Read Online Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine by Daniel Halper - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Daniel Halper
Tags: nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Retail, Presidents & Heads of State, Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton
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then something dramatic happened to change the mood. “Unexpectedly she came in to the Oval Office,” Lazio tells me with a little laugh. “He [Bill Clinton] froze like a deer in the headlights and backed away from me as if I was uranium.”
Winning a Senate seat meant Hillary needed a place to live in Washington, since the Clintons would be moving out of the White House. She settled on a 5,152-square-foot brick structure on Whitehaven Street, just around the corner from the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Northwest Washington, D.C. It was in this house that Hillary Clinton would later film her 2007 video announcing her bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
With three stories, attractive black shutters, four bedrooms, and seven bathrooms, the home cost the Clintons $2.85 million in 2001—considerably less than the asking price of $3.5 million. The District of Columbia now assesses its value at around $4.5 million, which puts the Clintons’ annual property tax bill close to $40,000, about the same as the salary of the average American. (In 2012, the Clintons got slapped with a $1,883.75 penalty for paying taxes on the home late, according to real estate records, and had to pay an additional $445.04 in interest on the late payment.)
When the time came to renovate Hillary’s new home, her interior decorator, Rosemarie Howe, expected the senator to be too busy to care about a lot of decorating details. Clinton wasn’t. Referring to an interview with Howe, the Washington Post reported in 2007 that “the senator from New York has been very involved in updating the Whitehaven Street property, which they’re swatching through room by room. Howe has finished the living room, dining room and kitchen, yet is always searching for special pieces and fabrics to update the look. Upstairs, she has redecorated the bedrooms, including Chelsea’s digs when she’s in town. Downstairs, she has added storage to the basement.” 28
Howe says Hillary “makes decisions quickly but does it with enjoyment”—perhaps because the decisions are far easier and much less important than the political, personal, and public-policy choices she would have to make in her eight years as senator. 29
While Hillary was preparing to enter the Senate, Bill was closing out his time at the White House—and scandal continued to dog him and tarnish his wife’s own efforts. At the center of the latest controversy was Clinton’s never-ending quest for money and the potential compromises he was willing to make to get it.
Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the president sought to close out business and prepare for life beyond the walls of the White House. So did the many, many political appointees, from across government agencies, whose work would come to an end when George Walker Bush was sworn in and the Democrats handed over power to their Republican counterparts.
One of those bureaucrats seeking another line of work was Louis Freeh, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Had it been up to Bill Clinton, Freeh would’ve been out of work years earlier. He was a constant thorn in the side of the president. It had been Freeh’s job to keep appropriate distance from the person who was both effectively his boss and who was at the center of a series of investigations that were faithfully carried out by the FBI. And since he was investigating the president, it wasn’t as though Clinton could fire Freeh; it in fact heightened his job security in a way not comparable to any other government bureaucrat.
As FBI director, Freeh had had the unprecedented task of taking a DNA sample from the president of the United States so that it could be compared to the DNA in the semen stain on Lewinsky’s infamous blue Gap dress. The exchange took place in secret—the president was at an official event when he pretended to have official business in the other room and slipped out momentarily to
Winning a Senate seat meant Hillary needed a place to live in Washington, since the Clintons would be moving out of the White House. She settled on a 5,152-square-foot brick structure on Whitehaven Street, just around the corner from the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Northwest Washington, D.C. It was in this house that Hillary Clinton would later film her 2007 video announcing her bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
With three stories, attractive black shutters, four bedrooms, and seven bathrooms, the home cost the Clintons $2.85 million in 2001—considerably less than the asking price of $3.5 million. The District of Columbia now assesses its value at around $4.5 million, which puts the Clintons’ annual property tax bill close to $40,000, about the same as the salary of the average American. (In 2012, the Clintons got slapped with a $1,883.75 penalty for paying taxes on the home late, according to real estate records, and had to pay an additional $445.04 in interest on the late payment.)
When the time came to renovate Hillary’s new home, her interior decorator, Rosemarie Howe, expected the senator to be too busy to care about a lot of decorating details. Clinton wasn’t. Referring to an interview with Howe, the Washington Post reported in 2007 that “the senator from New York has been very involved in updating the Whitehaven Street property, which they’re swatching through room by room. Howe has finished the living room, dining room and kitchen, yet is always searching for special pieces and fabrics to update the look. Upstairs, she has redecorated the bedrooms, including Chelsea’s digs when she’s in town. Downstairs, she has added storage to the basement.” 28
Howe says Hillary “makes decisions quickly but does it with enjoyment”—perhaps because the decisions are far easier and much less important than the political, personal, and public-policy choices she would have to make in her eight years as senator. 29
While Hillary was preparing to enter the Senate, Bill was closing out his time at the White House—and scandal continued to dog him and tarnish his wife’s own efforts. At the center of the latest controversy was Clinton’s never-ending quest for money and the potential compromises he was willing to make to get it.
Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the president sought to close out business and prepare for life beyond the walls of the White House. So did the many, many political appointees, from across government agencies, whose work would come to an end when George Walker Bush was sworn in and the Democrats handed over power to their Republican counterparts.
One of those bureaucrats seeking another line of work was Louis Freeh, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Had it been up to Bill Clinton, Freeh would’ve been out of work years earlier. He was a constant thorn in the side of the president. It had been Freeh’s job to keep appropriate distance from the person who was both effectively his boss and who was at the center of a series of investigations that were faithfully carried out by the FBI. And since he was investigating the president, it wasn’t as though Clinton could fire Freeh; it in fact heightened his job security in a way not comparable to any other government bureaucrat.
As FBI director, Freeh had had the unprecedented task of taking a DNA sample from the president of the United States so that it could be compared to the DNA in the semen stain on Lewinsky’s infamous blue Gap dress. The exchange took place in secret—the president was at an official event when he pretended to have official business in the other room and slipped out momentarily to
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