Clinton Insiders Fear Secret Service Records Could Damage Campaign

Even as Hillary Clinton's operatives were dropping hints that Republicans would exploit Barack Obama's youthful drug use, some Clinton insiders privately worried about her own vulnerability because the Bush administration possesses detailed knowledge of her movements - and her husband's - over the past seven years.

Because of Sen. Clinton's unique status as the first former First Lady to run for President - and because her husband was succeeded by a Republican - she is the first candidate to have both her and her spouse be subject to regular, long-term surveillance by an Executive Branch agency controlled by the opposing political party.

Since they left the White House in 2001, Bill and Hillary Clinton have been under the protection of the Secret Service, formerly a branch of the Treasury Department and now part of the Homeland Security Department. Records are maintained showing where they go and whom they meet.

Homeland Security is under the control of Michael Chertoff, a longtime Clinton nemesis dating back to his work as a Republican lawyer on the Senate's Whitewater investigation in the 1990s. In 2003, Sen. Clinton cast the sole dissenting vote against Chertoff's nomination as a federal judge in protest against his abrasive conduct during the Whitewater inquiry.

Though Secret Service records are supposed to be closely held secrets, a source close to the Clintons told me that it is believed that senior Republicans have received regular briefings about movements of the Clintons that might prove embarrassing if released during the general election campaign.

Click here to read more about Hillary's potential vulnerability, and the tightrope her campaign walked attacking Obama last week, on Consortium News.

Comments

[slobone]

You read it here first! The Clintons are quaking in their boots from fear that the Republicans will find a way to leak information about Bill Clinton's scandalous behavior since he left the White House! If you want all the juicy gossip, read the full article, which reveals --

Absolutely nothing. Bupkes. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not one rumor, innuendo, blind item, allegation, suspicion, nothing.

If either of the Clintons has done anything since 2001 they wouldn't want the whole world to find out about, the moron who wrote this column knows nothing about it.

Why is HuffPo wasting our time with crap like this?

[Zoopity]

Why would Chertoff not like the Clintons?

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Chertoff.html

He was the only US Attorney That Bill Clinton retained from pappy's administration.

[ScottChasWV]

I find it difficult to believe that the Secret Service would release that kind of information, and I 'pity the fool' that would ask for it.

Sorry, I am on the side of those who have voted this a tabloid-style piece.

[Progress08]

Bush is immoral and unethical. The neo-cons see every thing as a fight to the death and the rules of our constitution don't apply so long as they win. This is what we're stuck with. Scumbags like Bush and Cheney and their little cavalcade of idiots who support them. We either have to sink as low as them to beat them or hope that the inherent goodness in most people wins out over the republican psychopaths.

[huffposeur]

"Though Secret Service records are supposed to be closely held secrets, a source close to the Clintons told me that it is believed that senior Republicans have received regular briefings about movements of the Clintons that might prove embarrassing if released during the general election campaign."

I doubt that is true; every secret service agent I've ever met has been very apolitical. But it's easy to understand how hillary, having retrieved the FBI files of 900 friends and enemies, would jump to such a paranoid conclusion.

the secret service has been around since the days of lincoln and alan pinkerton. anyone who thinks michael chertoff has the ability to make them not only spill secrets, but brief key republicans on the clintons' movements, is crazy.

but then again, that's what this board is all about: a forum for the crazies. witness yesterday's rapidly closed thread about the fire in cheney's office. I don't know if it's shocking or funny that so many people on this board truly seemed to believe that sensitive materials were being burned in cheney's office and that is what caused the fire.

think about it, huffidiots! cheney wants to break the law and destroy incriminating evidence and thye only way to do it is burn the material in his office in the middle of the day?

Get a grip. If you want a conspiracy theory to latch on to, just wait till hillary has obama, um, eliminated, and not just eliminated from the presidential race....

[Kane]

Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

The only question left to ask is, was she wearing a beret?

[Arielman]

So what did the FBI do with the $6 billion it got for "Operation Megiddo" for the millennium terror we humans get when Y2K and other 2001 effects turn us into zombies? Wikipedia: "According to some interpretations of the Christian Bible, this place will be the venue for Armageddon (that derives from the name's place in Hebrew) or the final battle between the forces of light led by Jesus Christ and the forces of darkness led by Satan or the Anti-Christ after the End of Days." Where's the fiscal oversite on this kind of spending, at Homeland Security?

[Ammobob]

Would they be considered 'public domain' with the new revision to the FOIA?

Did the revelations about Rudy's movements and his Mistress' damage HIS campaign? DUH!

[drkazmd65]

Hmm,... not that I condone the Republicans 'leaking' this sort of informatio­n,...

But if meeting with somebody could prove 'embarassing' to Hillary should she have chosen to run for President,­.... Then perhaps she shouldn't have met with that person,... or she should have waived her Secret Service protection.

Living a public life is a double-edged sword folks.

[tbone99]

So what - the Bushes WANT her elected - she's more of the same.

[solarfared]

Damn, that's too bad. Sandy Berger is never around when you need him. Hill, Bill, what the hell is the difference?

[MadamRoma]

This is a complete pack of bull---- put out my the sheeple of the HuffObamington Post, in an effort to gain votes for their golden boy Hussein.

[rh654]

Given the mud and crap that Hillary and her folks are slinging at Obama - I don't see how any Hillary supporter could really be upset at all is someone digs up dirt on Hillary.

Bill and Hillary knew they were being guarded by the Secret Service - and they knew who was in charge of the Secret Service.

Certainly they both only upheld the highest dignity and honor of being allowed such a privilege and I don't see how there could be anything at all "damaging".

[javaman]

no problem, the SS has files on all the candidates, let's open them all and clear the air.

[Gussmith]

ConcernAmerican says:
Bush and the Republican Party would do ANYTHING in their power for ANY democratic nominee to win the General Election.

What on earth does that mean? I really struggle sometimes with the typing errors of commenters but rarely is the content so nonsensical.