Sunday, April 20, 2003; 2:30 p.m. EDT
Steven Brill: Hillary Fabricated 9/11 Records
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton had her staff fabricate records of meetings and phone calls to families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to burnish her image as New York's leading politician on 9/11 issues, the author of a new book on how U.S. officials dealt with the aftermath of the attacks charged Sunday.
"I think [Sen. Clinton] has begun every statement she's ever made in her life about the families of the victims by saying she's met innumerable hours with the families of the victims," Steven Brill, author of the new book "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.
To support Mrs. Clinton's claims of 9/11 victim service for his book, Brill said her staff tried to persuade him that she worked overtime to help, providing "an elaborate story, with an elaborate subtext of memos and phone calls - a long, long story."
But, says the author, "None of it turned out to be true. ... They gave me documents and phone calls and things like that which just plain never happened."
Brill, who defended the Clintons throughout the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal, said that efforts to mislead him began after the former first lady got word he was writing his 9/11 book. She actually sought him out at the Ground Zero ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of the attacks. "I hear you want to talk to me about your book," he recalls her saying.
"We had this discussion which she insisted be off the record," Brill said. But he added, "She did follow up in one non-off-the-record conversation, urging me that the person responsible for aid to New York City was not [Sen.] Chuck Schumer but Hillary Clinton."
Brill said he was astonished that Clinton would go to such lengths to fabricate a phony record of 9/11 service "all in the cause, actually, of shooting down Chuck Schumer getting a bunch of pages in a book."
"It sort of takes your breath away when you think about it," he told Malzberg.
The author detailed the saga of one family in particular, the Cartiers, who lost a relative in the Twin Towers collapse.
"This family had tried repeatedly to get Hillary Clinton to meet with them," Brill said. "And always the staff said: 'Write up a memo. We don't meet with any families unless they write to us first and tell us what they want to meet about.'"
"They said to me, the Cartiers - and these are not, you know, people who are political - that the only time families can meet with Hillary Clinton is if it's at a press conference."
Meanwhile, said Brill, Sen. Schumer took time out on a Sunday to meet with the Cartiers - "no reporters, no cameras, no nothing."
The former publisher of "Brill's Content" magazine said that then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Schumer worked to give the Cartier family access to Ground Zero and to Fresh Kills, the Staten Island recovery site, so they could search for their relative's remains.
The former Clinton defender also cast doubt on the authenticity of an account offered by Chelsea Clinton, who told reporters after the attacks that she was so close to the Twin Towers collapse that she feared for her life.
"There are people on Schumer's staff who say that Chelsea kept moving south [toward Ground Zero] the more the press kept reporting that [Schumer's daughter Jessica] really was at Stuyvesant High School," just five blocks away from Ground Zero, he said.
Of Sen. Clinton's attempts to garner praise for helping 9/11 victims, Brill said, "What stunned me is that one person would try to steal away the credit from the other person, especially when everything I was hearing from the families is that Schumer" had helped far more.
Listen to WABC's Steve Malzberg, 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. ET weeknights, 9 a.m. to 12 noon ET on Sundays. To get Steve Malzberg's exclusive NewsMax.com column emailed directly to you, go to www.newsmax.com/malzberg.
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Steven Brill: Hillary Fabricated 9/11 Records
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton had her staff fabricate records of meetings and phone calls to families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to burnish her image as New York's leading politician on 9/11 issues, the author of a new book on how U.S. officials dealt with the aftermath of the attacks charged Sunday.
"I think [Sen. Clinton] has begun every statement she's ever made in her life about the families of the victims by saying she's met innumerable hours with the families of the victims," Steven Brill, author of the new book "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.
To support Mrs. Clinton's claims of 9/11 victim service for his book, Brill said her staff tried to persuade him that she worked overtime to help, providing "an elaborate story, with an elaborate subtext of memos and phone calls - a long, long story."
But, says the author, "None of it turned out to be true. ... They gave me documents and phone calls and things like that which just plain never happened."
Brill, who defended the Clintons throughout the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal, said that efforts to mislead him began after the former first lady got word he was writing his 9/11 book. She actually sought him out at the Ground Zero ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of the attacks. "I hear you want to talk to me about your book," he recalls her saying.
"We had this discussion which she insisted be off the record," Brill said. But he added, "She did follow up in one non-off-the-record conversation, urging me that the person responsible for aid to New York City was not [Sen.] Chuck Schumer but Hillary Clinton."
Brill said he was astonished that Clinton would go to such lengths to fabricate a phony record of 9/11 service "all in the cause, actually, of shooting down Chuck Schumer getting a bunch of pages in a book."
"It sort of takes your breath away when you think about it," he told Malzberg.
The author detailed the saga of one family in particular, the Cartiers, who lost a relative in the Twin Towers collapse.
"This family had tried repeatedly to get Hillary Clinton to meet with them," Brill said. "And always the staff said: 'Write up a memo. We don't meet with any families unless they write to us first and tell us what they want to meet about.'"
"They said to me, the Cartiers - and these are not, you know, people who are political - that the only time families can meet with Hillary Clinton is if it's at a press conference."
Meanwhile, said Brill, Sen. Schumer took time out on a Sunday to meet with the Cartiers - "no reporters, no cameras, no nothing."
The former publisher of "Brill's Content" magazine said that then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Schumer worked to give the Cartier family access to Ground Zero and to Fresh Kills, the Staten Island recovery site, so they could search for their relative's remains.
The former Clinton defender also cast doubt on the authenticity of an account offered by Chelsea Clinton, who told reporters after the attacks that she was so close to the Twin Towers collapse that she feared for her life.
"There are people on Schumer's staff who say that Chelsea kept moving south [toward Ground Zero] the more the press kept reporting that [Schumer's daughter Jessica] really was at Stuyvesant High School," just five blocks away from Ground Zero, he said.
Of Sen. Clinton's attempts to garner praise for helping 9/11 victims, Brill said, "What stunned me is that one person would try to steal away the credit from the other person, especially when everything I was hearing from the families is that Schumer" had helped far more.
Listen to WABC's Steve Malzberg, 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. ET weeknights, 9 a.m. to 12 noon ET on Sundays. To get Steve Malzberg's exclusive NewsMax.com column emailed directly to you, go to www.newsmax.com/malzberg.
Read more on this subject in related
