Tell-all book falls short on Clinton facts

I am so excited to tell you that we're returning to the question of whether or not Hillary Clinton threw a vase at her husband in the White House.

Really, this one hasn't come up for about 20 years. But Gary Byrne says he saw the pieces! In a box! Byrne is a former Secret Service officer who has written a tell-all book, "Crisis of Character," about the (horrible/embarrassing/appalling) things he purportedly witnessed during the Bill Clinton presidency.

It's coming out next week to what's supposed to be a big rollout in the conservative media. Donald Trump has been tweeting about it, and he quoted from it in a speech last week. (That was the speech in which the new, measured Trump said Hillary Clinton "may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency," whose "decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched.")

Byrne was a low-ranking officer who could never have gotten near enough to the Clintons to see all of the things he says he knew firsthand. His juiciest anecdotes are just a rehash of old rumors. "One must question the veracity and content of any book which implies that its author played such an integral part of so many [claimed] incidents," said the Association of Former Agents of the U.S. Secret Service, which issued a denunciation.

This is typical of what concerned citizens are going through this year. We ought to be diligently examining the downside of Hillary Clinton's history as part of our civic duties. But having Trump on the other side of the ledger makes Travelgate and the Goldman Sachs speeches seem sort of irrelevant. "Crisis of Character" is supposed to give us an insight into the old White House messes, but it's written by a guy who has doubts about whether Vince Foster really killed himself.

One of the legends Byrne rakes up is that Hillary Clinton mistreated her security detail. (He claims that the first lady's bullying drove some of his comrades to alcohol, drugs, prostitutes or — this is a little unusual — performance enhancers.) This is old gossip, but not everyone agrees.

"Those stories have always kind of been out there. I don't know why; she's more than pleasant," said a higher-ranking agent who was on the Clinton security detail. "I spent close to two years with her — most days, to be honest. I never found Mrs. Clinton to be anything but professional."

Although the book is being promoted as a cautionary tale about the candidate's character, beyond the rudeness stories, there's actually only one juicy anecdote about her. That's the vase-throwing story. It has been around almost since the Clintons arrived in Washington, although the object being hurled has traditionally been described as a lamp.

I remember going home to Ohio a few weeks after the inauguration and telling it to my mother, who had already heard it on Rush Limbaugh. Several months later, Katie Couric went on a tour of the White House with the first lady and asked her to "point out just where you were when you threw the lamp at your husband."

"Well, you know … I'm looking for that spot, too," Hillary Clinton replied.

Gossip is, in part, an expression of public anxiety — people speculated, endlessly, about which politicians might be secretly gay back when there was an overriding fear of homosexuality. Before that, we had periodic rumors about presidential candidates with "Negro blood." It's possible the Hillary-lamp stories stemmed from nervousness about a first lady who intended to wield actual political power in the job.

As time went on, a Bible and "punches" were added to the things that she was rumored to have thrown at her husband. Then 23 years later, a former Secret Service officer, writing a tell-all book about people he barely glimpsed in the course of duty, breathlessly announced that he had once spotted a telltale box full of vase shards. ("The rumors were true.")