Hillary Clinton once threw a Bible at the back of a Secret Service agent’s head, part of a pattern of unhinged rage that the now-presumptive Democratic nominee exhibited, as exposed for the first time in former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne’s grueling insider account of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Byrne’s forthcoming book Crisis of Character—in which he details how the Clintons operated during his time in the U.S. Secret Service, where he protected the first couple for eight years in the White House in the 1990s. During three of those years, he was posted right outside the Oval Office. The book comes out next week.
“The First Lady had a different sort of liveliness,” Byrne writes in an excerpt obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. “She once threw a Bible at an agent on her detail, hitting him in the back of the head. He bluntly let her know it wasn’t acceptable. He told me that story himself.”
Byrne goes on to report that for Secret Service agents, being assigned to Hillary Clinton’s detail “was a form of punishment handed down by passive-aggressive middle management.”
This pattern of rage from Clinton was exhibited, Byrne wrote in another part of the book, on a regular basis the more “at home she felt in the White House,” as Hillary “vented on everyone” and “it got worse” as time went on.
“Most of us knew to brace for her inevitable eruptions,” Byrne wrote. “They didn’t happen every day, but behind closed doors we learned about them fast. In public, she was everyone’s best friend. Privately, she was her normal self.”
At one point, Hillary Clinton—Byrne wrote—even told a Secret Service agent to “Go f— yourself” after telling another to “Go to hell!” Byrne wrote:
One day, UD [Uniformed Division] officers met to review events at their respective postS. A bewildered new officer arrived. ‘Hey you’ll never believe it, but I passed the First lady and she told me to go to hell!’ A second young officer responded, ‘You think that’s bad? I passed her on the West Colonnade, and all I said was ‘Good morning, First Lady.’ She told me, ‘Go f— yourself.’ ‘Are you serious?’ ‘Go f— yourself!’ He imitated her, pointing a finger.
At first, the unit’s sergeant challenged the story “but another officer soon corroborated” it. “Our sergeant was speechless,” Byrne writes. “We assured the rookie that this wasn’t the job’s normal atmosphere—at least, not under the previous administration. The sergeant fumed and called the watch commander, who pushed things up the Secret Service chain of command, who said they’d forward it to Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.”
At that point, the Secret Service actually “circulated a memo reminding everyone to report any ‘unusual’ First Family interaction to their supervisors.”
“The new guy (who had earned a Purple Heart fighting the Clintons’ war in Somalia) got an apology for the First Lady’s actions—but not directly from her of course,” Byrne writes.
In another excerpt obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, Byrne recounts an episode in which Hillary Clinton—in a screaming, obscenity-laced tantrum wherein she referred to Secret Service agents as “assholes”—vented to Bill Clinton that she thought the Secret Service was out to get them. The book reads:
‘They f—ed us, Bill!’ Hillary screamed. I stifled a laugh. The president tried his best to calm her down. He couldn’t. Hillary Clinton possessed no perspective. ‘We need to get rid of these assholes, Bill!’ She thought she was being tough—in command—but the issue commanded her. She fumed that the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division, my branch, disloyal leftovers from Papa Bush, conspired against the administration. ‘They’ve had it out for us from the beginning!’ she kept yelling.
Byrne detailed how Hillary Clinton would introduce him to VIPs as “one of my favorite officers, Gary Byrne” while putting “her hand on my shoulder for good measure,” even though she really didn’t care about the Secret Service agents. “But we were like furniture to them,” he wrote of how the Clintons treated the Secret Service.
“Hillary’s antics made my job interesting,” Byrne wrote. “She’d explode in my face without reservation or decorum…”
Byrne even wrote, “on the whim” of Hillary Clinton’s “wrath,” that “careers were made or broken.”
The book is scheduled to hit stores a week from Tuesday, and has already shot to the top of Amazon sales since the Drudge Report featured it at the top of the highly popular news aggregation site last week.
“The secret project is causing deep concern inside of Clinton’s campaign, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT,” the Drudge Report wrote in an exclusive. “Specific details of the agent’s confessional are being held under tight embargo.”
Now, here for the first time, Breitbart News brings forth these key excerpts with more on the way. Clinton’s team has been looking for a way to undermine Byrne and his book but has not yet been able to find any. It will basically be impossible for them to discredit him, since so many people allied with the Clintons have praised him throughout his illustrious military and law enforcement career.
When sent key parts of these excerpts and asked to react on Monday evening, however, Hillary Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill has not yet responded to a request for comment from Breitbart News.
Byrne, who has had a 29-year career as a law enforcement professional, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1982. He became part of the Air Force Security Police, whose assignments sometimes included guarding Air Force One. He received the Good Conduct Medal, the Air Force Longevity Service Award Ribbon, the AF Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon, and more. He started as a uniformed U.S. Secret Service Officer stationed at the White House from July 1991, at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, until 1998—near the end of the Bill Clinton administration. He received awards and commendations regularly from his superiors, including a certificate of award from the Bill Clinton- appointed Secret Service Director. Clinton’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, in December 1995, praised Byrne for his “firm authority” and said that the United States of America is “fortunate to have” him “in such a position of responsibility protecting the President.”
“Your knowledge of the [Oval] office, the President, and the presidency is enviable,” Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff wrote in a note praising Byrne.
In March 1996, the U.S. Secret Service issued a letter of commendation on “the professionalism and knowledge displayed by Officer Byrne” and in 1995 he received an evaluation from his superiors who praised him as a “Mature and dependable employee who is an exceptionally well-informed member of West Wing detail” and who “consistently performs his duties in a highly efficient and conscientious manner.”
Byrne knew the Clintons so well he was even subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, as he had intimate details of the president’s sexual encounters with the young intern from his station right outside the Oval Office for three years.
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