Unlimited Access: an FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House is a scary, scary book – even a decade after it was published.
I just happened to pick it off the library shelf last Saturday, picked it up last night, and could hardly put it down.
The revelations that author Gary Aldrich documents about the Clinton era are nothing short of mind-blowing. Corruption was so common it became banal … to the US national media as well as the Clinton insiders.
Much of what the book broke for the first or near-first time in 1996 is well-known and well-documented now: Bill’s constant affairs, the rampant drug abuse problems in the hired help, the almost incredible degree of nepotism and favoritism exemplified by Travelgate (in which Hilary wanted to fire all the existing White House travel department in order to provide plum positions for personal friends, acquaintances, and cronies).
Every page resonates with head-shaking, depressing nonsense. For example, when Vince Foster committed suicide under suspicious circumstances, the Park Service, yes, the Park Service were commissioned to investigate his death. Not the Secret Service. Not the FBI. Not the police. Not the CIA. The park service. Unbelievable.
To me, however, the biggest things that stand out are the way that Clinton and Hilary treated ordinary people, the staff of the White House. They were dirt, or less than dirt, to the Clintons – who were supposed to be compassionate Democrats. And how they (Chelsea included) referred to their Secret Service guards: trained pigs. This for people who would have given their lives to protect them.
Character is revealed by few things as starkly as how people treat those over whom they have power. On this score alone, the Clintons fail, and fail miserably.
The other major thing is the complete lack of respect for the truth, twisting it to whatever they needed it to be. Which, naturally, also demonstrates a complete lack of respect for the people Clinton was supposedly governing.
If Hilary Rodham ever gets anywhere near the Oval Office again, America is in for a rough, rough ride.