The morning after our grand dinner, I met Princess Diana for the first time at the Drumhead Service, a traditional religious ceremony for “the Forces Committed,” the point at which troops cannot be pulled back from battle. The ceremony was held on the grounds of a Royal Navy base, on a field surrounded by gardens that extended along an oceanfront esplanade. Among the veterans and spectators was Diana, estranged, though not yet divorced, from Prince Charles. She attended the ceremony alone. I watched as she greeted the crowd of supporters, who clearly doted on her. She had a presence that was captivating. Uncommonly beautiful, she used her eyes to draw people in, dropping her head forward to greet you while lifting her eyes upward. She radiated life and a sense of vulnerability that I found heartbreaking. Although there was little time to talk during this visit, I came to know and like her. Diana was a woman torn between competing needs and interests, but she genuinely wanted to make a contribution, to have her life count for something. She became an effective advocate for AIDS awareness and land mine eradication.

  She was also a devoted mother, and whenever we met, we discussed the challenge of raising children in the public spotlight.

  Later that afternoon, we boarded the Britannia and sailed out into the English Channel, where we joined a long line of ships, including the Jeremiah O’Brien, one of the ships used by the U.S. government to ferry supplies to England during the war. We transferred to the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier anchored off the French coast.

  This was my first visit to a carrier, a floating city with a population of six thousand sailors and Marines. While Bill worked on the speech he would deliver the next day, I took a tour that included the flight deck, one of the most dangerous workstations in the Armed Forces. Imagine the courage and training it requires to take off and land a fighter jet on that bobbing patch of American real estate in the middle of the ocean. From the captain’s bridge high above the deck, I looked out over the enormous carrier and felt the power it represented. I ate dinner in the cafeteria-size galley with some of the crew members, most of whom looked about eighteen or nineteen years old. Fifty years earlier, young men their age had stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

  Although I had read Stephen Ambrose’s book D-Day, I was not prepared for the height of the cliffs that had to be scaled by Allied forces after they fought their way across the beaches on June 6, 1944. Pointedu-Hoc looked impenetrable, and I listened with reverence to the veterans who had made that climb.

  Bill’s relationship with the military had gotten off to a rocky start, so a lot was riding on his speech about D-Day. Like me, he had opposed the Vietnam War, believing that it was misconceived and unwinnable. Because of his work during college for Senator Fulbright with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the late 1960s, he knew then what we all know now: The United States government had misled the public about the depth of our involvement, the strength of our Vietnamese allies, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the success of our military strategy, casualty figures and other data that prolonged the conflict and cost more lives. Bill had tried to explain his deep misgivings about the war in a letter to the head of the University of Arkansas ROTC program in 1969. In deciding to withdraw from the program and submit to the draft lottery, he articulated the inner struggle so many young men felt about a country they loved and a war they couldn’t support.

  When I first met Bill, we talked incessantly about the Vietnam War, the draft and the contradictory obligations we felt as young Americans who loved our country but opposed that particular war. Both of us knew the anguish of those times―and each of us had friends who had enlisted, were drafted, resisted or became conscientious objectors. Four of Bill’s classmates from high school in Hot Springs were killed in Vietnam. I knew that Bill respected military service, that he would have served if he had been called and that he would also have gladly enlisted in World War II, a war whose purpose was crystal clear. But Vietnam tested the intellect and conscience of many in my generation because it seemed contrary to America’s national interests and values, not in furtherance of them.

  As the first modern President to have come of age during Vietnam, Bill carried with him into the White House the unresolved feelings of our country about that war. And he believed it was time to reconcile our differences as Americans and begin a new chapter of cooperation with our former enemy.

  With the support of many Vietnam veterans serving in Congress, Bill lifted a U.S.

  trade embargo on Vietnam in 1994 and a year later normalized diplomatic relations between our countries. The Vietnamese government continued to make good faith efforts to help locate American servicemen missing in action or held as prisoners of war, and, in 2000, Bill would become the first American president to set foot on Vietnamese soil since U.S. troops left in 1975. His courageous diplomatic actions paid tribute to more than 58,000 Americans who sacrificed their lives in the jungles of southeast Asia and enabled our country to heal an old wound and find common ground among ourselves and with the Vietnamese people.

  One of his first challenges as commander in chief became the promise he made during the campaign to let gays and lesbians serve in the military as long as their sexual orientation did not in any way com promise their performance or unit cohesion. I agreed with the commonsense position that the code of military conduct should be enforced strictly against behavior, not sexual orientation. The issue surfaced in early 1993 and became a battleground between strongly held opposing convictions. Those who maintained that homosexuals had served with distinction in every war in our history and should be permitted to continue serving were in a clear minority in the military and the Congress. Public opinion was more closely divided, but as is often the case, those who opposed change were more adamant and vocal than those in favor. What I found disturbing was the hypocrisy.

  Just three years earlier during the Gulf War, soldiers known to be homosexual―

  both men and women―were sent into harm’s way because their country needed them to fulfill its mission. After the war ended, when they were no longer needed, they were discharged on the basis of their sexual orientation. That seemed indefensible to me.

  Bill knew the issue was a political loser, but it galled him that he couldn’t persuade the joint Chiefs of Staff to align the reality―that gays and lesbians have served, are serving and will always serve―with an appropriate change in policy that enforced common behavior standards for all. After both the House and Senate expressed their opposition by veto-proof margins, Bill agreed to a compromise: the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

  Under the policy, a superior is forbidden to ask a service member if he or she is homosexual.

  If a question is asked, there is no obligation to answer. But the policy has not worked well. There are still instances of beatings and harassment of suspected homosexuals, and the number of homosexual discharges has actually increased. In 2000, our closest ally, Great Britain, changed its policy to permit homosexuals to serve, and there has been no reported difficulty; Canada ended its ban on gays in 1992. We have a long way to go as a society before this issue is resolved. I just wish the opposition would listen to Barry Goldwater, an icon of the American Right and an outspoken supporter of gay rights, which he considered consistent with his conservative principles. On the issue of homosexuals in the military, he said, “You don’t need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.”

  Bill addressed the American veterans of our parents’ generation in the speech he delivered at the World War II Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Collevillesur-Mer: “We are the children of your sacrifice,” he said. These brave Americans joined the armies and resistance fighters of Great Britain, Norway, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and others in standing up to Nazism and strengthening a historic alliance that continues to bind the U.S. and Europe half a century later. The “greatest generation” understood that Americans and Europeans were united in a shared enterprise, one that led to victory in the Cold War and inspired the spread of freedom and democracy across several continents. Given the uncertainties of today’s world, America’s historic ties to Europe, so evident on those Normandy beaches, remain a key to global security, prosperity and hopes for peace.

  Bill’s D-Day speech was particularly emotional for him because he had recently received a copy of his father’s military record and the history of his unit, which participated in the invasion of Italy. Following the story of his father’s service in several newspapers, Bill received a letter from a man living in New Jersey who had emigrated from Nettuno, Italy. As a young boy, he had been befriended by an American soldier who served in the motor pool of the invading army. The soldier, who had taught the youngster how to fix cars and trucks, was Bill’s father, William Blythe. Bill was thrilled to hear about his father and felt that he was connecting with that young soldier―and the father he never knew―as he tried to express our generation’s gratitude for all that he and millions of others had done for our nation and the world.

  That trip had been emotional for me as well. I wanted Bill’s Presidency to succeed not simply because he was my husband and I loved him, but because I loved my country and believed he was the right man to lead it at the end of the twentieth century.

  MIDTERM BREAK

  Aretha Franklin rocked the Rose Garden one unforgettable night in June as part of the In Performance concert series that we held at the White House and that were later televised.

  She strolled like a queen between tables of guests, who sat in rapt appreciation as Aretha soared through a repertoire of gospel and soul with the singer Lou Rawls. Then she moved on to show tunes and leaned in close to Bill, who swayed in his seat as she sang, “Smile, what’s the use of crying…”

  Ten days later Robert Fiske released the preliminary finding in his fast-moving Whitewater investigation: First, no one in the Clinton White House or Department of the Treasury had tried to influence the RTC inquiry. Second, Fiske concurred with the opinions of the FBI and Park Police that Vince Foster’s death was a suicide. He further concluded that there was no evidence his suicide had anything to do with Whitewater.

  To the dismay of many on the Republican Right, who had openly fueled speculation about Vince’s death, Fiske issued no indictments. A few conservative commentators and members of Congress, such as North Carolina Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth, called for Fiske’s head. Ironically, on the day Fiske’s findings were made public, my husband inadvertently paved the way for his replacement by signing the renewal of the Independent Counsel Act sent to him by Congress. It was something he had promised to do, and he kept his word.

  Because of the growing Republican criticism of Fiske, I had argued against signing the legislation unless the appointment of Fiske was grandfathered into the bill. I feared that the Republicans and their allies in the judiciary, led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, would figure out some way to remove Fiske because he was impartial and expeditious.

  I shared my fears with Lloyd Cutler, who had replaced Bernie Nussbaum as White House counsel. Lloyd is one of the great men of Washington, counsel to President Carter and adviser to many other political leaders. A first-rate lawyer, he helped build one of the most prestigious law firms in America. When I told him what I feared, he told me not to worry. Lloyd, a true gentleman, assumed he was dealing with men of similar manners and even told me he would “eat his hat” if Fiske was replaced.

  According to the newly enacted law, the independent counsel had to be chosen by a “Special Division,” a panel of three federal judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Rehnquist had handpicked David Sentelle, an ultraconservative Republican from North Carolina, to head the Special Division.

  According to news accounts, Judge Sentelle was seen in mid July having lunch with Faircloth and Senator Jesse Helms, another of my husband’s outspoken critics. It may have been a coincidence, and Sentelle later claimed that the three were merely old friends discussing prostate problems. But on August 5, a few weeks after that lunch, the Special Division announced the appointment of a new independent counsel. Robert Fiske was out, replaced by Kenneth Starr.

  Starr was a forty-eight-yearold Republican insider, a former appeals court judge who had stepped down to become Solicitor General in the first Bush Administration, a traditional path to the Supreme Court. He was a partner in Kirkland & Ellis, a law firm with a lucrative business defending tobacco companies. Starr was a staunch conservative; unlike Fiske, he had never been a prosecutor. He had been outspoken about the Paula Jones lawsuit, appearing on TV that spring to argue for the right of Jones to sue a sitting President, urging that the case proceed quickly. He had also offered to write a friend of the court brief on her behalf. Based on the evidence of these conflicts of interest, five former Presidents of the American Bar Association called on Starr to forgo serving as independent counsel. They also issued a statement questioning the three-judge panel that selected him.

  Starr’s appointment greatly slowed the progress of the investigation. Most of Fiske’s staff resigned rather than work for him; Starr did not take a leave of absence from his law practice, as Fiske had, and thus was a part-timer; Starr had zero criminal law experience, so he was learning on the job. Despite the mandate of the statute that an independent counsel conduct an investigation “in a prompt, responsible, and cost-effective manner,”

  Starr never set a timetable or showed any sense of urgency, in contrast to Fiske, who intended to wrap up the investigation by the end of 1994. It appeared from the beginning that Starr’s goal was to keep the issue alive at least through the 1996 election.

  Given these troubling conflicts of interest and early warning signs, it was clear that Starr was replacing Fiske not to continue an independent investigation, but for partisan purposes. I knew immediately what we were facing, but I also knew there was nothing I could do about it. I had to trust our justice system and hope for the best. I did, however, remind Lloyd Cutler of his hat-eating offer and suggest he might choose a small one made of natural fibers.

  Partisan politicking was nothing new in Washington; it came with the territory. But it was the politics of personal destruction―visceral, meanspirited campaigns to ruin the lives of public figures―that I found disheartening and bad for the country.

  All spring and summer, rightwing radio hosts with national audiences stirred up their listeners with terrifying tales from Washington. Rush Limbaugh routinely told his 20 million radio listeners that “Whitewater is about health care.” And I finally understood that, yes, it was. The ongoing Whitewater investigation, despite Fiske’s findings, was about undermining the progressive agenda by any means. Limbaugh and others rarely criticized the contents of the Health Security Act or any other policy the Democrats introduced. If you believed everything you heard on the airwaves in 1994, you would conclude that your President was a Communist, that the First Lady was a murderess and that together they had hatched a plot to take away your guns and force you to give up your family doctor (if you had one) for a Socialist health care system.

  One afternoon in Seattle at the end of July, I pulled into town as part of the Health Security Express. Inspired by the Freedom Riders who traveled by bus across the South in the early sixties to spread the message of desegregation, health reform advocates organized this nationwide bus tour in the summer of 1994. The idea was to spread the word about the health care plan at the grassroots level and generate crowds from the West Coast to Washington, showing Congress that there was support for the bill.

  We started in Portland, Oregon, where I sent off the first troop of riders. It was a lively event, despite the record-breaking heat and the vocal protesters who surrounded the site. As the buses pulled out, a small plane dragged a banner across the sky that read: “Beware the Phony Express.” Not an inexpensive stunt.

  Local and national radio hosts had been inciting protesters all week. One of them had urged listeners to come down and “show Hillary” what they thought of me. The call to arms attracted hundreds of hardcore right-wingers: militia supporters, tax protesters, clinic blockaders. At least half of the 4,500 people who came to my speech in Seattle were protesters.

  The Secret Service warned me that we might run into trouble. For once, I agreed to wear a bulletproof vest. By then I had become accustomed to the constant presence of security, to having intimate conversations within earshot of Secret Service men and women who I sometimes thought knew more about me and my family than did my closest friends. They had urged me before to avoid certain places or to wear protective clothing; now, for the first time, I heeded their warning. It was one of the few times I felt in real physical danger. During the rally, I could hardly hear my own voice over the booing and heckling. After the speech ended and we were driving away from the stage, hundreds of protesters swarmed around the limousine. What I could see from the car was a crowd of men who seemed to be in their twenties and thirties. I’ll never forget the look in their eyes and their twisted mouths as they screamed at me while the agents pushed them away. The Secret Service made several arrests that day, and they confiscated two guns and a knife hidden in the crowd.

  Neither random nor spontaneous, this protest was part of a well-organized campaign to disrupt the health care reform bus caravan and neutralize its message, according to journalists David Broder and Haynes Johnson. Everywhere the buses stopped, they were met with demonstrators. The protests were openly sponsored by a benign-sounding political interest group called Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). Reporters eventually discovered and disclosed the fact that CSE worked in concert with Newt Gingrich’s Washington office. And, as Broder and Johnson wrote in their book, The System, the generous sponsor behind the group was none other than the reclusive but increasingly active Richard Mellon Scaife, the rightwing billionaire who was also financing the Arkansas Project.