The publisher is keeping a tight seal on the contents of a new tell-all book about the Clintons by their former Secret Service bodyguard — but Breitbart News has found clues in the former officer’s 1998 testimony during the Clinton-era investigations.
Gary Byrne, the Secret Service uniformed officer, was stationed at one of the most critical choke points in the Free World: E-6, the small desk just outside Oval Office.
“Posted directly outside President Clinton’s Oval Office, Former Secret Service uniformed officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton’s character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family,” according to the press release for “Crisis of Character,” due out June 28.
“We’re there all the time. I mean, we’re sort of like doorknobs,” Byrne said in his 1998 testimony to the Grand Jury investigating the president’s relationship with his intern-girlfriend, Monica Lewinsky. “I know that’s kind of a little hard to fathom, but I mean people have had incredible personal conversations in front of me,” Byrne told Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
Byrne and other officers at this desk were the ones Clinton would tell: “Miss Lewinsky will be a while, you can shut the door.”
When Lewinsky would ask to be admitted in the Oval Office, often she would tell the officer on duty that she had “some papers for the president.” Starr and his staff determined was Clinton-Lewinsky code for a sexual encounter.
Another character, who may play a big part in the book is Navy Chief Petty Officer Bayani “Nels” Nelvis, the West Wing steward. The retired steward’s Facebook page features a photo of the White House with a Secret Service badge and the admonition: “Remember who you are and what you represent.”
Nelvis and Byrne became friends and the chief would ask Byrne to help him reach items in the pantry on high shelves and share with him his workplace frustrations. It was to Byrne that Nelvis complained about lipstick-stained towels left strewn by the president and his consorts in the private study adjacent to the Oval Office.
Byrne told the grand jury that he told the steward to throw the towels away, instead of taking them to the laundry. Byrne said he was concerned the people would connect the towels to Clinton.
Byrne knew about Lewinsky, but he knew about others, too.
“My fear was that regardless of whose — if there was lipstick on there, regardless of whose it was, that when the people that did the laundry saw it, you know, I just didn’t want to give anybody any more fuel for any more rumors about the President,” he told the grand jury.
On one of her visits to president’s section of the West Wing during the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 1995, Lewinsky told Nelvis told that she had smoked her first cigar.
Nelvis told the president’s mistress that he would get her one of the White House cigars with the presidential seal on the band.
“Just then, the President came down the hallway from the Oval Office and saw Ms. Lewinsky. The President dispatched Mr. Nelvis to deliver something to Mr. Panetta.”
Three months later, March 31, 1996, while the First Lady was in Ireland, Clinton called Lewinsky at her desk and asked her to bring over some papers. Promptly, she grabbed a folder and was admitted into the Oval Office by Secret Service plainclothes agent.
Opening the folder, Lewinsky took out a Hugo Boss tie for her boss. Her boss then led her from the Oval Office into the hallway connecting the office to his private study.
Byrne’s publisher is making a promise, too. “Byrne exposes the truth behind Hillary, Bill, and their public facade,” the press release said.
The officer’s book is called a firsthand account of the scandals–known and unknown–and daily trials ranging from the minor to national in scale.
“Having witnessed the personal and political dysfunction of the Clinton White House–so consumed by scandal and destroying their enemies, real and imagined–Byrne came to understand that, to the Clintons, governing was an afterthought,” the release said.
“He now tells this story–before voters go to the polls–in the hopes that Clinton supporters will understand the real Hillary Clinton.”
OK. Let’s find out.
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