Author Denies Recanting Claim Clinton Had Tryst

Author Gary Aldrich, who made national headlines by charging that President Clinton was slipping out for late-night trysts at the Marriott, has told an interviewer the charge was merely “hypothetical.”

That, at least, is what the New Yorker reports in its current issue.

Aldrich, a former FBI agent, denied it Monday and assailed reporter Jane Mayer for what he called “an absolute fabrication.”

“Maybe Gary Aldrich doesn’t know real reporting when he sees it,” Mayer shot back.

All this is just the latest skirmish over Aldrich’s book “Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the White House.”

Mayer’s article quotes Aldrich as saying the Marriott charge was “not quite solid” but that his publishers made him hype it. He said Regnery Publishing, moved the Marriott scenario from a “mock investigation” of the Clintons in the back of the book to an explosive charge in the text itself.

Regnery President Alfred Regnery fired off a statement, calling Mayer’s piece a “left-wing hatchet job by one of America’s foremost and unapologetically liberal reporters.”

“There is nothing wrong with the story,” Mayer replied.

“It is exactly, word for word, what he told me.”