When Juanita Broaddrick originally broke her silence by speaking to NBC’s Dateline in 1999, Bill Clinton’s rape accuser says she told the network’s reporter, Lisa Myers, on camera that she believed Hillary Clinton tried to silence her.
Broaddrick recalled that during the pre-taped interview, she began to tell Myers about a personal meeting with Hillary Clinton three weeks after the alleged rape in 1978, in which, Broaddrick believes, the future First Lady strongly implied the alleged rape victim had to stay silent about her traumatic experience.
Now Broaddrick reveals to Breitbart News that an NBC staffer present for the 1999 filming rushed in front of the camera, interrupted the prerecorded session, and declared that the allegations against Hillary Clinton could not be included in the interview.
She charges that NBC went so far as to re-film that portion of the interview, with Myers asking the same question anew and Broaddrick sidestepping the Hillary meeting in the new response.
“We were sitting on my couch,” Broaddrick recalled of the interview. “All the cameras were behind me. She asked some question about whether I was intimidated or threatened by anyone, and I started right in with the meeting with Hillary while we were filming the interview.
“And almost as soon as I started to explain, one of the staffers, I believe he was a producer, came rushing in and said, ‘No, no. We can’t go there.’”
Broaddrick said Myers re-asked the question for the camera and the following exchange, which made the final cut, took place:
Lisa Myers: Did Bill Clinton or anyone near him ever threaten you, try to intimidate you, do anything to keep you silent?
Juanita Broaddrick: No.
Myers: This has been strictly your choice.
Broaddrick: Yes.
Broaddrick, inexperienced in media relations, explained to Breitbart News why she gave an altered answer the second time around.
“I didn’t do interviews before and I’m not a lawyer. I thought from the sound of what the NBC staffer was saying that there was some legal reason why we couldn’t talk about Hillary and that we just couldn’t go there for legal reasons.”
NBC News did not provide Breitbart News with a statement about Broaddrick’s accusations despite being given five business days to do so.
Two weeks ago, Broaddrick tweeted about the alleged rape, generating a new flurry of news media activity.
She told Breitbart News that NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell called her personally last week and started to question her about Hillary Clinton during a recorded phone interview.
“While she was recording the conversation she started questioning me. She turned cold for a minute and said how do I know that Hillary meant that I should stay silent? Mitchell was questioning my sincerity on what I was saying. And she hasn’t put the interview on the air.”
After filming the 1999 interview, NBC waited 35 days until finally airing the exclusive. The timeline is critical. The Senate voted to acquit Clinton in the impeachment case on Feb. 12. NBC’s interview, conducted January 20, 1999, did not run until Feb. 24, and the network placed it opposite the highly-rated Grammy Awards.
Some have questioned NBC’s motivation in waiting to air Broaddrick’s charge of rape. “The 35-day interval between tape and air is now one of the legends of the impeachment process. Why didn’t the American public get to hear Mrs. Broaddrick before the Senate voted to acquit Mr. Clinton on Feb. 12?” wrote Philip Weiss in the Observer in 1999.
Speaking in 1999, NBC News vice president Bill Wheatley vehemently denied the network deliberately held the interview until after the Senate vote. He said NBC took the normal period of time for properly vetting stories. “There was no pressure from the White House, period. Nor as some were claiming was there any pressure from NBC or G.E. corporate higher-ups to kill the story,” said Wheatley.
Meanwhile, last Wednesday, BuzzFeed reported that NBC News pursued a new, on-air interview with Broaddrick, but a spokesperson for the network said the news agency ultimately decided not to cover the story, claiming there was nothing new to the allegations.
“When Juanita Broaddrick went public last week, NBC News sent an associate producer to Arkansas to see if there was anything new in her story. We established there was not, and decided not to pursue it any further,” an NBC spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.
However, Broaddrick’s narrative about Hillary Clinton allegedly attempting to silence her would certainly be new to the NBC audience, since the network has not aired the allegations.
Also, on Sunday, Broaddrick dropped new details in an interview on this reporter’s weekend talk radio show. Broaddrick said that within a few weeks after Clinton allegedly raped her, he started to call her repeatedly with the aim of meeting again. The phone calls went on for about six months, she stated.
“I was shocked to say the least that he would have the audacity to call me after what he did to me,” Broaddrick said.
Hillary meeting
Speaking publicly for the first time in nearly a decade, Broaddrick in November told this reporter that Hillary approached her at a fundraising event three weeks after the alleged rape and implied Broaddrick should stay quiet about the incident.
Broaddrick says she was still in a state of shock and denial about what she says transpired between her and Bill Clinton weeks earlier. She said she attended a private Clinton fundraiser at the home of a local dentist, where she had an encounter with the Clintons and was directly approached by Hillary.
Broaddrick said a friend of hers who had driven the Clintons to the fundraiser from a local airport informed her that “the whole conversation was about you coming from the airport. Mostly from Mrs. Clinton.”
She recalled: “And so then about that time, I see them coming through the kitchen area. And some people there are pointing to me. He goes in one direction and she comes directly to me. Then panic sort of starting to set in with me. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what do I do now?’”
Broaddrick said that Hillary approached her “and said, ‘It’s so nice to meet you’ and all of the niceties she was trying to say at the time.
“She said, ‘I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate the things you do for him.’ And I just stood there, Aaron. I was sort of, you might say, shell-shocked.
“And she said, ‘Do you understand? Everything you do.’
“She tried to take hold of my hand and I left. I told the girls I can’t take this. I’m leaving. So I immediately left.”
Broaddrick said, “What really went through my mind at that time is ‘She knows. She knew. She’s covering it up and she expects me to do the very same thing.’”
Rape allegations. Bloody lip.
Broaddrick’s story begins when she was a nursing home administrator volunteering for then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton’s 1978 gubernatorial bid.
She said Clinton singled her out during a campaign stop at her nursing home. “He would just sort of insinuate, you know, when you are in Little Rock, let’s get together. Let’s talk about the industry. Let’s talk about the needs of the nursing homes, and I was very excited about that.”
Broaddrick said she finally took Clinton up on the offer in the spring of 1978 when she traveled to Little Rock for an industry convention along with her friend and nursing employee Norma Rogers. The two shared a room at the city’s Camelot Hotel.
Broaddrick phoned Clinton’s campaign headquarters to inform him of her arrival and was told by a receptionist that Clinton had left instructions for her to reach him at his private apartment.
“I called his apartment and he answered,” she recounted. “And he said, ‘Well, why don’t we meet in the Camelot Hotel coffee room and we can get together there and talk.’ And I said, ‘That would be fine.’”
Clinton then allegedly changed the meeting location from the hotel coffee shop to Broaddrick’s room.
“Some time later, and I’m not sure how long it was, he called my room, which he said he would do when he got to the coffee shop. And he said, ‘There are too many people down here. It’s too crowded. There’s reporters and can we just meet in your room?’
“And it sort of took me aback a little bit, Aaron,” she said of Clinton’s alleged request.
“But I did say okay, I’ll order coffee to the room, which I did, and that’s when things sort of got out of hand. And it was very unexpected. It was, you might even say, brutal. With the biting of my lip.”
Broaddrick said she did not want to rehash the alleged rape, explaining that the painful details are fully available in previous news reports.
She told NBC’s Dateline in 1999 that she resisted when Clinton suddenly kissed her:
Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip… He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him ‘No,’ that I didn’t want this to happen, but he wouldn’t listen to me… It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to “Please stop.” And that’s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip… When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door, he says, “You better get some ice on that.” And he turned and went out the door.
In the interview with this reporter, Broaddrick recounted the aftermath of the incident, when her friend Rogers came back to the room after Broaddrick failed to show up at the convention.
“I was in a state of shock afterwards,” an emotional Broaddrick said, clearly still impacted by the event. “And I know my nurse came back to the room to check on me because she hadn’t heard from me… She came up and it was devastating to her and to me to find me in the condition that I was in.
“We really did not know what to do. We sat and talked and she got ice for my mouth… It was four times the size that it should be. And she got ice for me and we decided then I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to get out of there, which we did.”
The detail about Clinton allegedly biting her lip is instructive. One woman who would later say she had a consensual affair with Clinton, former Miss America pageant winner Elizabeth Ward Gracen, also revealed that Clinton bit her lip when a tryst became rough.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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