Audio: Clinton Foundation Head Accused Clintons of ‘Paranoia’https://soundcloud.com/washington-free-beacon/donna-shalala-on-clinton-paranoiaClinton Foundation head Donna Shalala privately expressed concerns about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s mental state in the mid-1990s, saying they had become “paranoid” and fixated on “right-wing conspiracies,” according to previously unpublished audio recordings obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
In 1994, four years before Hillary Clinton said a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to take down her husband’s presidency, top aide Shalala said this theory was already embraced by the Clintons.
“They’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. Thinking people are out to get them, this right-wing conspiracy stuff,” said Shalala, who was the head of Health and Human Services during the August 1994 interview.
Shalala was recently appointed president of the Clinton Foundation.
The tapes are part of a series of interviews with Hillary Clinton and top aides, conducted by the late Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Haynes Johnson and obtained by the Free Beacon from the Wisconsin Historical Society on the University of Wisconsin campus.
Some segments of the interviews are transcribed in Johnson’s 1996 book The System, written with David Broder, which gives a meticulously reported account of the 1990s health care debate. However, many of the quotes in the book are not attributed to the aides by name.
The recordings provide additional insight into how Hillary Clinton was affected by her unsuccessful push for health care reform, one of the highest-profile battles of her time in the White House.
Aides feared at the time that Hillary Clinton had become “paranoid,” “burnt out,” and prone to angry outbursts, according to the tapes.
“[The Clintons are] feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about [conspiracies] all the time,” said Shalala. “That there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we don’t have a chance, people don’t understand how much good we’ve done. Our message isn’t getting across because these people are beating us up.”
Shalala said documents about supposed right-wing conspiracies were also being distributed to White House staffers.
“There is a feeling in the White House, and I don’t know whether it’s [James] Carville or [Paul] Begala or who’s giving them the materials,” said Shalala. “But sitting on the desks of their staff there’s these materials on this right-wing conspiracy.”
The remark was a rare acknowledgement by a close aide that there were reservations about the Clintons’ “right-wing conspiracy” theory within their inner circle. The quote was not attributed to Shalala in Johnson’s book. However, the audio recording and an interview transcription do include her name and are open to the public.
Since leaving the White House, Hillary Clinton has been dogged by accusations that she has an insular leadership style and lacks transparency, although aides deny that her approach is driven by “paranoia.”
At a Clinton Global Initiative conference last year, a New York Times reporter said a Clinton press handler trailed her throughout the event, even following her into the restroom.
More recently, Clinton came under fire for using a private email server to conduct State Department business. The former secretary of state eventually turned over a collection of emails to the State Department, but the full server was “wiped clean,” according to her attorney.
In 1995, the Clinton White House drafted what became known as the “Conspiracy Commerce Memo,” which purported to show how negative stories about the Clintons’ filtered into the mainstream media from conservative outlets and talk radio. The existence of the memo was reported in 1997, but it was not published in full until earlier this year.
Hillary Clinton appeared to reference this theory during one August 1994 interview with Johnson.
“You’ve got a well-organized right-wing media operation, everything from talk radio, radical right religious broadcasting, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Washington Times, which are advocacy journalists,” said Clinton.
“And then you’ve got respectable mainline journalists basically in a kind of either-or, even-handed mode, you don’t have any counterbalance to this incredible 24-hour a day hate that is being spewed out.”
Clinton blamed this “right-wing media operation” for fueling public opposition to health care reform—which peaked when the First Lady was heckled by hundreds during her July 1994 speech in Seattle.
She said the protesters were recruited by a “[Rush] Limbaugh clone” on local radio and that the backlash against her health care plan was “fueled by abortion, gays, and guns.”
http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-foundation-head-accused-clintons-of-paranoia/
