American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power (23 page)

Back in 1999, when Paul Fray accused her of calling him a “Jew bastard,” Hillary was not about to rely solely on her denials to defuse the scandal. In keeping with her tried-and-true practice of discrediting her accusers, Hillary instructed an aide to send a memo to Clinton’s “Jewish Advisory Committee” outlining ways in which to cast doubt on the credibility of the three people who
allegedly went on record as hearing Hillary make the anti-Semitic slur: Fray, his wife Mary, and 1974 Clinton for Congress campaign worker Neil McDonald. The same memo urged Hillary’s Jewish backers to come forward and claim they had never heard her make an anti-Semitic remark, but not to mention that they had been asked to defend her. Instead, Hillary’s memo instructed them to say they were stepping forward on their own because they were “outraged with what was said about her.” New York’s other Democratic senator, Chuck Schumer, did just that, along with seven other Jewish members of Congress, who within hours of receiving their marching orders from Hillary held a conference at the Democratic National Committee offices to defend her.

“We’re talking about something that occurred 26 years ago, but here again,” Paul Fray said at the time, “it’s indicative of her style of approach that she’s going to deny it until it’s proven otherwise.” Hillary’s denials were, in fact, enough to convince voters that she could never have intentionally uttered an ethnic slur or an anti-Semitic remark.

These were the kinds of mistakes lifelong New Yorker Rudy Giuliani was not likely to make. Indeed, Hillary complained bitterly that the New York press was clearly playing favorites, lying in wait for the carpetbagging First Lady to make her next gaff while giving the hometown boy a free pass. Hillary, who in the early months of her campaign restricted press access largely to staged events and carefully circumscribed interviews, also suffered in comparison to the media-savvy Giuliani.

For months CBS talk-show host David Letterman had bombarded Hillary’s communications director, Howard Wolfson, with requests for an interview—a campaign that, as time went on, became a running gag on the show. Giuliani had charmed Letterman’s audience on several occasions, and the longer Hillary stalled, the more awkward the talk-show host’s on-air importuning became. Concerned that she would be “skewered” by Letterman,
Hillary agreed to do the interview only if she knew the questions in advance. To make things even easier, comedy writers provided Hillary with a couple of snappy one-liners. Asking about her new house in Chappaqua, Letterman cracked that “every idiot in the area is going to drive by honking now.”

“Oh, was that you?” Hillary shot back. The scripted line left the audience howling. She then went on to astound viewers with her in-depth knowledge of New York State as Letterman quizzed her on the state flower, the state bird, the state tree, the state motto, and more. What viewers did not know, of course, was that Hillary had been given the questions—and the answers—well ahead of time. (In her 2003 memoirs, Hillary would take full credit for the witty retort, and not mention the quiz—or the prepping for it—at all.)

On January 19, Martin Luther King Day, Hillary went to Harlem to speak at the headquarters of the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. The First Lady–turned–Senate candidate could always count on a warm welcome in New York’s black neighborhoods, where her husband was still widely regarded as a great man. Referring to “the tragic murder of Amadou Diallo,” Hillary affirmed that “what every community, but particularly the African American community, wants is to be respected and protected. The process has already started to bring this matter to the attention of the federal authorities,” she continued, being none too subtle about her willingness to have her husband pressure the Justice Department to intervene. “And if there is a role for the federal government, I will certainly encourage and urge that that occur.”

One month later, the four officers—who were never tried for murder—were acquitted on manslaughter charges by a jury that included blacks, whites, and Hispanics. It was only then that Hillary, now coming under heavy fire for unfairly criticizing the police and facing the possibility of being sued by the officers for slander, apologized for blithely calling the four innocent men murderers.

Yet when police killed another unarmed black man in March 2000, Hillary once again journeyed to Harlem to condemn New York City police officers and the mayor who stood behind them. When undercover cops approached Patrick Dorismond outside a bar and asked if he had drugs to sell, Dorismond became angry and a fight ensued. In the struggle, one of the officers shot and killed Dorismond. In a move that could only be described as indefensible, Giuliani, again under siege, released Dorismond’s juvenile arrest record. It showed, the mayor said, that the victim was “no altar boy.”

Hillary pounced on Giuliani’s misguided attempt at defending his beleaguered police department. “I do not believe bad relations with the police are necessary to keep our streets safe,” she told 1,100 congregates crammed into Harlem’s Bethel A.M.E. Church. “New York has a real problem, and we all know it. All of us, it seems, except the Mayor.” Hillary would later savor the moment. “The packed sanctuary,” she recalled, “erupted in cheers and hallelujahs.” This was, she said, the turning point in her campaign—the moment she gained “traction.”

Hillary had wasted no time in playing the race card. While slamming Giuliani for his “divisive rhetoric,” she hammered away at what she portrayed as the mayor’s callous disregard for the rights and safety of New York’s black population. She preferred to ignore the fact that, under Giuliani, New York’s crime rate had plummeted. So, too, had police shootings. Under Giuliani’s Democratic predecessor, David Dinkins, an African American and a close political ally of Hillary’s, there were 212 police shootings in 1993 alone—a number Giuliani had
reduced
by 77 percent. “I didn’t see the Justice Department investigating David Dinkins in an election year,” Giuliani said, pointing to the fact that as a result of his administration’s crackdown on crime, the city’s murder rate had dropped from 2,100 a year in the early 1990s to 600 in the
year 2000—a decline that was most evident in the city’s minority neighborhoods. Instead of investigating New York’s Finest, the mayor added, “the Justice Department should be giving them a medal.”

A number of Hillary’s supporters clearly did not share that sentiment. At the state Democratic Party’s convention in Albany that May, they jeered and spat on an Albany police honor guard carrying the American flag. Some of the convention delegates, who would later formally vote to nominate Hillary as their party’s candidate for the Senate, pelted the officers with insults. “It’s Giuliani’s Third Reich!” one protester screamed at the honor guard, which had been invited to participate. Others simply yelled, “Nazis!”

Hillary would later write a letter of apology to Albany Police Chief John Neilsen. She condemned the actions of the few cophaters in no uncertain terms, but showed no signs of comprehending that her intemperate antipolice rhetoric may have inflamed her supporters.

Over the spring, Hillary crept up in the polls as Giuliani found himself caught up in his own extramarital scandal. While she would later claim to have sympathized with the mayor’s plight, at the time Hillary was, said a campaign volunteer, “thrilled about the whole sordid mess. I watched her reading a story about Giuliani’s affair in the
Daily News,
and at one point she just
howled
with laughter.”

That was nothing compared to the reaction at Clinton headquarters when Giuliani announced on May 19, 2000, that he was withdrawing from the race to battle prostate cancer. Behind the campaign’s solemn public face, there was “jubilation,” said another Clinton volunteer. “Hillary knew that Giuliani was the only one who stood even the slightest chance of beating her. She didn’t want to look as if she was happy he’d gotten cancer, but some of the other people in the campaign made no secret of their hatred for Giuliani.”
Hillary said nothing when one of her most trusted advisers reacted to the news with “Cancer? Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

Few doubted that Hillary would trounce Giuliani’s replacement, a fresh-faced but little-known congressman from Long Island named Rick Lazio. But then Hillary was, in the words of her own mother, “never one to leave things to chance.”

Hillary was confident that she enjoyed a significant lead in New York’s black and Hispanic communities. But because of tensions between the black and Jewish communities, the kiss she gave Mrs. Arafat, her support for a Palestinian state, and her reputed “Jew bastard” remark, she worried that she might lose New York’s significant Jewish vote.

Just to be safe, Hillary made a concerted effort not to be seen in any situation that might make her appear to be sympathetic to the Arab cause. That was going to be tricky, since several individuals and organizations with ties to Arafat, the PLO, and other anti-Israel organizations had already promised to contribute large sums to her Senate campaign.

Exactly one week before Giuliani bowed out of the race, Hillary asked Yasser Arafat’s friend Hani Masri to host a secret fund-raiser for her at his Washington home. The Masri family poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Democratic Party coffers just as the Clinton administration was pondering a $60 million government loan to Masri’s Capital Investment Management Corporation. The two-hour-long reception at the Masri mansion netted a tidy $50,000 for Hillary’s campaign.

The following month, Hillary showed up at another event to collect $50,000 from the American Muslim Alliance, an organization that advocates the use of force against the state of Israel. Later, Hillary claimed to have been unaware that the alliance had sponsored the fund-raiser. But then a thank-you letter written on White House stationery and bearing Hillary’s signature turned up, as did a photograph of a smiling Hillary posing with a plaque the
organization had bestowed on her. Things only got worse when it was revealed that a donation from another questionable group, the American Muslim Council, was disguised in the campaign’s records as a contribution from the American “Museum” Council. “A typo,” Hillary commented with a shrug. The only typo, it turned out, in the campaign’s extensive list of donors submitted to the Federal Election Commission.

That June Hillary was, in the words of a state party official, “thrown into a panic” when crowds booed her as she marched up Fifth Avenue in New York’s annual Israel Day Parade. Later, at a “Solidarity for Israel” rally in front of the Israeli consulate in Manhattan, she was booed off the stage.

Polls were showing Hillary and “Little Ricky,” as she now referred to Lazio, as dead even. Convinced the race would be decided by a hairbreadth, she was more determined than ever to do whatever she could to win over Jewish voters. Not long after the “Solidarity for Israel” debacle, Hillary’s handlers briefed her on the situation in New Square, a tiny Hasidic enclave about thirty miles northwest of Manhattan. There, four prominent members of the Orthodox Jewish Skver sect had been convicted in 1999 of bilking government aid programs to the tune of $30 million and funneling the cash back into New Square’s yeshiva.

New Square had voted as a bloc in previous elections, and Hillary’s advisers suggested she make a campaign stop there. She was also warned that four of the community’s leaders were serving time in a federal prison for stealing millions of taxpayer dollars, and that the rabbis had been lobbying aggressively to have the four men’s sentences commuted. Giuliani refused to help, as did Lazio.

A campaign staffer cautioned Hillary that the issue of a presidential pardon might come up. “So?” the candidate asked incredulously.

On August 8, 2000, Hillary made her pilgrimage to New Square, following Hasidic custom by covering her head with a scarf before
sitting down to talk with village leaders. Positioned across a coffee table from the rabbis and talking through a tall flower arrangement that served as the Hasidims’ traditional screen between the sexes, Hillary calmly spelled out what she was willing to do to improve New Square’s health care services. The subject of pardons, both Hillary and her hosts would later insist, was never raised.

Six days later, on the opening night of the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Hillary thanked the party faithful “for your support and faith in good times—and in bad.” Surrounded by Democratic women senators Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Barbara Mikulski, and Patty Murray, Hillary seized the opportunity to position herself as a figure of national importance in her own right. “Bill and I are closing one chapter of our lives,” she declared, “and soon we’ll be starting a new one.” When Bill followed her onstage to chants of “four more years,” the Clintons smiled and subconsciously nodded in agreement. If all went according to The Plan…

The rabbis of New Square, meanwhile, would have to wait for several months before Hillary sent them a signal. The day before the election, a letter from the President was posted in the entrance hall of New Square’s main synagogue. In it, Bill Clinton said he was looking forward to visiting the village in the near future. Once the votes were tallied the next day, New Square delivered Hillary the biggest victory margin of any community in the state—1,359 votes to only 10 votes for her opponent, Rick Lazio. In contrast, the two neighboring Hasidic villages, where the issue of a presidential pardon played no role in the election, voted 3,480 to 152
against
Hillary.

“We had very strong support in the Jewish community, particularly in the towns surrounding New Square,” Lazio said. “But from the very beginning, we were told not to come to New Square itself. They’d say, ‘Don’t bother to send anyone, there’s
nothing you can do…. We’re terribly sorry.’ We didn’t know what it was at the time. Of course, we found out eventually.”

Three days before Christmas 2000, Grand Rabbi David Twersky and several other New Square leaders would meet with Bill and Hillary in the White House Map Room. Sobbing, the grand rabbi begged the President to pardon Kalman Stern, Jacob Elbaum, Benjamin Berger, and David Goldstein.