http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=44748#ixzz1cPwMZ6dOCharges then-first lady orchestrated smear, intimidation to keep accusers silent.
In her newly released book, Kathleen Willey asserts Hillary Clinton was behind a campaign of intimidation and harassment against her that fit a pattern employed against numerous other women whose claims of sexual impropriety or assault by her husband, Bill Clinton, threatened the couple's political fortunes.
Willey writes that along with the former president, "Hillary also betrayed me – and all of the women her husband abused – when she brought her power to bear on her husband's prey."
"Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton," published by WND Books, an imprint of World Ahead Publishing, reminds readers how the Democratic presidential front-runner, despite her husband's 20 years of countless extra-marital relationships, famously came to his defense shortly after the Monica Lewinsky affair broke in 1998. Asked about the accusations, the then-first lady said, "Certainly, I believe they're false. Absolutely."
Then, in a memorable interview with the "Today" show's Matt Lauer, she explained years of accusations by women such as Willey, Gennifer Flowers and Dolly Kyle Browning.
"Bill and I have been accused of everything, including murder, by some of the very same people who are behind these allegations," she said, pointing to a "vast right-wing conspiracy." "… So from my perspective this is part of a continuing political campaign against my husband."
Later, however, when placed under oath, Bill Clinton admitted to an affair with Flowers, as he did with Lewinksy.
But Mrs. Clinton's actions, Willey contends, indicated by word and deed that her main concern was to ensure her husband's proclivities didn't ruin their political careers.
In Willey's story, as in the accounts of others, Hillary is at the helm of campaigns to ensure the silence of her husband's accusers through various means of intimidation, including the use of notorious private investigators.
Hillary Clinton, Willey says, for example, was instrumental in the attempt to repair the damage from Willey's 1998 "60 Minutes" interview in which she detailed her explosive claim that the president sexually assaulted her in the Oval Office.
Willey's name became known in the summer of 1997 after lawyers for Clinton accuser Paula Jones gave her name to a national magazine reporter. After many months of unsuccessful legal maneuvering, Willey was forced to testify. Later, she became a cooperating witness before independent counsel Ken Starr's grand jury and was scheduled to become one of only three witnesses in the Clinton impeachment trial until some members of the House and Senate refused to allow her to testify.
Willey notes Hillary is believed to have been behind the hiring of aide Sid Blumenthal, who wrote in the New Yorker as the Clintons were moving into the White House in 1993, "Humiliating one's prey, not merely defeating one's foes, is central to the process" of political success.
Mrs. Clinton, working with Blumenthal, approved the public release of friendly private letters Willey sent to the president after the alleged November 1993 assault, according to attorney Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch.
Blumenthal acknowledged in a Judicial Watch interrogatory that he was on official business in Puerto Rico when he discussed the letters with Mrs. Clinton by telephone. Both agreed the letters should be released to discredit Willey.
Willey recalled explaining to David Schippers, the chief impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, that she wrote the letters to Clinton because, "I was destitute, I needed some kind of work, and I decided to forget what happened there, to start over, and hopefully they would help find me a job."
Later, a federal judge found the president guilty of invasion of privacy, ruling his aides must have known of his 1997 finding that the White House was bound by the Privacy Act. Violation of the act is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison.
Schippers told Willey, a reluctant witness, that deciding to tell the truth was her "insurance policy."
"If you had gone in there and lied, you'd be dead today," said Schippers, who told WND in September of his own experience of intimidation.
In his deposition in the Jones case, Clinton acknowledged he met with Willey in the Oval Office but "emphatically" denied her account, saying, "It did not happen ... there was nothing sexual about it."
'I was a Democrat'
Like Gennifer Flowers, whom Clinton aides dismissed publicly as a promiscuous lounge singer, and Paula Jones, demeaned as "white trash after cash," Willey's testimony was considered a potential threat to Bill Clinton's presidency and any hope Hillary Clinton had of one day occupying the Oval Office herself.
But Willey distinguishes her situation from the others.
"Clinton and his people did not want to attack me too directly, because I wasn't the 'usual' kind of accuser. I was a Democrat," she writes. "They couldn't play 'right-wing conspiracy' song and dance about me. And since I was a widow, a White House volunteer and a Clinton fundraiser, they couldn't paint me as a slut either. They had to treat me more discreetly. But they smeared me nonetheless."
Along with the smears were acts of intimidation, she says.
Two days before her testimony in the Paula Jones case, she says she was approached at dawn by a stranger while walking in her neighborhood. The man threatened her and her children by name, and references were made to her damaged car and missing 13-year-old pet. The message, she said, was clear: Remain silent.
A day after the deposition, she found an animal skull on her porch.
'The same thing happened to me'
Clearly, Willey says, the Clintons have sent a message to anyone who would consider coming forward with an accusation.
She claims that when her name was still listed in the phone book, she received anonymous calls from women who said, "He's done this to me," and "The same thing happened to me."
None of the women – Willey told WND she estimates there were about a dozen – would go public, however. She suspects a number of them worked in the White House.
Willey recounts an incident between Hillary Clinton and Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed she was raped by Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas attorney general.
Two weeks after the claimed rape, Broaddrick and her husband attended a political gathering at which the Clintons made an appearance. Broaddrick says Hillary Clinton said, "I am so happy to meet you. I want to thank you so much for everything you do for Bill." Broaddrick started to turn away while Hillary held on to her hand. "Looking less friendly," Hillary reiterated, "Everything you do for Bill."
Willey says Broaddrick told her it "scared the living hell out of her." Hillary's meaning was unmistakable, Broaddrick believes: Thank you for keeping quiet for Bill.
As WND reported in September, Willey suspects the Clintons were behind a break-in of her home over the Labor Day weekend in which a copy of a manuscript for her book was stolen.
Along with a long list of groups in the "vast right-wing conspiracy," Broaddrick, Jones, Flowers and another accuser, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, also were investigated by the IRS.
WND's non-profit parent company, the Western Journalism Center, also claimed to be an IRS target and filed a $20 million civil rights lawsuit in 1997 against officials and former officials of the Clinton White House and IRS charging an audit of the group was politically motivated. WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah said an IRS field agent "told us that this was a 'political case' and the decision about our fate would be made 'at the national level.'"
Private eyes
Willey cites sources who contend Hillary Clinton began engaging private investigators during their time in Arkansas so she could head off any repercussions from her husband's behavior.
The first to be dispatched were her own father and brother when she committed to marry Bill, and he left Yale University for Arkansas to teach law, and she went to work in Washington, D.C., according to author Jerome Levin in "The Clinton Syndrome."
Later, when Bill was governor, Hillary sent out a group of investigators known at the "Truth Squad" to discourage many of her husband's lovers from going public.
In 1987, when Bill Clinton was considering running for the presidency, Hillary worked with her husband's chief of staff, Betsey Wright, to compile a list of his affairs and find and discredit women, using private investigators. Of eight women investigated, they only found hard evidence to prove Bill was sleeping with Flowers and Browning, according to Christopher Andersen in "Bill and Hillary."
Willey points out that when author Joyce Milton first began writing "The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton," she was an admirer, but in the process of her research, she connected the dots between Hillary and private investigators.
Noisy investigation
Private investigator Jared Stern was a key witness in an investigation of whether there was an attempt to scare Willey, according to ABC News. Stern confirmed he was "doing work" regarding Willey but remained tight-lipped.
ABC reported Stern's assignment was to pull her phone records, find out what medications she was taking and conduct a noisy investigation so she would know she was being watched.
Willey says Stern was the man who identified himself as "Kirk" in a message left on her answering machine.
"My name is Kirk, and I just want to warn you, there are people out there who want to hurt you," he said in the message.
Willey points out the Clintons also hired notorious private investigator Anthony Pellicano, known for his dirty tricks and rough tactics on behalf of celebrity clients. As a member of the Clinton "shadow team" for two terms, he's reputed to have been deeply involved in the efforts to discredit Flowers and Lewinsky.
Willey notes Pellicano, according to court documents, hired Alexander Proctor to threaten a Los Angeles Times reporter working on a story about actor Steven Seagal and possible links to the Mafia. Proctor allegedly placed a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on the windshield of her car and made a bullet-sized hole in her windshield.
"These are precisely the kind of terror tactics that were in play against me," Willey writes.
Terry Lenzner, owner of Investigative Groups International, worked with Hillary Clinton when she was on the Senate Watergate committee. He was hired in 1992 to do "opposition research," or dirt-digging. Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris alleges IGI was in effect the Clintons "secret police."
As WND previously reported, Willey's book publishes for the first time an alleged admission by private investigator Jack Palladino that he was hired by Hillary Clinton to investigate Willey and bore responsibility for acts of harassment and intimidation designed to silence her.
Willey presents the claim by San Francisco talk-radio host Melanie Morgan, who recounts a private conversation she had with Palladino and his wife, Sandra Sutherland, at a conference in 2003.
Asked by WND to respond, the San Francisco-based Palladino recalled speaking at the conference and said he might have met Morgan, but he emphatically denied having a conversation that bore any resemblance to her claims and suggested several times he could sue the KSFO talk host for libel.
"It's total fantasy," he told WND. "No, that's too kind; it's a lie."
Morgan, a WND columnist, said she was not surprised by Palladino's response and stands by her story "100 percent."
"He has been well known for lying and protecting his clients for as many years as he's been a private detective," Morgan told WND. "I have no reason to make it up, no motivation to exaggerate."
Topic: Kathleen Willey: Hillary behind 'terror' campaign (Read 1846 times)