Blockbuster book due out Monday paints Clinton as a shrewish, paranoid ‘Bridezilla’ monster who verbally abused Secret Service at every turn

A blockbuster book set for release on Monday paints Hillary Clinton as a shrewish and paranoid monster during her time as America’s first lady – so mercurial and antagonistic that some U.S. Secret Service personnel protecting her ‘literally went mad’.

‘Many turned to alcohol, drugs, performance enhancers, affairs (sometimes at the workplace), and even prostitutes and other dangerous habits,’ Gary Byrne writes in the forthcoming memoir Crisis of Character.

And perhaps most ominously for the agency tasked with the safety of the White House and its occupants, he writes that ‘a “f*** it” mentality trickled down’ throughout the Service because of Hillary’s carelessness with safety and security. ‘Mrs. Clinton was a joke,’ writes Byrne, a former uniformed Secret Service officer who was stationed in the West Wing of the White House for several years during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. ‘She was a faux leader, all bark, no bite, but in a very real power position as First Lady.’


Comment: Apparently that cavalier attitude hasn’t changed at all.

Killary’s private server – a massive security headache meant to dodge FOIA requests

Daily Mail Online has obtained a copy of Byrne’s book in advance of publication. It paints a picture of Hillary’s paranoia about the agents and officers protecting her and her family, describing how it bled through in shouting matches between her and President Bill Clinton.

Byrne writes that strict security protocols dating from long before Hillary arrived in Washington cramped her style.

    

On one occasion when a gay-rights delegation led by Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank – the second openly gay member of Congress – visited the White House, Hillary’s own White House Social Office circulated a memo titled ‘HIV positive’. When Secret Service officers donned protective gloves to search and screen their briefcases, part of their standard operating procedure to protect against sharp objects, newspapers misinterpreted it as a homophobic slight. The first lady was furious – at Byrne and other Secret Service Uniformed Division officers, not at the press corps that made something out of nothing.

‘They f***ed us, Bill!’ Hillary yelled at the president, in his retelling. ‘We need to get rid of these a**holes, Bill! They’ve had it out for us from the beginning!’

Byrne recalls a rookie officer telling his superiors that Hillary had cursed him out. ‘Hey, you’ll never believe it,’ he said, ‘but I passed the First Lady, and she told me to go to hell!’ Another young officer added his own horror story: ‘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”.’

    

Clinton’s caustic personality in and around the White House ‘adversely affected those entrusted with her safety,’ Byrne writes, adding that ‘her private leadership style was based on pure fear and loathing – and I never saw her turn that off.’ It was her habit, according to Byrne, to make everyone including uniformed officers ‘disappear’ whenever she walked down a hallway with the small group of Secret Service agents who maintained the primary protective ‘bubble’ around her. It was, he says, ‘as if the whole place were her personal Executive Mansion. It was insulting. People scurried as if in a giant game of hide-and-seek.

‘An agent traveling ahead of her would direct people to disappear, usually into a nearby closet or alcove.’

Even Hillary’s jogging routine became a source of stress for Secret Service agents who had to accompany her. She routinely ditched her protective detail, Byrne writes, leaving them to decide whether to incur her wrath by insisting she wait for them.

‘She was clearly fuming about something’ on one day when Byrne was stationed outside, on the south side of the White House, and saw her in running clothes, making a beeline to the gate.

Gary Byrne says he was posted outside Bill Clinton’s Oval Office in the 1990s and what he saw ‘sickened him’ He saw her protective detail chase after her in full panic mode.

‘I can’t forget the look on one of their faces – he was a big muscular guy still wearing his suit – as he looked at us, rolled his eyes, and flung his hands up in the air, as if to say “Here we go again!”, Byrne writes. ‘He sprinted across the lawn to catch up. A few more agents, still struggling to don jogging attire, followed his lead.’ ‘Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton neared an exit gate,’ he recalls. ‘The officer manning it agonized over what to do if she demanded that he open it. Or whether he should abandon his post and fall in behind her if he did!’

    

The book has already been on the receiving end of attacks from Clinton supporters, including Correct the Record, the political action committee run by David Brock, once a fierce critic of the couple when they were in the White House, who is now a backer. It issued a lengthy denunciation of the book in an email sent ‘from the desk of David Brock’ which accused Byrne of having ‘underlying motives’ and ‘recycling’ old material. However the attack did not suggest any of the material facts in the book were untrue.

Byrne editorializes in an ‘afterword’ to his book that the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state shouldn’t be entrusted with the Oval Office and all it entails.

She broke federal law with her homebrew email server that held classified materials, he argues. ‘To duplicate classified material without permission or to send it over an unsecured channel is completely illegal,’ he writes. ‘That’s why every government agency employs burn bags, safes, and special folders for anything marked Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.’

‘People have lost their careers and gone to jail for far less. yet Hillary Clinton transmitted classified material by the figurative ton. No one else can operate like that in government. But she takes her normal shortcuts and continues to lie about it.’

He frets that voters may have become numb to the woman he refers to as ‘the world’s biggest Bridezilla.’

‘I guess Americans stopped being shocked by the Clintons one blue dress ago. We all remember – or should remember – what a Clinton White House was like,’ he concludes. ‘If we board that time machine for a return trip – it’s our fault.’