Clinton’s Schedules Offer Chance to Test Assertions

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

When the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time on Feb. 26, 1993, President Bill Clinton flew to New York to be briefed on the attack and the response by city, state and federal authorities. According to newly released White House calendars of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s time as first lady, Mrs. Clinton stayed behind in Washington to attend a photo shoot with Parade magazine and a performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Seven years later, in October 2000, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were enjoying a quiet weekend at their new home in Chappaqua, N.Y., when word came that the Cole, an American destroyer, had been attacked in a Yemen port. Mr. Clinton rushed back to the White House to deal with the crisis. Mrs. Clinton returned to the campaign trail in her run for the Senate.

As Mrs. Clinton runs for president, a central theme of her candidacy has been that her years in the White House gave her firsthand experience in dealing with foreign crises. In her now-famous TV advertisements that ran before the Ohio and Texas primaries, she portrayed herself as the candidate best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. phone call to address a sudden crisis.

While there is no doubt that she had an intimate view of foreign policy during her husband’s presidency, her claims that she was a central player on counterterrorism, Ireland, Africa and the Balkans have come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.

The release last week of more than 11,000 pages of her public schedule as first lady presents an opportunity for a closer examination of those claims.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides argued that the calendars backed up her argument that her time as first lady was marked by substantial foreign policy experience, although they emphasized that the calendars only show her public events and do not reflect the wide sphere of influence she had with her husband and others.

“The schedules are only a guide for Senator Clinton’s time in the White House and by their nature don’t include a lot of the very kinds of things that gave her deep experience in her eight years there — calls with world leaders, impromptu meetings and strategy sessions are all omitted from the schedule,” said Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman. “And some of her greatest influence and experience was as the president’s trusted adviser — precisely the kind of thing that is invaluable but doesn’t make it on a daily schedule.”

Melanne Verveer, Mrs. Clinton’s top aide in the White House, said that she served as “her husband’s closest adviser.”

“She was the first lady,” Ms. Verveer said. “She was not the commander in chief or the director of counterterrorism. But she certainly saw what her husband was going through and had a ringside seat for all these crises. And often, as in the case of the Macedonian border issue, had an active role.”

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has seized on the schedules to accuse Mrs. Clinton of exaggerating her role in substantive matters. Obama aides and supporters say the documents demonstrate that her claims of broad influence on policy are hollow.

Gregory B. Craig, who was a senior State Department official in the Clinton administration and is now a policy adviser to Mr. Obama, said Friday that the White House records showed that Mrs. Clinton was absent when critical foreign policy decisions were made and that her trips abroad were largely ceremonial.

“The fact is, and this was established by the White House schedules, that she did not attend N.S.C. meetings or routinely meet with the secretary of state or the national security adviser,” said Mr. Craig, a lawyer who represented Mr. Clinton in his 1998-99 impeachment and trial. “She did not routinely get briefed by the intelligence community, and there is no evidence that she participated or asserted herself in any of the crises that took place during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.”

A top White House aide said that after the terrorism episodes, Mrs. Clinton made a concerted effort to maintain her normal schedule to avoid giving the impression of panic or tip off possible targets of retaliation.

The schedules do not reflect private discussions with outsiders, with administration staff members or with her husband. Indeed, federal archivists and Clinton aides edited out more than 10,000 items on her calendars to preserve the privacy of people with whom she met, so the full range of her activities are not reflected in her public schedules.

But a former senior Clinton White House official who supports Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy but is not authorized to speak for it, said that Mrs. Clinton routinely called top White House and administration officials to inquire about policy matters or make her views known. Top aides to Mrs. Clinton also participated in high-level policy and political sessions from the first days the Clintons moved into the White House, he said.

“If there was something that she was interested in weighing in on, I don’t think she ever hesitated to go ahead and call,” the aide said. He said her interests and advocacy ranged across the entire domestic and foreign policy landscape. He said she participated in various ceremonial duties, both in the United States and abroad, but foreign leaders took her seriously as an emissary of the American government.

Earlier this month, Mrs. Clinton pointed to her work behind the scenes in Northern Ireland, which she visited five times as first lady, as instrumental in helping Mr. Clinton forge a peace treaty there. Her campaign has argued that her lobbying efforts “at the grass roots and behind-the-scenes helped cultivate the conditions necessary for the peace to take hold and last,” according to a memo from her press office.

On her first trip, on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, 1995, Mrs. Clinton attended a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, a rededication of a World War II stone and a reception. On two occasions, her calendar indicates that Mr. Clinton was holding private talks after Mrs. Clinton departed and returned to a local hotel.

Two weeks ago, on the campaign trail, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that she was not directly involved in peace negotiations, but she emphasized the importance of her behind-the-scenes role.

“I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland,” she told CNN in early March.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire in early January, Mrs. Clinton recalled “bringing together a meeting” at the Belfast town hall of Catholic and Protestant women, saying the discussion was a breakthrough for women who recognized their similarities rather than their differences.

Mrs. Clinton’s schedule for that period shows a brief event arranged by the American consulate at the Lamp Lighter Café in Belfast. The Belfast Telegraph reported at the time that Mrs. Clinton was given a stainless steel teapot at the event, but reported nothing about a breakthrough meeting of Catholic and Protestant women.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign also highlighted her May 1999 trip to the Balkans while the NATO-led war against the former Yugoslavia raged as part of the broader American effort that led to the reopening of the border with the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. The American efforts allowed thousands of Kosavar refugees to flee to safety.

Her campaign said Mrs. Clinton met with the president and prime minister of Macedonia separately, and the calendars demonstrate that. But there are wide stretches of the May 14, 1999, calendars blacked out for privacy issues, so they give only a partial glimpse of her time there.

On the campaign trail last year, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton said she had urged Mr. Clinton to intervene with American troops to stop the Rwandan genocide. But neither of them mentioned such a thing in their memoirs. Madeleine K. Albright, who was ambassador to the United Nations at the time, also does not mention it in her book.

Mr. Craig, the policy adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, said a review of National Security Council deliberations during the genocide found no discussion of American military intervention. He said that Prudence Bushnell, the assistant secretary of state for Africa at the time, did not recall any consideration of the use of American forces to stop the slaughter.

But a former senior Clinton administration official recalled that Mrs. Clinton had aggressively asked senior aides whether there was something the United States could do to stop the genocide. “Her posture was to sort of challenge — not so much the president — but his advisers, whom I was one,” said the official, who insisted on speaking anonymously. “She wanted to know if we were paying enough attention to the situation there and if we were doing enough. It clearly got the president’s attention.”

The calendars for March 1997, when Mrs. Clinton traveled to six countries in Africa, show that she met with several government leaders, including President Abdou Diouf of Senegal and President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania. According to her book “Living History,” she lobbied Mr. Diouf to support legislation banning female circumcision and Mr. Mkapa to end laws that banned women from owning or inheriting property.

In March 1998, Mrs. Clinton visited Rwanda with her husband when he apologized for America’s failure to do more to prevent the genocide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/polit...nyt&emc=rss

[natty bumppo 297]

Old news reconstituted for those with short memories ....

[kaydee457 13]

Gregory B. Craig, who was a senior State Department official in the Clinton administration and is now a policy adviser to Mr. Obama, said Friday that the White House records showed that Mrs. Clinton was absent when critical foreign policy decisions were made and that her trips abroad were largely ceremonial.

“The fact is, and this was established by the White House schedules, that she did not attend N.S.C. meetings or routinely meet with the secretary of state or the national security adviser,” said Mr. Craig, a lawyer who represented Mr. Clinton in his 1998-99 impeachment and trial. “She did not routinely get briefed by the intelligence community, and there is no evidence that she participated or asserted herself in any of the crises that took place during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.”

This is a fine line that they both need to walk, her and her husband as it's a felony to have disclosed classified info to someone that does not have a security clearance.

Some may dismiss this as trivial with the popular rationale that "she's the spouse, and therefore has to know", but this is naive.

I have a high level security clearance and trust me, discussion of national security matters with my spouse is a punishable felonious infraction that is pursued by the feds.....

Either she's a felon or she's not, thereby having the ignorance that we suspect she has of such matters.

She's walking a fine line here.........

[natty bumppo 297]

Gregory B. Craig, who was a senior State Department official in the Clinton administration and is now a policy adviser to Mr. Obama, said Friday that the White House records showed that Mrs. Clinton was absent when critical foreign policy decisions were made and that her trips abroad were largely ceremonial.

“The fact is, and this was established by the White House schedules, that she did not attend N.S.C. meetings or routinely meet with the secretary of state or the national security adviser,” said Mr. Craig, a lawyer who represented Mr. Clinton in his 1998-99 impeachment and trial. “She did not routinely get briefed by the intelligence community, and there is no evidence that she participated or asserted herself in any of the crises that took place during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.”

This is a fine line that they both need to walk, her and her husband as it's a felony to have disclosed classified info to someone that does not have a security clearance.

Some may dismiss this as trivial with the popular rationale that "she's the spouse, and therefore has to know", but this is naive.

I have a high level security clearance and trust me, discussion of national security matters with my spouse is a punishable felonious infraction that is pursued by the feds.....

Either she's a felon or she's not, thereby having the ignorance that we suspect she has of such matters.

She's walking a fine line here.........

maybe not walking ... just hoping the people won't notice .....