Hillary's ambition is far from satisfied

Driven by Radical Ideology, She Believes She Knows What's Best for Everyone

In her just-released book, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton, experienced Washington observer Barbara Olson unveils the real First Lady--a woman whose hol for power surpasses even that ofher husband. A frequent commentator and legal analyst on national television, Olson has served as an attorney in the Department of Justice, as a congressional investigator and as a general counsel in the U.S. Senate.

Hell to Pay, published by Regnery Publishing, a sister company of HUMAN EVENTS, reveals a political Machiavellian--a wife who defends her husband while reviewing his "bimbo eruption" file, a feminist who supports and abets a serial adulterer, all in order to maintain and increase her grip on power. Hillary's molding by a radical preacher of the "social gospel" and by legendary leftwing organizer and folk hem Saul Alinsky and her active role in Nixon-bashing over Watergate, in Travelgate, in Filegate and in many other Clinton-era fiascos are all vividly detailed.

In the excerpts below, Olson describes how Hillary found outlets for her radical social-engineering views--first through the leftist Children's Defense Fund and then through her chairmanship of the scandalridden federal Legal Services Corp.--and finally Olson speculates on what the future may hold for this driven woman.

Village Socialism

Hillary found an outlet for her social agenda in the CDF [Children's Defense Fund], and through her long association with its founder Marian Wright Edelman, a leading civil rights activist and longtime FOH. Edelman's group was well-funded, wellstaffed, and well-connected long before one of its leading advocates became the First Lady. Its donor base is generously sprinkled with Fortune 500 patrons.

In 1973 it dawned on Edelman that the "country was tired of the concerns of the sixties. When you talked about poor people or black people, you faced a shrinking audience. ... I got the idea that children might be a very effective way to broaden the base for change' " A convenient, sympathetic, photogenic, and malleable cause-how perfect. Hillary agreed

Edelman's great insight was to put children squarely in the front of almost every domestic policy debate. This is central to the CDF's mission and a marvelous marketing tool. Throughout the Carter, Reagan, and Bush years, the CDF used a combination of shrewd inside lobbying and outside activism to protect and expand the welfare state.

The CDF has browbeaten lawmakers for such programs as Head Start or the nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, as well as expanding welfare and public housing programs, guaranteed employment, and higher minimum wages....

It was Edelman's husband, Peter, a former aide to Robert F Kennedy, who first contacted Hillary after reading about her Wellesley commencement speech in Life magazine.

Later, as a Yale law student Hillary read a profile of Marian Wright Edelman in Time magazine. In the spring of 1970, "in one of those strange twists of fate that enters [sic] all our lives if we're open to hear and to see them," Hillary recalled that she noticed that Edelman was returning to her alma. mater to give a speech. Hillary was in the audience and experienced the kind of minor epiphany that seems to strike her with some regularity. I knew right away that I had to go to work for her."

It was easy to see the attraction. By 1970 Marian Wright Edelman had become a central figure of the mythic left She used her growing clout to establish the Washington Research Project, the forerunner of the CDF Hillary secured a small civil rights grant to go work for her. As part of her summer job, she performed research for a Senate subcommittee chaired by Walter Mondale. She traveled to migrant labor camps and interviewed workers and their families, documenting the conditions and their effect on children.

Later, Hillary worked as a volunteer in family custody cases in New Haven. Hillary, by then living with the gregarious third-year law student who would become her husband, took a fourth year to study child development at the Yale Child Study Center There she researched her now well-known legal writings on the rights of children for the Harvard Educational Review.

After Yale, but before she went to work on the House Judiciary Committee, Hillary moved to Boston to serve a stint as a lawyer for the CDE She joined the CDF board in 1978, and eventually served as its chairman for six years.

To understand Hillary's politics today, it is not enough to review her res=6 and her rapid assent through the then-chic liberal advocacy groups. One must read her writings from this period. It is in these samplings from her past that Hillary finds a fully developed, albeit superficial, political philosophy. All of this was set before her husband's political ambitions forced her to retract, disguise, or repackage in more benign wrapping her radical critique of society and the family.