The Secret Life of Bill Clinton (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

These days, it seems like everyone's a Friend of Bill--Clinton's buddies from Arkansas are turning up in powerful White House positions faster than you can say "Whitewater." But make no mistake, British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is no F.O.B.: in the course of The Secret Life of Bill Clinton's 350-plus pages, he manages to connect the president to everything from 1997's Oklahoma City bombing to Arkansas's drug underworld to the mysterious death of White House aide and longtime Clinton friend Vince Foster, and, of course, to Paula Jones. According to Evans-Pritchard--who has reported for the London-based Spectator, Sunday Telegraph (where he served as Washington bureau chief), and Daily Telegraph newspapers--Clinton's "original sin" was the Waco incident, the FBI's much-criticized assault on the Branch Davidian community in Texas that led to the deaths of 76 people. From that point on, the author asserts, it was all downhill for the American people.

Evans-Pritchard's exposé of Arkansas's favorite son is indeed scathing: he documents the then-governor's drug use and consort with prostitutes (primarily in the company of ne'er-do-well brother Roger); innumerable lies to friends, staff members, and the people who empowered him; numerous infidelities; blackmail--the list goes on and on. Evans-Pritchard claims that, because he is not an American citizen, he is not "beholden to any political or financial interest in the United States," and he does not "hang on lips of official sources," nor does he "fear the loss of access in Washington, or the blackball of [his] profession"; in other words, he ain't afraid to call 'em like he sees 'em. And although many of his seemingly wild claims and accusations are substantiated by thorough notes and appendixes following the text (including copies of original FBI documents), you're never quite convinced of the author's theories. Whether or not you come to believe, as Evans-Pritchard does, that "Arkansas was a mini-Colombia within the United States, infested by narco-corruption"; that--because of William Jefferson Clinton--"you can sniff the pungent odors of decay in the American body politic"; that the president's "actions and character ... have engendered the most deadly terrorist movement in the industrialized world," you will most certainly be entertained and enlightened by the dirt this British muckraker has uncovered. You may not be an F.O.B., but after reading this book, you may not mind so much.

Product Description

An illustrious investigative reporter adds shocking new and exclusive revelations to his swelling bag of Clinton scandals.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.; illustrated edition edition (November 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895264080
• ISBN-13: 978-0895264084
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #224,875 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #21 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( C ) > Clinton, Bill
  #29 in	Books > History > United States > State & Local > Oklahoma

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Chilling Expose on the GANGSTERS Running America, December 26, 1999

By	Willa (USA) - See all my reviews

This book was published several years ago. I finally picked it up and started reading it a few days ago. I already suspected this was the most corrupt administration in my lifetime, but seeing it all in print, fact after fact after fact, using the FBI's own documents, witness interviews in which the author showed each witness the FBI written reports on their comments and the witnesses were stunned that their comments were so baldly misrepresented, misspelled names, I'm left with the only conclusion possible: The people running this country are hopelessly compromised.

The book, even these many years are the initial publication, is "unputdownable." Even if you've been following the corruption in this administration since its inception, this book will still blow your mind. Highly recommended!

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinarily Important Book - All Citizens Should Read, January 24, 1999

By A Customer

This could be one of the most important books you ever read. The Secret Life of Bill Clinton is essential to understanding the serious corruption that has infested our government under Bill Clinton. Most significantly, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's exposure of the existence and workings of the murderous Arkansas mafia from which Bill Clinton hatched is something every American should understand - particularly that Clinton brought elements of it with him right into the White House. Drug-trafficker Dan Lasater's chief lieutenant Patsy Thomasson, for example, is Clinton's Director of the White House Office of Administration. In no other book are the ugly facts and sinister associations laid with such stark clarity.

Evans-Pritchard writes with a clear and graceful style, laced with doses of dry English wit. Reviewing the fishy crime scene evidence relating to the gun found in Vincent Foster's hand, for example, he observes: "The revolver...had not found its final resting place. The crime scene photos show it hopping about in a most animated way in Foster's hand."

As a result of Evans-Pritchard being one of the small handful of journalists who actually investigated the death of Vincent Foster and certain other Clinton-related matters, he developed contacts and relationships with key witnesses and others that provide his his book with devestating factual revelations that cannot be found elsewhere.

For example, the first person known to have seen Vincent Foster's body in Fort Marcy Park, officially known as the "Confidential Witness" is absolutely certain that at the time he saw the body there was no gun. He tells Evans-Pritchard: "The whole thing stinks, he clearly didn't shoot himself there. You can't shoot yourself without a gun. The man had no gun. End of story."

Another example: Jerry Parks was a Little Rock private investigator with long-standing ties to Vincent Foster, as well as having been head of security for the 1992 Clinton-Gore headquarters in Little Rock. He had a file on Clinton extra-marital affairs that Foster had hired him to compile several years earlier. He was murdered gangland-style two months after the Foster death and the files were stolen. Evans-Pritchard, over a several-year period, was able to get Parks' widow and son to open up to him and provide extraordinary revelations tying his murder to the White House.

Evans-Pritchard, an Englishman, has an obvious affection for this country and an admiration for the finer qualities of the American character. His protagonists are the ordinary people who fight the abuses of power and corruption from their little corner. "It makes me feel almost proud to witness such defiance," he says. I was moved by his seeing the virtue in our country and its people while in the midst of exposing the putrid evil and corruption that few seem to realize even exists.

I wonder what motivated the man, a Brit on temporary assignment in the U.S., to perform the tremendous service to this country that I believe he has. I don't know, but I suspect it is a highly developed sense of justice and a properly aroused moral indignation. He came to the U.S. at the end of 1992 as an admirer of Bill and Hillary Clinton, but over time came to realize they were very different from their packaging. He explains "Sending people to prison on false charges - or trying to do so - is his [Clinton's] specialty, which is the chief reason I have come to revile the man." Of course, if you only get your information from the mainstream media, you wouldn't have any idea of what he is talking about - which is all the more reason to read this book.

Evans-Pritchard wrote a farewell article when he left America to return to England, the subtitle of which was "Rouse and Guard Your Liberties." The warning is apt, but you will have to read the book to understand why.

31 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A year and a half later..., November 27, 1999

By	kevin nantes (Boston MA) - See all my reviews

This book stands the test of time. It also stands as an indictment of American Journalism. The mendacity and outright propagandizing of the major media in America should alarm even the most fervent liberal/democrat/socialist. Christopher Hitchens, a most liberal of liberal authors, decries the loss of the once lofty liberal mission-to speak truth to power. For his pains he was excoriated and thrown into the outer darkness by his so-called colleagues. His crime? Like Ambrose, he spoke truth to power.

I would like to issue a challenge to the left wing in America. Find among you even one penitent in your pantheon of liberal commentators. One honest man or women who would retract their unabashed support of the nightmare of Stalins USSR-recall Lincoln Steffens rhapsodizing upon returning from the slave labor camps along the White Sea canal? I have been to the future and it works... Well, perhaps not?

The left will never quite get it. Clinton is a totalitarian thug. His nature is to be despotic. His natural desire is to rule-not to govern justly with the consent of the governed.

His temper, his horrible, cold, vengeful fulminations against his enemies (as well as "friends") far surpasse any excesses of Richard Nixon. Yet the press continues to meekly lick his hands. Stalin once plucked a live chicken bare of it's feathers in front of his inner circle to demonstrate how people will fawn to a dictator no matter how they are ill-treated. The chicken huddled at Stalins feet and shivered, begging for food.

Clinton is a monstrously evil, unbridled, unfeeling, and uncaring charlatan. As is his wife. All the sex scandals ever really exposed was the low baseness and contempt in which Clinton holds his friends, family and each of us.

Will he ever leave? Will the rot he has caused ever heal? I think not. The future holds the fruit of his labours. "Transfer-the end of the beginning", by Jerry Furland, gives us a hard edged look into what the modern politician and the emerging statist, utopian, society-married with technology will produce. It is a vision Clinton would love to see come to pass-as long as he gets to live at the top of pile.