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During the December 20 edition of MSNBC s Hardball host Chris Matthews introduced as the "Hot Topic" for that night s show -- "Is the [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] campaign trying to obliterate [Sen. Barack] Obama s [D-IL] candidacy? Not just beat it, but strangle it in the crib before there s any chance he catches on?" Matthews then asserted there were "[m]ore efforts today by the Clinton people to smother the Barack Obama campaign in its crib" and went on to say, "The picture is not pretty, but it could very well be deadly. The goal is to smother the young senator in his crib." In fact, during the one-hour show, Matthews invoked imagery of Clinton murdering an infant Obama on four occasions, noting in a later discussion, "My conjecture here, which I opened the show with, was the Clintons believe they have to stop Obama early. They want sudden infant crib death, is what they want. They want this guy to die before Iowa," and asking Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC s Morning Joe, "Everybody s got a job in mind [in a Hillary Clinton administration], and they re willing to put the knife in this guy in the crib to get that job. Is that too strong a language?" Scarborough responded, "No, it s not." Matthews later suggested that Clinton s surrogates were "attacking Obama, so that she gets the knife into Obama without her fingerprints on it," and he asked, "Is this an attempt to basically get a preliminary shot against this guy? Kill him early. Before Christmas." NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell responded, "Kneecap him, I mean, if you have to." He then asked Mitchell "[W]ill she continue to have surrogates drop these little poison pills in the public reservoir of public opinion?" Mitchell replied by asserting: "Absolutely." Matthews then described the "poisons" he associated with Clinton s surrogates: "Hussein, Muslim, blah, blah, blah, coke, all kinds of stuff. Will they continue to drop these poisons in the water?" He concluded by saying, "She needs Luca Brasi to do this stuff for her," referring to a Mafia enforcer in the Mario Puzo novel The Godfather. As Media Matters for America has documented, media figures frequently portray the Clintons and their staff as ruthless and even violent. From the December 20 edition of MSNBC s Hardball with Chris Matthews: MATTHEWS: Good evening. I m Chris Matthews. The "Hot Topic" tonight: Is the Hillary Clinton campaign trying to obliterate Obama s candidacy? Not just beat it but strangle it in the crib before there s any chance he catches on? That s our "Hot Topic" tonight. On the Republican side, thrice-married Giuliani loses his once commanding lead nationally, and the Reverend Huckabee is ascending. And speaking of Huckabee, is he the affable Midwestern pastor, or is there a reason to be afraid of his candidacy? So who s afraid of Mike Huckabee? We ll debate that tonight. And we ll ask you -- we ll give you, rather, our daily "Political Fix" with Joe Scarborough, Andrea Mitchell and John Harwood. But first, the "Hot Topic." More efforts today by the Clinton people to smother the Barack Obama campaign in its crib, as I said. One, a letter attacking Obama s health care plan pretending to come from John Edwards but actually set up by a pro-Clinton union. Two, the launching of two websites specifically targeting and attacking Barack. Suddenly, the campaign for president on the Democratic side is dominated by this dark struggle to hold power. The Clintons -- Hillary, Bill, the whole universe of advisers and backers known as Hillary-land -- have targeted its enemy. The Clinton order comfortable at the center of Democratic power for a full generation is on the attack. The target: the junior senator from Illinois who dares to challenge the former first lady for commander-in-chief. The weapons being wielded against him are the wide-ranging regiments of Clinton people. A Clinton surrogate attacks Barack for saying he d like to be president back when he was in kindergarten. In New Hampshire, the husband of a former governor talks up what Republicans would do with Barack s admission of using drugs as a teenager. A former senator from Nebraska talks up Barack s middle name and the religion of his forebears, a comment for which he later apologized. But the attacks refuse to stop. Keeping up the beat, a group of back-bench congresspeople held a press conference today -- actually, a conference on telephone to call reporters to attack Senator Obama for voting president -- present -- as a state legislator back in Springfield. A friendly labor union is now putting out an attack on Barack s health care plan, making it appear to be from John Edwards. And according to ABC s Jack Tayper [sic: Jake Tapper], the Clinton troops have now set up two different websites with the expressed mission of destroying Obama. Tapper says it s the first case, at least in this campaign, of a candidate setting up websites with the single purpose of attacking another candidate. The picture is not pretty, but it could be very well be deadly. The goal is to smother the young senator in his crib. Whether it s right or wrong is, as in much of politics, a matter of how you look at it. A lot of true believers, the young and idealistic at heart, will find it -- let s agree on this thing -- dispiriting. [...] MATTHEWS: Is there a smart political tactic here, Mark [Green, president of Air America Radio]? You ve been in some campaigns. You ve won a lot of them. Is there a smart political tactic here -- if you re a Clintonite, saying, "Wait a minute, don t let this guy land on the beach"? It s like the Germans when they saw us coming in Normandy -- "Don t let them land on the beach because once they re on the beach, they re going to break out." Are the Clinton people afraid that if Barack does well in Iowa and New Hampshire, he will be unstoppable, therefore, they ve got to throw every trash can they got at him right now? GREEN: I agree with everything -- MATTHEWS: Is that the strategy? ED SCHULTZ (liberal radio host): Absolutely. GREEN: One second. MATTHEWS: OK -- GREEN: I agree with everything you just said except for the word "trash." Ed, there s no serious evidence -- MATTHEWS: Trash can. [...] MATTHEWS:. Let s talk about this fight here. My conjecture here, which I opened the show with, was the Clintons believe they ve got to stop Obama early. They want sudden infant crib death, is what they want. They want this guy to die before Iowa. And they are unleashing everybody they ve got, everybody who wants -- every meal ticket they ve got, everybody that wants to be a cabinet member, a VP, a staffer. They re all out there -- [former Sen.] Bob Kerrey [D-NE], [former Iowa governor Tom] Vilsack, [former Clinton campaign New Hampshire co-chairman] Billy Shaheen, [Clinton campaign strategist] Mark Penn, [Clinton campaign spokesman] Phil Singer. Everybody s got a job in mind, and they re willing to put the knife in this guy in the crib to get that job. Is that too strong a language, Joe Scarborough? JOE SCARBOROUGH (MSNBC anchor): No, it s not, because if she wins Iowa, she walks toward the nomination. The problem is, they re trying too hard. I can t help but go back -- and I know you were there, too, Chris -- in 2004 in Iowa, and you had all these people shipped in from out of state and it ended up making the Iowans just roll their eyes and toss Howard Dean to the side and go with John Kerry. No, I think actually the person who is damaged goods right now is Hillary Clinton. If you look at the latest NBC poll, which shows that Obama does much better in general election match-ups, and Hillary s negatives are above her positives now. MATTHEWS: Let me go to the question of tactics here. She is using things like having AFSCME -- the union, the federal, the state and county employees -- put out a letter that looked like it came from John Edwards, apparently, attacking Obama, so that she gets the knife into Obama without her fingerprints on it. [...] MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Andrea, again, about this way this campaign has to be run. The traditional way of an incumbent to defeat a challenger, in any congressional race we ve ever covered or seen, you try to, first of all, check their petitions and make sure there s no names wrong, use every trick in the book to get them out of the race. Is this an attempt to basically get a preliminary shot against this guy? Kill him early. Before Christmas. MITCHELL: Kneecap him, I mean, if you have to. The whole point is to get him out by Iowa so that she doesn t have to face him in New Hampshire, because what she s seeing is that her New Hampshire firewall, what was to be the firewall, has eroded. And that depending on the poll, they re either dead even -- he s ahead in some, she s ahead in others. So she no longer can count on New Hampshire, where the Clintons have a record. MATTHEWS: Will she continue -- Andrea, you first. Will she continue to have surrogates drop these little poison pills in the public reservoir of public opinion? MITCHELL: Absolutely. MATTHEWS: Hussein, Muslim, blah, blah, blah, coke, all kinds of stuff. Will they continue to drop these poisons in the water? MITCHELL: I think it will continue to be this kind of tough, nasty campaign. The difference is that it was a big mistake for her to do some of the negative stuff. She is going to be all warm and fuzzy. MATTHEWS: She needs Luca Brasi to do this stuff for her.

On the December 20 edition of CNN s Anderson Cooper 360, discussing controversial remarks by William Shaheen, a then-co-chair of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) presidential campaign about Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Jennifer Donahue, a senior adviser for political affairs at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, claimed that the Clinton campaign is "playing the race card" because of "what happened last week on the drug issue with Shaheen, and, moreover, with [Clinton s chief strategist] Mark Penn, who then kept repeating it over and over and over." But, as Media Matters for America documented, the entire December 13 Hardball segment on which Penn appeared was devoted to the controversy over Shaheen s comments, and Penn was not the first to raise the drug issue. Indeed, as Bob Somerby noted on his Daily Howler blog, host Chris Matthews "asked Penn a series of questions -- and every single one concerned drugs." The December 13 Hardball segment featured a discussion with Matthews, Penn, Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, and Joe Trippi, adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. As Media Matters noted, Matthews began the segment by asking Axelrod, "[A]re you satisfied with the explanation from the Hillary Clinton campaign that the comment by Mr. Shaheen about drug use by your candidate was not something coming from the top?" During his questioning of Penn, Matthews questions were exclusively on the issue of drugs: Matthews first asked Penn, "Mark, given the fact that this has reached into the spin room today and there were several questions to David Axelrod about whether his candidate, Senator Obama, has in fact shared or sold drugs, do you expect the Republicans to use this against the Democrats, no matter who wins the election -- the nomination fight, I should say?" Penn replied, "Oh, I don t know," before going on to say: "I m really disappointed. I think this thing with Billy Shaheen, he s stepped down. It was never a part of this campaign. It was unacceptable." Matthews then asked, "Did you tell him to step down? Did you tell him to step down? It took 24 hours for him to do it. Do you think he did it in time to stop this from becoming a story?" Penn replied: "I think this story is over. I think we made it very clear yesterday that we didn t condone it. We weren t part of these -- of the story that he went on with. And we absolutely apologized. And the senator went on the tarmac of the airport as we were all coming down to this debate and apologized personally, because this is not part of her campaign." Matthews continued, asking Penn: "These comments that are coming out of your campaign from different directions -- and I m not sure how they re coming, and nobody does -- but going after his perhaps youthful drug use, which he admitted in his book, and going after comments he made as a student and as a kindergarten student in fifth -- at the age of 5, I should say, do you think those are appropriate shots at the opponent, or are they below the belt?" In response, Penn said: "Well, I think we ve made clear that the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising, and I think that s been made clear." As Media Matters noted, Penn answered questions from Matthews and spoke for 1 minute and 43 seconds from the time he responded to Matthews first question until he said the word "cocaine." Later during the Anderson Cooper 360 discussion, Donahue followed up her assertion that the Clinton campaign is "playing the race card" by asserting, "I don t mean that Hillary Clinton is trying to play a race card, but I think that they re bringing up the issue of fear of African-Americans in a way that is either intentional or not, but is real." From the 5 p.m. ET hour of the December 13 edition of MSNBC s Hardball: MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, David Axelrod, are you satisfied with the explanation from the Hillary Clinton campaign that the comment by Mr. Shaheen about drug use by your candidate was not something coming from the top? AXELROD: Look, I have no way of knowing that. They say that, and we have to accept them at their word. I ll say this, Chris. When you, when you launch a negative attack and you say that this is the fun part of the campaign, you send a signal down the line to others in the campaign that leads to this kind of thing. And so whether or not there was an instruction to Mr. Shaheen, I think it s important that a signal get sent right from the top of the campaign that this isn t encouraged, that it s not the fun part of the campaign, that we ought to be lifting up this country instead of trying to tear each other down. MATTHEWS: Are you serving notice by your comment right now and your comment in the spin room that any further negative attack or suggestion by one of the Clinton people will come from Hillary? AXELROD: Well, I -- I m not suggesting that, Chris. But I will say this. Unless there s a strong, consistent signal from the top, unless we refrain from saying things like, "Negative campaigning is the fun part of the campaign," you re going to have that happening. There s sort of -- it s sort of a wink-and-a-nod thing. Everybody down the line says, "Oh, well, this is what this is about." So, I would think that it would be important for all the candidates to send a strong signal to their troops that this isn t where we re going go with this campaign. We re not going take it into the gutter. MATTHEWS: Mark, given the fact that this has reached into the spin room today and there were several questions to David Axelrod about whether his candidate, Senator Obama, has in fact shared or sold drugs, do you expect the Republicans to use this against the Democrats, no matter who wins the election -- the nomination fight, I should say? PENN: Oh, I don t know. I think, though, I m very disappointed by David s comments. I mean, you know, he s trying to rewrite history here. It is his candidate, Senator Barack Obama, on the front page of The New York Times that called Senator Clinton disingenuous. He started a wave of direct, personal negative attacks. And the senator finally began to reply very substantively that his plan leaves out 15 million people, whereas hers covers every single person. And he kept bringing up an Iran vote that he, in fact, skipped. So, I m really disappointed. I think this thing with Billy Shaheen, he s stepped down. It was never a part of this campaign. It was unacceptable. MATTHEWS: Did you tell him to step down? PENN: The senator made that clear. No, he stepped down. And he made clear -- MATTHEWS: Did you tell him to step down? It took 24 hours for him to do it. Do you think he did it in time -- PENN: No. No. MATTHEWS: -- to stop this from becoming a story? PENN: I think this story is over. I think we made it very clear yesterday that we didn t condone it. We weren t part of these -- of the story that he went on with. And we absolutely apologized. And the senator went on the tarmac of the airport as we were all coming down to this debate and apologized personally, because this is not part of her campaign. MATTHEWS: Right. PENN: And I think it s very important. She has been running a year-long positive campaign in which she s out there talking about ending the Iraq war and health care for all. MATTHEWS: These comments that are coming out of your campaign from different directions -- and I m not sure how they re coming, and nobody does -- but going after his perhaps youthful drug use, which he admitted in his book, and going after comments he made as a student and as a kindergarten student in fifth -- at the age of 5, I should say, do you think those are appropriate shots at the opponent, or are they below the belt? PENN: Well, I think we ve made clear that the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising, and I think that s been made clear. I think this kindergarten thing was a joke after Senator - TRIPPI: I think he just did it again. He just did it again. PENN: This kindergarten thing, after what the senator did - TRIPPI: Unbelievable. They just literally - [crosstalk] PENN: Excuse me. TRIPPI: No, no. No, no, Mark, excuse me. PENN: Excuse me. Excuse me. TRIPPI: This guy s been filibustering on this. He just said "cocaine" again. It s like - PENN: I think you re saying "cocaine." TRIPPI: No, no. PENN: I don t know. I think you re saying it. [crosstalk] TRIPPI: You just did it. PENN: I don t know why you re saying it. [crosstalk] MATTHEWS: OK, Joe Trippi s turn. [crosstalk] TRIPPI: No. MATTHEWS: Joe Trippi s turn. From the December 20 edition of CNN s Anderson Cooper 360: COOPER: Jennifer, in New Hampshire is there the perception that Hillary Clinton is being singled out unfairly? I want to read you something that Time magazine s editor at large mentioned to The Washington Post, Mark Halperin. He said: "She s just held to a different standard in every respect. The press rooted for Obama to go negative. When he did, he was applauded. When she does it, it s treated as this huge violation of propriety. It s not a level playing field." DONAHUE: Well, they re doing it in an entirely different way. When Barack Obama went negative on Hillary Clinton, he did it after Edwards did, first of all. He grilled it and got it ready. And then Obama flipped it, and he basically did it in a way that was policy-based, issue-based. What [former Sen. Bob] Kerrey [D-NE] did the other day and what happened last week on the drug issue with Shaheen, and, moreover, with Mark Penn, who then kept repeating it over and over and over, they re playing the race card. I mean, this is not some small thing where they re saying, like Gore did about [Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bill] Bradley [NJ] in 2000 -- "He wanted to raise the retirement age" -- when, in fact, he didn t. This is the race card. They re attacking his race. And I think it s really above the pale. Voters here don t like it. [...] DONAHUE: Anderson, can I just jump in? Because I want to hear David s [Gergen, CNN senior political analyst] perspective. I mean, would you also say, then, that [Republican presidential candidate Mike] Huckabee is not playing the religion card against [Republican presidential candidate Mitt] Romney? GERGEN: No, I think he is playing the religion card. But that s -- that s said in a positive way. But I think, when you say somebody is playing a race card, you suggest that they have racist motives or they have a racist quality to them. DONAHUE: I don t -- well, I guess I don t -- GERGEN: I think that s unfair to the people involved. DONAHUE: They re trying to -- but don t you think -- I don t mean that Hillary Clinton is trying to play a race card, but I think that they re bringing up the issue of fear of African-Americans in a way that is either intentional or not, but is real. COOPER: I want David to respond, and then we got to go. GERGEN: I just don t happen to agree. I think that s unfair. Look, I think they have been clumsy. I think -- I think this is going to rebound against them. But I think it goes too far to say they re playing a race card. COOPER: [CNN chief national correspondent] John King, David Gergen, Jennifer Donahue, appreciate your comments. Thank you.

On the December 20 edition of Fox News Hannity s (D-NY) brother is behind on child support payments demonstrates "Rodham family values." A December 20 New York Post article reported that Clinton s brother, Anthony Rodham, "is a deadbeat dad who owes tens of thousands of dollars in child support" to his ex-wife, Nicole Boxer, the daughter of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Referring to the article, guest co-host Mark Steyn asked Bruce: "Is Clinton fatigue already setting in early, Tammy?" Bruce responded: "Well, I think we had Clinton fatigue quite a while ago. This is obviously Rodham family values." Later, Bruce asserted: "But, you know, this isn t good for Hillary s campaign. I do think it speaks about the Rodham family itself. And I think it reflects on her just like Hillary s husband reflects on her. It s not good, neither one of them." Bruce also said: "But Nicole married this fellow, I think, pretty much knowing what she was getting. She knew who her sister-in-law was and the nature of that marriage. I don t think anybody should be surprised." Also during the segment, referring to the Post s report that Rodham "stiffed" Boxer "out of $75,000 in child support," Steyn asked Democratic strategist Bob Beckel: "It makes you, it makes you wonder, Bob, if they are such smart campaigners -- this is $75,000. Couldn t the Clinton campaign have settled all this quietly when the campaign got going before it all became public?" Beckel responded: "The answer to your question is you legally can t do that." From the December 20 edition of Fox News Hannity s get back to good old negative stuff. The New York Post, Tammy, had a story today about Anthony Rodham being a deadbeat dad. He owes $75,000 to his ex-wife. If you can t keep track of the Clinton brothers -- this is the guy we last heard from I think six or seven years ago when he was involved in a hazelnut scam in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, which is not an order of words one has cause to use terribly often. Is Clinton fatigue already setting in early, Tammy? BRUCE: Well, I think we had Clinton fatigue quite a while ago. This is obviously Rodham family values. And here you ve got the Boxer family, which has yet to say anything. But Nicole married this fellow, I think, pretty much knowing what she was getting, and she knew who her sister-in-law was and the nature of that marriage. I don t think anybody should be surprised. Also, at the same time, of course, the Boxer family is not suffering. They are not living in poverty. Some people might argue that that s a heck of a lot of money to be arguing to pay someone for alimony when they are doing moderately well themselves. That s a whole another argument. But, you know, this isn t good for Hillary s campaign. I do think it speaks about the Rodham family itself. And I think it reflects on her just like Hillary s husband reflects on her, and it s not good, neither one of them. STEYN: It makes you, it makes you wonder, Bob, if they are such smart campaigners -- this is $75,000. Couldn t the Clinton campaign have settled all this quietly when the campaign got going before it all became public? BECKEL: I m still getting over the nuts in Georgia. The answer to your question is you legally can t do that. The other point here, is this is much ado about nothing. Everybody has known about Rodham from the beginning. This guy has been a problem. If you had every sibling who caused a problem for a candidate for president to cause a real problem, you wouldn t have any candidates for president. There s always one, you know? So I don t think it means anything.

In a December 20 New York Times article, reporters Don Van Natta Jr., Jo Becker, and Mike McIntire wrote that "the secrecy surrounding the William J. Clinton Foundation has become a campaign issue as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination" and cited concerns "that donors could use presidential foundations to circumvent campaign finance laws intended to limit political influence." The Times reported that "federal election law prohibits foreign donations to presidential campaigns and limits Americans to $2,300 per election" in order "[t]o limit the influence of any single donor," in contrast to the "unlimited and anonymous contributions" to the Clinton Foundation by "foreigners and foreign governments," suggesting an ability on the part of foreigners and foreign governments to exercise considerable influence over candidates through contributions. The article went on to note that "the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, a foundation linked to the United Arab Emirates [UAE], and the governments of Kuwait and Qatar have made contributions of unknown amounts to the Clinton Foundation." But the Times did not note that Hillary Clinton has repeatedly criticized the Saudi government and opposed the sale of control of several U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of Dubai, a member state of the UAE. The article also did not mention that former President George H.W. Bush s presidential library, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, received several donations of $1 million or more from "foreigners and foreign governments," including the Saudi royal family, the government of Kuwait, and the late president of the UAE. Hillary Clinton most recently criticized the Saudi government after a Saudi court sentenced a rape victim to 200 lashes and six months in prison for not having a male guardian with her at the time. (The Saudi king later pardoned the victim.) In a November 26 editorial, the New York Sun editorial board praised Clinton for speaking out on the issue despite the library donations from the Saudi royal family: How s this for a surprising turn in the presidential race? The candidate who has been toughest on Saudi Arabia in the past week hasn t been Mayor Giuliani, Senator McCain, or Governor Romney, but Senator Clinton, the Democrat of New York. It was Mrs. Clinton who spoke out about a punishment of 200 lashes that a Saudi Arabian court gave to a 19-year-old woman victim of a gang rape by seven men. Said Mrs. Clinton, "This is an outrage. The Bush administration has refused to condemn the sentence and said it will not protest an internal Saudi decision. I urge President Bush to call on King Abdullah to cancel the ruling and drop all charges against this woman. As president I will once again make human rights an American priority around the world." Hats off to Mrs. Clinton for talking tough to the Saudis. The statement is even more newsworthy because the House of Saud has long been a patron of the Clintons. As The New York Sun reported in 2004, the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen, Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, Nasser Al-Rashid, and Walid Juffali, each donated $1 million or more to the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. President Clinton also helped secure millions of dollars in Saudi funds for the University of Arkansas. As for the Bush administration, we have given great deference to the maneuvering required of a wartime leader, as Churchill so memorably explained of his dealings with Stalin in pursuit of Hitler. But the State Department hasn t been covered with glory; here s how it went at the State Department on Tuesday: In August, Clinton asserted that the United States would need to see "evidence of genuine Saudi cooperation" with U.S. interests in the Middle East before the United States should agree to a proposed arms sale to Saudi Arabia and its neighbors. A December 4 article from The Hill reported that the "Bush administration said it would not officially notify Congress of the deal until Jan. 15, 2008," and that "[o]nce Congress is officially notified, it has 30 days to review such a deal and possibly oppose it." In an August 22 blog post on the Jerusalem Post website, Clinton stated: "I think we needed to see evidence of genuine Saudi cooperation in pursing stability in Iraq and Lebanon and in supporting our efforts to foster peace between the Israelis and Palestinian, before we move ahead with such a significant arms sale. We also need Saudi cooperation in stopping the export of radical Islam from the Kingdom." Further, in a November policy address on "America s Economic Challenges," Clinton warned that U.S. "dependence on foreign oil means we send billions of dollars to countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Our trade deficit and our ballooning debts mean we send billions of dollars in payments to countries like China." She added: "These countries then turn around and use our dollars to buy chunks of our economy": Now, where exactly are countries getting the money for these funds? They re getting it from us. Our dependence on foreign oil means we send billions of dollars to countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Our trade deficit and our ballooning debts mean we send billions of dollars in payments to countries like China. These countries then turn around and use our dollars to buy chunks of our economy. Today, sovereign wealth funds hold an estimated $2.5 trillion. Within a decade, it s predicted they ll hold five times that much. We have never seen anything like this, and you don t hear a peep out of the Bush administration. Now, why exactly are these sovereign wealth funds cause for concern? Well, let me ask you this: How would you feel if a foreign government used its sovereign wealth fund to buy an American car company and moved it overseas? Right now, that government might be our banker, but what if they became our boss, as well? And how would you feel if countries used their investments in America to influence our foreign policy? What if a country set out to buy companies that compete with their national industries and shut them down? I don t think we d be comfortable with our own government speculating in real estate or buying up companies, and we should be doubly uncomfortable with the idea of a foreign government doing these things in our country. In short, these sovereign wealth funds represent a potential threat to our economic sovereignty if we don t act now to assess their impact on our economy. In March 2006, Clinton joined a bipartisan effort criticizing Saudi Arabia s decision to host a meeting promoting a trade boycott of Israel. She was among a group of senators who signed a letter on the subject addressed to President Bush: Dear President Bush, We are writing to urge you to protest the decision by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to host a meeting next week in Jeddah to promote the trade boycott of Israel. Saudi Arabia is taking this action despite a public promise to you last November to drop the trade embargo. You should urge the Saudi rulers to keep their word, cancel this meeting, and end the boycott immediately. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has its headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is hosting 57 countries at this conference next week. Saudi diplomat Salem el-Honi, High Commissioner of the OIC, recently described the purpose of the meeting in a telephone interview March 6th, 2006 with The Jerusalem Post as follows: "we will discuss coordination among the various offices to strengthen the boycott." On November 11th, 2005, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled to admit Saudi Arabia into the WTO. As you know, the WTO rules forbid any member government to participate in a boycott of a fellow WTO member. Israel is a member of WTO. Last month, in a Senate Finance Committee hearing, your trade representative, Rob Portman, said that the Saudis "have a responsibility to treat Israel as any other member of the WTO." By calling for a strengthened trade embargo against Israel, Saudi Arabia is failing to live up to its obligations to treat all WTO partners equally. Mr. President, the United States cannot remain silent on Saudi Arabia s intolerant boycott of Israel, nor should the U.S. allow the continued membership of Saudi Arabia in the WTO if they continue to violate WTO rules. Additionally, in a speech to the 2005 AIPAC Policy Conference, Clinton criticized "Saudi textbooks" that "characterize Jews as wicked" as an example of "hate and incitement and anti-Semitism ... throughout the Arab world." Clinton also opposed a 2005 Bush administration proposal to establish a bilateral trade agreement with Saudi Arabia and to pave the way for Saudi membership in the WTO. Indeed, a June 22, 2005, article in The Hill reported that Clinton was part of a Democratic effort to pressure the administration to forestall the welcoming of Saudi Arabia into the WTO and the finalization of the trade agreement: Saudi Arabia s effort to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and finalize the U.S.-Saudi free-trade agreement that will accompany its admission is coming under increasing attack from a bipartisan group of lawmakers assisted by pro-Israel lobbyists. [...] "Clearly, Congress continues to be concerned with Saudi behavior with regard to a number of issues," said Josh Block, a spokesman for AIPAC, which is "clearly supportive of attempts to bring attention to those issues prior to any ascension to the WTO by Saudi Arabia." AIPAC disagrees with ZOA [the Zionist Organization of America] on Israeli-Palestinian policy, but the two groups have united in congressional outreach that attempts to capitalize on general frustration with the Saudis by linking it to the WTO. [Then-Rep. Ben] Cardin [D-MD] maintained that the Saudis were slowing their own path to democracy. "They could do things quickly if they wanted to, to show some goodwill," Cardin said. Other senators who have pledged to back the campaign against Saudi WTO membership include Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), whose speech at last month s AIPAC Policy Conference noted that "Saudi textbooks describe Jews as wicked." Further, in opposing the proposed sale of control of the Port of New York and New Jersey to Dubai Ports World, Clinton said in a February 24, 2006, press conference: "It is clear that the Bush Administration has failed to adequately address valid national security concerns. We will do everything possible to make sure the Administration conducts the mandatory investigation required under the law and does not compromise security at our ports." As Media Matters for America noted, a March 4, 2006, Baltimore Sun article reported that Clinton was among the five Democratic senators and five Republican senators who "sent a letter to their party leaders" on March 3, 2006, "asking for cooperation in giving Congress a role in the Bush administration s latest review of Dubai Ports World s planned takeover of some operations at the port of Baltimore and five other major U.S. seaports." A statement announcing the letter is posted on Clinton s website. In a March 3, 2006, article, Newsday reported that "Bill Clinton coached United Arab Emirates officials on how to handle the Dubai ports controversy two weeks ago -- but didn t tell his wife about that conversation, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton disclosed yesterday." As Media Matters noted, after Bill Clinton s role was first reported, Hillary Clinton continued to publicly criticize the deal. The December 20 Times article also cropped a quote by Bill Clinton regarding whether foundation donors would try to influence a Hillary Clinton administration. As Media Matters noted, the article omitted the portion of the quote in which Bill Clinton asserted that he did not believe that donors would make contributions to his foundation in an attempt to influence a Hillary Clinton administration, and that if such an attempt were made, it would be ineffective. Furthermore, the Times reported that two members of the "ready pool of donors" who contributed to the Clinton library had given to the foundations of other presidents. Specifically, the article paraphrased a spokeswoman for the Anheuser-Busch Cos., whose charitable arm gave $1 million over five years to the Clinton library, asserting that Anheuser-Busch s "foundation had contributed more than $360 million to a wide array of organizations, including the Bush, Truman and Johnson presidential libraries." The Times also reported that donor Bernard L. Schwartz said "that he had contributed to other presidential libraries." However, the article did not note many of the foreign governments cited had contributed to the Bush library years earlier. Indeed, a November 4, 1997, USA Today article about the opening of Bush s library reported: Gratitude for Bush s leadership in the Persian Gulf War helped with the library fund-raising. Listed among donors of $ 1 million or more are the citizens of Kuwait, the State of Kuwait, the Bandar Bin Sultan family of Saudi Arabia, the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science, the Sultanate of Oman, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahayan and the People of the United Arab Emirates. From the December 20 Times article, headlined "In Charity and Politics, Clinton Donors Overlap": Over the last decade, former President Bill Clinton has raised more than $500 million for his foundation, allowing him to build a glass-and-steel presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and burnish his image as an impresario of global philanthropy. The foundation has closely guarded the identities of its donors -- including one who gave $31.3 million last year. Now, the secrecy surrounding the William J. Clinton Foundation has become a campaign issue as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination with her husband as a prime source of strategy and star power. Some of her rivals argue that donors could use presidential foundations to circumvent campaign finance laws intended to limit political influence. [...] To limit the influence of any single donor, federal election law prohibits foreign donations to presidential campaigns and limits Americans to $2,300 per election. But presidential foundations are free to accept unlimited and anonymous contributions, even from foreigners and foreign governments. Indeed, the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, a foundation linked to the United Arab Emirates, and the governments of Kuwait and Qatar have made contributions of unknown amounts to the Clinton Foundation. "The vast scale of these secret fund-raising operations presents enormous opportunities for abuse," said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who introduced a bill to force disclosure of presidential foundation donors. The bill passed the House, 390-34, in March but stalled in the Senate. [...] On October 6, 1999, the charitable arm of the Anheuser-Busch Companies gave $200,000, the first of five payments over five years totaling $1 million, according to records filed by the company s foundation. Less than a month earlier, the company, the country s leading beer maker, had scored a major victory when the Clinton administration s Federal Trade Commission dropped a bid to regulate beer, wine and liquor advertising that critics said was aimed at under-age drinkers. Francine I. Katz, a company spokeswoman, said the donation was unrelated to any government action and that its foundation had contributed more than $360 million to a wide array of organizations, including the Bush, Truman and Johnson presidential libraries. [...] Bernard L. Schwartz, another major Democratic contributor who was then chief executive of Loral Space and Communications, gave $250,000 and pledged $750,000 more in 2000. At the time, investigators were trying to determine if Loral had improperly provided satellite technology to China. Under the Bush administration, Loral agreed to pay a civil fine of $14 million to settle the case. Mr. Schwartz, who is now also a Hillraiser, said that his donations were unconnected to Loral s troubles and added that he had contributed to other presidential libraries.

On the December 18 edition of CNN s The Situation Room, guest host John King and White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux played a video clip of former President Bill Clinton talking to reporters in Des Moines, Iowa, in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) can be heard and seen in the background saying to someone, "We ve got to go. These kids are waiting for us. Come on." King commented that he had a "[s]neaky suspicion, Suzanne, you might be able to translate that Move [sic] on to Please stop talking. " Malveaux responded, "Yes. Stop sucking the air out of my campaign, yes." Politico senior political writer Ben Smith commented on the same video on his blog. Smith wrote: A great moment captured in the background of this video, from The Page: about halfway through, Hillary, on the left edge of the screen, emerges from the SUV to drag Bill away from the press. Kind of emblematic of his role lately. From the December 18 edition of CNN s The Situation Room: MALVEAUX: But the Clinton campaign has to play a delicate balancing act. Former President Bill Clinton is causing controversy over his sharp questioning of Obama s credentials, even suggesting he -- Clinton -- had the good sense not to run until he was ready. We caught up with Mr. Clinton in Des Moines. Some of the comments you made about Barack Obama, you had said that in 1988, you weren t ready to be president. You didn t run. Are you trying to say that Barack Obama isn t ready either? BILL CLINTON: No. I m trying to say that I agree with what The Des Moines Register said, that Hillary has the best record of positive change-making in other people s lives, and I think it s important. And I think that s why they endorsed her. That s what I was trying to say. I think -- I bragged on all of them -- Senator Obama, Senator Edwards, all of them. I like them. MALVEAUX: If you rewind, during our exchange, you can hear Senator Clinton urging her husband to move on. BILL CLINTON: Hillary has the best record of positive change-making in other people s lives -- HILLARY CLINTON: We ve got to go. These kids are waiting for us. Come on. BILL CLINTON: -- and I think that s why then endorsed her. That s what I was trying to say. I think -- I brag -- [end video clip] MALVEAUX: And John, there s some political analysts who suggest that they do move on, that that is a good idea, because they say while President -- the former President Clinton, he does have a lot of credibility within the party, they say going too negative or pushing too hard, too aggressive, might actually backfire for his wife. John. KING: Sneaky suspicion, Suzanne, you might be able to translate that "Move on" to "Please stop talking." Suzanne Malveaux. MALVEAUX: Yes. "Stop sucking the air out of my campaign," yes. KING: Catching the candidates in Iowa and the candidates spouses, Suzanne Malveaux. Thank you, Suzanne.

On the October 21 edition of the NBC-syndicated The Chris Matthews Show, while discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) proposal to roll back a portion of the Bush tax cuts to pay for her health insurance plan, host Chris Matthews stated: "I think it s time for me to get in trouble again. ... I m thinking about a woman who lives in the suburbs; she may not work outside the home. They re talking around election time -- the husband and the wife." Matthews, speaking first in the voice of the hypothetical wife, said: " I sort of like this Hillary, the first woman president. She s pro-choice. And the husband says, You know, dear, you know, this is going to kill our tax bracket. You know that tuition thing we pay every couple of years for the kids, every year, we can t do that if we get a higher tax bracket. We have to pay more money. " Matthews then asked Washington Post Writers Group syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker: "So, could the tax issue -- Hillary s threat to raise taxes -- throw a lot of women and men from the suburbs back into the Republican column?" From the October 21 edition of the NBC-syndicated The Chris Matthews Show: MATTHEWS: I think it s time for me to get in trouble again. Kathleen, I m thinking about a woman who lives in the suburbs; she may not work outside the home. They re talking around election time -- the husband and the wife -- you know, she says, "I sort of like this Hillary, the first woman president. She s pro-choice." And the husband says, "You know, dear, you know, this is going to kill our tax bracket. You know that tuition thing we pay every couple of years for the kids, every year, we can t do that if we get a higher tax bracket. We have to pay more money." So, could the tax issue -- Hillary s threat to raise taxes -- throw a lot of women and men from the suburbs back into the Republican column? Am I being too tricky here? PARKER: Yeah, you may be too tricky. First of all, I don t know what your assumption is here that I would know about women in the suburbs who don t work. [laughter] PARKER: I don t have any recent poll material. MATTHEWS: Those club members that come in, you know, late in the afternoon. PARKER: Oh, those guys. Yeah, well, nobody wants to pay more taxes, let s face it. But -- and, yeah, I think it s not helpful for Hillary at this point to say that. And you don t necessarily need -- there are other ways to go about this health care issue. I mean, what if one of these Republicans would sort of cut through the clutter and say, "Look, I m going to give you your own money to buy health care, and I m not going to tax that money," that would be a whole new scenario and a different talking point for people, and that, I think, has a lot of power.

In recent days, numerous media outlets have reported on an anonymously sourced allegation that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) eavesdropped on a phone conversation involving Bill Clinton s political opponents during his 1992 presidential campaign -- an allegation the Clinton campaign has said is "categorically untrue." In the book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions" and described the tape as having been "obtained under questionable circumstances." According to the endnotes of Her Way, Gerth and Van Natta s only source for this claim is an "[a]uthor interview with former campaign aide present at the tape playing in 2006." Some in the media seized on the allegation before the book was even officially released and many failed to note that the sole basis for the claim is a single unnamed source describing events that allegedly occurred 14 years earlier. After numerous reports in June, the allegation did not surface again until an October 16 article in The Hill, headlined "GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping." The Hill article quoted an anonymous "GOP official" accusing Clinton of "hypocrisy" because she allegedly eavesdropped on political opponents but opposes the Bush administration s efforts to expand the government s authority to conduct electronic surveillance of communications involving people in the United States without a warrant. In reporting on the allegations, several media outlets -- including the following -- failed to note that Gerth and Van Natta sourced the claim to only one, unnamed person: Slate.com, National Review, CNN s Paula Zahn Now, ABC News The Note, Fox News Fox s Tucker, The Washington Times, and The American Spectator. From Her Way, Pages 93-94: Hillary s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries;10 she vetted senior campaign aides;11 and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.12 A lot had changed since the moment eighteen years earlier when Hillary had been aghast at the suggestion that the Clinton campaign use underhanded means to garner votes in rural Arkansas. Yet again, Bill Clinton s chances were being jeopardized by rumors of his womanizing. And yet again, it was up to Hillary to minimize the threat -- and if that meant listening to a tape that had been obtained under questionable circumstances, then she would just deal with it. Associated endnotes: 10. Numerous 1992 campaign memoranda addressed to Hillary Rodham Clinton. 11. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Scribner, 2001), 20. 12. Author interview with former campaign aide present at the tape playing in 2006. May 31 In a May 31 Slate.com blog post, Mickey Kaus wrote that he had "obtained a copy of page 93 of the unreleased Gerth-Van Natta Hillary Clinton book" and highlighted the allegation that Hillary Clinton "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack." Kaus speculated, "Isn t it not so legal?... I m not an expert, but it looks like a potential minefield for Hillary." Kaus did not note the basis for the allegation -- a single anonymous source -- nor did he note that, if he had only page 93 and not the endnotes, he was unable to determine the sourcing for the allegation. From the May 31 post (bold and italics in original): Hillary, Eavesdropper? Big Mama is Listening! Kf has obtained a copy of page 93 of the unreleased Gerth-Van Natta Hillary Clinton book, which describes how, during the 92 campaign, Hillary herself "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions." Hmm. Phone-monitoring was a key investigative method of what notorious California-based Clinton-friendly private eye and problem solver? Just asking! ... P.S.: I m not talking about Jack Palladino, who is explicitly mentioned in the footnotes as working for the Clinton team and would not have to be described as a "supporter." But of course, it could still be him, or any other "supporter." (Nor is it clear if the phones were being monitored in Arkansas or D.C..) ... I don t know how common cell-phone-monitoring was in 1992. ... P.P.S.: Wasn t there a character in Joe Klein s Primary Colors who did this sort of thing? ... P.P.P.S.: Isn t it not so legal? ... See also this exegesis of the elements of a violation of 18 U.S.C. 2511 (1) (a). I m not an expert, but it looks like a potential minefield for Hillary. Think what Patrick Fitzgerald could have done with the provision criminalizing anyone who "intentionally uses, or endeavors to use, the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication" knowing it was obtained illegally. [E.A.] Maybe it all depends on what the uses of "uses" are! ... Did I bury the lede? ... Update: Actually, say the profs at the Volokh Conspiracy, it depends on whether they were cell calls or cordless calls! Gerth and Van Natta say "cell." I don t think Hillary can take much comfort in Volokh s analysis. ... 5:15 P.M. link June 1-6 During this period, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Fox News contributor and nationally syndicated columnist Dick Morris, and Politico reporter Ben Smith all seized on Kaus post. On the June 1 edition of Premiere Radio Networks The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh cited Kaus posting and claimed, "The Clintons have been engaged in illegal wiretapping. They re monitoring cell phone frequencies so they hear calls from enemies of the Clintons plotting their next attack and so forth." From the June 1 edition (subscription required) of The Rush Limbaugh Show : LIMBAUGH: Mickey Kaus. Where was this -- Slate.com. Headline: "Hillary, caught eavesdropping?" Page 93 from the yet-unreleased Gerth-Van Natta Hillary Clinton book has quite a bombshell, Kaus writes. Hillary Clinton "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with her husband Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions." So the Clintons were out there just like that couple, the grandparents driving on I-75 here in Florida heading up to Jacksonville to do some Christmas shopping, and like every one of us they had a cell phone monitor in their car, right there in the dashboard, and they decided to tune in, and all of a sudden, just quite by accident, they said they caught a moment of history. They listened to Newt Gingrich talking to John Boehner. By the way, who was it, Jim Moran got this? Was it Moran or McDermott? Yeah, it was McDermott, Baghdad Jim McDermott. Anyway, this couple, just the sweetest people you d ever want to run into, grandparents, accidentally tuning around their cell phone receiver in the car, like we all have in our cars and hear this conversation between Newt Gingrich and John Boehner, "Gee, this is history, what do we do with this?" And they decided to give it to Baghdad Jim McDermott, congressman from Washington, who then gave it to The New York Times, which then published the transcript of the conversation. So far McDermott has been in lawsuits, has lost up to 800-grand now in terms of reimbursing Boehner for all this. We find out now the Clintons have been doing the same thing. The Clintons have been engaged in illegal wiretapping. They re monitoring cell phone frequencies so they hear calls from enemies of the Clintons plotting their next attack and so forth. Now, don t get carried away here, my friends. This will not affect a single Hillary supporter or a single drive-by editor. It s like that picture that s out there. Hillary was making a speech yesterday and somebody on the graphic behind her misspelled the word "tomorrow," with two M s in it, and Hillary is up there making a speech. Now, she didn t misspell it, but she s standing in front of it. If this were a Republican this would be all over the news today as in Dan Quayle and potato. So the drive-bys are not going to care about Hillary and, you know, monitoring people s cell phone calls, but what this sort of shows us is this: The last three major wiretap stories on American citizens have been -- well, how many of you can name the three? What are the big three wiretap stories on American citizens? Going back a number of years. No, no, no, not the NSA, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Number one, Bobby Kennedy wiretapping Martin Luther King. Yes, he did. They wiretapped Martin Luther King and they were collecting a dossier on his infidelities. The Kennedy attorney general -- the Kennedy Justice Department was doing it. Bobby Kennedy wiretapped Martin Luther King. Then we had Baghdad Jim McDermott passing on wiretaps of Republicans, as we ve talked about. And now Hillary Clinton wiretapping anybody she says is an enemy, monitoring their cell phone calls with a cell phone receiver. Chairman Meow, we call her, Chairman Mao, Chairman Meow strikes again. And nobody s going to care. Well, it s going to be in the book. The book s not yet released, but Kaus has a copy of it and has put this on the website. We ll see what kind of traction it gets. In a June 1 blog post, Smith noted Kaus posting and the allegations of eavesdropping, but later added an "Update": "From a Clinton 92 source, no longer in Hillaryland: I never heard, saw or came across anything remotely like this.... Believe me, if a campaign or political operation had the capacity to monitor the cell phones of the opposition, people would be doing a lot more than listening to the supposed recordings. " Later, in a June 6 Politico article on Her Way and another recently released Clinton biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Knopf, June 2007), by Carl Bernstein, Smith wrote that the "[m]ost tantalizing charge" in either book was that " Her Way reports that during the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack." From Smith s June 1 post: Clinton eavesdropping? Mickey Kaus seizes on a passage from the Gerth/Van Natta book to speculate about private investigators and possible crimes, but I m more interested in getting a bit more detail: Hillary, in 1992, "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions." I have calls out to James Carville and a couple of others, and am of course waiting eagerly by the phone. UPDATE: From a Clinton 92 source, no longer in Hillaryland: "I never heard, saw or came across anything remotely like this.... Believe me, if a campaign or political operation had the capacity to monitor the cell phones of the opposition, people would be doing a lot more than listening to the supposed recordings." From Smith s June 6 article: Two new Hillary Rodham Clinton biographies contain a series of revelations. In "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. report on Hillary s shifting approach toward the Iraq war and lingering questions about her billing practices as an Arkansas lawyer. The book also demonstrates the then-first lady s deep involvement in working to beat back the myriad scandals that beset President Bill Clinton s administration through much of the 1990s. In "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," Watergate sleuth Carl Bernstein has more personal revelations, ranging from her father s exaggerations about his past to the fact that Bill considered leaving her for another woman in the late 1980s. [...] Here are some highlights. [...] Most tantalizing charge: "Her Way" reports that during the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions." (Former Clinton aides say the anecdote is unfamiliar.) On the June 4 edition of Fox News Hannity posting, claiming, "Slate reports that, on Page 93 of one of these new books coming out, the Gerth-Van Natta book, that they literally talk about Hillary and describe a scene where she would listen to recorded audiotape conversations taken by her operatives." Morris then claimed, "The whole secret police, yes. Hillary was in charge of the secret police. Hillary was in charge of the eavesdropping, the damage-control operation." From the June 4 edition of Fox News Hannity t think he d win. When I realized I should have had more faith in him and that he was, indeed, a serious candidate, it was too late. He had his consultants all set, and it made no sense to dislodge them. That was a fight I d never win. Besides, they had had the courage to bet on Clinton and I hadn t, so they deserved the right to win. June 8 On June 8, Her Way was officially released. June 12 In a June 12 review of Her Way and A Woman In Charge, National Review White House correspondent Byron York wrote that "Gerth and Van Natta report that on one occasion Mrs. Clinton listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of Clinton adversaries talking on the phone about the next possible bimbo eruption." York added, "Who knew that Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of warrantless wiretapping?" He did not address the sourcing of the allegation. From York s review: The Defense Team s job was to knock down any allegation, no matter how well founded, about Bill Clinton s girlfriends, his avoidance of the draft, Whitewater, Hillary Clinton s legal work -- anything that might hurt the campaign. And to do it by any means necessary, legal or not: Gerth and Van Natta report that on one occasion Mrs. Clinton listened to a "secretly recorded audiotape" of Clinton adversaries talking on the phone about the next possible bimbo eruption. "Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones," Gerth and Van Natta add, "and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions." Who knew that Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of warrantless wiretapping? [...] Underneath her appointment to the health-care initiative was the suspicion, held both inside and outside the White House, that Bill Clinton had to give his wife something pretty big because he owed her so much for the work she did knocking down those bimbo eruptions. She put her own credibility on the line, and under her supervision the Defense Team had procured false affidavits, kept up with that anonymous domestic spying, and crafted denial after denial. Also on June 12, Gerth and Van Natta appeared on CNN s Paula Zahn Now to discuss their book. Host Paul Zahn teased the segment by saying, "Wait until you hear what they [Gerth and Van Natta] have to say about her listening to secretly recorded phone conversations." Zahn later asked Gerth and Van Natta, "So, if she would do these kinds of sneaky things to protect this man that she wanted to see become president, what might she resort to as president?" Zahn did not discuss the sourcing of the claim. From the June 12 edition of Paula Zahn Now: ZAHN: The authors of the hottest and most controversial book yet out about Hillary Clinton. Wait until you hear what they have to say about her listening to secretly recorded phone conversations. [...] ZAHN: There is something you had in the book that I hadn t heard about before -- and this was the idea that -- how she was involved in President Clinton s run for the presidency, when he was governor, going back to 1992. And you wrote, "She listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics, plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill." And then you go on to say: "Bill Clinton s chances were being jeopardized by rumors of his womanizing and yet again, it was up to Hillary to minimize the threat. And if that meant listening to a tape that had to be obtained under questionable circumstances, then she would just deal with it." So, if she would do these kinds of sneaky things to protect this man that she wanted to see become president, what might she resort to as president? GERTH: Well, I think the 92 effort is interesting because she headed up a defense team that operated sort of secretly, dealing with her husband and her liabilities, whether it was the draft record, the womanizing, or her legal practice -- and the idea was to do whatever had to be done to get her husband elected president. ZAHN: So, it didn t matter that the conversations were secretly recorded and probably illegal? GERTH: Well, we don t know whether they were illegal and we don t say so in the book, but the more interesting thing is she had come a long way in the years in Arkansas. She started in 1974 as an idealist and working in Bill s first campaign and wasn t really getting mixed into the political fray and, by 1992, when he was running for president, she was prepared to do most anything to get him elected president. And we show in the book that, as a senator, she s not been terribly behold tonight rules sometimes and has an attitude as described us to by people in the Senate as cavalier about the rules and not necessarily following them all the time. June 13 On the June 13 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh again mentioned the eavesdropping allegations, saying that Clinton had an "elite group" in 1992 that engaged in "a warrantless wiretap program." He also cited York s review of Her Way. From the June 13 edition (subscription required) of The Rush Limbaugh Show: LIMBAUGH: I have shared with you constantly my question: What in the world is it that recommends this woman to be president of the United States other than her name? Other than her last name? And the fact that she s owed this because she s put up with so much -- I mean, there s so much mythology around this woman. That she could have had this great career on her own. She could have been elected president or senator as early as 1992. She came out of Wellesley. She came out of Yale. And she gave it all up for this hayseed hick in Arkansas, then she had to put up with his peccadilloes, and basically keep his [unintelligible]. These books talk about how she ran the bimbo eruptions operation. It wasn t Betsy Wright. Betsy Wright was the public face in it, but it was Hillary running the bimbo operations in 1992, trying to find all these women who d might pop up and accuse Clinton of having dalliances with them. And she was in charge of getting hold of them, getting signed affidavits saying it wasn t true and -- you know, who knows what kind of threats. And they were wiretapping cell phone calls, Hillary and this unit -- it was a group in addition to the war room. The war room was Clinton and [Paul] Begala and [George] Stephanopoulos -- or Carville and Stephanopoulos and Begala. And Hillary had a further elite group -- forget the name of it -- but they were intercepting, monitoring cell phone calls of Clinton opponents, trying to find out what their next plan was -- get a head start on it. And that s a warrantless wiretap program that they were engaged in. Well, that s domestic surveillance -- wireless domestic surveillance, wireless wiretapping. Whatever. I mean, Byron York s story, it s in National Review Online, NRO, it s just a devastating review of the information in these two books that the drive-bys haven t touched. June 19 On June 19, Gerth and Van Natta appeared on Hannity s so much that I want to get to -- including their 20-year plan or strategy, as you call it here -- but a lot of press has come up to Page 93 in this book, where there were these recorded phone conversations that she had listened to about the potential of another Clinton woman being exposed. More importantly, the fact that she may have been listening to conversations that were recorded illegally caught my attention. GERTH: Well, we don t say that they were illegal. HANNITY: You don t say that, but I m assuming they may have been. GERTH: This was part of an effort in 1992, where she headed up something called "the defense team," which was really designed to manage the liabilities of both her and her husband. He had his draft record issues, and we uncovered new documents that they withheld from the press. He, of course, had womanizing issues, and she had her own issues with her law practice and her finances. And the idea in 1992 was, "Do whatever it takes; cover it up; suppress it; keep it out of the press," and we, in fact, when you talked about retribution in 1992, Hillary told someone on the campaign, "If you let out these records" -- there were tax returns which they later made public -- HANNITY: Right. Right. GERTH: -- "you will never work in Democratic politics again." ALAN COLMES (co-host): By the way, a lot of this is unsourced. You don t mention names. You don t -- GERTH: That is not unsourced. That is on the record. October 16On October 16, the article in The Hill reported that "Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance." The article added: "Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents." The article also quoted an anonymous "GOP official" saying, "Hillary Clinton s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year." The Hill added, "Gerth told The Hill that he learned of the incident in 2006 when he interviewed a former campaign aide present at the tape playing. He has not revealed the aide s identity." The Republican National Committee (RNC) highlighted the story on its website. Internet gossip Matt Drudge linked to the Hill story by 7:04 a.m. ET, with the headline "Republicans targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping..." ABC News The Note also highlighted The Hill s article: "Here comes the next piece of the RNC assault on Clinton." The Note also added that a "Republican source tells The Note that the Arkansas Republican Party today will be asking the state attorney general to investigate that allegation." The Note made no mention of the sourcing of the allegation. By 8:29 a.m. ET, Drudge had linked to The Note with the headline "GOP Asks Arkansas AG to Investigate..." Following The Hill s report, the Arkansas Republican Party issued a press release that "called on State Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to investigate the fact that New York Senator Hillary Clinton may have eavesdropped and recorded political opponents telephone conversations while her husband was Governor of Arkansas." Dennis Milligan, chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas, asserted: "This is a very serious allegation, which is why Arkansas Attorney General McDaniel should investigate whether or not Hillary Clinton eavesdropped and recorded her and her husband s political opponents phone conversations without legal authority." The release also quoted Milligan stating: "If these allegations are true, Arkansans have a right to ask the Senator from New York: why were you willing to break the law and use wiretapping for personal political gain, but you re unwilling to vote for measures that would provide our nation s intelligence community with the tools they need to catch potential terrorists, as they plot and plan to kill Americans?" The chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, Saul Anuzis, also highlighted the Hill article in a post on the Michigan Republican Party blog. Anuzis wrote: "This is the highest form of hypocrisy and is a clear example of how the Clintons will stop at nothing to recapture the White House. For Senator Clinton to deprive federal agencies of tools that can be used against terrorists after she has used similar tactics herself -- illegally -- is an absolute outrage. Senator Clinton owes the American people an apology for this unacceptable behavior, and her supporters, including Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, a former attorney general, should not endorse someone who so cavalierly flaunts the law for political gain." Similarly, the Georgia Republican Party also issued a press release citing The Hill s article and claimed that Hillary was engaged in "hypocrisy." From the press release: " Hillary s hypocrisy knows no bounds, said Sue. P Everhart, Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. How she can think it is wrong to allow our intelligence professionals to prevent and disrupt terrorist attacks through intercepted conversations between plotters, but not think it is wrong to spy on her political opponents is beyond me. " Fox News Fox s a bit of hypocrisy going on any time Hillary comes up and criticizes the president or the administration about amending the FISA laws." Doocy replied -- repeating a falsehood commonly leveled against congressional Democrats, that they oppose any wiretapping -- "That s right, because she has refused to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in on conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot to blow us up." Neither Kilmeade nor Doocy, nor co-host Gretchen Carlson discussed the sourcing of the allegation. At 9:02 a.m. ET, blogger David Knowles discussed the Hill article in a blog post on AOL s Political Machine blog, writing, "the timing of the release of this fifteen year-old-scandal, as anonymously sourced in a widely panned book, couldn t be worse for Mrs. Clinton." He noted unanswered questions about the allegation, writing: "If the allegation of listening in on an enemy s phone conversation was true, this would, indeed, make her something of a hypocrite. In fact, it would make her a criminal, just as Verizon may yet be found to have broken the law. So, the obvious question is, why hasn t law enforcement looked into the matter? Another intriguing aspect of the story is, why didn t we hear about the other woman named in the purported phone call? If she indeed existed, why wouldn t the Clintons foes trot her out into the light of day as threatened?" The Atlantic s Marc Ambinder also noted the Hill article in a blog post at 10:30 a.m. ET. Ambinder described the article as "[a] story placed by the RNC in today s Hill." After quoting from the article, which opened by stating that "Republicans plan to seize on [the] allegation" from Her Way, Ambinder wrote: So -- what will the Republicans seize, who s doing the seizing, and why telegtraph [sic] your plans in a newspaper article? 1. This is a trial balloon floated by the RNC to see whether anyone bites. 2. The RNC is willing to associate itself with the Clinton sex stuff. Also: the Clinton s [sic] tenure in Arkansas is fair game. 3. The RNC wants state parties to start challenging Clinton. As if on cue, this news release came this morning from the Republican Party of Arkansas: "Today, Republican Party of Arkansas Chairman Dennis Milligan called on State Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to investigate the fact that New York Senator Hillary Clinton may have eavesdropped and recorded political opponents telephone conversations while her husband was Governor of Arkansas." 4. The RNC doesn t mind the world knowing that they re going to throw everything, including the kitchen plumbing, at Hillary Clinton. 5. From a reader: "My guess on that RNC thing was that they did it that way because they knew it would get them a story on Drudge -- classic ploy, "we plan to use this in an attack" sources say ... whereas if they d actually used it in an attack, it would have been widely ignored, because it s so thin." Discussing the Hill article during his radio show, Limbaugh asserted: "So, she s out there monitoring these phone calls about potential bimbo eruptions. So, the point of this story in The Hill is that the Republicans are gonna go after her on this. Van Natta and Gerth totally stand by this in their book." In addition, Limbaugh claimed that Clinton is "the most-cheated on woman in the history of the world, folks. And she knew it. And she let it happen right in front of her eyes -- right behind her back. She let it happen. She let it happen. She was -- she allowed herself to be humiliated and disgraced because that s what it required to get her to where she is now. She had to keep her husband in office wherever he was, if she was ever to have a chance to go anywhere." From the October 16 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show: LIMBAUGH: So, Hillary was doing this. She was in charge of the bimbo eruptions. Everybody thinks that it was Betsy Wright that was in charge of the bimbo eruptions. It was Hillary because she knew about them. She s the most-cheated on woman in the history of the world, folks. And she knew it. And she let it happen right in front of her eyes -- right behind her back. She let it happen. She let it happen. She was -- she allowed herself to be humiliated and disgraced because that s what it required to get her to where she is now. She had to keep her husband in office wherever he was, if she was ever to have a chance to go anywhere. So, she s out there monitoring these phone calls about potential bimbo eruptions. So, the point of this story in The Hill is that the Republicans are gonna go after her on this. Van Natta and Gerth totally stand by this in their book. "A Republican official said that Hillary Clinton s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that she would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents but refused to allow our own intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and planned to kill us. "Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year." She s made it very plain -- they ve made it -- Republicans have made it plain that they re not gonna forget about this. As Media Matters for America noted, on MSNBC s Tucker, host Tucker Carlson and guests A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and Politico staff writer Josephine Hearn discussed the allegation without noting it was anonymously sourced. The segment also featured a series of false and baseless claims, including Carlson s attribution of the controversy to a "new book" (in fact, the book is more than four months old) and Hearn s claim that the Clinton campaign "apparently ... never challenged anything in the book at all" (in fact, the campaign has challenged this claim and at least one other). As Media Matters also noted, minutes before the Tucker segment, on Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume, chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle noted that Clinton s presidential campaign "flatly denied" the allegation and quoted Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson saying, "This story is categorically untrue." Special Report aired an audio clip of Gerth saying, "The person who told us about this was present at the playing of the tape recording," but did not otherwise discuss the sourcing of the allegation. CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck led his Headline News program, Glenn Beck, by discussing the story. Beck compared Clinton to former President Richard Nixon and suggested that she had a "bag of campaign tricks," including "wiretapping equipment, stolen cell-phone calls, and a special set of rules that apparently only she gets to follow." Beck added that "Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite. And while her sex-scandled husband probably likes to watch, it seems that Senator Clinton prefers to listen." Later, Beck baselessly claimed that Clinton "seems to have purchased a high-tech digital scanner to monitor and record cell-phone calls." Beck also repeated the false assertion that "Hillary s campaign staff has not disputed one single thing in this book [Her Way]," when, in fact, as Media Matters has noted, the campaign has challenged this claim and at least one other. Beck then hosted Gerth to discuss the allegations made in his book. Beck asked Gerth why he "believe[d his] book, when it first came out, kind of just went away." Gerth replied that "the Clinton camp spent a lot of time trying to knock down and sort of either ignore or suppress the book, as the case may be." Gerth added: "But I ll leave it for others to decide why some books fail and others don t." During the interview, Gerth said that the allegation was "based on someone who was in the room," and Beck pursued no further discussion of its sourcing. Later, Beck interviewed National Public Radio commentator John Ridley about the allegations and asked, "Who do you think is behind the releasing of this report now? ... Is this the GOP waking up and saying, Uh-oh, there s really nobody on the other side maybe to take her down? Or is this possibly somebody like [Democratic presidential candidates Barack] Obama or [John] Edwards that is releasing this?" In fact, The Hill article cited an anonymous "GOP official" and otherwise strongly suggested that Republicans were responsible for pushing the story. From The Hill: Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance. [...] Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents. [...] A GOP official said, "Hillary Clinton s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year." The Hill article made no mention of Edwards, and mentioned Obama only while reporting that "Clinton voted against an emergency law that temporarily expanded the government s power to conduct surveillance on American soil without a warrant. ... The Senate s other Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.), Chris Dodd (Conn.), and Joseph Biden (Del.), also voted against the bill." Beck s program first airs at 7 p.m. ET. At 7:45 p.m. ET, in a post on CNN s Political Ticker blog, CNN Congressional correspondent Dana Bash wrote that "Republicans on Capitol Hill and around the country engaged Tuesday in a coordinated effort to paint Hillary Clinton as hypocritical on the issue of government surveillance, seizing on an allegation in a recent book that Clinton secretly listened to phone conversations of political opponents in 1992." Bash added: "The orchestrated attack is part of an evolving GOP strategy to attack Senator Clinton with dual goals: tarnishing her image and rallying the GOP base." Bash also reported that "Clinton Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson told CNN, As Hillary Clinton continues to beat all Republicans in poll after poll this is just politics as usual from Republicans who can t defend this president s failed policies. The story is categorically untrue. " Regarding the sourcing of the claim, Bash wrote: "Gerth told The Hill newspaper that he learned of the incident in 2006 form a former Clinton campaign aide who claimed to be present at the taping. Gerth has not revealed his source s identity." October 17 An October 17 Washington Times article also reported on the allegation. The article stated: "State Republican Party officials across the country yesterday assailed Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for possibly eavesdropping on political opponents cell-phone calls during her husband s tenure as Arkansas governor." The Times also reported that "Clinton campaign spokesman Howard L. Wolfson said the campaign had not responded to the accusation sooner because there were too many accusations in books to answer them all. The story is categorically untrue, said Mr. Wolfson. This is partisan politics as usual from the Republicans who can t defend the failures of this administration. " The Times did not note the allegation is based on an account by a single anonymous source. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported (subscription required) several impediments to the Arkansas Republican Party s effort to have state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel investigate Clinton s purported eavesdropping. According to the Democrat-Gazette, "There were at least two problems with the complaint, however. The law that [Arkansas] GOP Chairman Dennis Milligan said that now-U.S. Sen. Clinton of New York may have violated [during her husband s 1992 presidential campaign] wasn t on the books until 1993. And the complaint was filed 14 years too late." From the October 17 report: The leader of the Arkansas Republican Party asked Attorney General Dustin McDaniel on Tuesday to investigate whether then-first lady Hillary Clinton violated state law during her husband s 1992 presidential campaign by listening to a recording of a phone conversation. There were at least two problems with the complaint, however. The law that GOP Chairman Dennis Milligan said that now-U.S. Sen. Clinton of New York may have violated wasn t on the books until 1993. And the complaint was filed 14 years too late. In a press release Tuesday, Milligan cited one paragraph in the book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, by TheNew York Times reporters Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Gerth. "Hillary s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack," the book stated. The complaint offered no further details about the purported conversation or the circumstances of the purported taping or the purported listening. A call to Clinton s presidential campaign press office was not returned Tuesday afternoon. Gabe Holmstrom, a spokesman for McDaniel, said the Republican Party also complained to the wrong office. The attorney general s office lacks the authority to investigate or bring legal proceedings based on allegations of this nature "even if they were true," Holmstrom said. He said any further inquiries on such matters should be directed to the Pulaski County prosecuting attorney. Larry Jegley, the Pulaski County prosecutor, said his office hasn t received any complaint. "If somebody brings us a complaint, we ll handle it in due course just like everything else," Jegley said. "If it s worthy of us spending precious tax dollars, we ll do it." The Republican press release referred to Arkansas Code Annotated 5-60-120, which states, in part: "It is unlawful for a person to intercept a wire, landline, oral, telephonic communication, or wireless communication, and to record or possess a recording of the communication unless the person is a party to the communication or one (1) of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the interception and recording." The statute was enacted in 1993. John DiPippa, dean of the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said he could find no reference to a prior law replaced by the one cited in the Republican Party press release. "Every statute has a history section that tells where it originates, and this one starts in 1993," DiPippa said. The law is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail or a fine of up to $1,000. Jegley, a Democrat, said the statute of limitations on a Class A misdemeanor is one year. "We re talking about something 15 years ago," he said. "I m not saying that I won t give it a fair look. I am saying that having been around as long as I ve been around - and whether it s a Democrat or Republican doesn t matter to me - this kind of smells." October 18 In an October 18 column for The American Spectator, Spectator founder and editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. referred to the eavesdropping allegation, writing: "This week it was reported in the authoritative Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill, that Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Gerth included some unsavory news about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Her Way, their recent book on her. Hillary, during the 1992 presidential campaign, listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics .... Washington observers appeared shocked. Mein Gott, where have they been all these years? The Clintons have engaged in brute behavior for decades, much of it a matter of record." Tyrrell did not address the sourcing of the allegation or note the Clinton campaign s response that "[t]he story is categorically untrue."

On the October 16 edition of MSNBC s Tucker, host Tucker Carlson and guests A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and Politico staff writer Josephine Hearn repeated an anonymously sourced allegation that during Bill Clinton s 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics." During the segment, Carlson and his guests did not note that the sole basis for the claim is a single unnamed source describing events that allegedly had occurred 14 years earlier. The segment also featured a series of false and baseless claims, including Carlson s attribution of the controversy to a "new book" (in fact, the book is months old) and Hearn s claim that the Clinton campaign "apparently ... never challenged anything in the book at all" (in fact, the campaign has challenged this claim and at least one other). Minutes earlier, on the October 16 edition of Fox News Special Report, chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle reported that Sen. Clinton s presidential campaign "flatly denied" the allegation and quoted Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson saying, "This story is categorically untrue." The claim about Hillary Clinton s purported eavesdropping is drawn from Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions" and further describe the tape as having been "obtained under questionable circumstances." According to the endnotes of Her Way, Gerth and Van Natta s only source for this claim is a 2006 "[a]uthor interview with former campaign aide present at the tape playing." From Her Way, Pages 93-94: Hillary s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries;10 she vetted senior campaign aides;11 and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.12 A lot had changed since the moment eighteen years earlier when Hillary had been aghast at the suggestion that the Clinton campaign use underhanded means to garner votes in rural Arkansas. Yet again, Bill Clinton s chances were being jeopardized by rumors of his womanizing. And yet again, it was up to Hillary to minimize the threat -- and if that meant listening to a tape that had been obtained under questionable circumstances, then she would just deal with it. Associated Endnotes: 10. Numerous 1992 campaign memoranda addressed to Hillary Rodham Clinton. 11. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Scribner, 2001), 20. 12. Author interview with former campaign aide present at the tape playing in 2006. From the October 16 edition of MSNBC s Tucker: CARLSON: Hillary Clinton says she s against warrantless wiretapping, so why did she do it herself, reportedly listening in on private conversations between her political opponents? Details in a minute. [...] CARLSON: The conventional wisdom right now says Hillary Clinton is solidifying her front-runner status on the Democratic side, but her smooth ride to the nomination could get bumpy if rumors of scandal resurface -- and what do you know? They have. A new book out by a pair of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporters makes a startling claim. Back in 1992, it says, Hillary Clinton allegedly eavesdropped on the phone calls of her husband s political opponents. Some Republicans say that smacks of hypocrisy especially since Senator Clinton criticizes the warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists -- trouble for Hillary Clinton? Well, now, we welcome associate editor of The Hill, A.B. Stoddard, and the Politico s Josephine Hearn. This is an amazing story. At first, I kind of wrote this off -- it s 1992, who cares? Take look at this. This is from the book -- I m ashamed to say I ve not read, I m gonna read -- by Don Van Natta and Jeff Gerth, both formerly of The New York Times. And it says this -- let s just put a graphic up on the screen. This is an excerpt from the book: "[Hillary] listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions." That s pretty -- I mean, if that s true, that s not like tape-recording a phone call, which I think you can explain away if you re on the phone call, you know. Even if it s illegal, I think it s not an evil thing to do. But tape-recording people s cell phone calls with a police scanner? HEARN: Right. And it looks like it is illegal and was illegal then, in 92. But on the other hand, she was just listening to a recording, right? CARLSON: Right. HEARN: She wasn t actually -- it was not like she was there with the equipment, you know, as the phone call was happening. CARLSON: Right. No, that s fair. HEARN: She just listened to a recording. So, you know, maybe -- we don t know the circumstances of it. Maybe there was -- you know, everybody was listening to it, and then, you know, would you incriminate the intern who was also sitting there listening to it at the same time. CARLSON: Oh, I m not suggesting that charges ought to be brought against her. I think you ought to pull -- no, I m not. And I m not saying "Oh, it s" -- huffing about its illegality. I m just saying, having covered a lot of campaigns, some of them sort of intimately, I ve never heard of anything like that. And I m not just being mean to Hillary Clinton. HEARN: Never heard of illegal activity? CARLSON: Oh, I ve heard of a lot of illegal activity. STODDARD: Of monitoring the frequencies of cell phones? CARLSON: I ve heard of buying votes, I ve heard -- and I ve seen a lot of things that are sketchy, if not outright wrong. I ve never heard of anybody taping phone calls on a scanner, ever, have you? HEARN: I haven t, no. CARLSON: Have you? STODDARD: No. I think that it s very tech savvy, and it definitely was illegal. But I think that again, Jose is right. Are you going to blame Hillary Clinton for listening or are you going to get the guy who did the recording for the Clinton camp? I think anyone, any one of her rivals, given the opportunity in this very same situation, would listen if offered a recording like this -- CARLSON: Oh, I would listen. STODDARD: -- to know what was coming. And any wife who has -- whose husband -- CARLSON: Yes, I think that s fair. STODDARD: -- runs around is probably going to do the same. CARLSON: I would listen, too. Absolutely. And I m not faulting her for listening. I m faulting the campaign and the Clinton operation and the culture around the Clintons for being so hardball. So -- it s the same impulse that led them to tell me personally when the Monica thing broke that Monica was like a whore and a stalker, which is what they told me. You know what I mean? It s the -- there s a meanness and a toughness that s -- it s too much. HEARN: Why would you run a campaign -- STODDARD: You re leaving nothing to chance. HEARN: -- where somebody would feel it was OK to do this? CARLSON: Right. HEARN: You know, why would there -- yeah, I think it s a big deal if somebody decides to investigate it. I mean, it s 15 years old. CARLSON: Yeah. HEARN: I think, lacking an investigation, I don t know, it seems pretty tenuous right now. CARLSON: Well, the Clinton people seem to think that. They don t appear worried about it, because here s what Clinton s press secretary said. Asked for comment, he said -- I m quoting now -- "We don t comment on books that are utter and complete failures." In other words, we only comment on John Grisham novels. That s the only thing we re going to talk about. What does its sales numbers have to do with the truth or falseness of the allegations? HEARN: Nothing at all, but, I mean, if you re him, you don t want to admit anything on this. They never -- apparently they never challenged anything in the book at all. CARLSON: Right. That s what the author says. STODDARD: And they ve known about it, obviously, since before -- probably before the book was published. CARLSON: Well, just to be clear, these are not two guys from The American Spectator. These are two -- in at least one case, I think, a pretty well-established, at least, former liberal. I mean, they re not screaming right-wingers, they re just -- they re reporters. STODDARD: And we re all guilty of not reading the book right when it came out and discovering this for ourselves. CARLSON: I m embarrassed, I -- STODDARD: Look at Alex [ph]. CARLSON: You know what? I didn t read it for the same reasons a lot of people didn t. I just feel like, what could you tell me new about Hillary Clinton? I spent the entire 90s, you know, writing about this stuff, but I guess there is a lot new. But I -- people -- my strong sense about Hillary Clinton is, people don t want to know. They don t want to know. They don t care. STODDARD: Well, the people who support her and have decided to overcome their discomfort and support her -- and there are a lot of them, and that number s growing -- probably don t want to hear about it. It ll be interesting to see what she says about it if she s pressed. But for Republicans, they have to work with what they have, and they are interested in hearing about this. CARLSON: And they don t have squat. They don t have squat. I mean, if this were about -- STODDARD: But they ll take what they can get. CARLSON: If this were a story about Rudy Giuliani from 1992, it would lead every show on MSNBC today. There s just no question it would. Is that -- I mean, you know it would. Rudy Giuliani using a police scanner to listen to people s cell phone calls? Holy smokes, man. STODDARD: But, no, no. But it s not clear that she -- it was her husband s campaign. CARLSON: Her campaign. If it was Bernie Kerik working on behalf of Rudy Giuliani -- I m not just claiming media bias, it s more complicated than that, but do you -- would that not be a story? STODDARD: It might be true. It might be true. CARLSON: Could he get away with saying -- STODDARD: Well, anything about Bernie Kerik is a story these days. I mean, to be fair. CARLSON: All right, we re going to be back. You thought that was bad news for Republicans, wait till you hear this. Wall Street has always backed them, you knew that, forever. Well, not anymore. We ll tell you what happened in a minute. From the October 16 edition of Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume: ANGLE: There is no allegation Senator Clinton ordered the wiretapping, only that she knowingly listened to it. GERTH [audio clip]: The person who told us about this was present at the playing of the tape recording. ANGLE: A Clinton spokesman had earlier dismissed the account of the eavesdropping, saying they wouldn t comment on a failed book, but stopped short of denying it. Today, however, the Clinton campaign decided to go further and flatly denied the account. Communications director Howard Wolfson said, "This story is categorically untrue."

On the October 15 edition of MSNBC s Tucker, discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) presidential campaign with Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, host Tucker Carlson said: "Gene, this is an amazing statistic: 94 percent of women say they d be more likely to vote if a woman were on the ballot. I think of all the times I voted for people just because they re male. You know? The ballot comes up, and I m like, Wow. He s a dude. I think I ll vote for him. We ve got similar genitalia. I m -- he s getting my vote. " After asserting that "the Clinton campaign says: Hillary isn t running as a woman, " Carlson stated: "Well, that s actually completely false, considering the Hillary campaign -- and I get their emails -- relentlessly pushes the glass ceiling argument. You should vote for her because she s a woman. They say that all the time." May responded: "At least call her a Vaginal-American." Carlson replied: "Is that the new phrase? Boy, that s nasty. I don t think I can say that." Robinson interjected, "No, you don t say that," to which Carlson responded: "I shouldn t say that? I m not going attempt it. No, no." Carlson also asked: "Do you think that people who are voting on the basis of gender solidarity ought to be allowed to vote in a perfect world? Of course they shouldn t be allowed to vote on those grounds. That s like -- that s moronic. I m sorry. I know I m going to get bounced off the air for saying it, but that s true." From the October 15 edition of MSNBC s Tucker: CLINTON [video clip]: All these women in their 90s come to my events. And they come and they wait. Sometimes they re in walkers. Sometimes they re in wheelchairs, like a daughter or granddaughter bring them. And then when I m going around shaking hands, they ll say something like, "I m 95 years old and I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House." CARLSON: That was Hillary Clinton talking to women, the women who host ABC s The View and the millions of American women, presumably, who watch that show. According to polls, Mrs. Clinton has widespread appeal to female voters, and if you talk to her campaign, it s women who are going to carry her to the nomination and eventually the White House. A memo from chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn says that 94 percent of women under the age of 35 said they are more likely to vote next November if a woman, Hillary, is on the ballot. Can that be? And how much would it matter were it true? Here to tell us, The Washington Post s Eugene Robinson and the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Cliff May. Gene, this is an amazing statistic: 94 percent of women say they d be more likely to vote if a woman were on the ballot. I think of all the times I voted for people just because they re male. You know? The ballot comes up, and I m like, "Wow. He s a dude. I think I ll vote for him. We ve got similar genitalia. I m -- he s getting my vote." ROBINSON: Look, you didn t have a choice all those times you were voting, right? You didn t have a choice of genitalia to vote for. CARLSON: No, but when I do, I just -- I always vote the man. Because, I don t know -- come on. ROBINSON: It s a -- when firsts happen, they are significant. They say something about the society and how far it s come and where it is. And, you know, not just that figure in that poll, but if you look at all the polls, really, that show her amazing strength among women. And you look at a state like South Carolina, my home state, where both in my paper, the Post, and in The New York Times, over the weekend there were stories about black women and how, in a sense, conflicted -- CARLSON: That s an interesting [unintelligible]. ROBINSON: -- they feel about Obama versus Hillary Clinton. Part of that -- not all of that, certainly, but part of it is -- you know, he s African-American. She s a woman. CARLSON: Well, part of it is loyalty to the Clintons as -- specifically the Clintons, don t you think? It s not just the female. ROBINSON: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think -- [crosstalk] MAY: Because if gender solidarity trumps all other interests, I think that s kind of sad. I don t think racial or religious solidarity should trump all interests, either. CARLSON: Do you think that people who are voting on the basis of gender solidarity ought to be allowed to vote in a perfect world? Of course they shouldn t be allowed to vote on those grounds. That s like -- that s moronic. I m sorry. I know I m going to get bounced off the air for saying it, but that s true. ROBINSON: That doesn t trump all other characteristics. There are a lot of women who are going to vote for Republicans in November because they re conservative. CARLSON: I m not saying women shouldn t vote for Hillary at all. I m merely saying the obvious: that you shouldn t vote for her because she s a woman. Here s what the Clinton campaign says: "Hillary isn t running as a woman. As Hillary says, she s not running as a woman candidate. The only reason to vote for her is that you believe she s the most qualified to be president." Well, that s actually completely false, considering the Hillary campaign -- and I get their emails -- relentlessly pushes the glass ceiling argument. "You should vote for her because she s a woman." They say that all the time. She just said that on The View. I mean, that s like their rationale. MAY: At least call her a Vaginal-American, as opposed to -- CARLSON: Is that the new phrase? MAY: I think that is, yeah. CARLSON: Boy, that s nasty. I don t think I can say that. ROBINSON: No, you don t say that. CARLSON: I shouldn t say that? I m not going attempt it. No, no. [crosstalk] ROBINSON: Look, it s kind of working, number one. CARLSON: It s definitely working. It s definitely working. ROBINSON: So this is effective. And number two -- CARLSON: So you don t think it s a little embarrassing, though? ROBINSON: No, it s not embarrassing. There are a lot of -- CARLSON: I talked to two women today who I love and admire, who -- I work in their proximity, and they both said, "I m embarrassed that women would vote just on the basis of her gender or that that would influence their vote." ROBINSON: It wouldn t vote -- you know, we re talking about Democrats -- CARLSON: But how will she be a different president because she s a woman? ROBINSON: -- first of all, who basically agree with her. Hmm? CARLSON: I mean, here s what I don t understand. We need a woman. How is she going to be a different president because she s a woman? I just don t get that. ROBINSON: I don t think she will be. But I think it will be significant if a woman is elected president of the United States, as it would be significant if an African-American were elected president of the United States. It s -- you know, for some people, it was significant, you know, when a Southerner is elected as opposed to a Northerner, when the first Catholic was elected president of the United States. It says something about the country and inclusiveness. MAY: Did Maggie Thatcher have more women voting for her than men? I wonder. ROBINSON: You know, I don t know the figure. CARLSON: I suspect she had more men voting for her than women. MAY: I suspect that s true. CARLSON: She ran and governed as a man, I think, was the idea. ROBINSON: Most of her elections, she probably -- she won pretty big, most of her elections. She probably did have [unintelligible]. MAY: She ran and governed based on her views and her determination and her mettle, and I think that s the way it s supposed to be. ROBINSON: I once talked to Margaret Thatcher about John Major, and she thought he was kind of a wuss. She leaned close and said, "If only he were a man." [laughter] CARLSON: She was a tougher dude than he ever was, no doubt about it. Here s an interesting poll -- this is from your paper, Mr. Robinson, Washington Post/ABC News poll. Republicans are asked who best reflects the core values of their party. Guess who wins, Cliff.

While discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) presidential campaign during the October 15 edition of Fox News Hannity re not going to find out what Hillary Clinton believes. She s not doing any kind of interviews." In fact, in the past month, Clinton has given interviews to newspapers, television shows, and radio programs. For instance, on October 15 -- the same day as Santorum s appearance on Hannity Face the Nation, NBC s Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday, ABC s This Week, and CNN s Late Edition) all aired separate interviews with Clinton. Neither co-host Sean Hannity nor co-host Alan Colmes challenged Santorum s false assertion. From the October 15 edition of Fox News Hannity s changing here on very specific issues that she s making, you know, a month ago, two weeks ago, not on a significant, heart-wrenching, soul-searching issue like abortion, right? SANTORUM: No, this is what you re going to expect to see from Hillary from here on out. She s playing to try to do two things. She s sort of moving from running a primary campaign to running a general election campaign, and she s finding herself now where she thinks she s won the nomination, and so she s trying to play both sides. You re not going to find out what Hillary Clinton believes. She s not doing any kind of interviews. She has no access to the press when they travel with her. She s going to be very, very scripted. She s going to try to keep everybody happy, both in the primary and for the general. This is all about politics. She does not want you to know what she really thinks. She s not going to give you access to dig to what she really thinks -- COLMES: Hey -- SANTORUM: She s trying to just keep everybody happy until she gets to the last few months of the campaign. COLMES: Hey, Rick, this is going to surprise you. I don t always agree with Hillary Clinton. In fact, I m very upset that she voted to declare the Iran Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. I think that moves us a step closer to war, so I object to her position on that. However, in this case, I do not see it as an exact flip-flop. She was -- in the first instance, the question was, would you engage directly with leaders of other countries? She said no. Here she says, there would be negotiations with Iran. It wouldn t necessarily be between her and [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, but that there would communication between the countries. They re not exactly the same thing. SANTORUM: Well, what she did was criticize Barack Obama for saying that he would negotiate without conditions with Iran - COLMES: Directly, himself. SANTORUM: -- directly. Well, and saying that she would negotiate without conditions with Iran generally, that is a very nuanced -- if that s not a flip-flop, that s about as nuanced as it gets off the cuff in New Hampshire. I just don t buy it. I think what it is, is she s trying to appeal to both audiences. She s trying to play it down the middle. And, you know, when you re in a campaign where everybody s watching every word you re saying, you can t do that and get away with it. COLMES: Well, I do see a difference between her directly engaging with the leader of other countries and having negotiations between countries. But, [Democratic strategist] Rich Masters, you know, Sean is correct. You cannot, they cannot paint her as a flip- flopper if Rudy Giuliani -- because he knew I was going to say this -- or Mitt Romney will be the nominee when they have flip-flopped on every key -- in fact, I m going to let him do my stuff from now on -- on every single key issue, which are serious, important, mainstream issues. They flip-flopped on everything.

An October 10 Washington Post article by staff writers Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz about the October 9 Republican presidential debate reported that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani "accused" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) of "being weak because she did not answer a question at a Democratic debate about the use of military action to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability." The article then quoted Giuliani saying, "Well, you ve got to answer the question. The answer is: Yes, we would. Iran is a greater danger than Iraq." In fact, when asked by moderator Tim Russert during the September 26 Democratic presidential debate whether she would "make a promise as a potential commander in chief that you will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and will use any means to stop it," Clinton said: "Well, what I have said is that I will do everything I can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power." During the October 9 Republican debate, Giuliani said: "At the last Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked by Tim Russert whether she agreed with my position on Iran." He continued: "But on Iran -- on Iran, what she said was, she was asked would you take a strong position that Iran will not be allowed to become nuclear and that we would use a military option, if we had to. And she didn t answer the question." But during the September 26 Democratic debate, Russert quoted Giuliani discussing Iran and then asked Clinton if she would "use any means to stop" Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Clinton answered that she would "do everything I can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power." From the October 9 debate: GIULIANI: Now, you asked me about Hillary Clinton. At the last Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked by Tim Russert whether she agreed with my position on Iran. I like that form of debate, by the way. Any time you want to do it that way, ask her if she agrees with my other positions as well. But on Iran -- on Iran, what she said was, she was asked would you take a strong position that Iran will not be allowed to become nuclear and that we would use a military option, if we had to. And she didn t answer the question. Well, you ve got to answer the question. The answer is: Yes, we would. Iran is a greater danger than Iraq. Iraq cannot be seen in a vacuum. And we have to be willing to use a military option to stop Iran from becoming nuclear. If we re willing to do it, we have a much better chance of having sanctions for it. CHRIS MATTHEWS (moderator): Thank you, Mayor. From the September 26 debate: RUSSERT: You will all be running against a Republican opponent, perhaps Rudy Giuliani. This is what he said. "Iran is not going to be allowed to build a nuclear power. If they get to a point where they re going to become a nuclear power, we will prevent them, we will set them back eight to 10 years. That is not said as a threat. That should be said as a promise." Would you make a promise as a potential commander in chief that you will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and will use any means to stop it? CLINTON: Well, what I have said is that I will do everything I can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, including the use of diplomacy, the use of economic sanctions, opening up direct talks. We haven t even tried. That s what is so discouraging about this. So then you have the Republican candidates on the other side jumping to the kind of statements that you just read to us. We need a concerted, comprehensive strategy to deal with Iran. We haven t had it; we need it, and I will provide it. From the October 10 Washington Post article: Clinton (N.Y.), the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, became a frequent target throughout the debate, as the leading Republicans competed to demonstrate their readiness to challenge her in a general-election contest. Giuliani accused Clinton of being weak because she did not answer a question at a Democratic debate about the use of military action to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability. "Well, you ve got to answer the question. The answer is yes, we would. Iran is a greater danger than Iraq."

During the Republican presidential candidates debate on October 9, the debate moderators -- MSNBC host Chris Matthews and CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo -- did not challenge former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani after he repeated his claim that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) "once said that the unfettered free market is the most destructive force in modern America." In fact, in a 1996 C-SPAN interview, Clinton agreed with author Aren Ehrenhalt s characterization of the "unfettered free market" as "the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation" -- not the "most destructive." Clinton went on to say that the "market is the driving force behind our prosperity" but that it "cannot be permitted just to run roughshod over people s lives." As Media Matters for America previously noted, Giuliani made a similar claim during the May 15 Republican presidential debate -- that Clinton said she "agreed" that "the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America" -- and several media outlets uncritically reported his misquotation. Additionally, in an August 13 CNBC interview, Kudlow s assertion that Clinton "agreed with the statement, The unfettered free market is the most destructive force in modern America. ... That s got to tell you her ideology, right? She agreed with that statement a few years ago." From Clinton s March 3, 1996, interview on C-SPAN s Booknotes: BRIAN LAMB (host): There s a quote here. I want to ask you if you agree with this. This is from Alan Ehrenhalt, author of "The Lost City" -- you put it in your book. "The unfettered free market has been the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation." CLINTON: I believe that. That s why I put it in the book. I think if you look at the argument we ve had in our political life in the last several years, it s been a false debate. We ve pitted the government against everything else. Well, I don t believe the government has had as big an impact as commercial television, as a lot of the decisions made in the marketplace about how we re going to pay and compensate people, about downsizing corporations and making workers more insecure. And I just believe that there s got to be a healthy tension among all of our institutions in society, and that the market is the driving force behind our prosperity, our freedom in so many respects to make our lives our own but that it cannot be permitted just to run roughshod over people s lives as well. From CNBC s coverage of the October 9 Republican presidential debate: MATTHEWS: Mayor Giuliani, the private equity firms are making billions of dollars. I guess it s a mystery to me, and you could explain this to a New Yorker -- where do these billions of dollars come from? Where were they before? And is there any downside to this amazing bonanza in the hedge fund and the private equity firms? GIULIANI: Well, I mean, the market is a wonderful thing. I mean, the free market is our -- one of our greatest assets. The leading Democratic candidate once said that the unfettered free market is the most destructive force in modern America. I mean, just get an idea of where that philosophy comes from. The free market is the asset that has allowed us to -- the sky s the limit. The reality is that what we have to do is look at the fundamentals. A president can t be a economic forecaster. The president s not going to be any better an economic forecaster than you are a baseball forecaster. And I m not a particularly good baseball forecaster this afternoon. So, the reality is, the president has to work on the fundamentals. What are the fundamentals? Keep taxes low, keep regulations moderate, keep spending under control. That s an area where we need a lot of help. And, make sure you do something about legal reform so that our legal system doesn t -- it s 2.2 percent of our GDP [gross domestic product] now is spent on all these frivolous lawsuits. It s double any other industrialized nation. If we don t get control of that, that s another way in which we re going to eat up our future. So, we ve got a prospect on the Democratic side of overspending, overtaxing, over-regulating, and over-suing. And I think you need a Republican alternative to that, which is an emphasis on the pillars of growth that I mentioned. MATTHEWS: Just to test your forecasting ability, Mr. Mayor, will [New York Yankees manager Joe] Torre keep his job? GIULIANI: God willing. Joe Torre is the best manager in the history of the Yankees, at least in the modern era, so -- and he s my friend.

During the October 9 edition of Fox Hey, don t be so fast to pick [Sen.] Hillary [Rodham Clinton (D-NY)]. Remember [former Vermont Gov.] Howard Dean [D]. " As Luntz responded, "[Y]es, remember how Howard Dean went up, and remember how Howard Dean came down," Fox News aired an audio clip of Dean s exclamation during his 2004 concession speech after the Iowa Democratic presidential primary. After Doocy replied, "That s like a cackle," Fox News aired part of an audio clip of Clinton laughing during a September 23 interview on Fox Broadcasting Co. s Fox News Sunday. As Media Matters for America documented, following Clinton s appearance on all five Sunday political talk shows on September 23, the Republican National Committee highlighted audio and video clips of Clinton s laughter. Since then, there has been intense media coverage of Clinton s laugh, with some media figures characterizing it as a "cackle." From the October 9 edition of Fox News Fox t vote on, for, him, her, based on that exchange. How does she look? Look who is here, national pollster and author of Words That Work, Frank Luntz. Good morning to you, Frank. LUNTZ: Good morning. How are you? BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Is that a big deal? LUNTZ: No. DOOCY: Why not? LUNTZ: It really isn t, because any other person who had that kind of exchange, it wouldn t even have made it on air. With her, every potential misstep gets brought into the discussion. It s far more dangerous for her -- this so-called cackle is a much greater threat for her, because it shows that someone is rehearsed, that she is fake. DOOCY: You re talking about that laugh she used with Chris Wallace. I don t know if we have it, but this would be a good place to play it. [audio clip of Clinton laughing] DOOCY: That one? That cackle? LUNTZ: Yeah. I can t do it. I mean, I can t laugh like that. KILMEADE: [CBS Face the Nation host] Bob Schieffer, she did it with everyone. LUNTZ: Everyone. KILMEADE: It seemed. LUNTZ: Yes. KILMEADE: You know what is so strange about it? It just didn t seem to fit, Frank. It just didn t seem -- not that it seemed as fake, for me anyway. It didn t seem like it was a fake laugh, it just seemed inappropriate. And what s funny about those situations which she was laughing at? LUNTZ: Someone taught her, or told her, that you laugh that way and that diffuses the question and also gives her a moment to respond. It makes her look human. Here is the problem, when you do it every single time at every tough question. DOOCY: Sure. LUNTZ: She has Dan Quayled herself. She is now in danger of being the focus of ridicule by late-night comedians and every time she laughs, people will remember -- DOOCY: Right. LUNTZ: -- when she did it last time. It s too rehearsed. It s not fake. This kind of exchange she had with that voter, candidates have that all the time. It s no big deal. DOOCY: OK, well, speaking of fodder for the late-night comics, look at Sandy Berger. Apparently he s one of her unofficial advisers. We were talking about this yesterday when the news broke. It seems extraordinary that she would have an unofficial adviser on the team, a guy who admits, "Yeah I took all that secret stuff, and I threw it away." LUNTZ: But how great is that? She now has an official shredder. Anything that she doesn t want, "Sandy. Psst. Come on over here." KILMEADE: It does show bad judgment. And if you are Edwards and [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL], you welcome this? What do you do with this? LUNTZ: Actually, if I m one of them, I wouldn t say anything because Berger is a very smart man. He does know his stuff. He knows history. He knows geopolitics. He knows global affairs. He behaved in a bad way, but in terms of intellect, I don t think she made the wrong decision by going to him. I think that she made the wrong decision by allowing it to get out. DOOCY: What do you think of John Edwards -- the guy with the $400 haircut -- yesterday, saying, "Hey don t be so fast to pick Hillary. Remember Howard Dean." LUNTZ: Well, Howard Dean -- yes, remember how Howard Dean went up, and remember how Howard Dean came down. DEAN [audio clip]: Yeaaaahh! LUNTZ: The issue for Edwards -- DOOCY: That s like a cackle. CLINTON [audio clip]: (laughing) LUNTZ: Wow, you have a very -- you know, you re supposed to stop drinking by the time you get on the show in the morning. KILMEADE: Frank is actually -- you re a little thrown by this. LUNTZ: Yeah, I m surprised.

Discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) new television advertisement "Stand by Us ," Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz began an October 5 article : "In a stark, black-and-white ad that pictures her in a mask at Ground Zero, Hillary Rodham Clinton is treading on [Republican presidential candidate] Rudy Giuliani s turf." Similarly, on the October 5 edition of CNN s American Morning, host John Roberts said that Clinton s ad "really is a shot across Rudy Giuliani s bow to say, You re not the only one who has a claim to 9-11 here. But is she going too far? Is she politicizing 9-11?" Roberts did not ask whether Giuliani, who has repeatedly discussed 9-11 in campaign settings, is "going too far" or "politicizing 9-11." Giuliani has repeatedly brought up 9-11, even when it did not seem related to the topic under discussion. For example, in a September 29 New York Daily News article , senior correspondent David Saltonstall wrote, "For Rudy Giuliani, it s always about 9/11 -- even when it comes to his wife s ill-timed phone calls." He continued: "Elaborating for the first time on why he interrupted a speech to the National Rifle Association this month to take a cell-phone call from his wife, Judith, Giuliani explained that, since 9/11, he and the missus always chat before flying." Similarly, CBS News reporter Ryan Corsaro wrote on September 11, "[Giuliani] is certainly talking about it [9-11] -- the subject even came up while he was discussing the weather with a family in Houston over coffee. I ll always remember that Sept. 11, it was one of the most beautiful days of the year, Giuliani said, talking about the hours before the city skyline was filled with thick smoke and ash." Giuliani has also boasted about his connection to Ground Zero. As Media Matters noted, on August 9, Giuliani told reporters that he "was at Ground Zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers" participating in the hazardous clean-up there. Giuliani later attempted to clarify his remarks, saying, "I think I could have said it better. ... You know, what I was saying was, I m there with you. " From the October 5 Washington Post article "Clinton on Giuliani s Turf": In a stark, black-and-white ad that pictures her in a mask at Ground Zero, Hillary Rodham Clinton is treading on Rudy Giuliani s turf. The new commercial, launched yesterday in Iowa and New Hampshire, marks the New York senator s attempt to position herself as a champion of those whose health was endangered by the environmental effects of the attack on the World Trade Center. The aftermath of 9/11 has long been considered Giuliani s greatest strength, but the former New York mayor has also drawn criticism for failing to adequately safeguard the health of rescue workers. "She stood by Ground Zero workers who sacrificed their health after so many sacrificed their lives, and kept standing until this administration took action," the ad says. The reference is to Clinton s support for a medical screening and monitoring program for the disaster workers. Clinton claims credit, as a co-sponsor, for expanding access to military health care for National Guard members, a measure passed last year by a Republican-controlled Congress. From the October 5 edition of CNN s American Morning: ROBERTS: OK. And for that, here we ve got our last topic here this morning. This one s going to go to you first, Jamal [Simmons, Democratic strategist]. Politicizing 9-11. Hillary Clinton s got this new ad out called "Stand By Me," in which she shows scenes of her down at Ground Zero wearing a mask to cover her face. The whole thing is talking about health care. But I mean, this really is a shot across Rudy Giuliani s bow to say, "You re not the only one who has a claim to 9-11 here." But is she going too far? Is she politicizing 9-11, Jamal? SIMMONS: Well, she should fight out the primary before she starts fighting the general election. But I do think that she s right on target and that she was there on 9-11. She has support of firefighters, support of families who were down, whose families were killed during 9-11, and I think that it is perfectly appropriate for her to talk about that. Now, this isn t like Rudy Giuliani, who s got supporters raising funds in nine dollar and 11 cent increments. Now, that s a going a little bit too far. LESLIE SANCHEZ (Republican strategist): OK, that s not fair. He denounced that. KIRAN CHETRY (co-host): He wasn t [unintelligible] -- but, Leslie, go ahead. SANCHEZ: Yeah, no, he denounced that. The bigger issue is, Rudy Giuliani is incredibly strong on national security. He s seen as tough, energetic, and smart according to the latest Pew survey, and she realizes that is a dangerous threat to her. She s trying to shift the conversation away and trying to move some of that national security aura to her. The problem is, if you look at the two and match them together, Americans are going to fundamentally believe that we would be more vulnerable with a Hillary Clinton in the White House than with a Republican president. SIMMONS: Not true. ROBERTS: All right. Thanks, folks, for joining us. Leslie Sanchez, Jamal Simmons, good to see you again.

During the October 5 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh broadcast what he called "a spoof ad from DNC Pharma. ... A new ad for a drug that they have recently introduced to the market: Tryphorgetin." The "spoof ad" declared: "If you are a supporter of Hillary Clinton and you have a nagging fear that her shameful past will come back to ruin her election chances, this message of hope is for you." In a mock testimonial, a woman asserted that after taking "Tryphorgetin," "I even forgot that Hillary stood by her husband even when she learned that he d raped Juanita Broaddrick. Thank you, Tryphorgetin. Thank you, DNC Pharmaceuticals." Limbaugh introduced the "spoof ad" by stating: "This is being emailed all over the place. I m -- you may have heard it, because this is -- it s funny." From the October 5 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks The Rush Limbaugh Show: LIMBAUGH: One more bite here before we go to the break and then get back to calls. You ve got to hear this. This is being emailed all over the place. I m -- you may have heard it because this is -- it s funny. It is -- it s a new ad -- it s a spoof ad from DNC Pharma. It s a Bruce Chapman production, DNC Pharmaceuticals. A new ad for a drug that they have recently introduced to the market: Tryphorgetin. [begin audio clip] MAN: I had this terrible sense of anxiety, this unshakable sense of doom, but that was before I tried Tryphorgetin. ANNOUNCER: If you re a supporter of Hillary Clinton and you have a nagging fear that her shameful past will come back to ruin her election chances, this message of hope is for you. DNC Pharmaceuticals presents Tryphorgetin: more than just a drug, a way of coping. WOMAN: Hillary was in charge of destroying the reputations of the women Bill sexually harassed. That used to bother me. Then I tried Tryphorgetin. Now I don t even remember what a bimbo eruption is. MAN: When I tried Tryphorgetin, I completely forgot about the missing files from Vince Foster s office, Chinagate, the Madison Guaranty swindle, money for pardons. It s all just gone. Thanks to Tryphorgetin, I believe there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy that makes Bill jump into the sack with all those girls. WOMAN: Here s the best part: I even forgot that Hillary stood by her husband even when she learned that he d raped Juanita Broaddrick. Thank you, Tryphorgetin. Thank you, DNC Pharmaceuticals. I definitely recommend Tryphorgetin to all my fellow Democrats. It s made the difference between -- between -- what was I saying? ANNOUNCER: Side effects are generally mild and include nausea, dizziness, and loss of self-esteem. In more severe cases, side effects include delusions of victory, irrational exuberance, and the complete suspension of rational judgment. MAN: Tryphorgetin. Whatever it takes to win.

Following her appearance on all five Sunday political talk shows on September 23 -- NBC s Meet the Press, CBS Face the Nation, ABC s This Week, Fox News Sunday and CNN s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer -- political reporters and other media personalities have seized on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) laugh as a new subject of attention. In his October 2 column -- headlined "Chucklegate" -- Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz contended that "Jon Stewart is now setting the agenda for presidential campaign coverage," suggesting that the media flap over Clinton s laughter began with a September 25 segment on Comedy Central s The Daily Show. Similarly, Kurtz stated in his column in the October 3 print edition of The Washington Post similarly that "Jon Stewart, setting the pace for political journalism, kicked things off last week by assembling a grab bag of giggling and guffawing when the senator appeared on all five Sunday talk shows." In fact, before the Daily Show segment aired, audio and video clips of Clinton s laughter had already been highlighted by the Republican National Committee, the Drudge Report, and the radio shows of conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, as well as such cable news programs as MSNBC s Hardball with Chris Matthews and Fox News The O Reilly Factor. Starting with reports in The New York Times and the Politico, and progressing to many other outlets, commentators speculated about whether Clinton s laughter is evidence of her "calculating" nature, with some characterizing her laugh as a "cackle" -- defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "the sound made by a hen after laying an egg." Occasional comments about Clinton s laughter did appear in the media prior to September 23, but not with the frequency and intensity present since Clinton s Sunday show appearances. For example, following Clinton s comment at a January 28 campaign stop in Iowa -- "[W]hat, in my background, equips me to deal with evil and bad men?" -- U.S. News s Paul Bedard wrote in his February 4 "Washington Whispers" column that "many didn t believe her aides who claimed it proved she s a jokester." Bedard added: "Well, as they say in Missouri, show me. Let s start with her laugh. People think that big belly laugh of hers is not real, but it is, pleads a friend. She has a deep laugh that just makes you cackle. And apparently, it s heard often by staff." Additionally, following the "Democratic Candidate Mashup" online debate co-hosted by Yahoo!, The Huffington Post, and Slate in early September, Rush Limbaugh highlighted what he called Clinton s "cackle" from the debate on the September 13 edition of his show, and a clip from the debate was posted on YouTube on September 16 with the headline, "Cackling Hillary Clinton." Some journalists have criticized this latest media focus, which follows the media s earlier fixation on Clinton s neckline, as Media Matters for America documented (here, here, here, here, and here). Their criticism is included as part of a timeline of the coverage set out below: September 23 During the roundtable discussion after Clinton s appearance on the September 23 edition of Fox News Sunday, Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume said Clinton s laughter during her interview with host Chris Wallace earlier in the show was "disarming," "engaging," and "attractive:" HUME: I have to tell you, Chris, I thought she was in terrific form. I can t remember -- if she could handle the interview that you did with her as well as she did, I don t know why she wouldn t be on here all the time, because you threw her tough questions and she handled them all, it seemed to me, very smoothly, particularly that first question, which had to be a little bracing and unexpected, about why are they so hyper-partisan based on the excerpt from your interview with Bill Clinton which had become so contentious, and she had answered that by bursting out laughing, which is always disarming, always engaging and always attractive. WALLACE: And the response I often get to my questions, which is just gales of laughter. Following Clinton s appearance on all five Sunday political talk shows, the Republican National Committee released a "research briefing" headlined, "Hillary: No Laughing Matter: On Sunday Morning Shows, When Not Laughing Off Important Questions, Hillary Hides From The Facts And Her Own Record," which featured links to video clips of Clinton laughing on Fox News Sunday and Face the Nation. From the briefing: Fox s "Fox News Sunday": In Response To Question About Her And Her Husband s Partisan Nature, Hillary Laughs At Interviewer:Click Here To View CBS "Face The Nation": When Asked Whether Her Plan Is A Step Toward Socialized Medicine, Hillary Giggles Uncontrollably:Click Here To View In their September 23 articles on Clinton s performance on the Sunday shows, both New York Times reporter Patrick Healy and Politico reporter Ben Smith mentioned Clinton s laugh. In a post published on the Times political blog The Caucus, Healy wrote: "Mrs. Clinton generally did fine -- there were no major gaffes, no flashes of a chilly or combative side. When Republican attacks were mentioned, she stuck to her trademark belly-laugh -- though she overdid it a tad on CBS s Face the Nation. " Smith described Clinton s laugh on Fox News Sunday as her "signature cackle." September 24 During the 7 a.m. ET hour of the September 24 edition of MSNBC s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough brought up Clinton s laughter on Fox News Sunday: SCARBOROUGH: Boy, Hillary Clinton goes on Fox News Sunday yesterday and laughs at Chris Wallace -- MIKA BRZEZINSKI (co-host): Well -- SCARBOROUGH: -- throughout the interview. Isn t that something? BRZEZINSKI: Well, that was, like, her tenth interview. Maybe she was a little punchy. WILLIE GEIST (contributor): She s a little punchy. BRZEZINSKI: She did all the Sunday morning shows. SCARBOROUGH: Chris Wallace, at the end, what did he ask her there at the end that made her crack up? GEIST: He said -- he said, "Give my best to the president." And he wasn t kidding, but she just erupted in laughter. Said, "He ll love to hear that, Chris." SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. They re big Fox News fans, you can tell. BRZEZINSKI: Well, maybe --remember he and -- I think he and Chris Wallace had a fight. GEIST: Right. Right. It was a year ago. BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, yeah. OK. All right. By 8:58 a.m. ET, the Drudge Report, the website of Internet gossip Matt Drudge, featured an audio clip of Clinton s laugh with the headline, "AUDIO: The Strange Sunday Laugh..." That afternoon on his radio show, Limbaugh aired a compilation of clips of Clinton laughing on the September 23 Sunday shows, including clips from both Fox News Sunday and Face the Nation. Prefacing the clips, Limbaugh said his "montage" was "the most newsworthy, noteworthy thing to come out of all of her appearances yesterday." After airing the audio, Limbaugh said, "That s about it, folks. If you want four years of that, you need to stop and think seriously about what s ahead." Sean Hannity also repeatedly played an audio clip of Clinton s laughter on his nationally syndicated radio show, saying of Clinton s laugh, "What is that? Where did that come from? Isn t that frightening? And this went on a number of times in these interviews." After playing a clip of Clinton s laugh seven times, Hannity said, "It s -- you know what it is? She went on [the Sunday shows] with one goal this weekend. You know what the goal was? To convince people she s nice." Later in the show, a caller requested that Hannity post the audio clip of Clinton laughing on his website because the caller s "daughter s going to be a witch this year for the first time" for Halloween and needed to "work on her ... shrill witch laugh." Hannity responded, "Now be -- be careful. Be careful. See, look, one of the things Hillary always likes to do for herself is create victimhood. You know, we refrain on this program from creating victim status for Hillary, here, by ad hominem atta -- look, I m gonna tell you what -- I ll put it on the website as a special request for you." Later that day, Clinton s laughter on the Sunday shows was mentioned on Fox News The O Reilly Factor and Hannity s Tucker and Hardball. As Media Matters previously noted, on the September 24 edition of The O Reilly Factor, Fox News "body language expert" Tonya Reiman asserted that Clinton exhibited "evil laughter" during her Fox News Sunday interview with Wallace. On Hannity s Fox News Sunday appearance was aired: "I thought you were going to put on the laugh, the cackle." Rather, the clip that was aired featured Clinton responding to Chris Wallace s question on Fox News Sunday, "Senator, you have refused to criticize the MoveOn.org ad about General Petraeus, and in fact, this week you voted against a Senate resolution denouncing it." Clinton said, "I did vote for a resolution that made it clear I do not condone and do condemn attacks on any American, impugning their patriotism." On Tucker, guest host and MSNBC correspondent David Shuster asked Congressional Quarterly contributing editor Craig Crawford: "Craig, how did Hillary do on these five Sunday shows yesterday? I mean, aside from the laugh with Chris Wallace, and she did face some tough questions, there. How did she do overall?" Crawford responded, "The laugh was great. She had to be thinking, Fox of all people is calling me partisan? That doesn t seem to be the meaning of the laugh. Going on all of these shows, she was very careful not to make news, which I think one reason -- all they wanted out of this was the news to be that she did the shows, and that she is in command of Washington." On Hardball, host Chris Matthews said of Clinton s laugh, "I think she was laughing because she was talking to Chris Wallace, who went after her husband like you couldn t believe that time a few months ago. She s laughing at the notion there might be a political problem for the Clintons when they go up against Fox." Washington Post staff writer Anne Kornblut replied, "I think that s true," and continued, "Yes. And the -- that was quite a laugh first thing in the morning yesterday." Matthews then added, "I know. I think she was really mad at who was asking it. That s my guess." Kornblut responded: KORNBLUT: Yeah. I think -- I mean, you could tell by the look on her face that it was not just a sincere "I m laughing with you." But, you know -- but there s a history there. And I think what she got credit for was going on the show in the first place, after what he went through with her husband, coming back and saying, I m going to take -- that was the first question out of the gate yesterday morning. And she took it. She laughed, maybe a little bit too much, but she did laugh. She didn t get back in his face. September 25 On September 25, Comedy Central s The Daily Show featured a segment on Clinton s laughter during the Sunday shows. September 26 The September 26 editions of MSNBC s Hardball and Tucker again included mentions of Clinton s laughter on the Sunday shows. On Hardball, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported, "This past Sunday, Clinton reinforced the image of invincibility by appearing on all five network Sunday talk shows. She made little news, but surviving without a scratch was itself a headline. And Clinton even managed to laugh in the face of Fox News." Later on Hardball, host Chris Matthews discussed Clinton s laughter with Joan Walsh, editor in chief of Salon.com, and Chuck Todd, NBC News political director. Both Matthews and Walsh said they "liked" Clinton s laughter on the Sunday shows. Todd said, "Look, the laugh stuff, it s humanizing and all that stuff." Earlier in the show, Todd commented that Clinton s laugh was her "version" of former President Ronald Reagan s "there you go again." On Tucker, Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies said that Clinton "gets on the TV and she laughs almost in a giddy manner to show I am so approachable and likable. " September 27 In a September 27 column, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann wrote that Clinton s laughter on the September 23 edition of Fox News Sunday was "loud, inappropriate and mirthless ... a scary sound that was somewhere between a cackle and a screech." Morris and McGann continued: Just as Hillary s answers are scripted, so is her "spontaneous" laughter. This is truly learned behavior -- laughing -- or pretending to laugh at will. Over the past 15 years, she s perfected the art of responding to people, questions and networks that she doesn t like. In the past, she would sneer and answer sarcastically, as in, "Maybe I should have stayed home and baked cookies." But those days are over. Now she smiles constantly and dissolves into a flood of loud giggles. It s been a big part of her media training. The mainstream media hasn t had much to say about the laughing candidate. But can you imagine if Rudy Giuliani responded to a network interviewer by laughing loudly and hysterically for five seconds? No doubt The New York Times would seriously wonder about his state of mind. But they don t find it odd with Hillary. It ll likely be a long time before we see the real Hillary again. So next time you hear her special laugh, think about what it really means. September 28 In a September 28 Slate article headlined, "Bwah-Ha-Ha! What s with Hillary s laugh?" John Dickerson posted an audio clip of Clinton s laugh and wrote, "Call it a caterwaul, call it a bray, call it what you will, the sound the Democratic front-runner makes when she performs the actions of mirth are now a part of the political conversation." Dickerson continued: Comedians see the laugh the way editorial cartoonists view Barack Obama s ears -- an enormous target with endless possibilities. The laugh is, um, highly idiosyncratic. And it s something new to make fun of, since Clinton s hairstyles, pantsuits, makeup, and cleavage have been pretty well pawed over. Clinton s ideological enemies have had fun, too. Matt Drudge posted a sound clip of it, and Sean Hannity raised the pressing question of whether Clinton s laughter was presidential. Hannity should be reminded that George Bush s Beavis laugh was such an accurate imitation of the teenage cartoon reprobate he should have had to pay royalties. Like all aspects of the Clinton campaign, there s sexism in the giggle critique: Women can only laugh in certain preapproved ways. Historically, men have categorized women s laughter as a way to diminish them -- they either cackle like a witch, or they titter like a schoolgirl. Liberals, always on the lookout for signs of artifice from Clinton, are concerned that the laugh is staged to make the candidate appear more lighthearted and approachable. If so, it s certainly not working. The laugh sounds forced -- tacked on to warm Hillary s persona. If bwah-ha-ha is a strategy, an aide should stop it now, before someone gets hurt. Alternatively, the campaign should indignantly mention the criticism of the laugh in a fund-raising letter, the way aides did the Washington Post article about Clinton s cleavage. Clinton also needs to ditch the laugh because it has become her tell. Like all poker players, politicians have a sign that they re bluffing. For Newt Gingrich, the tell was when he said "frankly." Dick Cheney uses that same word to dissemble, too. "In all candor" is another signal that a hedge is coming. Nixon had lots of tells--his tense smile, the pod of sweat on his upper lip -- it was as if his tiny little truth instinct was trying to break free any way it could. Hillary s laugh appears during discussions of her vote to authorize force against Iraq and her failed 1993 health-care plan, and during attacks from rivals. All politicians laugh a little to buy time -- regular humans do it, too -- but the whole point of political evasion is to get voters to focus on something else. In this way, Clinton s laugh backfires. It signals to voters that they should pay attention, because a dodge is coming. September 30 On September 30, The New York Times Pat Healy, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, The Boston Globe s Joan Vennochi, Time magazine s Joe Klein, and the Politico s Mike Allen and John Harris all wrote columns or articles that mentioned Clinton s laugh. In his September 30 Political Memo, headlined, "The Clinton Conundrum: What s Behind the Laugh?" Healy wrote: "Stepping offstage, she took questions from reporters, and found herself being grilled about whether she was moderating her pro-choice position. And suddenly it happened: Mrs. Clinton let loose a hearty belly laugh that lasted a few seconds. Reporters glanced at one another as if they had missed the joke. But nothing particularly funny had occurred; it was, instead, a deployment of the Clinton Cackle." Healy then wrote, "But friends of hers told a different story: She has this fantastic sense of humor, you see, but it s too sarcastic to share with the general public because not everyone likes sarcasm," adding: "So, instead of alienating Iowans who might not vote for edginess, Mrs. Clinton goes for the lowest-common-denominator display of her funny bone: She shows that she can laugh, and that her laugh has a fullness and depth." However, later in the article -- after citing anonymous "advisers" saying that Clinton "needs ways to respond" to criticism "without appearing defensive or brittle" -- Healy wrote: "[L]ess often but more notably, she copes with the pressure by using what friends have come to call the Cackle." As an example, Healy cited the Democratic presidential debate, during which Clinton "laughed [at a question] before answering, as if to minimize the matter." Rich wrote: "Then there was that laugh. The Clinton campaign s method for heeding the perennial complaints that its candidate comes across as too calculating and controlled is to periodically toss in a smidgen of what it deems personality... Now Mrs. Clinton is erupting in a laugh with all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer. Mocking this tic last week, The Daily Show imagined a robotic voice inside the candidate s head saying, Humorous remark detected -- prepare for laughter display. However sincere, this humanizing touch seems as clumsily stage-managed as the Gores dramatic convention kiss." Dowd wrote: "That s why Hillary is laughing a lot now, big belly laughs, in response to tough questions or comments, to soften her image as she confidently knocks her male opponents out of the way. From nag to wag." In a Boston Globe column headlined "That Clinton cackle," Vennochi wrote, "HENS CACKLE. So do witches. And, so does the front-runner in the Democratic presidential contest. Former Bill Clinton adviser Dick Morris recently described Hillary Clinton s laugh as loud, inappropriate, and mirthless. . . . A scary sound that was somewhere between a cackle and a screech. Politico s Ben Smith referred to Clinton s signature cackle. Conservative radio hosts routinely play Clinton s cackle on their radio shows. ... Not too long ago, Clinton s cleavage attracted all the attention. She wore a tank top under a blazer and her modest confirmation of breasts became the subject of serious presidential campaign analysis. Now, the critique is moving from chest to throat, and to a sound associated with female fowl. What s next, speculation that Clinton will cry if Iran s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says something mean about her?" In a Swampland post, Klein wrote, "I share many of Rich/Dowd s stylistic concerns about Clinton, but these are ultimately peripheral. Yes, the laugh is awkward (when staged) and yes, her campaign is focus-grouped up the wazoo. But then, so is Obama s and the campaigns of all the other candidates flush enough to hire political consultants. (Obama s a more elegant speaker than Clinton but about as spontaneous as a fence post, which is a real problem for a candidate who is supposed to be the Next New Thing.)" In the Politico, Allen and Harris wrote: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) last week flew into a sudden burst of media wind shear. After months of mostly rosy portrayals of her campaign s political skill, discipline and inevitability, the storyline shifted abruptly to evasive answers, shady connections and a laugh that sounded like it was programmed by computer. ... The New York Times ran a Sunday story about what it called the Cackle -- it is actually closer to a guffaw -- suggesting that it is the senator s technique for disarming persistent questioners. ... Even Jon Stewart bared fangs on The Daily Show, splicing together clips from Sunday morning shows that his network, Comedy Central, calls creepy delayed laughter on a segment called Hillary s Laugh Track. He suggested the candidate was bionic. Such mockery represents a distinct turn in her coverage of this year." October 1 On October 1, ABC s Good Morning America, CNN s Situation Room, Fox News Hannity s Hardball all featured segments on Clinton s laughter. From Good Morning America: ROBIN ROBERTS (co-anchor) Now Senator Clinton s getting some scrutiny because of her laugh. GMA weekend anchor Kate Snow has more on that. A lot of people are writing about this and talking about it. KATE SNOW (weekend co-anchor): Uh-huh. A lot of people -- we ve been talking about it for weeks here, Robin. Depending on who you ask, Hillary Clinton is either having a really good time out on the campaign trail, or she s the master of a shrewd political skill: disarming her critics with the gleam in her eye and a roar straight from the belly. CLINTON: I am running for president. SNOW: She s taking hits from all sides. At debates. SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D-CT): And I m ashamed of you, Hillary. GOV. BILL RICHARDSON: I also disagree with Senator Clinton. SNOW: On the Internet. UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (clip from political ad): Hillary Clinton is turning her back on them. SNOW: On the trail. SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): Even the senator of New York wasn t clear about the Yankees. GOV. MITT ROMNEY (R-MA): Hillary Care continues to be bad medicine. SNOW: So, no surprise, Hillary Clinton has an arsenal ready to take on her attackers. There s the slow giggle, the "I can t believe he just said that" chuckle of disbelief, and then there s the full Hillary. WALLACE (Fox News Sunday clip) A partisan view of politics. [Clinton laughs] SNOW: Jon Stewart had a field day on The Daily Show. [begin video clip] STEWART: To the untrained eye, that looks like a satellite delay. But that was not a satellite interview. This is what it really is. WALLACE: Send my best to the president. FEMALE VOICE: Humorous remark detected. Prepare for laughter display in two, one, go. [Clinton laughs] [end video clip] SNOW: Her inner circle insists her laugh is not calculated. It s natural. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It comes from her soul. I mean, it s just -- UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It s contagious. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah. It s really, like, it s so heartfelt. SNOW: But when you re the frontrunner with a lot of baggage, laughter can also be a savvy political move. CHRIS LEHANE (Democratic strategist): She is someone who, who finds some humor in these things, but also is pretty smart and pretty adroit to be able to take these questions, slough them off and move on to what she wants to talk about. And I think the laugh has actually served as a pretty effective tool. SNOW: Back in January, she made a joke about dealing with evil and bad men. And when reporters kept pushing about who she was referring to -- CLINTON: I thought I was funny. You know, you guys keep telling me, "Lighten up, be funny." You know, I get a little funny and now I m being psychoanalyzed. I mean -- SNOW: OK. Maybe we are overanalyzing a little bit here. One Clinton spokesperson said sarcastically yesterday, "Breaking news, the senator laughs." But as Mark Twain once said, Robin, the human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. ROBERTS: Mm-hmm. SNOW: That s Mark Twain s quote. And in politics -- ROBERTS: Right. SNOW: -- you need all the weapons you can get. ROBERTS: Yes, you can. But she has a bit of a point there when a lot of people were critical of her because she wasn t showing us a sense of humor. And then she does do that-- SNOW: Right. ROBERTS: -- she gets -- SNOW: And when you re the frontrunner -- ROBERTS: Oh, yeah. SNOW: -- you, you get it from everybody. ROBERTS: All right. Well, you got a nice laugh, Kate. SNOW: Thank you. ROBERTS: See -- see there? We re gonna -- we won t overanalyze that. It s about 45 minutes after the hour. We ll be right back. It was too easy. I had to go there. From The Situation Room: BLITZER: And there s been a lot of focus lately on her laughter. We ve heard her laughing at the various debates, in some of the interviews. She did five Sunday talk shows a week ago Sunday. What do you make of this? GLORIA BORGER (CNN senior political analyst): I saw she laughed during your interview too, Wolf -- BLITZER: Yes, she did. BORGER: She did -- BLITZER: She laughed at all of them. BORGER: She did. She laughed at all the interviews. I think that it s a contrivance, when you look at it and watch all these interviews. It s a perfectly legitimate way to try and deflect a tough question that perhaps you might have been asking or any of the other interviewers might have been asking. But -- and it s a way to kind of, I also think, diminish the questioner, if you will -- oh, my god, ha ha ha, what a funny question. But I think in the end, now that we re all paying attention to it, it s not going to be as effective as it may have been at the start of the campaign. BLITZER: Gloria, thanks very much. [...] BLITZER: Senator Hillary Clinton s laugh is under the media microscope. Here s CNN s Jeanne Moos. [begin video clip] MOOS: Is it a cackle? Or is it a chortle? BOB SCHIEFFER (CBS Face the Nation host): It would require among other things that every American -- CLINTON: I m sorry, Bob. MOOS: Or is it a calculated cackle? Hillary Clinton s laughter is echoing all over the Web. Who needs a laugh track to get a reaction to Hillary s laughter? WALLACE: Let me ask you about health care. CLINTON: Yeah, I d love for you to ask me about health care. GEORGE STEPANOPOULOS (host, ABC s This Week): What s your response? [laughing] BLITZER: I wonder if you want to respond to the former mayor? [laughing] STEWART: I m joyful. MOOS: Hillary s contagious laughter spread to the editorial page of The New York Times, where heavyweight columnists snickered. Wrote Frank Rich: "Now Mrs. Clinton is erupting in a laugh with all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer." Critics say she s trying to undercut difficult questions. BILL MAHER (host, HBO s Real Time with Bill Maher): Why should Americans vote for someone who can be fooled by George Bush? [laughing] MOOS: While supporters say she s got a great sense of humor. Seems to run in the family. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You re a disaster. BILL CLINTON: [laughing] MOOS: Back when Russian President Boris Yeltsin called the press a disaster, Bill Clinton was beside himself. Some say Hillary s laugh is as overdone as Al Gore s kiss. But maybe Hillary should kiss off the criticism. Though her campaign wouldn t comment, she may feel like she did after the time she said she d had experience with bad men. HILLARY CLINTON: You know, you guys keep telling me lighten up, be funny. You know, I get a little funny, and now I m being psychoanalyzed. MOOS: Hillary is not the only front runner to be accused of calculated mannerisms. GIULIANI: This is my wife calling, I think. Hello, dear. MOOS: That was September. This was June. GIULIANI: This is my wife on the phone. MOOS: September. GIULIANI: I m talking to the members of the NRA right now. Would you like to say hello? MOOS: June. GIULIANI: Say hello. MOOS: September. GIULIANI: Talk to you later, dear, I love you. MOOS: June. GIULIANI: OK, dear, I love you, bye. MOOS: But at least no one described Rudy as cackling. Cackling is what witches do. "I like Hillary s laugh," read one Internet post. "What was she laughing about?" read another. And for once, Web shorthand LOL, laughing out loud, seemed perfect. At least they didn t say COL, cackling out loud. Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York. From Hannity s distinct laughter has many asking if the maniacal giggling is scripted to make you like her. Dick Morris will sound off straight ahead. [...] HANNITY: Hillary Clinton s maniacal laughing fits on Fox News Sunday have sparked speculation that she is trying to get voters to believe that she s not the cold, calculating candidate that the press has often characterized her as. But will Hillary be laughing all the way to the White House, or will the campaign tricks turn her into a laughingstock in this election? Joining us now, author of Outrage, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris. Be sure to check out his latest column, by the way. It s free on DickMorris.com. Is she trying to manipulate people? Unfavorables too high? MORRIS: Well, I have to quote my wife Eileen s characterization of that laugh she wrote in our Fox News column. "A loud, inappropriate, and mirthless laugh, a scary sound that was somewhere between a cackle and a screech." The reason she does that is that her speech coaches are sitting with her and saying, "Listen, any time someone says something that gets under your skin and you re feeling a little bit angry, laugh." HANNITY: Smile. MORRIS: No, don t smile, laugh, because you need to give a verbal expression to it. And if all you give is words, they re going to come out as sarcastic and hurt you. HANNITY: Does it work? MORRIS: It works. It s like a timing mechanism, and she defuses her anger through laughter. And that laughter you re hearing is really alternative to cursing out the questioner. HANNITY: All right, but doesn t it sort of begin to become a caricature if she uses it too much? MORRIS: Yeah, well, it does, but it s better than saying, "Well, I didn t stay home and bake cookies and serve tea" -- HANNITY: That s true. MORRIS: -- which is what she used to do. [...] ALAN COLMES (co-host): I want to get back to this mocking Hillary for her laugh, ridiculing her for that. Either she s a dour, cold and calculating -- with the phrase you used, or you re going to ridicule her for laughing. So this is a no-win situation for her. Let me just finish, and then I ll give you a chance to respond. Newt Gingrich, coming on the show in a few minutes, will say, "You ve got to fight this battle ideologically." If you re going to go after Clinton on personal issues, you re going to lose. MORRIS: Yeah, I think that s absolutely right. You know, one of the things that I think needs to be said about Hillary Clinton -- and I want to say it now -- is that, if she is elected president, one of the first things she s going to do is either double the capital gains tax so it s 30 percent, not 15, or repeal it entirely so it s ordinary income taxed at 40, because that will be the new rate. As her election gets closer, as it becomes more likely she s going to win, there s going to be a stock market crash. And when she wins, it s going to be Black Wednesday, because what s going to happen is that Americans will want to sell their stocks so they can get 15 percent tax, not 30 percent tax. COLMES: All right, so you re predicting a stock market crash based on what Hillary s going to do. Now, it s fair to debate capital gains. That s a fair debate. But you want to make the issue about a calculated laugh and make that and ridicule her for that, that s not going to help Republicans win. MORRIS: No, no, I m -- yeah, I don t -- I don t think so, but the laugh was too good, fun to avoid. COLMES: It seemed fine to me. From Hardball: MATTHEWS: What do you make of the cackle? Drew? DREW WESTEN (author, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation [Public Affairs, June 2007]): Well, I think it -- in some ways, it s a little like the [Howard] Dean "scream." I think it can get blown out of proportion. It does sound like a defensive laugh. It sounded like that in the debate when she was -- when Mike Gravel took her to task for that Iran vote. But boy, I ll tell you, I wouldn t want my every move scrutinized the same way she s getting it scrutinized now. MIKE ALLEN (Politico chief political writer): Chris -- MATTHEWS: Go ahead. You go ahead. Go ahead, Mike. ALLEN: Yeah, Chris, first of all, "cackle" is a very sexist term. It s hard to believe that you would talk about -- MATTHEWS: No, I -- [crosstalk] MATTHEWS: -- wait, wait, wait. Look, let me tell you something. I ve got a cackle. I have a hoot. Norah O Donnell, my colleague here, has a cackle. I love cackles, OK? ALLEN: All right. MATTHEWS: I don t consider it sexist. Drop that line -- [crosstalk] MATTHEWS: I m not going to get in trouble for "cackle" being female-specific. What do I have, a hoot? What is that thing I do -- they do on Saturday Night Live when they make fun of me, a hoot? You know, I can t -- I can t pretend to do it. I just do it when I hear something ridiculous. But go ahead, Mike. ALLEN: I promise not to laugh, Chris, or -- MATTHEWS: No, go ahead. Go ahead. Keep taking your shots. ALLEN: But it is a guffaw, and it has been very effective. It s a way for the senator to deflect questions that either are tough or sound tough or are rude -- MATTHEWS: Right. ALLEN: -- or could be trouble, and not only does she take the spotlight off herself, but it serves to impugn the questioner. So it s worked very well -- MATTHEWS: Impugn the questioner? I love that. I love that because somebody said that the other day. Patrick Healy of The New York Times yesterday said that what Hillary s really doing when she s going up against somebody like Chris Wallace -- and this is her perspective -- is saying, OK, you re from Fox. OK, you took my husband into a little pistol fight a couple weeks ago, and you re asking me if I m hyper-partisan? Give me a break. Her way of saying "give me a break" to Chris Wallace is to cackle. Do you buy that, Mike? ALLEN: Well, and the other thing that that article pointed out is it looks contrived because she laughs in surprise at questions that she s heard before -- MATTHEWS: Right. ALLEN: -- and taken seriously. And it s the artifice, the contrived nature -- MATTHEWS: I know. ALLEN: -- of the Clintons -- MATTHEWS: But I m hoping -- ALLEN: -- that these pundits still have under their craw from years ago. MATTHEWS: I know, but Drew, I m hoping it s real because I really liked the cackle when she did it to Chris and -- because I love to be rivals with everybody. But I ve also heard that she cackled when she was talking to Bob Schieffer, which made no sense. I can t figure her out. Is the cackle killing her? You think it s a distraction. What is it? WESTEN: Well, it s -- MATTHEWS: We ll know if she stops cackling because then we ll know it was a tactic. WESTEN: Well, but Chris, also -- MATTHEWS: If she keeps cackling, we ll keep talking about it, so I don t think she can win this baby. I don t know what to say. WESTEN: Well, you know, when it indicates defensiveness is when she runs into trouble. I thought when -- the cackle in response to Mike Gravel s comment -- Mike Gravel was actually raising a really interesting -- MATTHEWS: Oh, yeah. WESTEN: -- point, and it was right on the mark, and that -- MATTHEWS: Hey, I was with him on that one, by the way. WESTEN: I m sorry? That sounded like -- that sounded more like kind of defensive laughter there than it did -- MATTHEWS: Yes. WESTEN: -- an attempt to change the subject. ALLEN: But Chris -- Chris, the reason the guffaw is fine is it s been part -- until now, I think she was misserved by some satellite delays and some other problems with those last Sunday interviews. But until now, it works fine. It s been the softening of her image. I ve watched on your show clips of her four, eight, twelve years ago. It was a very different Senator Clinton -- MATTHEWS: Oh, yeah. ALLEN: -- we re seeing now, a much more likable, personable person, and that s very important for her. MATTHEWS: Hey, Mike, Drew, I m warming up towards her, despite how hard I get on this show, because it s my job to play hardball and be tough on all these guys. But I do think she s so much more appealing as a political figure after all these years of putting up with Bill. Anyway, thank you very much -- he s been her sparring partner, maybe, not her trainer. Anyway, Mike Allen, thank you, Drew Westen. Both of you please come back a lot. Salon s Walsh wrote a blog post headlined "The nag, the witch, and the media," in which she stated: "I winced Sunday when I read Maureen Dowd calling Clinton a nag, and Joan Vennochi, in the Boston Globe, comparing Clinton s suddenly controversial laugh to the cackle of hens and witches. If David Brooks or David Broder started throwing around terms like witch or nag when talking about Clinton, they d be castigated as sexist throwbacks, but Dowd and Vennochi can get away with it? To be fair, both female columnists could try to argue that they were just playing off male doubts about Clinton, but the two nasty columns served to reinforce stereotypes, not dispel them." Additionally, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz addressed coverage of Clinton s laughter in his online live discussion forum, "Media Backtalk." From Kurtz s October 1 webchat: Philadelphia: Why does the media have such a right-wing slant? Do you really think people want to hear about John Edwards hair, or Hillary s laugh? Why not tell us about the Lieberman-Kyl amendment? Tell us what that bill means as far as war with Iran. Talk about issues instead of fluff. Howard Kurtz: The Hillary s laugh mini-flap began after she did a lot of belly-laughing during her five Sunday show interviews last weekend and Jon Stewart made fun of it on the Daily Show. Others, including me, picked it up from Jon, and I don t think he s been accused of being a right-wing tool. [...] Enough is enough, U.S.: I m crying uncle here! Okay, we get it -- there is no aspect of Sen. Clinton that is off-limits. But this brouhahah about her laugh is crazy. What is driving this? Could it be that she may actually think it s funny that reporters are tripping over their self-satisfied selves to get her to slip up? Oh, if they only did that to Bush... Howard Kurtz: She *could* actually think it s funny. Or she could be using laughter as a way of defusing tough questions. Not that there s anything wrong with that. [...] Boston: Putting aside for the moment the question of whether laugh analysis is serious journalism, is it appropriate for journalists to use sexist terms like "giggle" and "cackle" to describe Hillary Clinton s laugh, as Patrick Healy did in the New York Times? "She giggled, giggled some more, and then could not seem to stop giggling. "Sorry, Bob," she said, and finally unleashed the full Cackle." Howard Kurtz: What, you d rather be debating her cleavage? You should listen to the sound online and make your own judgment on whether journalists are being humor-impaired here. October 2 On October 2, Kurtz revisited the coverage of Clinton s laughter in an online column headlined "Chucklegate." From Kurtz s column: Hahahaha -- here s a funny one. Jon Stewart is now setting the agenda for presidential campaign coverage. No joke! The pack has been following him in recent days. That s either because he s sharper than your average MSMer when it comes to video analysis, or because he s got a small army of kids poring over the TiVo for ridicule-worthy sound bites. Thus it was that the "Daily Show" strung together clips of Hillary Rodham Clinton laughing--loudly, uproariously and sometimes oddly--during her Full Ginsburg of Sunday show interviews last week. (There was also a great bit depicting her as a robot.) That 30 seconds made clear, in a way that mere words could not, that the Hillary laugh was a calculated tactic to deflect tough questions and perhaps soften her image in the process. I used the sound on "Reliable Sources" Sunday. The New York Times did a piece on what it called the Clinton Cackle. "Good Morning America," "Hardball" and "Hannity s silly. From cleavage to cackling. What s next, debating the way she colors her hair? But here s what is really going on: Sen. Clinton is being depicted in the press as the inevitable Democratic nominee and, therefore, a good bet to become the 44th president. The media want more of a primary race -- never discount that as a factor -- but the country is trying to decide if it feels comfortable with another President Clinton. And so journalists are examining her personality quirks precisely because she is doing so well, and because it s more fun than analyzing her health plan. Additionally, CNN re-aired Moos October 1 segment on Clinton s laughter, and CNN Headline News Glenn Beck also featured a segment on it. From Glenn Beck: BECK: Hillary has been getting a lot of attention in the news lately, but not for her health care plan or for the $5,000 she just wants to magically give every newborn baby in the country -- which we, of course, can afford -- or for the $27 million her campaign has raised in the last quarter. No, America is finally starting to pay attention to the real issues that matter to the future of our country, namely Hillary Clinton s laugh. I`ve never noticed it, but critics have. They ve called it -- and I m quoting -- "less of a laugh and more of a cackle." Some have been even a little more cruel as to compare her laugh to the Wicked Witch of the West, which is just a little unfair. Here is the actual Wicked Witch of The Wizard of Oz. MARGARET HAMILTON (video clip from the film The Wizard of Oz): I`ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too! BECK: OK. And here s the wick -- the junior senator from New York. [clip of Hillary laughing] BECK: OK, maybe I was wrong. Nevertheless, I d like to come to Hillary s defense here. I know at times -- many times I ve been less than kind to her, but her laugh isn t something she should be ashamed of. I think it s actually one of her best qualities. It makes her seem almost, oh, I don t know, human. [clips of Hillary laughing] BLITZER: Let her tell us, if you were president, Senator Clinton, what would your husband do? [laughter] HARRY SMITH (CBS The Early Show co-anchor): We remember those ads from during your -- [laughter] MIKE GRAVEL (Democratic presidential candidate): You re not going to get another shot at this, because what happens if this war ensues? We invade, and they`re looking for an excuse to it. And Obama was not even there to vote. TIM RUSSERT (host of NBC s Meet the Press): Senator Clinton, I want to give you a chance to respond. [laughter] BLITZER: I wonder if you want to respond to the former mayor. [laughter] BLITZER: What would your husband do? [laughter] [end video clip] BECK: And your little dog, too. October 3 On October 3, the print edition of The Washington Post featured a column by Kurtz on Clinton s laugh on the front page of the Style section, headlined "Hillary Chuckles; Pundits Snort: Clinton s Robust Yuks Lead To Analysis of Appeal of Laughter." From Kurtz s column: Forget the cleavage. It s now about the cackle. No joke: Hillary Clinton s laugh is now being analyzed, scrutinized and, yes, mocked as if it were a sound barrier on her glide path to the Democratic presidential nomination: Is it real? Is it fake? Is it a diabolically clever attempt to portray her as a human being? What a hoot. Jon Stewart, setting the pace for political journalism, kicked things off last week by assembling a grab bag of giggling and guffawing when the senator appeared on all five Sunday talk shows, from a barn outside her Chappaqua, N.Y., home. As Clinton was seen bursting into belly laughs-- sometimes oddly and abruptly -- at queries by the likes of Bob Schieffer and Chris Wallace, the "Daily Show" host likened her to a robot switching into chuckle mode when aggressive interrogators needed to be neutralized. Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of the punch line, examining whether The Laugh met some vaguely defined standard of acceptability. "Depending on who you ask," ABC s Kate Snow said on "Good Morning America," "Hillary Clinton is either having a really good time out on the campaign trail, or she s the master of a shrewd political skill disarming her critics with the gleam in her eye and a roar straight from the belly." Fox s Sean Hannity said Clinton s "maniacal laughing fits on Fox News Sunday have sparked speculation that she is trying to get voters to believe that she s not the cold, calculating candidate that the press has often characterized her as." On MSNBC s "Hardball," author Drew Westen likened the spectacle to the infamous Howard Dean scream, saying: "I think it can get blown out of proportion. It does sound like a defensive laugh." The Clinton campaign doesn t view this as a thigh-slapper. "She s got a great laugh," said spokesman Jay Carson, "but given the serious issues facing this country -- the mess this administration has gotten us into in Iraq, growing economic woes and millions without health care, to name a few -- we don t think voters are going to decide on their next president based on who has the most melodious laugh." The subtext here is that the media have collectively decided that the wife of the 42nd president is the inevitable nominee and a good bet to become the 44th Oval Office occupant. Lacking much of a horse race, since Clinton has maintained a 20-point national lead over Barack Obama all year, journalists are resorting to a classic general-election question: Are Americans ready to have this woman in their living rooms every night for four years? Are they comfortable with her personality? Do they like her voice? Plus, examining her personality quirks is more fun than deconstructing her stance on Iraq. And with Bill Clinton making the television rounds himself -- he appeared on two of the talk shows this past Sunday -- anchors get to debrief him about her funny lines. Sometimes, as Freud might have said, a laugh is just a laugh. But not in the hothouse of a presidential contest. [...] The Hillary humor issue first surfaced soon after she announced her candidacy in January, when Clinton drew laughter by telling an Iowa salesman who asked about her capacity to handle the world s evildoers: "What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men? "You guys! she told reporters after being repeatedly quizzed about the line. "I thought I was funny. You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun. Now I get a little funny, and I m being psychoanalyzed. Much of the critical buzz has come from liberal commentators, who are using the laugh as a metaphor for the candidate s persona. "The Clinton campaign s method for heeding the perennial complaints that its candidate comes across as too calculating and controlled is to periodically toss in a smidgen of what it deems personality. . . . Now Mrs. Clinton is erupting in a laugh with all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer," writes New York Times columnist Frank Rich. Time magazine s Joe Klein sees "a major media style-assault on the senator," writing: "Yes, the laugh is awkward (when staged) and yes, her campaign is focus-grouped up the wazoo. But then, so is Obama s and the campaigns of all the other candidates flush enough to hire political consultants." Lest anyone think this amounts to harmless high jinks, Slate s Dickerson used his column to deliver a blunt warning: "If bwah-ha-ha is a strategy, an aide should stop it now, before someone gets hurt." Or maybe he was joking.

During the October 1 edition of Fox News Hannity s going to do is either double the capital gains tax, so it s 30 percent, not 15, or repeal it entirely so it s ordinary income taxed at 40, because that will be the new rate." Morris continued: "As her election gets closer, as it becomes more likely she s going to win, there s going to be a stock market crash. And when she wins, it s going to be Black Wednesday, because what s going to happen is that Americans will want to sell their stocks so they can get 15 percent tax, not 30 percent tax." From the October 1 edition of Fox News Hannity s a dour, cold, and calculating -- with the phrase you used -- or you re going to ridicule her for laughing. So this is a no-win situation for her. Let me just finish, and then I ll give you a chance to respond. Newt Gingrich coming on the show in a few minutes will say, "You ve got to fight this battle ideologically. If you re going to go after Clinton on personal issues, you re going to lose." MORRIS: Yeah, I think that s absolutely right. You know, one of the things that I think needs to be said about Hillary Clinton -- and I want to say it now -- is that if she is elected president, one of the first things she s going to do is either double the capital gains tax, so it s 30 percent, not 15, or repeal it entirely so it s ordinary income taxed at 40, because that will be the new rate. As her election gets closer, as it becomes more likely she s going to win, there s going to be a stock market crash. And when she wins, it s going to be Black Wednesday, because what s going to happen is that Americans will want to sell their stocks so they can get 15 percent tax, not 30 percent tax. COLMES: All right, so you re predicting a stock market crash based on what Hillary s going to do. Now, it s fair to debate capital gains. That s a fair debate. But you want to make the issue about a calculated laugh and make that and ridicule her for that, that s not going to help Republicans win.

On the September 30 edition of NBC s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert noted that, during a recent MSNBC-sponsored debate at Dartmouth College, the three leading Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY) and Barack Obama (IL), and former Sen. John Edwards (NC), would not commit "by January of 2013, to have all American troops out of Iraq." NBC White House correspondent David Gregory described this as "a really measured position" and asserted, "Edwards particularly, who was embracing the left wing of the party s view that you have to end the war now, and the others even voting for cutting off funding." He added, "I think it s a realization ... that they re going to take a more centrist position and say to the left wing of their party, We ve got to be pragmatic about this. " But Gregory s suggestion that Clinton s and Obama s current positions are inconsistent with their having "even vot[ed] for cutting off funding" -- an assertion that is itself misleading -- is false. And Gregory offered no evidence that Edwards has shifted position either. In fact, both Clinton and Obama voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) mandating that funding for the U.S. mission in Iraq be terminated and combat forces be redeployed by June 30, 2008, but providing, as Media Matters for America noted, continued funding for "limited" military operations there indefinitely. Additionally, earlier this year, the Senate, with Clinton and Obama s support, passed an emergency supplemental funding bill that would have required the "Secretary [of Defense] ... [to] commence such redeployment no later than October 1, 2007, with a goal of completing that redeployment within 180 days," but that also included a provision stipulating that a residual U.S. troop presence remain in Iraq: Prohibit[] the Secretary, after the appropriate redeployment period, from deploying or maintaining members of the Armed Forces in Iraq for any purpose other than: (1) protecting American diplomatic facilities, American citizens, and other U.S. forces; (2) serving in roles consistent with customary diplomatic positions; (3) engaging in targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; and (4) training and equipping members of the Iraqi Security Forces. Moreover, as Media Matters has noted, Clinton and Obama have both introduced legislation providing for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but also a continuing military presence there. Edwards has also previously stated that he would not withdraw all troops from Iraq as president. In a May 23 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards asserted that he would preserve "some presence in Baghdad" in order to "protect the American Embassy and other personnel." From the speech: EDWARDS: My plan calls on Congress to use its funding power to stop the surge and force an immediate withdrawal of 40,000 to 50,000 combat troops from Iraq, followed by an orderly and complete withdrawal of all combat troops in about a year. [...] EDWARDS: I believe that once we are out of Iraq, the U.S. must retain sufficient forces in the region to prevent a genocide, deter a regional spillover of the civil war, and prevent an Al Qaeda safe haven. We will most likely need to retain Quick Reaction Forces in Kuwait and in the Persian Gulf. We will also need some presence in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the American Embassy and other personnel. Finally, we will need a diplomatic offensive to engage the rest of the world in Iraq s future -- including Middle Eastern nations and our allies in Europe. During the debate, Edwards said that "in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops" would be needed to remain in Iraq because the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and humanitarian workers in Iraq would "have to be protected": RUSSERT (debate moderator): Senator Edwards, will you commit that at the end of your first term, in 2013, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq? EDWARDS: I cannot make that commitment. But I -- well, I can tell you what I would do as president. When I m sworn into office, come January of 2009, if there are, in fact, as General [David] Petraeus suggests, 100,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, I will immediately draw down 40 to 50,000 troops; and over the course of the next several months, continue to bring our combat troops out of Iraq until all of our combat troops are, in fact, out of Iraq. I think the problem is -- and it s what you just heard discussed -- is we will maintain an embassy in Baghdad. That embassy has to be protected. We will probably have humanitarian workers in Iraq. Those humanitarian workers have to be protected. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops will be necessary to accomplish that, 3,500 to 5,000 troops. In response to the same question, Obama said, "What I can promise is that if there are still troops in Iraq when I take office ... I will drastically reduce our presence [in Iraq] to the mission of protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians and making sure that we re carrying out counterterrorism activities there." Clinton said, "I will immediately move to begin bringing our troops home when I am inaugurated," and later added, "[T]here may be a continuing counterterrorism mission, which, if it still exists, will be aimed at Al Qaeda in Iraq. It may require combat, Special Operations Forces or some other form of that, but the vast majority of our combat troops should be out." From the September 30 edition of NBC s Meet the Press: RUSSERT: Let me ask you about Iraq, because it was interesting, I thought in this debate. The first question I asked of the three front-runners, and all the candidates, will you pledge, by the end of your first term, January of 2013, all American troops will be out of Iraq? Clinton, Obama, Edwards all said, "I won t make that commitment." GREGORY: Right, they said you never know what we re going to find, a really measured position for three candidates. Edwards, Edwards particularly, who was embracing the left wing of the party s view that you have to end the war now, and the others even voting for cutting off funding. I think it s a realization, though, that they re going to take a more centrist position and say to the left wing of their party, "We ve got to be pragmatic about this. We can t lose a general election because of your feelings about the war."

On the September 30 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show, during a discussion of Democratic presidential candidates stances on Iran and other national security issues, BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton s (D-NY) "calculation is that she can t stand up there as a woman and sound soft." Kay added: "She knows that as a Clinton and as a woman, she s got to come across as somebody who is prepared to use military action if it s needed." Kay did not explain her apparent view that the public sees Bill Clinton as having been unprepared "to use military action" or her apparent view that Hillary s marriage to Bill poses an obstacle to her coming across as "prepared to use military action if it s needed." Kay s comments echo the long-perpetuated myth in the media that Democrats are perceived as "soft" on national security. As Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, polls actually show that the public prefers Democrats on the issue of handling the war in Iraq and on national security. Most recently, a September 14-16 Gallup poll asked: "Looking ahead for the next few years, which political party do you think will do a better job of protecting the country from international terrorism and military threats?" Forty-seven percent answered Democrats, while 42 percent said Republicans. And a September 4-7 Washington Post/ABC News poll asked: "Which political party, the (Democrats) or the (Republicans), do you trust to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq." The poll found that 42 percent answered Democrats, while 31 percent answered Republicans. Moreover, regarding Kay s suggestion that Clinton s gender also impedes her ability to convince the public that she is "prepared to use military action if needed," polling suggests otherwise. While a July 9-17 CBS News/New York Times poll asked if registered voters "have confidence in Hillary Clinton s ability to deal wisely with an international crisis" or if they are "uneasy about her approach," finding that 52 percent were "uneasy" and 42 percent were "confident," the poll also found that a majority (58 percent) of respondents believe Clinton would be an effective commander in chief, and 68 percent believed that Clinton would likely or very likely to make good decisions in dealing with foreign countries. Further, 75 percent of respondents said they believe Clinton is a "strong leader." From the September 30 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show: MATTHEWS: Can a Democrat running today appear just as hawkish as the Republican incumbent and still hold the Democratic base? KAY: I think Hillary s calculating on two things. First of all, she s got her eye very firmly on the general election and not on the primaries. She s calculating that the base stays with her if she gets the nomination, and that this Democratic base desperately wants to win the White House back and the numbers will turn out. The other thing I think the calculation is that she can t stand up there as a woman and sound soft. She s going to be America s commander in chief. She knows that as a Clinton and as a woman, she s got to come across as somebody who is prepared to use military action if it s needed.

On the September 27 edition of NBC s Today, discussing the September 26 Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire, NBC chief White House correspondent David Gregory asserted that "surprisingly, the top three contenders, [Sen. Hillary Rodham] Clinton [D-NY], [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL], and [former Sen. John] Edwards [D-NC], would not promise a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces, even by the end of their first term." But Gregory did not explain why he thought that this was "surprising[]," and in fact the statements of all three candidates were consistent with their previous positions. As Media Matters for America has documented, both Clinton and Obama have voted for legislation that included provisions for keeping a residual U.S. troop presence in Iraq. In July, the Senate debated an amendment to the defense authorization bill -- offered by Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Carl Levin (D-MI) -- that called for a "reduction" of U.S forces in Iraq to begin "not later than 120 days" after the bill s enactment, but also stipulated that the United States maintain a "limited presence" of troops there to protect U.S. and coalition infrastructure, train Iraqi security forces, and conduct counterterrorism operations. A motion to stop a filibuster of the Levin-Reed proposal garnered 52 votes on July 18, including Clinton s and Obama s. Additionally, earlier this year, the Senate, with Clinton and Obama s support, passed an emergency supplemental funding bill that would have required the "Secretary [of Defense] ... [to] commence such redeployment no later than October 1, 2007, with a goal of completing that redeployment within 180 days." It also contained a provision to: Prohibit[] the Secretary, after the appropriate redeployment period, from deploying or maintaining members of the Armed Forces in Iraq for any purpose other than: (1) protecting American diplomatic facilities, American citizens, and other U.S. forces; (2) serving in roles consistent with customary diplomatic positions; (3) engaging in targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; and (4) training and equipping members of the Iraqi Security Forces. Moreover, as Media Matters has noted, Clinton and Obama have introduced similar legislation in the Senate. Indeed, Obama introduced legislation in January that would require the redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq to begin "not later than May 1, 2007." According to Obama s bill, redeployment of U.S. forces would be "subject to the exceptions for retention of forces for force protection, counter-terrorism operations, training of Iraqi forces, and other purposes." Clinton introduced a bill on February 16 providing for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, while stipulating that the United States maintain a "limited presence" of forces there for training Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. personnel and infrastructure, logistical support of Iraqi security forces, and targeted counterterrorism activities. Edwards has also previously stated that he would not withdraw all troops from Iraq as president. In a May 23 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards asserted that he would preserve "some presence in Baghdad" in order to "protect the American Embassy and other personnel." From the speech: EDWARDS: I believe that once we are out of Iraq, the U.S. must retain sufficient forces in the region to prevent a genocide, deter a regional spillover of the civil war, and prevent an Al Qaeda safe haven. We will most likely need to retain Quick Reaction Forces in Kuwait and in the Persian Gulf. We will also need some presence in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the American Embassy and other personnel. Finally, we will need a diplomatic offensive to engage the rest of the world in Iraq s future -- including Middle Eastern nations and our allies in Europe. During the debate, Edwards said that "in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops" would be needed to remain in Iraq because the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and humanitarian workers in Iraq would "have to be protected": TIM RUSSERT (NBC News Washington managing editor and debate moderator): Senator Edwards, will you commit that at the end of your first term, in 2013, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq? EDWARDS: I cannot make that commitment. But I -- well, I can tell you what I would do as president. When I m sworn into office, come January of 2009, if there are, in fact, as General Petraeus suggests, 100,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, I will immediately draw down 40 to 50,000 troops; and over the course of the next several months, continue to bring our combat troops out of Iraq until all of our combat troops are, in fact, out of Iraq. I think the problem is -- and it s what you just heard discussed -- is we will maintain an embassy in Baghdad. That embassy has to be protected. We will probably have humanitarian workers in Iraq. Those humanitarian workers have to be protected. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops will be necessary to accomplish that, 3,500 to 5,000 troops. From the September 27 edition of NBC s Today: MEREDITH VIEIRA (co-anchor): We re going to begin with today on the trail of the Democrats squaring off in the crucial state of New Hampshire last night. NBC s chief White House correspondent David Gregory is in Hanover, New Hampshire, with the latest. David, good morning to you -- late night. GREGORY: It was a late night. Good morning, Meredith. Well, two hours on the debate stage, pronounced differences between the candidates on the issues and a single strategy: knock Hillary Clinton off her stride. [begin video clip] GREGORY: A crowded Democratic field sharing a stage and battleground -- New Hampshire -- but a key moment in the debate pitted Clinton against Clinton. The former president once suggested it would be appropriate to torture a suspect to prevent a terror attack against the U.S. Mrs. Clinton disagreed. RUSSERT: So, he disagrees with you? CLINTON: Well, he s not standing here right now. RUSSERT: So there is a disagreement? CLINTON: Well, I ll talk to him later. GREGORY: Senator Clinton spent much of the night fending off her rivals. On Iraq, John Edwards said he would immediately withdraw at least 40,000 combat troops, while Senator Clinton, he argued, would prolong the war. EDWARDS: There are, however, differences between us, and those differences need to be made aware. Good people have differences about this issue, and I would not continue combat missions in Iraq. GREGORY: Clinton said the only combat mission she would support would be against Al Qaeda. But surprisingly, the top three contenders, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards would not promise a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces, even by the end of their first term. OBAMA: I think it would be irresponsible. We don t know what contingency will be out there.