by Crisis of Character- A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience
That doesn’t appear to be the case.
But what I heard from other Secret Service personnel on the scene was this: The Service paid $7,000 per month rent on an adjacent house to serve as their unit headquarters from a rental company. Again, nothing wrong there. But what was also well known and what I also heard was that—at least for a while—the Clintons were charging the identical amount for that small garage of theirs to the Secret Service to basically have the Service cover the cost of their mortgage as Hillary ran for office.
I can’t verify that (I’m former Secret Service—not Ken Starr), but it’s interesting to once again contrast the Clintons with Papa Bush. The USSS did, in fact, cover the costs of renovating former president Clinton’s garage, which was mostly space heaters and meager basic utilities. When Papa Bush was still president, the Secret Service needed to construct a facility on his Kennebunkport, Maine, property. President Bush said fine—but on two conditions. One, make it bigger, so you guys aren’t cramped. He cared about the little guys. Two, you’ll be protecting me after I leave office—so I’m paying for it.
The Clintons are crass. Papa Bush is class.
Hillary Clinton’s email scandal has garnered a lot of attention. Every week we learned something so startling that we weren’t even shocked anymore. I guess Americans stopped being shocked by the Clintons one blue dress ago.
But here’s the scandal that’s gotten dwarfed by her email scandal: the Clinton Foundation.
Suspicious financial deals are nothing new for the Clintons. Long before there was a Monica there was a Jim McDougal and Whitewater. Not long afterward, there was the Clinton pardons scandal. Today it’s outrageous speaking fees running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for her and Bill and for the multi-, multi-, multimillion-dollar Clinton Family Foundation.
In 2015, author Peter Schweizer published a meticulous investigation of the Clintons and that foundation. He called it Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. In it he detailed “a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneously with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefitting those providing the funds.”
Schweizer noted questionable donations from such places as Colombia, Haiti, and Kazakhstan. His information was so strong it even earned the respect of such papers as the New York Times. London’s Daily Mail noted:
The Times reported that Clinton Cash lists examples of the pattern including a free trade agreement in Colombia that benefitted a donor with industrial interests there.
It also cites development projects in Haiti after their devastating 2010 earthquake, and a $1 million payment to Bill Clinton made by a Canadian shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline while it was being discussed by State Department officials.
Pretty serious stuff. But not really very unexpected by veteran Clinton watchers.
In her article “Stuck in Scandal Land,” published in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan nailed it:
As long as she is in public life, Hillary will protect and serve herself.… Doesn’t the latest Hillary Clinton scandal make you want to throw up your hands and say: Do we really have to do this again? Do we have to go back there?… Do we really have to return to Scandal Land? It’s what she brings wherever she goes. And it’s not going to stop.
I’m constantly asking myself the same questions because I know Hillary’s embroiling more Gary Byrneses, people who signed up to serve this country (or maybe just to install a server) and ended up before grand juries, all because of her self-serving motives for power. Right now she’s involving more and more government employees in her crisis of character. Even those who share her party affiliation should ask themselves: Is there no one else better here to serve our party, our nation, or his or her own sense of honor? Her supporters seem genuine—I can give them that. But all along the way the Clintons have continually hamstrung their own objectives, embarrassed their followers, and compromised their associates, men and women of character like Leon Panetta.
Now let’s take a minute to discuss the recent spate of active-shooter scenarios. Even these tie into the Clintons.
Active-shooter scenarios are really nothing new, whether they occur in Paris or halfway around the world in San Bernardino, California. They’re just the latest tactic of radical Islamic extremism, which has moved from flying planes into buildings to suicide bombers to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to active shooters, with a multitude of iterations between. Even in dealing with IEDs, we moved from confronting detonations by triggermen to mine-like IEDs to IEDs thwarting metal detectors by containing very little metal. It’s a dance of death. We constantly maneuver, but you have to know your enemy, keep pace with him, anticipate his next move—then make yours.
History never ceases to repeat bitter lessons, but the media doesn’t have the time to connect the dots. I watched the aftermath of an active-shooter man and wife infiltrate the country and massacre fourteen Americans in San Bernardino using our Second Amendment rights against us. To some political showboat artists the answer is to decrease American’s rights. It’s not mine.
San Bernardino didn’t come out of the blue. Neither did New York City on 9/11. Both were soft targets. So was Virginia Tech. And if you’re Indian you know about 26/11 (the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008). If you’re British, it’s 7/7 (the London attacks of July 7, 2005). If you’re French, it’s Charlie Hebdo and 13/11 (the Paris attack of November 13, 2015).
But you should also know about Garland, because it doesn’t fit that pattern. On Sunday, evening, May 2, 2015, in Garland, Texas, an active-shooter incident didn’t end in a massacre. It ended when an armed police officer took the fight to the enemy, literally pushing toward them and killing the duo before they could massacre innocents in a crowded event center. Forget politics. Forget before and after. When the attack is initiated there is no negotiation, no thinking—only fighting, pushing, and close killing. The event in Garland wasn’t quite the soft target the terrorists thought it would be. They didn’t have the access to the defenseless civilians they thought they’d have.
Defend yourself—now rather than later. Strength stops strength. Overwhelming strength stops massacres in their tracks. The principle we saw demonstrated in Garland is the same principle that has thwarted hijacks since 9/11.
Benghazi: We, and the Clintons, have been there before—and on the same continent. In 1993 we called it Somalia and Black Hawk Down. Not wishing to look like invaders, the Clinton White House moseyed a company of Rangers and a team of Delta operators into a city of hostiles where they had to shoot their way in and out, killing thousands. Because the administration denied armor support, we lost some of our men. They did not have to die. Our mission failed entirely. Somalia ended up as a classic failed state, just as Libya now turns into yet another haven for ISIS murderers. It’s the same pattern. The Clintons treat running the free world like a damn part-time job.
U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and State Department Foreign Service officer Sean Smith should never have gone to Benghazi—and shouldn’t have stayed once they got there. We were woefully unprepared at every single angle to protect them. We created a classic soft target and didn’t bother to think, What if? When U.S. Global Response Staff (GRS) had to bail everyone out of Benghazi in September 2012, Secretary of State Hillary shifted blame from Islamic terrorism and the Obama administration’s deadly lack of foresight to American freedom of speech and an obscure YouTube video.
I don’t care if Hillary Clinton watched caskets come home behind Secret Service protection at Andrews Air Force Base. That’s not leadership. Character in leadership comes down to two questions: Would you trade places with anyone under your command? Do you hold yourself to the same level of accountability as those for whom you bear responsibility? Would Mrs. Clinton have been willing to trade places with Chris Stevens and Sean Smith? No. She was too busy swapping gossip and classified information with Clinton loyalist S
idney Blumenthal.
I scratched my head at the deadly irony. Why do the lowest security threat places in D.C. have the most security, yet a consulate—in reality an embassy—in one of the most dangerous cities in the world—on the anniversary of 9/11!—is protected by a mere handful of agents armed only with pistols? Our security personnel’s safe room even lacked standard-issue Emergency Escape Breathing Devices (EEBs). Contrast that with the security cocooning Secretary of State Clinton when she traveled.
And here’s what everyone missed: Benghazi shattered military and federal law enforcement morale. We all wondered, Will they come for us if we’re attacked? Will they stand by us? Does “no man left behind” mean a damned thing? Will they even tell the truth after I’m gone?
How do I explain Benghazi to my children? How do I use Hillary Clinton as a role model in leadership? It drives me mad, so I don’t. I shake my head.
Let’s say it straight out: Hillary Clinton lied about the reason for the Benghazi attack. She lied about it to the nation as a whole and she lied right to the faces of the grieving family members of those who died there—and then lied about her lying. And she keeps telling Americans one huge, disgusting lie after another. As I wrap up writing this book, Hillary has claimed that we “didn’t lose a single person” in Libya. Really? Try telling that to the families of the four men we lost on September 11, 2012.
Not too long before Mrs. Clinton committed that amazing, bizarre falsehood, the late Sean Smith’s mother, Pat, broke down on national television, exclaiming, “Hillary is a liar! I know what she told me.” Pat went on to say that she wanted to “see Hillary in jail” for her misdeeds at Benghazi. “She’s been lying. She’s turned the whole country into a bunch of liars.”
Two decades ago the late New York Times columnist William Safire wrote: “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady—a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation—is a congenital liar.”
The lies change.
The liar doesn’t.
I don’t know where the future will lead, but I know enough of history and I know my own personal experiences. I trust in the Constitution. I know who I am, what I do, and whom I’m doing it for. My God, my family, and my country are my riches. I’m not looking for a fight, but I don’t run from one, either: I walk softly and carry my standard-issue stick. I’m proud of my legacy, but it’s not over, not yet. No matter what, I never stop hearing Genny in my ear: “Just do the right thing.”
That’s why I told you my story. Me, I’m not important. But what I learned about the Clintons firsthand—the hard way—is very important.
It’s 2016, but with Hillary Clinton again running for president, it feels uncomfortably like the 1990s again—as if America were trapped in some great, cruel time machine hurtling us back to the land of Monica and Mogadishu and a thousand other Clinton-era nightmares. Fool me once, as the saying goes—your fault. Fool me twice…
The bottom line: My job in the 1990s was to lay down my life for the presidency. My obligation today is to raise my voice, to help safeguard the presidency from Bill and Hillary Clinton—to remind readers like you of what happened back then.
We all remember—or should remember—what a Clinton White House was like.
If we board that time machine for a return trip—it’s our fault.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“All gave some, but some gave all.” This book would not be possible without others whose memory and example of heroism and sacrifice to country continues to inspire.
A special thank-you to Grant Schmidt of Flim Films LLC, David Pietrusza, and the unnamed couple without whom this project would not have been possible. And of course to all those who always said, “Damn, Gary, you should write a book!”
Thank you to Keith Urbahn and Matt Latimer at the Javelin Group and our publisher, Center Street, for taking us on and believing in the project.
* Because of the sensitive nature of law enforcement work, in the case of this officer, I have shielded her real last name. I will often be following that practice in the pages to come, not only for law enforcement personnel but for certain White House staff as well.
* George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), p. 96.
* http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/30/hillary-clintons-abominable-national-security-reco/?page=all.
** Final report of the independent counsel (in re Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association); in re William David Watkins and in re Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels, Division, no. 94-1 (U.S. G.P.O., Supt. of Docs., 2000), p. 17.
*** http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/30/hillary-clintons-abominable-national-security-reco/?page=all.
* http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/30/hillary-clintons-abominable-national-security-reco/?page=all.
* Dan Emmett, Within Arm’s Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2012).
* George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999).
* Leon Panetta, Worthy Fights (New York: Penguin Press, 2014).
* http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB892699092473349000.
* Ken Starr’s investigation began with Whitewater Development Corporation scandal and under another special investigator, Robert B. Fiske. Though I testified before this so-called “Whitewater grand jury,” my testimony had nothing to do with Whitewater.
* Gregory L. Vistica, The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), p. 28.