Bill Clinton in Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton

On Foreign Policy: 1994: “did not fully appreciate” Rwandan genocide

Hillary did not blame Bill for the inaction, but rather “the failure of the world, including my husband’s administration.” Bill later claimed that he and other world leaders “did not fully appreciate” what had been going on in Rwanda. In fact, his intelligence agencies and newspaper, radio, and TV journalist had made it all clear to the world. Hillary would have had to ignore the news for weeks, as well as the frantic pleas of human-rights activists and some members of Congress, not to know what was happening. There is no evidence she did anything substantial to help.

On Principles & Values: Met Hillary in 1970: impressed with strength, not appearance

Bill followed Hillary, fully intending to introduce himself. When he came within two feet of her, a force larger than himself stopped him. “It was almost a physical reaction. Somehow I knew that this wasn’t another tap on the shoulder, that I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.”

Bill and Hillary met near the end of their first year. They were inseparable that first week. Over the weekend, Hillary went to see a man she had been dating. Bill spent the weekend fretting. When she returned, he called her but she was sick. Bill brought her soup, and with that, neither was interested in anyone else.

On Principles & Values: Start of “20-Year Project”:Hillary managed Bill’s House race

In a letter to Bill, Hillary laid out some of the details. One of Bill’s ex-girlfriends accidentally stumbled upon the letter. “The note talked about all their future plans. political plans. the letter had everything to do with their careers, there was no talk of a home, family, and marriage.” Having glimpsed the missive Crider was not surprised to see Hillary running Bill’s first campaign for Congress. Hillary did everything. She wrote Bill’s speeches. She even sold sandwiches to raise money.

On Principles & Values: 1974:Turned down dairy money because it had strings attached

The operative asked Bill, “Do you want to win or do you want to lose?” Hillary said, “If we can’t earn it, we can’t go.” And that was that. On election night, Bill’s opponent won by 6,000 votes.

On Principles & Values: 1986: Attacked for Hillary working at Rose while First Lady

These arguments resonated. In the eyes of the voters, the relationship became a non-issue. But previously undisclosed law firm records show that Hillary didn’t ask the firm to segregate her share of the state business until two months after White’s unsuccessful attack. Hillary eventually rectified the situation by repaying her share of past state fees “in any year Bill served as Governor,” which she calculated at $12,235.83.

On Principles & Values: Expanding Whitewater to Lewinsky was a perjury trap

The deposition amounted to nothing less than an elaborate perjury trap designed to catch the president in an under-oath lie. The trap by Jones’s lawyers was intended to harm Bill politically and possibly drive him from the presidency.

Kenneth Starr sought permission to extend the Whitewater inquiry into Tripp’s allegations. The thinking was that the president’s alleged attempt to “buy” Lewinsky’s silence through a job in NY was tantamount to the same sort of obstruction of justice. By virtue of the wording of the independent-counsel statute, he was within his rights to follow nearly any lead. It was not surprising that Attorney General Janet Reno granted Starr’s request to investigate it.

On Principles & Values: “What the meaning of is, is” became symbol of hairsplitting

The prosecutor pointed to a passage in the Jones deposition when his lawyer had assured everyone that there is no sex of any kind in any manner, shape, or form between the president & Lewinsky. The prosecutor asked the president whether he agreed that this “was an utterly false statement.”

With a wan smile, the president said, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’... is. If ‘is’ means is, and never has been, that is one thing. If it means, there is none, that was a completely true statement.” The quotation came to symbolize Bill’s hairsplitting obfuscation, and infuriated the prosecutors.

On War & Peace: 1969: Navigated draft maze; never quite clear on deferment

Bill’s draft status burst onto the campaign stage in Feb. 1992, when the Wall Street Journal reported on his dealings with the university’s ROTC program. Soon afterward, ABC discovered a 1969 letter from Bill to Col. Eugene Holmes, head of the University of Arkansas ROTC, describing Bill’s opposition to the war and his gratitude for “saving me from the draft” with a deferment.

More than a decade later, Bill conceded it was a “misstatement” for him to have claimed, “I had never had a deferment.”

Bill’s campaign possessed including an “Order to Report for Induction”; an induction postponement; and a notice of cancellation on July 23, 1969, a few days after Bill agreed to join the ROTC program.