The 42nd President made her the first. Bill Clinton hired Janis Kearney to be his personal diarist. The first time a President did that. Her "Clinton Chronicles" bring us inside a White House you've not heard about before now. My Closer Look, tonight.
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Suppelsa: Say a meeting got heated. Say the you-know-what is hitting the fan. With this big-wig and this big-wig and the President--
Kearney: Yeah! and I was just writing away. Every once and a while, someone would look around say, "Okay, I guess she got that but..."
Suppelsa: Did anybody ever say, "don't put that down!"
Kearney: Jokingly. They did. But they all knew what I was there for.
Kearney was there, on the Oval Office staff, to capture color and emotion: anecdotes the official logs could never give historians.
Kearney: It never was "sit down and let's talk about what you're thinking or what you did today." I was the official fly on the wall. I observed.
Kearney remembers when one of Clinton's best friends, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, died in a plane crash.
Kearney: It was kind of an out-of-body experience watching that President of the United States be somebody just like me. Just a human being.
Suppelsa: Was he crying?
Kearney: There wa -- yeah, yeah, mm-hmm.
Kearney believes Clinton's public emotions were equally genuine.
Kearney: He just has this reservoir of empathy. He can feel! I mean, people made jokes about "feeling your pain", but I believe this man really can feel other people's pain or joy or whatever. I mean, he connects! He completely connects.
Kearney is writing a book on Clinton's legendary connection as the "first Black president."
Kearney: I think the fact that he made African-Americans believe that the White House and the Presidency belonged to them was the greatest thing he did for the race.
Suppelsa: You wrote, I believe, that this man was the only person -- white or black -- to know every word of the African-American anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
Kearney: He's the only one I know. Who knows every word. Every word to it.
Suppelsa: One of the most interesting people you interviewed was his babysitter.
Kearney: She's in her eighties now. Almost ninety.
Suppelsa: Wow. What did she say?
Kearney: She said how she would put him outside the house and let him play. Probably longer than she should. Because she didn't want to have to answer all his questions.
President Clinton had to answer some questions, based on Kearney's diligent notes. Special Prosecutor Ken Starr used her daily log to confirm Monica Lewinsky's visits to the Oval Office. After that, Kearney says, things changed.
Kearney: It was a different White House than the the one I had gone into. For sure. And it was, if there was a dark period during his Presidency and my involvement in his Presidency, that was it.
Suppelsa: Did it sadden you? I mean --
Kearney: Yes. It made me sick to my stomach. And most people that I worked with and most people that I know, it did. Of course.
Suppelsa: Was there hatred on his part for Ken Starr?
Kearney: I'm not even sure Bill Clinton can hate anybody. I'm serious about that! Dislike, I'm sure. Probably very, very strong dislike.
Suppelsa: Hillary Clinton. Describe what you saw.
Kearney: First of all, I saw a very devoted wife.
Suppelsa: Even through thin?
Kearney: Even through thin, I did.
Kearney: I saw a woman who loved her husband, who helped her husband whenever she could.
Kearney says most of her work was on the West Wing, so she didn't have the same access to Hillary Clinton. I asked her if she ever felt uncomfortable sitting witness to all that happened. Kearney said no, Mr. Clinton made her feel she was wanted and needed to log history, no matter which way it played out.
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