In an advance copy of the new book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown & Co.) obtained by Media Matters for America, co-authors Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. claim that former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), “in the earliest days of their romance,” “made a secret pact of ambition, one whose contours and importance to the two of them has remained their secret across all these years.”

According to the authors, the “pact” -- purportedly referred to by the Clintons as their “twenty-year project” -- initially consisted of “a political partnership with two staggering goals: revolutionize the Democratic Party and, at the same time, capture the presidency for Bill.” Gerth and Van Natta also claim that the alleged “pact” was expanded after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 to include “eight years as president for him, then eight years for” Hillary Clinton.

Gerth and Van Natta first refer to the “audacious pact” in the introduction of Her Way and return to it throughout the book -- alternately as the Clintons' “pact,” “their plan,” or “their twenty-year project.” Nonetheless, in criticizing a Washington Post article previewing Her Way and A Woman in Charge by Carl Bernstein, Van Natta took issue with the Post's “focus on the notion of a two-decade Clinton 'plan.' ” In a May 25 report for Politico.com, updated May 27, senior political writer Ben Smith wrote that “Van Natta denied that the supposed '20-year plan' was the book's central premise.”

Additionally, according to a May 30 weblog post by Smith on Politico.com, Van Natta wrote to Smith: "[T]he Clinton people should wait until the book comes out before they nitpick everything from our alleged 'main premise' to footnotes." (In a May 25 web posting on her official presidential campaign website, Clinton research director Judd Legum referred to the so-called “plan” as “the book's central premise.”) Van Natta's email came in response to an email from Clinton staffer Dana Singiser to the publishers of Her Way asking for a retraction in the endnotes, in which Singiser is cited as having been interviewed for the book. Singiser claimed she did not* have “any contact, directly or indirectly, with either author or their representatives.” In his email to Smith, Van Natta acknowledged that he and Gerth did not interview Singiser and claimed that the error would be fixed in the final version of the book.

Media Matters found no examples of the phrases “secret pact of ambition” or “audacious pact” attributed to any source. These phrases are the characterization of Gerth and Van Natta alone. The authors refer to a “plan,” “pact,” or “project” more than 20 times in Her Way.

In the prologue of Her Way, Gerth and Van Natta write:

More than three decades ago, in the earliest days of their romance, Bill and Hillary struck a plan, one that would become both the foundation and the engine of their relationship. They agreed to work together to revolutionize the Democratic Party and ultimately make the White House their home.¹⁴ Once their “twenty-year project” was realized, with Bill's victory in 1992, their plan became even more ambitious: eight years as president for him, then eight years for her.¹⁵ Their audacious pact has remained a secret until now.

While their plan was hatched together, Hillary had her own ideas about what it would take to achieve victory. She concluded that if she had any chance of winning the ultimate prize of her life, she would need to pursue it her way. That meant, among other things, carefully crafting a persona and a narrative to present to the American public that knew both so much and so little about her. [Page 9]

Associated endnotes:

14. Interviews with Leon Panetta and former Clinton administration official in 2006.

15. Author interviews with Ann Crittenden and John Henry in 2007.

The sourcing for the first version of the Clintons' so-called “twenty-year project” -- to “revolutionize the Democratic Party and ultimately make the White House their home” -- is detailed on Page 143. The authors describe a 1996 exchange between then-White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and then-President Clinton in which Panetta is quoted as saying the Clintons' “twenty-year project” " 'had begun in Arkansas with the goal of establishing a long-term change in where the Democratic Party was heading' and 'included capturing the presidency.' " The endnotes for this exchange cite both Panetta and an anonymous “former Clinton administration official.” From Her Way:

One evening in the fall of 1996, during a game of hearts aboard Air Force One, the president was asked by Leon Panetta, his chief of staff, why he had put up with Morris all these years. The president, trying to unwind after a grueling day on the campaign trail, was “taken aback” by the question.⁶⁴ He paused a moment to think and then told Panetta that in politics “you need to hear from the dark side, and Morris represented that.” In other words, Panetta later explained, “in order to win they needed to have someone like Morris to guide them, to understand the Gingriches of the world.”⁶⁵ And Morris was part of that larger strategic plan, conceived, Bill said, by Hillary and him more than two decades ago, their “twenty-year project.” The project, Panetta went on, “had begun in Arkansas with the goal of establishing a long-term change in where the Democratic Party was heading” and “included capturing the presidency.”⁶⁶ Victory was the aim, and poll-driven policies were the means. [Page 143]

Associated endnotes:

64. Author interview with former Clinton administration official in 1996.

65. Author interview with Leon Panetta in 2006.

66. Ibid., and author interview with former Clinton administration official in 2006.

As of May 30, Panetta had neither confirmed nor denied the statements attributed to him by Gerth and Van Natta.

Gerth and Van Natta also write that according to Marla Crider, "[o]ne of Bill's ex-girlfriends," "[i]n a personal letter she wrote to Bill sometime before she arrived in Arkansas for good, Hillary laid out some of the details" of the “twenty-year project.” Gerth and Van Natta acknowledged in an endnote that Crider's account first appeared in former National Enquirer reporter Jerry Oppenheimer's book State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton (HarperCollins, 2000), but that Crider said that account “was not totally accurate.” Gerth and Van Natta never quote Crider herself saying that she saw evidence of a “twenty-year project” or of a “plan” -- singular -- only that the note she saw “talked about all of their future plans ... political plans.” From Her Way:

Though still unwed, Hillary and Bill had already made a secret pact of ambition, one whose contours and importance to the two of them has remained their secret across all these years. They agreed to embark on a political partnership with two staggering goals: revolutionize the Democratic Party and, at the same time, capture the presidency for Bill. They called it their “twenty-year project,” an auspicious timetable for two young people in their mid-twenties. And they agreed that the only way they would be able to achieve these goals was to do whatever it took to win elections and defeat their opponents. Bill would be the project's public face, of course. And Hillary would serve as the enterprise's behind-the-scenes manager and enforcer. ⁵²

In a personal letter she wrote to Bill sometime before she arrived in Arkansas for good, Hillary laid out some of the details. One of Bill's ex-girlfriends, Marla** Crider, accidentally stumbled upon Hillary's letter sitting atop Bill's desk, in his house in Fayetteville. As Marla Crider scanned the words, she was stunned by what she was reading. This was hardly the usual love letter. It was all about their mutual ambition, a game plan for reaching their shared calling.

“The note talked about all of their future plans ... political plans; that is the best way to put it,” Crider said. The letter “had everything to do with their careers,” and Crider found it “so unusual that there was no talk of a home, family and marriage.”⁵³ Having glimpsed the missive, Crider had not at all been surprised to see Hillary running Bill's first campaign for Congress.⁵⁴ [Page 54-55]

Associated endnotes:

52. Author interviews with Leon Panetta and former Clinton administration official in 2006.

53. Author interview with Marla Crider in 2006. Crider's account was first mentioned in Jerry Oppenheimer, State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). Crider says Oppenheimer's account “was not totally accurate.”

54. Ibid.

In State of a Union, Oppenheimer wrote:

It was sometime later that Marla went to Bill's house and found the letter from Hillary open on his desk. The letter that talked about “the plans we've made, the goal we've set”; the letter insisted his feelings for her, Marla, would pass -- “let me remind you it always does.” She stood over it a long time, confused, unsure. What, exactly, was going on here? [Page 130]

The source of Gerth and Van Natta's additional assertion that the purported “twenty-year project” was expanded to include “eight years as president for him, then eight years for her” is a disputed secondhand account by former New York Times reporter Ann Crittenden and her husband, John Henry, of a conversation they purportedly had with historian Taylor Branch. In the conversation, as described by Crittenden and Henry, Branch allegedly recounted to Crittenden and Henry a conversation he had with then-President Bill Clinton in 1993 in which Clinton said both Clintons planned to become president.

In Her Way, Gerth and Van Natta write:

By the summer of 1993, the ways of Washington, sometimes called Potomac fever, had not dissuaded Bill or Hillary. According to one of their closest friends, Taylor Branch, they still planned two terms in the White House for Bill and, later, two for Hillary.

Branch described the plan to two Washington friends, John Henry and Ann Crittenden, over a barbeque dinner at a rodeo in Aspen, Colorado, that summer.⁷¹ The president would frequently talk with Branch, a well-respected historian and author, about his place in history, and shortly after he was elected president, Branch said, Bill asked him to begin recording “diary sessions”⁷² as part of an oral-history project.

Branch had just come from one of those sessions, a marathon late-night chat with Bill at the White House, where the two men had talked as they stood on the back balcony, looking toward the Washington Monument. Now in the cool mountains of Colorado, Branch told his friends about the Clintons' presidential plans. The bold goal of sixteen years in the White House took Henry's breath away. “I was shocked,”⁷³ he said. [Pages 128-129]

Associated endnotes:

71. Author interviews with John Henry and Ann Crittenden in 2007. Branch, in an interview with one of the authors in 2007, said, “I don't remember” the conversation but “I'm not denying it.” He acknowledged that he knows Henry and Crittenden and that he has been to Aspen many times. But Branch declined to discuss Hillary or Bill, saying it was “stupid” to do so in light of the fact that he was doing his own book on Bill's presidency.

72. Julie Bosman, “Historian Plans Book from Chats with Clinton,” New York Times, March 22, 2007, El; author interview with Taylor Branch in 2007. Bill Clinton, in his autobiography, says the oral history project began in late 1993. (Clinton, My Life, ii.)

73. Author interview with John Henry in 2007.

In addition to Branch's statement in the endnotes that he “do[es]n't remember” the conversation with Crittenden and Henry, The Washington Post also contacted Branch for a comment about the Crittenden-Henry account for the May 25 news report on Her Way. According to the Post report, “Branch said that 'the story is preposterous' and that 'I never heard either Clinton talk about a 'plan' for them both to become president.'”

Additionally, in a May 29 post for TPMCafe.com, blogger and media critic Greg Sargent noted that according to Bernstein's A Woman In Charge, Hillary Clinton “repeatedly” told confidante Diane Blair that aside from briefly considering a run for Arkansas governor in 1990, “she had no interest in elected office” until 1999, when she expressed interest in running for the U.S. Senate. As Sargent noted, Blair's comments to Bernstein appear to contradict the allegation in Her Way that the Clintons, in Sargent's words, “were already plotting two terms for her in the White House.” [Sargent's emphasis.]

Bernstein's account also appears to undermine the suggestion by Gerth and Van Natta that Hillary Clinton had specific Senate and presidential ambitions by “early 1998,” which determined her handling of the Monica Lewinsky matter. Gerth and Van Natta write:

Privately, Hillary was hopeful that “people might start to understand” the argument that she had been making for years: She believed that the prosecutors were attempting to undermine the office of the presidency and her husband's agenda through an abuse of their power.³² Omitted from her account was an acknowledgment of the peril endangering her own political career. Her friend and adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, observed, “For her, the stakes were greater than for anyone. They encompassed not only everything she had worked on politically for a lifetime, but her marriage. She had to defend both.”³³

A political future was by no means a vague hypothetical. She was nearly certain by early 1998 that she was going to seek a Senate seat, possibly in New York. And this scandal, it appeared in those early days, directly threatened that prospect. More immediately, the Clintons' reported plan for eight years for him in the White House, followed by eight years for her, was now in peril. Hillary was just furious that such a stupid, sad mistake on her husband's part now endangered all their plans -- no, all her plans.³⁴ [Page 177]

Associated endnotes:

32. Clinton, Living History, 442.

33. Blumenthal, The Clinton Wars, 339

34. Author interviews with two Hillary friends and a former Clinton administration official in 1998, 2006, and 2007.

So, Gerth and Van Natta build the case for what they describe as “a secret pact of ambition, one whose contours and importance to the two of them has remained their secret across all these years” using this information:

• Panetta's statement that the Clintons' “twenty-year project” “had begun in Arkansas with the goal of establishing a long-term change in where the Democratic Party was heading” and “included capturing the presidency” -- which was also attributed to an interview with an anonymous “former Clinton administration official.”

• The statement by "[o]ne of Bill's ex-girlfriends" that she had seen a letter “about all of their [the Clintons'] future plans ... political plans.”

• The disputed secondhand account about the Clintons purportedly updating their “twenty-year project” in 1993 to include Hillary Clinton becoming president.

Based on these three accounts, Gerth and Van Natta refer to the Clintons' “secret pact of ambition” throughout Her Way. Those references include:

Page 9:

More than three decades ago, in the earliest days of their romance, Bill and Hillary struck a plan, one that would become both the foundation and the engine of their relationship. They agreed to work together to revolutionize the Democratic Party and ultimately make the White House their home. Once their “twenty-year project” was realized, with Bill's victory in 1992, their plan became even more ambitious: eight years as president for him, then eight years for her. Their audacious pact has remained a secret until now.

While their plan was hatched together, Hillary had her own ideas about what it would take to achieve victory. She concluded that if she had any chance of winning the ultimate prize of her life, she would need to pursue it her way. That meant, among other things, carefully crafting a persona and a narrative to present to the American public that knew both so much and so little about her.

Pages 53-54:

Though still unwed, Hillary and Bill had already made a secret pact of ambition, one whose contours and importance to the two of them has remained their secret across all these years. They agreed to embark on a political partnership with two staggering goals: revolutionize the Democratic Party and, at the same time, capture the presidency for Bill. They called it their “twenty-year project,” an auspicious timetable for two young people in their mid-twenties. And they agreed that the only way they would be able to achieve these goals was to do whatever it took to win elections and defeat their opponents. Bill would be the project's public face, of course. And Hillary would serve as the enterprise's behind-the-scenes manager and enforcer.

In a personal letter she wrote to Bill sometime before she arrived in Arkansas for good, Hillary laid out some of the details. One of Bill's ex-girlfriends, Marla Crider, accidentally stumbled upon Hillary's letter sitting atop Bill's desk, in his house in Fayetteville. As Marla Crider scanned the words, she was stunned by what she was reading. This was hardly the usual love letter. It was all about their mutual ambition, a game plan for reaching their shared calling.

“The note talked about all of their future plans ... political plans; that is the best way to put it,” Crider said. The letter “had everything to do with their careers,” and Crider found it “so unusual that there was no talk of a home, family and marriage.”⁵³ Having glimpsed the missive, Crider had not at all been surprised to see Hillary running Bill's first campaign for Congress.⁵⁴

Pages 56-57:

THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER 1976 was a milestone for Bill and Hillary's twenty-year project. A Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter demonstrated that Democrats could take back the White House, after eight long years. More to the point, Carter proved to the Clintons that a little-known southern governor could win enough electoral votes to become president. Perhaps most important for the Clintons, after narrowly losing his first campaign for a House seat two years previous, Bill scored his first electoral victory in 1976, winning the race for attorney general of Arkansas.

Pages 67-68:

THE 1980 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION had been a heartbreaker for the Democratic Party. Ronald Reagan's defeat of President Jimmy Carter launched a twelve-year Republican reign in Washington. As if that outcome was not depressing enough for the Clintons, Bill had lost his reelection bid for governor that November, a humbling defeat that he would later describe as a near-death experience. Her husband's failure left the thirty-three-year-old Hillary in tears; Dorothy Rodham would tell a reporter in 1992 that it was the only time she saw her daughter cry as an adult. Bill's defeat must have seemed an unimaginable roadblock, one that neither he nor Hillary had envisioned when they set off on their twenty-year project. Hillary was shedding tears not only for Bill's future but for her future too.

Page 96:

Hillary had long ago made a pact of her own with Bill; no allegations of Bill's womanizing, accurate or not, would stand in the way of reaching their shared goal. And if she was OK with it, why should anyone else object?

Page 117:

ON INAUGURATION DAY, January 20, 1993, Bill and Hillary's “twenty-year project” was realized, right on schedule. Given the project's history, it was a certainty that Hillary would play a crucial, behind-the-scenes role in her husband's presidency. The question swirling around Washington was what formal role, if any, would she assume?

Page 124:

Hillary had long been a fighter who -- in the smaller Arkansas pond, at least -- had relished political combat and prevailed. And her steadfast devotion to her husband and their twenty-year project had certainly continued in large part because she and Bill were able to fend off attacks from their few antagonists in Arkansas and produce results. As long as she could do something good, she felt she could ignore her critics. Not surprisingly, Hillary's most ambitious goal -- her insistence that a health care bill be submitted to Congress within one hundred days -- turned out to be the most unrealistic one, rejected by Senator Byrd, a fellow Democrat. Perhaps it was merely because Hillary was no longer thinking like a cautious lawyer; she was now the client, and an exacting and demanding one at that. (In a number of travel office documents, White House aides referred to Hillary as “TC,” an acronym for “The Client.” Her former colleague Webb Hubbell described her as “a very demanding client indeed.”)

Pages 128-129:

By the summer of 1993, the ways of Washington, sometimes called Potomac fever, had not dissuaded Bill or Hillary. According to one of their closest friends, Taylor Branch, they still planned two terms in the White House for Bill and, later, two for Hillary.

Branch described the plan to two Washington friends, John Henry and Ann Crittenden, over a barbeque dinner at a rodeo in Aspen, Colorado, that summer. The president would frequently talk with Branch, a well-respected historian and author, about his place in history, and shortly after he was elected president, Branch said, Bill asked him to begin recording “diary sessions” as part of an oral-history project.

Branch had just come from one of those sessions, a marathon late-night chat with Bill at the White House, where the two men had talked as they stood on the back balcony, looking toward the Washington Monument. Now in the cool mountains of Colorado, Branch told his friends about the Clintons' presidential plans. The bold goal of sixteen years in the White House took Henry's breath away. “I was shocked,” he said.

Page 143:

One evening in the fall of 1996, during a game of hearts aboard Air Force One, the president was asked by Leon Panetta, his chief of staff, why he had put up with Morris all these years. The president, trying to unwind after a grueling day on the campaign trail, was “taken aback” by the question. He paused a moment to think and then told Panetta that in politics “you need to hear from the dark side, and Morris represented that.” In other words, Panetta later explained, “in order to win they needed to have someone like Morris to guide them, to understand the Gingriches of the world.” And Morris was part of that larger strategic plan, conceived, Bill said, by Hillary and him more than two decades ago, their “twenty-year project.” The project, Panetta went on, “had begun in Arkansas with the goal of establishing a long-term change in where the Democratic Party was heading” and “included capturing the presidency.” Victory was the aim, and poll-driven policies were the means.

Page 177:

A political future was by no means a vague hypothetical. She was nearly certain by early 1998 that she was going to seek a Senate seat, possibly in New York. And this [Monica Lewinsky] scandal, it appeared in those early days, directly threatened that prospect. More immediately, the Clintons' reported plan for eight years for him in the White House, followed by eight years for her, was now in peril. Hillary was just furious that such a stupid, sad mistake on her husband's part now endangered all their plans -- no, all her plans.

Around the world, reporters spoke of the risk to Bill Clinton's legacy. But the view from Hillaryland was simple: She had the most to lose.

Page 338:

THE SHOWDOWN OVER the legacy of 9/11 was as good an example as any of the unique complications of Hillary's campaign for president. As much as she had intended to go forward on her terms, she knew that her political future, like the twenty-year project she and Bill had forged three decades ago, would depend on her husband's assets and liabilities, for better or worse. If she could only have cherry-singled out Bill's great successes, the dependence might not have been so strong. But, of course, that was not possible.

Page 343:

A few days before the 1993 inauguration, Father Tim Healy, the former president of Georgetown University, died of a heart attack while typing a letter to Bill Clinton. The letter was posthumously sent to Bill.

Father Healy wrote of his hope that Bill's election would “force the spring.” Hillary was struck by the phrase, understanding it to mean that her husband's presidency would bring about a “flowering of new ideas, hope and energy that would reinvigorate the country.”²³

For Hillary, Healy's phrase was a fitting metaphor for her husband's ambitions -- and thus her own. Bill and Hillary Clinton had been connected personally and politically for two decades, and with his arrival in Washington, their twenty-year project had been realized.

Fourteen years later, it is Hillary's turn. She is the most viable female contender in American history for the nation's highest office. Her landmark campaign has inspired women of all generations, giving them hope that their time has come. Her election too would “force the spring.”