Early in 1993, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, now the administration’s drug czar but then an assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was exiting the White House through the southwest gate. He encountered a Clinton staffer, young and female. “Good morning,” he said. “I don’t talk to the military,” she snapped.
McCaffrey told some colleagues about the incident, and soon it made its way into the press. Questioned about it after a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Clinton denounced reports of the snub as an “abject lie,” “made up out of whole cloth.” Those repeating the story “should be ashamed of themselves,” he declared. Later, though, the Washington Post confirmed the story, and Clinton jogged with McCaffrey, offered him a promotion, and generally made nice.
In Madhouse, a forthcoming book about the administration, Jeffrey Birnbaum reports that then-press secretary Dee Dee Myers “sought [McCaffrey] out and discussed the problem.” Moreover, “Myers also gave McCaffrey’s daughter a job in her offce over the summer,” “to help make amends.” “Both actions,” Birnbaum writes, “helped repair troubled relations between the White House and the Pentagon.”
As the administration now moves between hardcovers, the anti-military ugliness of the still-protected Clintonite has been amply confirmed (not only by Birnbaum, but also by Elizabeth Drew in her book on the White House) and is no “abject lie.”
Once again, when it comes to Bill Clinton’s defending himself and his administration, the first casualty appears to be the truth.
