The former agent, Gary Aldrich, has written a book titled "Unlimited Access," which makes a number of allegations of a sensational nature regarding the private lives of the president, his wife and members of the White House staff. The author has been vehemently criticized by the mainstream media for basing a number of his allegations on accounts provided by unnamed sources
According to Aldrich, Mr. Clinton was late to his own inauguration due to Mrs. Clinton's adamant insistence that she be given the White House office traditionally reserved for the vice president. She backed down only after being told that Al Gore had threatened to resign rather than submit to the humiliation of being denied the office that was rightfully his by tradition. Aldrich noted that the altercation between the president and the first lady became so heated at one point that the Secret Service agents present considered intervening to protect the president.
Aldrich also claims that Craig Livingstone told him Vince Foster had expressed serious concern about rumors that he had been having an affair with Hillary Clinton. Foster was said to have believed, shortly before his death, that the rumors were about to surface in a Washington newspaper and "was worried sick about it." (The allegation did appear in the American Spectator some time after Foster's death). Livingstone maintains that he had never actually met Vince Foster.
A "highly placed, credible" source is cited by Aldrich as saying that Hillary was given a major role in determining domestic policy in return for supporting her husband after Gennifer Flowers alleged that she and Mr. Clinton had been involved in a 12-year affair. According to the source, the deal was brokered by former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler prior to the 1992 election. Cutler has denied this.
According to a London Times article that was published on Saturday, June 29, Aldrich, who was responsible for clearing presidential appointees, maintained that "security was so lax that he found evidence of 'willful endangerment' of the President and national security." He complained that many of the young White House staffers who lacked security clearance were allowed to handle classified documents.
Perhaps the most controversial account in Aldrich's book involves the allegation that Mr. Clinton slipped away from his Secret Service protectors on a number of occasions to engage in nighttime trysts with an unnamed lady at the Marriott Hotel. The president is described by Aldrich lying, covered with a blanket, on the back seat of a car driven by his friend and White House advisor Bruce Lindsey. Mr. Clinton is said to have taken a service elevator from the underground garage in the hotel straight to the room of his lady friend, returning, sometimes hours later, to be driven back to the White House by Lindsey who had waited patiently in the automobile the whole time.
Quite apart from the extraordinary forbearance required of Mr. Lindsey, the story has several difficulties. The hotel management point out that the service elevator ascends from the service entrance rather than the parking garage, for example. A spokesman for the Secret Service insists that the president could not possibly leave the White House without the knowledge of his bodyguards. U.S. News reports, however, that a secret tunnel, constructed during the Reagan administration, connects the Oval Office to the president's living quarters in the East Wing. The tunnel was to provide an escape route in case of a terrorist attack. (There is also said to be an older tunnel connecting the White House to the State Department building by way of an underground garage). Reagan is said to have used the tunnel to sneak Richard Nixon into the White House for consultation on foreign policy. The article suggests that the president could use the tunnel to leave the White House with minimal chance of detection.
This account became the focal point of the media's attack upon Aldrich's credibility when it was revealed that the conservative investigative writer David Brock had stated that he was the source of the story and that he had been unable to verify it. (If nothing else, this controversy has had a salutary effect on Mr. Brock's credibility with the dominant media - few mainstream journalists seemed to believe anything he wrote about Anita Hill). Aldrich denies that Brock was his source and maintains that he has other sources for the story and that he will testify to this under oath, if necessary. He told Michael Reagan in a radio interview that he regards Brock as a competitor. Nevertheless, the mainstream media have used Brock's statement to sow the seed of doubt regarding Aldrich's credibility.
Some reporters go so far as to say they find it inconceivable that a president could evade his Secret Service detail. This is not the first time that issue has been raised. According to Thomas C. Reeves, John F. Kennedy did this very thing from time to time. In his best-selling book, "A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy," Reeves writes:
At one point, according to consultant Langdon Marvin, Jack eluded his agents in New York to reach a party undetected. In doing so, he became separated from the Army officer who followed him with the nation's nuclear codes handcuffed to his wrist. (This separation surely happened more than once during Kennedy's private escapades.) Marvin recalled, "The Russians could have bombed us to hell and back, and there would have been nothing we could have done about it."Clinton apologist Richard Cohen commented in his column that appeared on July 2 in The Washington Post that Aldrich "has had to concede" that the woman at the Marriott "may not even have existed."
Perhaps, but the story has found resonance. A San Francisco talk show personality at KSFO radio, Melanie Morgan, has named Mr. Clinton's putative paramour as the granddaughter of a former vice-president. The presence of this tall blonde lady at the West Wing of the White House while the first lady was out of town has been reported by both the Washington Times and the New York Post.
Mr. Cohen would have us believe that "what Aldrich stated as fact is just sheer rumor."
That remains to be seen, but those who are old enough to remember the press coverage of the Kennedy administration will be aware that the rumors regarding JFK (which most of us didn't believe at the time) proved to be considerably more accurate than the saccharin fairy tales of Camelot they fed us in those days.
One thing this controversy has established is evidence that the dominant media culture really does operate by a set of standards. Unfortunately they appear to be mostly double standards.
While carping endlessly about the deficiencies of Mr. Aldrich's book, real or imagined, the mainstream media have ignored glaring errors in the Clinton administration's counterattack. The administration's "smear" charges have focused on a Washington public relations man named Craig Shirley who is being paid to promote the book. Their charges that Shirley is a ``paid adviser'' to Dole have been discredited, however. Although Shirley informally assisted Dole with a few radio appearances earlier this year, he has never been a paid advisor to the former senator. Nor did he promote Paula Jones' lawsuit against Clinton, as administration sources have alleged. Their assertion that the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which has offered to assist Aldrich, was founded by Newt Gingrich was shown to be nonsense when it was revealed that the organization was founded twenty years ago - long before Gingrich became a player in national politics. In fact, he is not connected with the foundation in any way. Nor was the book "planned by Republicans," as administration spin doctors have charged. Aldrich was steered to Regnery, a conservative publishing house, by former U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens. Thus, the entire "Republican plot" theory presented by Clinton aides is based on erroneous information, but with the notable exception of columnist Robert Novak, hardly any journalist has bothered to mention this.
In response to a question posed by Josette Shiner, the managing editor of the Washington Times: "What's the difference between Bob Woodward's book and this?" Richard Cohen replied, "Well, for starters Woodward has either written or co-written seven best- selling books and not a one of them has been impeached."
Ms. Shiner was presumably referring to Woodward's controversial book "Veil" in which he described an interview he claims to have had with Reagan's CIA director, William Casey. A problem arises in that Mr. Casey had just had a portion of his brain removed by surgery and, according to his family, had lost the faculty of speech. Nor was Mr. Woodward's presence in Casey's hospital room noted by the federal agents who were guarding him around the clock. Challenged by Ted Koppel to describe the interior of Casey's room, Mr. Woodward declined to do so, mumbling that he had to protect his sources. One can but wonder what it would take, in Mr. Cohen's opinion, to impeach Bob Woodward's veracity.
The truth is, there is nothing out of the ordinary in Gary Aldrich's use of unnamed sources in his book. To this day nobody, with the possible exception of Bob Woodward, knows the identity of "Deep Throat," Woodward's supposed source for the Watergate revelations that brought down the Nixon presidency. The New York Times splashed Kitty Kelley's trashy supermarket tabloid "expose" of Nancy Reagan over its front page even though the author's most scurrilous allegation was attributed to an unnamed source. Nor is a failure to get every detail letter perfect usually seen as undermining the credibility of an entire book. "Unlimited Access" has been afforded special treatment by the mainstream media because most Washington journalists support Mr. Clinton (89 percent, according to a recent Roper poll) and see this book as particularly damaging to the administration.
Not without reason - Mr. Aldrich is expecting to be called to testify before the House committee that is investigating the improper use of FBI background checks on former White House aides from the previous administration. According to recent press accounts, he can be expected to tell the committee that the White House security chief responsible for misusing the files, Craig Livingstone, was hired at the insistence of Hillary Clinton. Nor will he have to rely on anonymous sources; his testimony will be corroborated by an FBI colleague, Dennis Sculimbrene. That is the more likely reason for the frantic attack upon Mr. Aldrich's credibility.
[Printed in the July 8, 1996 issue of the Washington Weekly]