Beltway Confidential
Bill Clinton's "sometimes questionable associations"
By jules on June 2, 2008 at 2:57 PM
Todd Purdum's illuminating piece about Bill Clinton in Vanity Fair (worth the cover price alone for that Angelina pic — aye yi yi!) drew a scary-crackers memo from the man himself today — calling it "gratuitous" and "baseless" and "tawdry" and OMG, tell us more!
"A tawdry, anonymous quote-filled attack piece, published in this month's Vanity Fair magazine regarding former President Bill Clinton repeats many past attacks on him, ignores much prior positive coverage, includes numerous errors, and ultimately breaks no new ground. It is, in short, journalism of personal destruction at its worst," reads a memo from the former president's office.
Todd Purdum, who is married to former Clinton press secretary DeeDee Myers, is a former New York Times White House correspondent. He was on CNN today with Wolf Blitzer, talking about the story and whether or not he thinks Bill Clinton is, well, cheating.
PURDUM: Well I'm very careful to say that there is no clear cut evidence that President Clinton has done anything improper. What I am careful to say, and what is the truth, is that this former senior aide was concerned enough that prominent Democrats around the country were complaining about hearing reports of this in their own backyard that he felt President Clinton should be made aware of it, and should know that it was out there in the slipstream (ph) in the water, so to speak, and that it could have an effect in the campaign season. That's all I say. I don't say anything more.
BLITZER: But does that rise up to the threshold required to make what obviously is a very serious insinuation that he's still cheating on Hillary Clinton?
PURDUM: Wolf, I don't make that insinuation. I don't make that insinuation in any place in the story, and I'm quite careful to say that I'm not.
What I'm saying is that some of his own aides are concerned about these reports. That's all I say. And I think the point here is I'm not quoting Ken Starr's operatives. I'm not quoting opposition researchers for Barack Obama. I'm not quoting Republican lawyers or private eyes.
I'm quoting people who work and used to work and still work for Bill Clinton. And these are their concerns, they're not my concerns, they're not anyone else's concerns…I'm very comfortable quoting the people I quote because I know who they are, and I know that they are very senior people who have known President Clinton for a very long time and work for him at very high levels.
Meanwhile, Vanity Fair is responding to Bill Clinton's memo about Todd Purdum's piece, and whoops — here's Bill Clinton's spokesman responding to the response to the memo reacting to the story.
Hello, beautiful