The man once intent on bringing down Bill Clinton is now helping Hillary Clinton
David Brock delivering his address at the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas. Photo: New York Times
Washington: In a cosy corner of loft-like offices near Union Station, 16 young researchers sit almost shoulder to shoulder, monitoring rows of computer screens.
Their mission: track attacks on Hillary Rodham Clinton, defend her record and dig up any potentially damaging information on her would-be 2016 rivals. Their leader: the one-time Clinton antagonist David Brock.
While Clinton said it was far too early for her to consider a run for the presidency, a sprawling and well-funded operation built by Brock has already established a rapid-response nerve centre for her. Brock is determined to defend and define Clinton's image during her candidacy-in-waiting the kind of task her aides have struggled with since her earliest days in Washington.
Hillary Clinton says it is far too early for her to consider a run for the presidency. Photo: AP
Back then, Brock was a self-described conservative hit man intent on taking down the Clintons. He went to Arkansas in 1993 and wrote an article for a conservative magazine asserting that state troopers had facilitated sexual liaisons for Bill Clinton, then the governor, which led to Paula Jones' 1994 sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton and Brock's elevation in Republican power circles.
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On Tuesday, Brock returned to Arkansas for the first time since that article, this time in the warm embrace of Clinton world. He delivered an address, titled "Countering the Culture of Clinton Hating" to a packed audience at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.
Part confession, part cautionary tale, Brock took the stage of the converted railway station adjacent to the William J.Clinton Presidential Centre to talk about his involvement in "The Arkansas Project" in the 1990s, or what he called a conservative-funded "dirt-digging operation into the Clintons' past."
Former US president Bill Clinton. Photo: Reuters
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The man once intent on bringing down Bill Clinton is now helping Hillary Clinton