Bill wanted to split, Hillary said no

Two new biographies of Senator Hillary Clinton, including one by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, paint an unflattering picture of the life of one of the frontrunners in the US presidential elections.

According to Bernstein’s 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Clinton had sought a divorce in 1989 after he fell in love with Marilyn Jo Jenkins, an Arkansas Power and Light Co employee, when he was governor of Arkansas. Hillary refused, telling his gubernatorial chief of staff Betsey Wright that “there are worse things than infidelity”.

The second book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, says, Hillary went to great lengths to hide his adulterous lifestyle when his presidential ambitions grew.

Even after Bill Clinton became president and a barrage of accusations of extra-marital affairs followed, Hillary worked hard to counter his adultery.

During the 1992 presidential campaign when Gennifer Flowers went public with her affair with Bill, Hillary set up a team to undermine her “until she is destroyed”.

Bernstein says Hillary had turned to her best friend Diane Blair for advice during this tumultuous period. Hillary told Blair, the book says, that she will not leave her husband even though she wanted to, because she thought his sexual appetite would be tempered by the White House.

Advance copies of both books were received by The Washington Post, which published these snippets. The report said: “The Hillary Clinton who emerges from the pages of the books comes across as a complicated, sometimes compromised figure who tolerated Bill Clinton’s brazen infidelity, pursued her policy and political goals with methodical drive, and occasionally skirted along the edge of the truth along the way. The books portray her as alternately brilliant and controlling, ambitious and victimised.”

Bernstein’s book also alleges that while she was the First Lady of Arkansas, she even interviewed one woman alleged to have an affair with her husband, and then thought of running for governor “out of anger at her husband’s indiscretions”. The report says: “At the behest of Wright and Hillary Clinton, two partners with Hillary Clinton at the Rose Law Firm, Webster L. Hubbell and Vincent W. Foster Jr., were hired to represent women named in a lawsuit as having secret affairs with the governor. Hubbell and Foster questioned the women, then obtained signed statements that they never had sex with Bill Clinton. On one occasion, Bernstein reports, Hillary Clinton was present for the questioning.”

Hillary Clinton’s Senate staff and presidential campaign staff have, predictably, slammed the books. “Is it possible to be quoted yawning,” her Senate spokesman Philippe Reines asked the Washington Post. “If past books on Clinton were cash for trash,” he added, “these books are nothing more than cash for rehash.”

In the same report, Howard Wolfson, a campaign spokesman, pointed to previous reports on some of the elements in the books to make the point that there was nothing new. “The news here is that it took three reporters nearly a decade to find no news,” he said.