The fur is flying between the Clintons and their former top aide, George Stephanopoulos.
George is a turncoat, White House loyalists whisper. He's violated ancient protocol by penning a tell-all book -- "All Too Human" -- while the president remains in office. How can any future president solicit confidential advice without worry that the details will soon be told on Larry King, establishment types wonder? Hillary Clinton, reportedly, is especially mad at Stephanopoulos' betrayal.Our verdict: If there were ever two men who deserved each other, it's these two. And like practically every other Clinton misstep, the seeds of this betrayal were planted years ago and fertilized by Clinton's own insistence on winning at all costs.
For this isn't the first time that Stephanopoulos has cashed in on the Clinton presidency to the tune of seven figures. Today, we retell a story first revealed in this space more than four years ago -- yet curiously absent from this spare-no-details memoir.
Stephanopoulos was flying high in the summer of 1994 when he decided to ditch his old northwest Washington condominium in favor of a far more luxurious property, worth nearly $1 million, in a nicer neighborhood. At the time, Stephanopoulos was earning a little more than $100,000 per year, yet he managed to borrow $668,000 from NationsBank to complete the sale. Dozens of experts we spoke to said the loan smelled of special treatment.
"George made out like a bandit," said his proud real-estate agent, Georgio Furioso, at the time. Made out he did, at a time when NationsBank was in the forefront of a lobbying drive that would ultimately make it much easier for big banks to expand their operations across state borders. NationsBank's chairman, Hugh McColl Jr., was a contributor to and close ally of the president; we later learned the he was among those who sipped java at those infamous White House "coffees" that were used to raise money for Clinton's 1996 campaign.
We also wanted to know how Stephanopoulos secured a below-market interest rate for his new abode, especially since some banks might consider it risky to lend so much money to a man whose net worth at the time was relatively low. While things may have smelled funny to us, everyone involved insisted the deal was on the up-and-up.
"I can unequivocally state I never asked for any special treatment," Stephanopoulos insisted. The president's right-hand man said he'd never even met McColl, even though Clinton and McColl met regularly and once chatted late into the night at the executive mansion.
As we kept asking questions, Stephanopoulos' mellow demeanor changed dramatically. The man who now keeps his cool in media interviews bared his fangs in several profanity-laced tirades while we were reporting the story. "Write whatever the (expletive) you want!" he roared before hanging up the phone to end one conversation.
But we felt the story had to be told -- even if there was (and is) no evidence that Stephanopoulos actually solicited his sweetheart deal from NationsBank, or that McColl personally approved the loan. The appearance of favoritism was enough reason to forgo such a deal.
Stephanopoulos himself explains this particular problem in the first chapter of his book. He's describing the background check that all prospective White House employees must submit to before getting their security clearance. The background check was conducted, ironically, by future felon Webster Hubbell.
Several months after the loan was issued and our story ran, Clinton signed the interstate banking bill that McColl had been pushing -- and which paved the way for a massive expansion by NationsBank. "McColl wrote (the interstate banking) bill," Ken Guenther, executive vice president of the Independent Bankers Association of America, told our associate, Aaron Karp. "Between his connections with the White House and (members of Congress), everything was cleared with McColl."
Should anyone now feel sorry for Clinton that Stephanopoulos breached protocol by selling his intimate recollections for a big payday? We all are judged by the company we keep, and in Clinton's case the roster isn't pretty. Before George, there was Dick Morris, the toe-sucking consultant whose dalliance with a prostitute got him bounced from the 1996 campaign.
Or as Stephanopoulos himself said on Larry King, when asked why he didn't resign from the campaign in 1992 after suspecting that Clinton was lying about Gennifer Flowers: "To be honest, Larry, I wanted to win."
United Feature Syndicate Inc.