A new book has claimed that President Barack Obama basically "ignored" Hillary Clinton when she was his secretary of state,
according to Business Insider.
In an excerpt from
"Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding Of A Political Machine," author Daniel Halper says that before taking the job in Obama’s administration, the pragmatic Clinton had demanded regular "one-on-ones" with the president.
And although Obama readily agreed to her requests to be included in the loop, Halper, a political writer and online editor at The Weekly Standard, said that after she had left the room he did "whatever he wanted to do."
Halper, who interviewed former Clinton administration aides, friends, and enemies for the book, wrote that a retired high-ranking diplomat told him, "Obama brought her into the administration, put her in a bubble, and ignored her."
The former official continued, "It turned out to be a brilliant political maneuver by Obama, making it impossible for her to challenge him, unless she left the administration, and not giving her an excuse that she could resign in protest. So she was stuck."
A veteran State Department employee, said Clinton "had very little interaction" with the president, adding, "She would go to meetings of the NSC [National Security Council] when she was in town and called, but it was a very distant relationship."
Arizona Sen. John McCain told Halper that as the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee he observed Clinton first-hand and found her relationship with the president "was cordial, but never close."
"I don't believe that when crucial decisions were made that she was necessarily in the room," McCain is quoted in the book as saying. "I'm not saying she wasn't consulted, but I think it's very well-known she was not in the inner circle of decision makers on national security."
In the HarperCollins publication, Halper wrote that the NSC "sidelined Clinton at every turn," as it did with other Cabinet secretaries, including Chuck Hagel, who was recently forced out by the administration as defense secretary.
"They would send [the defense secretary] to someplace like Botswana while they crafted North Korea policy at the White House," one former Defense Department official says.
In the passage quoted by Business Insider, Halper wrote that when Clinton realized that she "would never really be a major player in Obamaland," she avoided tension with the White House by keeping her nose out of important issues.
Instead Halper says, "She focused on her own future. With Clinton taking to the skies and traveling the world, her post at the State Department became a platform for the United States and Hillary Clinton."