 First edition book cover from 1997 | |
| Author | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Politics, Biography |
| Publisher | Regnery Publishing |
Publication date | 25 November 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 460 |
| ISBN | 9780895264084 |
The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories is a critical biography about certain episodes during the administration of former United States president Bill Clinton by English author and investigative journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
The book, published in 1997 by Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C, an imprint of Eagle Publishing caused controversy in the USA. Evans-Pritchard, the author, at the time was chief editor in Washington DC for the Sunday Telegraph. In particular, the book investigates the death of former deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster.
Evans-Pritchard had initially intended the book to be titled The Secret History of the Clinton Presidency, in reference to Secret History , a sixth-century book by Procopius of Caesarea "about Justinian and Theadora and the wicked things that went on in the Byzantine court - the salacious gossip and terrible goings-on and murders and so forth". [1]
The Secret Life makes various allegations about Clinton, including drug use, visits to prostitutes and dishonesty. [2] In the book he also repeats the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theory that the Oklahoma City bombing was an FBI sting operation that went horribly wrong, that warnings by an ATF undercover agent were ignored, and that the Justice Department subsequently engaged in a cover-up. [3]
In Clinton's America, Evans-Pritchard alleged: "The way American reporters cover Arkansas is exactly the way they covered Nicaragua, which is they didn't go out into the hills and talk to ordinary people."[ citation needed ]
Evans-Pritchard's work has been criticized as: "little more than wild flights of conspiratorial fancy coupled with outrageous and wholly uncorroborated allegations", although Robert Novak defends Evans-Pritchard as: "...being no conspiracy-theory lunatic.... [H]e was known in Washington for accuracy, industry and courage." [4]
However, long-time Clinton defender Gene Lyons, columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and author of Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater (Franklin Square Press, 1996), says in an article: 'When necessary, Evans-Pritchard resorts to even more questionable methods. The temptation, in addressing so manifestly absurd and error-filled a piece of work, is to raillery. In form, Evans-Pritchard's book is a feverish concatenation of what his countryman, Guardian Washington correspondent Martin Walker, calls "the Clinton legends" into one vast, delusional epic.' [3]
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician and attorney who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992, and as attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton became known as a New Democrat, as many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the husband of Hillary Clinton, who was a senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election.
The Whitewater controversy, Whitewater scandal, or simply Whitewater, was an American political controversy during the 1990s. It began with an investigation into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation. This failed business venture was incorporated in 1979 with the purpose of developing vacation properties on land along the White River near Flippin, Arkansas.
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"Vast right-wing conspiracy" is a conspiracy theory popularized by a 1995 memo by political opposition researcher Chris Lehane and then referenced in 1998 by the then First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton, in defense of her husband, President Bill Clinton, characterizing the continued allegations of scandal against her and her husband, including the Lewinsky scandal, as part of a long campaign by Clinton's political enemies. The term has been used since, including in a question posed to Bill Clinton in 2009 to describe verbal attacks on Barack Obama during his early presidency. Hillary Clinton mentioned it again during her 2016 presidential campaign.
The Hunting of the President is a 2004 English language documentary film about Bill Clinton. Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton appear in archived footage. The film is based on the book The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, written by investigative journalists Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, and published by Thomas Dunne Books in 2000. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the film premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Peter Franz Schweizer is an American political consultant and writer. He is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), senior editor-at-large of far-right media organization Breitbart News, and a former fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.
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The Arkansas Project was a series of investigative press reports, funded primarily by conservative businessman Richard Mellon Scaife, that focused on criticism of then-President Bill Clinton and his administration. Scaife spent nearly $2 million on the project.
Gene Lyons is an American political columnist who has defended former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Michael William Brescia is an American convicted bank robber who has also been alleged to have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Jack Cashill is an American author, blogger and conspiracy theorist. He is a weekly contributor to WorldNetDaily and Executive Editor of Ingram's Magazine, a business publication based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. His death was ruled a suicide by five official investigations, but remains a subject of conspiracy theories.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is the international business editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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Rex Armistead was a private detective, Mississippi Highway Patrol officer, and the leading operative for the since disbanded Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Later, he was heavily involved as an investigator for the Arkansas Project, a co-ordinated attempt in the 1990s to investigate then U.S. President Bill Clinton. The project was funded by conservative media billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.
Carol Elizabeth Howe is a former informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Howe became a key figure in Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories when she said that she informed authorities of a right-wing extremist plan to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma a few months before the Oklahoma City bombing.
Andreas Carl Strassmeir is a German national and the former head-of-security for the white separatist community, Elohim City, Oklahoma. He gained media attention for his alleged connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing and has become an important figure in its conspiracy theories.