Press Tried to Cover Up Hill's 'Jew Bastard' Slur
NewsMax.com
Tuesday July 18, 2000; 8:09 PM EDT
Sources in Arkansas told mainstream reporters at least a year ago about Hillary Clinton's use of anti-Semitic language, but they and their editors decided to withhold the bombshell revelation from the American people.
"The State of a Union," a new book by former UPI reporter Jerry Oppenheimer on Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage, has forced new scrutiny of 26-year-old allegations that the first lady called former campaign aide Paul Fray a "F--king Jew Bastard."
But it turns out that Oppenheimer was far from the first reporter to get the story.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell admitted Monday night that Fray recounted the incident, complete with Hillary's anti-Semitic slur, during an interview for the network's "Dateline NBC" program in 1999. But NBC News editors decided to kill the report on the sensational allegation because the story lacked corroboration, Mitchell said.
The folks at NBC must not have tried too hard to substantiate Fray's account, since his wife, Mary Lee, was more than willing to corroborate the charge - as she has for dozens of reporters since the story resurfaced on Friday.
Vanity Fair writer Gail Sheehy, who has enjoyed special access to Mrs. Clinton over the years, did interview Mary Lee Fray for her book "Hillary's Choice." But Sheehy told Newsday that even though Mary Lee's account included Mrs. Clinton's vile slur, her husband made no mention of it in a separate interview.
Sheehy does not say that Mr. Fray denied the story - only that the subject did not come up. Apparently the author herself decided to avoid the topic, thereby ruling out any chance that a second source for Hillary's anti-Semitic shocker would compel publication.
Sheehy also took a pass on another story that lent credence to what Mary Lee Fray had told her.
One-time Clinton consultant Dick Morris gave the Vanity Fair writer an exclusive account of his now legendary story about Hillary's use of a Jewish stereotype during an argument she had with him. "Money - that's all you people care about is money," Morris said Hillary yelled after he asked for a pay raise in 1986.
Last November Morris went public with the story, noting that he'd told it to Sheehy for her then-upcoming Hillary biography. But when the book hit the stands in December, Morris' explosive report was nowhere to be found.
Apparently, even after hearing the key Clinton confidant's account of Mrs. Clinton's anti-Semitic remark, Ms. Sheehy made no connection to Mary Lee Fray's "Jew Bastard" story.
Now that the mainstream press has finally picked up on the Hillary shocker that she walked away from, Sheehy calls the charge "outrageously unfair."
But even with reporters going full throttle on the story, news editors have declined to acknowledge that the very first person to go public about Hillary's use of the term "Jew Bastard" was former Clinton bodyguard Larry Patterson.
The recently retired Arkansas state trooper also says he and his colleagues overheard the first lady using the "N" word on at least six occasions.
In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com last September, Patterson detailed Hillary's regular use of ethnic slurs well into the 1990s.
Ironically, though the media blackout on Patterson's far more damaging account continues in full force, "State of a Union" author Oppenheimer cites the former Clinton bodyguard's story as corroboration for Paul Fray's account in his book.
Hear Trooper Patterson's blockbuster interview with NewsMax.com's Christopher Ruddy in More Than Sex: The Secret Lives of Bill and Hillary Clinton.