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Author Stretched The Truth Former Fbi Agent Admits Flaws In White House Book

Washington Post

Gary W. Aldrich, the former FBI agent whose book about the White House has sparked a furor, Sunday backed away from his charge that President Clinton made secret late-night visits to a Washington hotel, saying only that the visits were no more than a “possibility.”

As the White House continued to denounce Aldrich as a liar, David Brock, a conservative reporter for the American Spectator, said that he was unwittingly the source for the allegation - and that he was merely repeating a “rumor” to Aldrich.

“This was not from anyone in a position to know,” Brock said in an interview. “I was just astounded this would be attributed to me.”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley,” Aldrich, who had been assigned to the White House, strongly defended his book “Unlimited Access.” “Ninety-eight percent of the book is my personal observations and interviews of people … at the White House,” he said. Under questioning, however, he was unable to substantiate several key allegations.

Aldrich, while not confirming or denying Brock’s role, called Brock’s comments “very bizarre.” He said he had talked to “many sources” about Clinton’s supposed clandestine visits to the Marriott Hotel without Secret Service protection.

But Aldrich backtracked further in an interview for today’s edition of Newsweek. “These are only allegations that need to be further investigated,” he said.

White House senior adviser George Stephanopoulos said on the ABC program that “someone should have to pass a bare threshold of credibility before they’re put on the air to millions of viewers.” He said the Brinkley panel did “a more than adequate job of destroying his credibility.”

Stephanopoulos has put pressure on the television networks not to give Aldrich a forum, and the campaign seemed to be bearing fruit Sunday. Both CNN’s “Larry King Live” and NBC’s “Dateline” canceled plans to interview Aldrich, although executives at both shows said they had not talked to the White House.

Neal Shapiro, executive producer of “Dateline,” said he decided after watching Aldrich Sunday that “it was all second- and third-party hearsay, not anything he could document. I felt that’s not someone who deserves network airtime.”

By day’s end, Brock, who is writing his own book about the Clintons, had dealt a major blow to Aldrich’s credibility. He is not named in the book, but Aldrich writes that his source is “a highly educated, welltrained, experienced investigator who is conducting his own investigation into the Clintons.”

Brock said Sunday he had lunch with Aldrich several times last year. He said he casually mentioned that “a friend of mine knew somebody on the Hill who knew somebody who supposedly worked in the Marriott downtown and had told him that Clinton appeared at the hotel fairly regularly and took a room.”

Brock said he passed on a separate piece of “gossip” that White House aide Bruce Lindsey sometimes took the president out of the White House at night. Aldrich’s book says the president’s driver on the purported Marriott visits “is believed to be Bruce Lindsey,” with Clinton hiding under a blanket in the back seat.

“He didn’t even get the gossip right,” Brock said.

Aldrich also wrote that several Clinton staffers were observed having homosexual relations in offices and showers at the White House.

He drew criticism Sunday for describing a conversation with Craig Livingstone, the former White House director of personnel security, after the 1993 suicide of deputy counsel Vincent Foster. He said Livingstone told him Foster was worried rumors might surface that he was having an affair with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

On “This Week,” however, Aldrich said Livingstone “didn’t tell me that Foster told him this,” but simply passed it on “as if it was common knowledge.”

“So you don’t know that story is true,” ABC’s Sam Donaldson said.

“No, of course not,” Aldrich said.

One lingering mystery that Stephanopoulos addressed is the question of who hired Livingstone, the man who improperly obtained hundreds of FBI files. He said Foster had hired Livingstone on a temporary basis.

In his book, Aldrich said that Kennedy told him he was hiring Livingstone because “Hillary (Clinton) wants him.” In a statement Sunday, Kennedy denied the conversation took place.