The Legend of the Hildebeast: “Hillary Papers” Released

Back in the early 1980s’, HBO taped a couple of live performances of America’s “Clown Prince of Comedy”, Richard “Red” Skelton. Even though the ol’ redhead was 78 years old, he was still as sharp as a tack…and was still an absolute master of comedic timing. At one point,  he was telling the audience how much he loved his wife, when abruptly,he looked from side to side, got a mischievous grin of his legendary face and said,

But, where that woman spits, grass never grows again.

He could have been speaking about Hillary Clinton.

FreeBeacon.com reports that

On May 12, 1992, Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, top pollsters for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, issued a confidential memo. The memo’s subject was “Research on Hillary Clinton.”

Voters admired the strength of the Arkansas first couple, the pollsters wrote. However, “they also fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well.”

Their conclusion: “What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary.”

The full memo is one of many previously unpublished documents contained in the archive of one of Hillary Clinton’s best friends and advisers, documents that portray the former first lady, secretary of State, and potential 2016 presidential candidate as a strong, ambitious, and ruthless Democratic operative.

The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her “closest friend” before Blair’s death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky.

The archive includes correspondence, diaries, interviews, strategy memos, and contemporaneous accounts of conversations with the Clintons ranging from the mid-1970s to the turn of the millennium.

Diane Blair’s husband, Jim Blair, a former chief counsel at Tyson Foods Inc. who was at the center of “Cattlegate,” a 1994 controversy involving the unusually large returns Hillary Clinton made while trading cattle futures contracts in the 1970s, donated his wife’s papers to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library in Fayetteville after her death.

The full contents of the archive, which before 2010 was closed to the public, have not previously been reported on and shed new light on Clinton’s three decades in public life. The records paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was “tough and mean enough.”

As Arte Johnson used to say on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, “Verrrry Interesting”.

That explains Whitewater.

A while back, the Washington Post published the following timeline:

1978

Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton join with James B. and Susan McDougal to borrow $203,000 to buy 220 acres of land in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. They soon form the Whitewater Development Corp., intending to build vacation homes.

Clinton is elected governor.

1980

Clinton loses his reelection bid and enters private legal practice.

James McDougal, who served briefly as Gov. Clinton’s economic development director, quits government to buy a small bank in Kingston, Ark. He loans $30,000 to Hillary Clinton to build a model house on a Whitewater lot.

1982

McDougal buys a small savings and loan and names it Madison Guaranty.

After two years as a private citizen, Clinton is once again elected governor.

1984

Federal regulators begin to question the financial stability and lending practices of Madison Guaranty, criticizing Madison’s speculative land deals, insider-lending and hefty commissions paid to the McDougals and others.

Clinton is reelected.

1985James McDougal holds a fund-raising event at Madison Guaranty to help pay off a $50,000 Clinton campaign debt. Investigators later determine some of the money was improperly withdrawn from depositor funds.

McDougal hires the Rose Law Firm, where Hillary Clinton is a partner, to do legal work for the ailing savings and loan.

Hillary Clinton and another Rose lawyer seek state regulatory approval for recapitalization plan for Madison.

1986

McDougal borrows $300,000 from a company owned by David Hale, a former Little Rock judge. Hale’s company receives federal funds from the Small Business Administration to lend to disadvantaged business owners, but an investigation 10 years later alleges that he lent up to $3 million to political figures instead.

Citing improper practices, federal regulators remove McDougal as Madison Guaranty’s president, but he retains ownership.

1988

Witnesses from the Rose Law Firm say Hillary Clinton requested the destruction of Madison land contract files.

Hillary Clinton writes James McDougal to ask for power of attorney to sell off remaining Whitewater lots and clear up bank obligations.

1989

Madison Guaranty collapses after a series of bad loans and a change in government accounting procedures. The federal government shuts it down and spends $60 million bailing it out.

James McDougal is indicted on federal fraud charges related to his management of a Madison real estate subsidiary.

1990

McDougal is acquitted.

1992

The Clinton presidential campaign gathers information on Whitewater and Madison Guaranty. A report commissioned by the campaign claims the Clintons lost $68,000 on Whitewater, an estimate later adjusted down to somewhat over $40,000.

The Federal Resolution Trust Corp., investigating causes of Madison’s failure, sends a referral to the Justice Department that names the Clintons as “potential beneficiaries” of illegal activities at Madison.

January 1993

Clinton’s first term as president begins.

May 1993

White House fires seven employees in the travel office, possibly to make room for Clinton friends. An FBI investigation of the office ensues, allegedly opened under pressure from the White House to justify the firings.

June 1993

Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster files three years of delinquent Whitewater corporate tax returns.

July 1993

Foster is found dead in a Washington area park. Police rule the death a suicide. Federal investigators are not allowed access to Foster’s office immediately after the discovery, but White House aides enter Foster’s office shortly after his death, giving rise to speculation that files were removed from his office.

If one is to believe all the weighted “push polls” one sees, Hillary is, by far, the front runner among all of the potential Democrat Candidates for President in 2016. If that is indeed the case, any non-RINO Republican Candidate, who is willing to get down in the trenches and slug it out, should have a field day citing Hil’s notorious past along the 2016 Presidential Campaign Trail.

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

Safire was being too kind.

Vince Foster and the Benghazi 4 remain unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ