Foxnews: Secret Service officer's book details Clintons' 'crisis of character'Enter a post title

A forthcoming book from a former Secret Service officer assigned to the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency alleges that presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office.”

The book, “Crisis of Character,” is due to be released June 28 – a month before Hillary Clinton is likely to take the stage to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia. Written by ex-Secret Service Officer Gary J. Byrne, who was “posted directly outside President Clinton’s Oval Office,” the 285-page book describes Hillary Clinton’s “appalling leadership style” as being “volcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone else.”

While most of the book’s contents have remained under wraps so far, the Amazon.com preview features large sections from the introduction, first two chapters and afterward. It also shows the title page, featuring a Chapter 11 titled “Wild Bill.”

In the introduction, Byrne said he “personally observed” President Clinton’s infidelities and was complicit in covering them up.

“I even secretly disposed of sordid physical evidence that might later have been used to convict the president,” Byrne wrote.

Byrne recalled an alleged fight between the first couple during the summer of 1995 in Chapter 1, “The Vase.” Byrne said a vase was smashed during the loud argument and the next morning President Clinton sported “a shiner, a real, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.” Clinton’s personal scheduler Nancy Hernreich allegedly told Byrne the eye condition was a result of Clinton’s allergy to coffee.

The book is not solely about the Clintons, however.

While writing about his career prior to the Oval Office post, Byrne revealed an incident on May 30, 1983, when he said Russian bombers were spotted 5 miles off the U.S. coast while President Ronald Reagan was holding an economic summit in Williamsburg, Va. Byrne said U.S. fighter jets ended up shooting a warning missile “right past a bomber’s nose” and the Soviet bombers turned around.

“The media never heard of it,” Byrne wrote.

While books about the Clintons written by supposed insiders are plentiful, Byrne’s credibility is bolstered by reporting at the time of the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton sex scandal. A New York Times article from April 1998 reported that Byrne, “a uniformed member of the Secret Service assigned to the White House,” told the deputy chief of staff in 1996 about concerns he had regarding Lewinsky’s visits to the West Wing of the White House. A CNN article from April 1998 said Byrnes’ complaints about Lewinsky ultimately led to her being transferred to the Pentagon.

Byrne said in the introduction to “Crisis” that what he saw in the 1990s “sickened me.”

“We were supposed to lay our lives – not our consciences – on the line,” he wrote.

Neither Clinton has commented on the book.

Clinton IT aide Pagliano ordered to produce DOJ immunity agreement

federal judge ordered the man who set up Hillary Clinton’s private email server Friday to produce the immunity agreement he had reportedly struck with the Department of Justice as part of her investigation.

According to The Hill, the judge’s order postpones Bryan Pagliano’s deposition with the watchdog group Judicial Watch indefinitely. The interview had been scheduled to take place Monday.

Pagliano planned to assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answers questions over an open records lawsuit, according to court documents obtained Wednesday by Fox News. His lawyers also asked a federal judge to block Judicial Watch from recording his deposition, stating that a written transcription should be enough.

However, Judge Emmet Sullivan declared that his lawyers need to file a legal memorandum to outline the legality for him to plead the Fifth “including requisite details pertaining to the scope of Mr. Pagliano's reported immunity agreement with the government,” The Hill reported.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, called Sullivan’s order “an important step to getting more answers from Mr. Pagliano about Hillary Clinton's email system.”

Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before helping install the so-called “homebrew” server system in her Chappaqua, N.Y. home, cut an immunity deal last fall with the Justice Department amid the FBI probe. He was recently described to Fox News by an intelligence source as a “devastating witness.”

In the fall, Pagliano told at least three congressional committees in the fall that he will invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying against Clinton. He was asked to testify about the serve by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

The Washington Post reported in September 2015 that Pagliano had been subpoenaed by the Benghazi committee Aug. 11 and committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy , R-S.C. had ordered that he appear for questioning Sept. 10. Gowdy also demanded that Pagliano provide documents related to all servers or computer systems controlled or owned by Clinton between 2009 and 2013.

The Post reported in August 2015 that Pagliano  had worked as an IT director on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and was asked to oversee the installation of Clinton’s server to handle her correspondence while secretary of state. He was paid by a political action committee tied to Clinton until April 2009, when he was hired by the State Department as an IT specialist.

According to the paper, Pagliano left government service in February 2013 and now works for a technology contractor that provides some services for the State Department.

Lawyers for senior Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, during a nearly five-hour deposition last week in Washington, repeatedly objected to questions about Pagliano’s role in setting up the former secretary of state’s private server.

According to a transcript of the deposition with Judicial Watch released on Tuesday, Mills attorney Beth Wilkinson – as well as Obama administration lawyers – objected to the line of questioning about PaglianoPagliano, who has emerged as a central figure in the FBI's ongoing criminal probe of Clinton's email practices.

Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing related to her private server.

Click for more from The Hill.

Yahoo: Hillary Clinton Ignored Multiple Warnings on Email Vulnerability

The State Department’s Inspector General has concluded that Hillary Clinton and her senior aides ignored repeated warnings that her private email system was vulnerable to hackers when she was Secretary of State. The IG also finds, in the report set to be released Thursday morning, that Clinton failed to comply with Federal Records Act requirements to turn over her work e-mails when she left office in 2013.

The report, copies of which were provided to the State department and Congress ahead of its public release, will drive continued criticism of Clinton’s unorthodox e-mail arrangement as she seeks the White House, and could fuel civil cases brought by watchdog groups seeking access to her e-mails.

The IG found evidence that hackers tried to breach Clinton’s server, but were unsuccessful. The report finds that the technical specialist Clinton used to manage the server had twice shut the system down when it came under attack. On January 9, 2011, the report says, the specialist wrote a top Clinton aide that “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didn’t want to them them have the chance to.” Another attack occurred later the same day, the report says.

The FBI has been investigating since last August how classified information made it onto Clinton’s unclassified private server. The investigation is in its final stages and there is no indication criminal charges against anyone are likely, or that classified information was compromised or that the system was actually breached. Clinton’s senior aides have been interviewed by the FBI, and the former Secretary is expected to be interviewed soon.

Clinton’s critics have accused her of endangering national security and intentionally thwarting rules and laws enforcing government transparency. In a statement, her campaign said that “there is no evidence of any successful breach of the Secretary’s server” and that “Clinton’s use of personal email was not unique, and she took steps that went much further than others to appropriately preserve and release her records.”

The Federal Records Act requires government officials to comply with rules that they hand over all their work e-mails to their employers when they leave government. Clinton only turned over more than 30,000 pages of work e-mails to the State Department 21 months after she stepped down in 2013.

The State IG report says Clinton responded in person to a top department security official in 2009 after he sent a classified memo to her chief of staff describing the vulnerability of Blackberry devices to hackers. The report also says Clinton received a March 11, 2011 email from the State cyber security team warrning of a “dramatic increase since January 2011 in attempts by [redacted] cyber actors to compromise the private home e-mail accounts of senior Department officials.”

Multiple organizations are suing the State Department for access to Clinton’s e-mails, and some claim she intentionally thwarted the Freedom of Information Act in keeping all her work e-mails on her private server. One group, Judicial Watch, has asked a federal judge to subpoena all of Clinton’s e-mails to ensure she isn’t hiding anything. The judge in that case has said he may subpoena all her documents, potentially including any recovered personal e-mails which Clinton sent and received on the system.

Preventing those personal e-mails from becoming public appears to have been a contributing factor in why Clinton set up the private server to begin with, according to one e-mail exchange made public by the State IG report. In November 2010, the report says, Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff emailed her that “we should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department.” Clinton responded, “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”

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