How Hillary Clinton Grappled With Bill Clinton’s Infidelity, and His Accusers


By MEGAN TWOHEYOCT. 2, 2016
 
Bill and Hillary Clinton in Manchester, N.H., in January 1992. An accusation of infidelity emerged the same month. Credit Paul Hosefros/The New York Times 



Hillary Clinton was campaigning for her husband in January 1992 when she learned of the race’s newest flare-up: Gennifer Flowers had just released tapes of phone calls with Bill Clinton to back up her claim they had had an affair.

Other candidates had been driven out of races by accusations of infidelity. But now, at a cold, dark airfield in South Dakota, Mrs. Clinton was questioning campaign aides by phone and vowing to fight back on behalf of her husband.

“Who’s tracking down all the research on Gennifer?” she asked, according to a journalist traveling with her at the time.

The enduring image of Mrs. Clinton from that campaign was a “60 Minutes” interview in which she told the country she was not blindly supporting her husband out of wifely duty. “I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said.
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Last week, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, criticized Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Clinton’s affairs and her response to them, and said he might talk more about the issue in the final weeks before the election.

That could be a treacherous strategy for Mr. Trump, given his own past infidelity and questionable treatment of women. Many voters, particularly women, might see Mrs. Clinton being blamed for her husband’s conduct.

It could also remind voters of a searing period in American history, and in Mrs. Clinton’s life.

Confronting a spouse’s unfaithfulness is painful under any circumstance. For Mrs. Clinton, it happened repeatedly and in the most public of ways, unfolding at the dawn of the 24/7 news cycle, and later in impeachment proceedings that convulsed the nation.

Outwardly, she remained stoic and defiant, defending her husband while a progression of women and well-funded conservative operatives accused Mr. Clinton of behavior unbecoming the leader of the free world.

But privately, she embraced the Clinton campaign’s aggressive strategy of counterattack: Women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Mr. Clinton would become targets of digging and discrediting — tactics that women’s rights advocates frequently denounce.

The campaign hired a private investigator with a bare-knuckles reputation who embarked on a mission, as he put it in a memo, to impugn Ms. Flowers’s “character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition.”

In a pattern that would later be repeated with other women, the investigator’s staff scoured Arkansas and beyond, collecting disparaging accounts from ex-boyfriends, employers and others who claimed to know Ms. Flowers, accounts that the campaign then disseminated to the news media.

By the time Mr. Clinton finally admitted to “sexual relations” with Ms. Flowers, years later, Clinton aides had used stories collected by the private investigator to brand her as a “bimbo” and a “pathological liar.”





Mrs. Clinton’s level of involvement in that effort, as described in interviews, internal campaign records and archives, is still the subject of debate. By some accounts, she gave the green light and was a motivating force; by others, her support was no more than tacit assent.

What is clear is that Mrs. Clinton was in a difficult spot. She was aware that her husband had cheated earlier in their marriage, but by her telling, she also believed him when he denied the accusations levied by Ms. Flowers and others.

Mickey Kantor, the chairman of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said that Mrs. Clinton wanted to separate fact from fiction and to size up the women making the claims.

“Let’s say the woman has some not-helpful things that she has done in the past,” Mr. Kantor said. “Wouldn’t you want to know that, and evaluate it?”

At the same time, a growing cadre of conservative groups and media outlets had begun focusing on the issue. Mrs. Clinton, those close to her said, viewed the attacks as a political crusade that demanded a stiff political response.

And that determination to fight back inspired others in the campaign to do the same.

“She’s the firefighter running to the fire,” Mr. Kantor said, “not away from it.”

Mrs. Clinton and her husband declined to be interviewed, and her campaign did not answer questions about her support of efforts to undermine the women. “The country closed the book on these matters close to 20 years ago, and there is nothing whatsoever new here,” her spokesman, Brian Fallon, said in

Karnal wrote on Oct 19^th, 2016 at 7:13pm:


Not saying, eh Sprint?

No worries. You got it from one of your faux news sites that just happen to be started by the Trump campaign. You saw a headline, you didn't read the details.

That's okay, it happens to the best of us. Look at Homo's big post - he hasn't read that one either. Never mind the lack of a reference, he doesn't even know half of it's missing.

Karnal wrote on Oct 19^th, 2016 at 7:31pm:



legally, reputation, publicly.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Oct 19^th, 2016 at 7:38pm:


Sorry?

Karnal wrote on Oct 19^th, 2016 at 8:00pm:
No, jihadists sugar muffin. If I had my way I wouldn't have one Muslim in Australia.

Trump may be a buffoon, however Clinton, with her obsession with power at any cost, to the point of not only ignoring her husbands very public infidelity but actively supporting him, and her well documented disdain of anyone she sees as beneath her, exhibits all the traits of a sociopath......

Belgarion wrote on Oct 19^th, 2016 at 8:10pm:


Another who wants to avoid the policies because of a husband's infidelities.

No worries, Belgarion. Let's hope the Amerikan people vote for a chaste candidate, okay?

Red, if you actually knew the sort of policies Trump's putting out there, there is no way you'd be his Australian propaganda bureau.

You may well like the idea of his Muslim ban and Mexican wall, but there is no way you'd support him abandoning universal health care or implimenting his massive corporate tax cuts. I doubt you'd support his Muslim ID card to be carried at all times - or else. I know you wouldn't support his massive welfare crackdown - veterans included - while he halves taxes for the rich. You wouldn't sipport him putting the US into deficit for 5.3 trillion over 8 years, which are the independent costings of his tax policies alone.

The media has been way too nice to Trump. If they were doing their job, you would know about all these things. You'd be free to continue apologizing for Trump - or not.

Because let's face it, you're not that dumb. You don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face - just to get back at a few  Muslims, Mexicans and blacks. Homo would. Sprint would. Herbie and the old boy definitely would.

You, on the other hand, would fight for your own interests, as you always do.

But alas, you always forget to read the fine print - hence your support for Trump. If we had a real democratic media, and a real presidential debate, you'd drop Trump like a live UXB.

Whoops.