"It's absolutely crucial for the Democrats to have a sense of their history, of who they are, in order to be able to project their values and stand up for them." -- Sidney Blumenthal
Sidney Blumenthal (, born November 6, 1948) is a former aide to President Bill Clinton and a widely published American journalist, especially on American politics and foreign policy.
Born in Chicago, he earned a BA in sociology from Brandeis University in 1969 and started his career in Boston as a journalist who wrote for The New Republic. Over a career of twenty years, he became editor of several departments and wrote for several publications including The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. During the '00s, he published several essays critical of the administration of then-President George W. Bush. What Bush is hiding | Salon
"22 million new jobs under President Clinton. 3 million lost under Bush.""And Louis Freeh was a completely dysfunctional FBI Director, who was actually waging his own private war against the Clinton Administration.""As I said, if you don't stand up for yourself, people aren't going to think that you can stand up for them.""At the same time, Clinton was doing a lot things right, like the economy.""Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems.""But presidents matter. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned being in the White House.""Clinton took very tough decisions on the economy.""Clinton was a president who used his office, in creative ways, to try to reinvigorate the federal government to benefit the majority.""Clinton was very early on aware of the problem of international terrorism.""Dick Clarke, who was head of counter-terrorism in the National Security Council, pushed constantly for the Principals Committee, which is the key national security group of top officials to take up the issue of terrorism.""Even on education, his one accomplishment, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and he has left it unfunded.""Every decision that they take has enormous consequences, and ripple out from the White House.""If there were any clear investigation of 9/11, they wouldn't let Louie Freeh off the hook.""It was an absurd theory that by cutting taxes you would increase government revenues, because the growth of the economy would create an overflow of taxes that would fall into the government coffers.""It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book.""It wasn't simply that Clinton created the greatest prosperity in the country's history. Or that we created 22 million new jobs, more than ever before. Under Clinton, poverty was reduced 25%.""On health care, virtually every political error that could be made was made.""On the contrary, it might even be a projection of what the truth is of the Bush Administration's complacency and ineptitude on the terrorism in its first 9 months in office.""The attack on Clinton on terrorism is entirely politically inspired by the right-wing of the Republicans, and has no basis in fact whatsoever.""The biggest mistakes, early on, involved foreign policy and involved the strategy for health care.""The book shows Clinton in the presidency as a profile in growth.""The conservative argument is that the economy is like the weather, that it just operates automatically.""The Democrats need to remind people of where were, in terms of our progress, as markers against where we are, and where we've fallen, and how we've declined under Bush.""We barely missed killing Bin Laden. There were numerous findings issued by the President to kill him. We rolled up terrorist cells. We stopped the millennium bombings.""What happened to the Bush Administration regarding terrorism is that they regarded it as a secondary issue, and associated with Clinton. One of those Clinton issues."
Sidney Blumenthal served as assistant and senior adviser to Bill Clinton from August 1997 until January 2001. His roles included advising the President on communications and public policy as well as researching information in the general media about the White House. Because of Blumenthal's previous career in journalism he was able to pass on positive stories about the Clinton White House (from state and local sources) that were otherwise missed in general mass circulation. He became a major figure in the grand jury investigation that ended in the impeachment of President Clinton.
During the investigations by White House independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Blumenthal was called to the Grand Jury to testify on matters related to what Clinton had told both Blumenthal and his senior staff in regard to Monica Lewinsky. It was on this occasion that Blumenthal was accused by the independent counsel of seeking to discredit the office of the counsel by passing stories to the media about Starr and his aides.
Nevertheless, the leadership of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives felt that enough evidence existed in regard to the Paula Jones case and Lewinsky for impeachment proceedings to begin in December 1998. After the House Judiciary Committee and the United States House of Representatives impeached Clinton on December 19, the matter then passed to the United States Senate. Blumenthal was one of only four witnesses called to testify before the Senate. (Although no live witnesses were called, the four were interviewed on videotape.) Blumenthal's testimony addressed the key "lie": that Clinton was allegedly pressuring Betty Currie and Blumenthal himself to state that it was Lewinsky who initially pursued Clinton, not vice versa. Lewinsky herself stated that she was the one who instigated the relationship. With the assistance of other evidence and arguments, the Senate acquitted Clinton of perjury and impeachment proceedings ended.
Blumenthal also served as key organiser and supporter of the Third Way conferences, aimed at creating a movement for progressive governance throughout the world. He was present at the two original conferences, both in the U.K. and America in which he became friends with the newly elected Labour leader Tony Blair.
Blumenthal v. Drudge
In 1997, Blumenthal instigated a $30 million libel lawsuit against Internet blogger Matt Drudge (as well as AOL, who had hired Mr. Drudge) stemming from a false claim Drudge had made of spousal abuse attributed to "top GOP sources." Drudge retracted the story later, saying he was given bad information. In Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44 (D.D.C. 1998), the court refused to dismiss Blumenthal's case for lack of personal jurisdiction. Drudge later publicly apologized to the Blumenthals. Blumenthal dropped his lawsuit and eventually reached a settlement involving a small payment to Drudge over having missed a deposition. In his book, The Clinton Wars, Blumenthal claimed he was forced to settle because he could no longer financially afford the suit.
Post-Clinton Administration years
Following the end of the Clinton presidency, Blumenthal subsequently wrote a book titled The Clinton Wars published in 2003. The book includes a small biography of Blumenthal, but focuses on his years with the Clintons and in the White House. Other books by Blumenthal include The Permanent Campaign, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War, and How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.
Blumenthal was recently the Washington bureau chief for Salon.com, for which he has written over 1800 pieces online. He is also a regular contributor to openDemocracy.net, as well as being a regular columnist for the UK newspaper, The Guardian. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife; they have two sons, one of whom is journalist Max Blumenthal. He is currently a senior fellow for the New York University Center on Law and Security.
Blumenthal joined the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as a "senior advisor" in November 2007. Sidney Blumenthal Joins Hillary Campaign - Off The Bus on The Huffington Post
While on a trip to advise Hillary Rodham Clinton on her Presidential campaign, Blumenthal was arrested for driving while intoxicated in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 7, 2008. Blumenthal pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor DWI charge.
After her appointment as Secretary of State, Clinton wanted to hire Blumenthal. However, it was reported that White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel blocked his selection due to lingering anger among Obama aides over Blumenthal's role in promoting negative stories about Obama during the Democratic primary.
Film work
Blumenthal was the executive producer of the documentary, "Taxi to the Dark Side," directed by Alex Gibney, that won the Oscar for best documentary of 2007 at the Academy Awards. He was also the associate producer of the 2002 film Max, directed by Menno Meyjes and starring John Cusack, about the early political rise of Adolf Hitler and the aesthetics of Nazism.
