The Clinton presidential library on Friday released almost 10,000 pages of never-before-seen documents that shed new light on the inner workings of the Clinton White House, from the salacious (Monica Lewinsky) to the political (Mike Huckabee hates Bill Clinton) to the comical (a future Supreme Court justice’s profane apology to her boss).
Here are the eleven most interesting revelations from the document dump, in no particular order:
Before she was a Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan “really f—ked up:” While working as a lawyer in the Clinton White House in 1996, Kagan apologized to him for not keeping him informed about a television segment on the Paula Jones lawsuit. “I realize now that I may·have really f–ked up in not mentioning to you,” Kagan wrote to then-White House Counsel Jack Quinn. “God, do I feel like an idiot.” Fortunately, her career seems to have survived. “Riding a roller coaster in a hurricane:” As Hillary Clinton’s health care reform task force was getting under way, its leader Ira Magaziner warned the Clintons it would not be easy. “The health care effort is going to be like riding a roller coaster in a hurricane,” he wrote in a memo to the first couple. “If we are well organized, persistent and ‘fight like hell’ every day for the next nine months, we will succeed.” A health care autopsy: The effort failed and Magaziner conducted an autopsy of sort in 1995, while providing extensive help to journalist David Broder on a book about the process. “I see the inside when I think of how disloyal some administration officials have been to you,” he wrote to Hillary Clinton, “and how hurtful they have been to me in their private discussions with the press.” In addition to disloyal officials and the press, Magaziner also said the delayed process was “fatal.” He added that the delay was not the task force’s fault, but the result of external events. Keeping the committee secret: The documents show the great lengths the administration went to keep the members of the health care task force and its proceedings secret. Top officials in various parts of the government strategized from the outset how to keep records private, and individual Freedom of Information Act Requests were elevated for discussion about senior White House lawyers. The administration was eventually sued to make the documents public, but a court sided with the White house. Two president-elects at once? In 2000, weeks after Election Day, with no clear winner, the White House asked the Department of Justice if it could start helping both Al Gore and George W. Bush in their transition efforts. Nope, the department ruled, “since there cannot be more than one ‘President-elect’ and one ‘’Vice-President-elect’ under the Act.” This post will be updated as more documents are reviewed.
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