Shocker: Hillary Lied About China Briefings

Here is another news snippet that has zipped by without much notice due to the flurry of news about Mr. Obama’s problems with Mr. Wright.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Clinton’s First-Lady Papers Touch on Diplomacy, Nafta

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
March 20, 2008; Page A6

The release of Hillary Clinton’s daily schedules as first lady back up a central claim of her presidential campaign: She had extensive exposure to foreign-policy matters during her eight years in the White House.

But the 11,000 pages put out by the National Archives yesterday do little to bolster her assertion that she was a central player, instead showing she may have had a front seat to history, but was often removed from the action.

Her campaign hopes the records — showing involvement in key policy issues such as health care — offer tangible proof that her experience makes her qualified to be president…

Sen. Clinton has made much of a September 1995 speech she delivered in Beijing, in an effort to show she is willing to get tough on China. She said in her book “Living History” that she was briefed by the State Department and the Secret Service in advance of that speech, and was even fed “intelligence information” during those discussions. The schedules don’t reflect such briefings, however…

And, indeed, here is the claim on page 363 of her ghostwritten autobiography, Living History:

Before leaving for China, I had received briefings from the State Department and Secret Service that included intelligence information as well as protocol and diplomatic issues. I had been cautioned to assume that everything I said or did would be tape-recorded, particularly in the hotel room.

Whether the newspaper’s arrival was a coincidence or an example of the Chinese government’s internal security, it led to some good laughs, and we realized that we’d all been unusually tense about being watched and recorded. From that point on, my staff regularly winked at the television screen and spoke into lamps, making loud requests for pizza, steak and milkshakes and hoping that our security handlers would deliver again. But after three days, only the newspaper had arrived at the door.

One of the ironies here is that Mrs. Clinton now claims that, unlike Mr. Obama, she doesn’t need briefings before facing foreign matters. Having been co-President for eight years.

But of course as we have previously pointed out, just about everything Mrs. Clinton has claimed about her China speech, like most of her other foreign policy triumphs, has been a tissue of lies.

The truly shocking thing is that some in the media are finally calling her on them.

Her chances for the Democrat nomination must be nil.