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International News Electronic Telegraph
Saturday 11 January 1997
Issue 596

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Disgraced adviser dishes dirt on Clinton
By Hugh Davies in Washington


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Wronged wife feels backlash of publicity

IN public Bill Clinton is a charmer, smiling and saying the decent thing, even about his political enemies. But, according to a new book, he has a vicious temper and routinely mocks aides as "children".

In one private outburst, he is said to have screamed that his Republican rival, Robert Dole, was "an evil, evil man". This remark was a surprise to many Americans as, during the election campaign, he went out of his way to call the war-wounded Dole an honorable man who had served his country with courage and decency.

The dark side of the president was revealed yesterday by Dick Morris, his old friend and confidant, in Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties, for which he was paid a $2.5 million advance by Random House. The White House, which has been worrying for months about what the book would disclose, has taken pains to keep Morris sweet.

After he was forced to quit as the leader's main political guru for consorting with a prostitute, both Mr Clinton and his wife, Hillary, telephoned him to sympathise with his plight. In the book, Morris says the president called him six weeks later to tell him his lead in the polls was due to the Morris "game plan". Mr Clinton spoke of his "gratitude and affection".

Morris, branded by several White House aides as a traitor, betrays the president left and right in the 359-page tome. He portrays him as insulated in a White House of warring camps, with a clique led by Hillary - "the girls' club" - being harshly critical of "the boys" (advisers such as George Stephanopolous, Leon Panetta and Harold Ickles) "for screwing things up". The president was even more critical of his male inner circle.

"Time and again he would derisively refer to his staff as the 'children who got me elected'. He would plead for more adults in the White House," Morris writes. The disgraced adviser presents Mr Clinton as out of touch with the world, never reading newspapers and relying on staff to summarize what was happening.

"Dozens of times I would mention a front-page story of great importance . . . and he had not seen them. He almost never knew what was on the nightly news."

Morris writes that Mr Clinton was often at his worst while on holiday. "The president doesn't sleep well on vacation . . . so he complains that someone or something is spoiling his vacation. He broods, turns nasty and starts lacing into people."

At one point during a rest Mr Clinton was taking while the Republicans held their national convention in San Diego, Morris phoned him and he screamed: "Today I had a good game of golf, and for the first time in this vacation I'm really able to sit here at night and try to relax, and you call me and screw it up."

In another bad mood, the president is pictured as in a terrible tantrum, with "his lips curling into a sneer". The topic was his aides. Morris quotes him as saying: "I will not have the decisions I make, that take guts, that take courage, where I'm risking everything, and have them transformed into seamy, seedy, political decisions, so some staff member or some consultant can blow his own horn to look oh, so smart and oh, so good to some journalist."

Morris writes: "Typically, much of Bill Clinton's self-image comes from the feelings reflected by others around him. In a room, he will instinctively, as if by a canine sense of smell, find anyone who shows reserve towards him, and he will work full-time on winning his or her approval, and, if possible, affection."

Morris claims he orchestrated many of Mr Clinton's actions, such as his attendance at the actor Ted Danson's wedding to Mary Steenburgen on Martha's Vineyard. He told aides to ensure the president was not photographed. "In order to maintain the president's populist image, I tried to keep him away from Hollywood and the jet set."

Morris admits that the prostitute Sherry Rowlands listened to conversations he had with the president from their suite at the Jefferson Hotel, Washington. However, he insists he did not let his "companion" hear much. She has claimed that during more than 40 "all-nighters" with Morris, between sucking her toes and "being dominated", he liked to let her listen in to calls to Mr Clinton.

In the book, he says he would put his phone to her ear only "for a moment or two". He writes of the crushing blow he suffered when a supermarket tabloid caught him with the woman. He told Mr Clinton's friend, Erskine Bowles, now White House Chief-of-Staff. Mr Bowles ordered him to resign.

Morris says he asked: "Why? What the hell did I do that he [Mr Clinton] wasn't accused of doing four years ago?" Mr Bowles replied: "You've admitted it's true."

Morris writes that he felt "omnipotent" after helping Mr Clinton get back on political course after the 1994 Republican congressional landslide. He was "flush with victory", but in the high-pressure world of "official Washington" he was unable to cope with "the inevitable periods of solitude". So he went to a prostitute.

Morris concludes by detailing the horror of being found out - "when power, ego and self gratification are stripped away".

He says that he left a message for Mr Clinton saying he would appreciate a call "because I was in a bad way." The leader called back the next day, saying: "We all have to fight the disintegration of our personal lives in this business. It's a very lonely business. If you can't work hard to hold your personal life together, it just disintegrates you."

Morris, married for 20 years, not only dallied with a call girl. It emerged that he had fathered the six-year-old daughter of Barbara Jean Pfafflin, a mistress in Austin, Texas. He has been sending her $5,000 a month in child support. The affair lasted 11 years.

6 January 1997: Wife of former Clinton aide seeks divorce
25 November 1996: Clinton guru talks of 'Greek tragedy'



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