for instance) are any indication, the tales of corruption, greed, hypocrisy, and rank incompetence still to come will be truly horrifying.
Anonymous says
Raul: I think it is admirable that you defend your party and the Clinton Administration with such vigor. I read Stephanopoulos “All Too Human” and he hit it right on!
BTW go to this sight and read this article. You may want to eat your words. http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/2005/08/23/home.shtml
Noel
Anonymous says
Chinese cash — that’s Neil Bush you’re talking about, not Clinton. The Clinton charge was found to be another hoax. But Neil Bush was paid millions. Look it up.
And look at the results! President Bush has transferred our entire manufacturing base to China, and put us in debt to them for trillions of dollars with his massive borrowing.
Anonymous says
I would encourage those coming to this forum for this first time to check their Republican or Democrat talking points at the door.
I’ve been reading this blog for months and this is the first time I’ve felt bold enough to comment.
The credibility of this article is borne out not only by its documentation but also – as Noel references – by the fact that the author is so fair and refreshingly nuanced. I challenge anyone to cite a more competent columnist who is not beholding to either the liberal or conservative orthodoxy.
Read a little on this site and you will surely be exorcised of your narrowminded partisan ways. But if you refuse to be disabused of that partisanship, stick around a little and I’m sure ALH will have something critical to say about Bush that will please you in due course.
Richard, London
Anonymous says
Oh, so Louis Freeh, George Stephanopoulous and Lani Guinier are now “drooling, sub-human, right-wing morons for Bush”? And you probably consider yourself an evolved left-wing genius for Clinton, right?
Talk about delusional!
Rebecca
esmense says
Another self-serving book from another Washington under-performer, destined for the remainder bin.
Clinton had huge personal faults that badly served both his party and this nation. Nonetheless, Clinton’s failings don’t excuse Freeh’s — or anyone else’s — own failures. Or provide them with instant virtue. (And there is much to legitimately criticize about Freeh and his tenure as FBI Director.)
Blaming everything on Clinton has become a cheap and easy way for people of weak principles and mediocre performance to let themselves off hook. They know that there’s a rabid audience out there that will accept any excuse as long its wrapped in the entertain of Clinton bashing (Hill or Bill).
Unfortunately for Freeh, though, I think that audience is waning in its desire to pay cold, hard cash for that entertainment. Why buy the book when the reviews and and the non-stop conservative and mainstream media interviews will provide with you with your great big helping of partisan, political spite for free?
Anonymous says
Look, both Bill and Hillary got around $20 million between them for writing their versions of the Clinton presidency. So why knock Freeh for writing the FBI perspective on the Clinton years.
Frankly, as far as relative faults go, I would believe anything Freeh writes before believing the man who looked the American people dead in the eye and said “I never had sex…”; And he only compounded his deceit by using his cabinet members to perpetuate his lies and perjuring himself.
C’mon people.
James – like George and Lani – a Democrat!
esmense says
Lani Guinier has a legitimate complaint. Her case, just as much as Freeh’s, but in a different way, represents one of Clinton’s greatest personal faults — his constant efforts to appease, compromise, and find the middle ground. In a different era, this “can’t we all get along” approach might have been a virtue, and useful (compromise has historically been the hallmark of American politics, after all). But in an era when Republicans were making their bid for power by exaggerating partisanship, declaring compromise immoral and positing politics as a war in which the other side of the aisle is an enemy and victory means nothing less than their absolute AND PERSONAL destruction,his conciliatory ways often not only were the wrong approach — they came across as unprincipled and weak.
In the case of Guinier, that instinct toward conciliation and compromise led to him to, in the face of melodramatic, dishonest Republican howling, shamefully throw a very qualified candidate overboard.
In the case of Freeh, on the other hand, in the name of a “bi-partisanship” that Clinton didn’t seem to realize was meaningless to Washington Republicans, his urge toward conciliation led him to appoint a mediocre, unprincipled careerist on the basis, primarily, of political identification (Republican).
As for Stephanopolis, he’s a self-serving, star-struck little twerp for whom politics was just a stepping stone to his real career ambitions in the media. A user with no gratitude or loyalty toward any of the people he used. So who cares what he thinks?
Anonymous says
Boy, y’all never will forgive ole Bill for that one blowjob.
Get a life! Get back to reality. It’s 2005!
Start worring about georgie and tom-tom. Bill ain’t your problem. georgie is!
Anonymous says
you need to get your mind out of the gutter or from between “ole Bill’s” legs. no one wrote anything about a “blowjob”. the man was consorting with chinese spies and hitting up the saudis for money while americans were being blow-up by terrorist on his watch. at least bush had the useful balls to strike back at those bastards.
Anonymous says
So.. let me get this right.
The head of the FBI couldn’t look after the security of this nation because he was too distracted by ……GOSSIP.
Anonymous says
Helloooooo – it’s not the FBI director’s job to “look after the security of this nation”. His primary duty is to investigate crimes.
It’s the commander-in-chief’s duty to look after the security of this nation and, evidently, Bill Clinton was too “distracted” getting blowjobs from Monica and soliciting cold hard cash from the Arabs to do his JOB!
Anonymous says
So, let me get this straight:
Terroist attack the US in Sept. of 2001; a full 8-1/2 months after Bubba left office.
The Clinton administration attempted to instruct the incoming Bush administration about the fight with terroism being the most important issue on their docket. They were ignored until August 2001 when they met with the Clintonians and then postponed the meeting ’till the middle of Sept. I don’t think fighting terroist was high on Bush’s list of things to do.
Freeh said, on 60 Minutes, that even if the FBI were to have information about 9/11 they would not have been able to act on it. He also said that at the time that Clinton was still in office he would not have been able to invade The Vatican let alone Afganistan. No one would authorize it and the country would not want it.
Terroist attack the US and Bush whisks the Bin Laden clan out of the country and to Saudi Arabia but the Saudis had Clinton in their back pocket?
Sometimes it’s awfully hard to see the truth when you’re obstructed by dogma.
esmense says
Anyone with a brain understands by now that what Starr was doing was politics, not criminal investigation.
Sure, Clinton was a sinner. But nothing he did, privately, with Monica reaches the level of immorality of what was done to her publicly. The level of human debasement,intentional infliction of pain and humiliation on another human being, disregard for the humanity of another, and self-serving cruelty of the most arrogant and ambition-serving kind, exhibited by the House Republicans, the various Republican legal “elves,” other impeachment plotters (Delay, Norquist, etc., etc.), Ken Starr and those in the justice department, including Freeh, who, without moral reflecton or qualms, did his bidding.
No legitimate investigation, of adultery or perjury, required or justified the kind of detailed, pornographic testimony that was demanded from Lewinski under threat of jail. That testimony was forced from this young woman — and spread immediately to the world through intentional leaking to the press — simply to weaken the presidency through public humiliation of the President. Nothing justified the detailed, shameful, pornographic document produced by the Special Prosecutors Office on the taxpayers’ dime. These things were done for purely political, not legal, reasons.
In the process, this whole amoral crew casually and completely destroyed a young woman’s life (and the lives of other powerless people as well) without a second thought — for no other reason than to satisfy their own personal and political ambitions. To them she wasn’t human — she was just a useful object, a pawn. In the process of her destruction (for their gain), they made the entire country feel dirty.
In the process, they also harmed our democracy and the American people by plotting to thwart and over-throw the people’s will through non-democratic means.
If you think that anything Monica and the President did in private justifies the immorality that Starr, Freeh and others demonstrated in public — if you are so blinded by Clinton’s private sin that you cannot see their PUBLIC sin of abuse of power (that destroyed lives and made a mockery of democracy) then you are revealing only this; that you are as immoral and ethically challenged as they are.
Anonymous says
So let me get this straight. The conservatives are reflecting on the “scandlals” of the Clinton years. Oh my god! They spent 8 years with a special prosecutor finally coming up with “he had consensual sex”. Thats it! We had to suffer through all those years all the way to impeachment proceedings which made it to the senate! For what? Conservatives scream. “Clinton lied under oath”Oh please. They always leave out the question he lied about because it’s so pathetic. Remember this was the BIG question.. “Did you have sex with Monica?” Let me see. Now we have clear evidence that we were lied to about the reasons for getting into a war that has killed thousands (Downing streat and Niger), we have clear evidence that top administration officials conducted a smear campaign against an official who was attempting to shed light on the lies (Plamegate), an administration that hires unqualified cronies to government positions that literally are life and death in their scope (FEMA), and administration that has been sleeping with Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff. And the right wing psychos and Louie Freeh say the Clinton years were scandal ridden.
Anonymous says
Oh the Chinese spies!Look out for the Chinese spies! I bet these Chinese spies screamers have a house full of products with MADE IN CHINA. I’m more worried about who Bushco and the Neocons have been sleeping with. Can we talk about corporate giveaways. And isn’t Kenneth Ley still a free man. Why he was GW’s best friend wasn’t he?