Inside the Beltway

Flirting with Hillary

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t appreciate the generous tax cut provided to her and former President Bill Clinton by the “compassionate” President Bush, which isn’t to say she’s returning the money.

“I know what my compassionate mother thinks about a budget that gives her daughter and son-in-law tax cuts while kicking 300,000 poor kids out of after-school programs,” Mrs. Clinton writes in the new afterword of the paperback version of her recent best seller, “Living History.”

The former first lady-turned-New York Democratic senator also writes in her updated book that she is “worried about my country,” which is a far different place from three years ago.

“When I first arrived in the Senate, I was dismayed to find the Bush administration and its congressional allies using every lever of power available to undo the economic, social and global progress achieved during my husband’s presidency,” she says.

“I admit I viewed that prospect dimly because I believe my husband was a very good president who left our nation well prepared for the future.”

As for the best-selling success of “Living History,” in which she tells the story of her 30-year adventure in love and politics with Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton says her “right hand occasionally swelled from signing my name so many times.”

She also sees fit to reveal that one middle-aged man who stood in line during one of her many book signings “handed me his business card with the handwritten message, ‘If you’re ever single, give me a call.’”

Digital Watergate

An expert in digital security who was campaign security adviser to Wesley Clark during the Democratic primary is guaranteeing campaign “sabotage” and “espionage” — through the use of technology and the Internet — during the homestretch of the 2004 presidential race.

David H. Holtzman, a former cryptographic and intelligence analyst at the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center who focused chiefly on the Soviet manned space program, says altered photographic images of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, which appeared recently on the Internet, are just the beginning.

It’s only a matter of time until one campaign digitally “invades” the other, says Mr. Holtzman, causing a “digital Watergate” scandal for the 21st century.

The former chief scientist at IBM’s Internet Information Technology group, who now teaches at American University, says that for every positive use of technology during the campaign, it is equally possible for campaign strategists or supporters to implement negative or destructive tactics, including:

• Hacking into the other campaign’s computers to gain secret strategic information, private information about a candidate, and information about major campaign contributors, endorsers and lobbyists.

Story Continues →