March 19, 2011: Columnist: Clinton Planning to Use ‘Birther’ Issue to Force Obama out for 2012 Campaign

Larry Klayman, the founder of the conservative media watchdog organization Judicial Watch, writes a column for conservative news blog WorldNetDaily that alleges Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working behind the scenes to “prove” that President Barack Obama is not a US citizen, thereby ruining his chances of running for re-election in 2012 and opening the door for her own run. Clinton ran a hard-fought primary campaign against Obama in 2008. Klayman resurrects long-disproven allegations that Clinton, during her time as First Lady, had White House staffer Vince Foster murdered to keep him from exposing the raft of “crimes” Klayman says were committed by Clinton, her husband, and others in the Clinton administration. According to Klayman, Obama has always “fear[ed]” having Clinton as a political rival. He did not name her vice president: she “would only have been a stone’s throw away from the Oval Office, and the ‘mullah in chief’ obviously did not want to encourage his own ‘unfortunate accident.’” Instead, Obama “co-opt[ed]” Clinton by fobbing her off to the State Department, where “she could take the blame for his planned foreign policy of anti-Americanism, appeasement, weakness, prevarication, and hostility toward Israel and nearly all things Jewish and Christian. This would serve the dual purpose of harming her political base should she ever decide to run for president against him in 2012.” Klayman notes that Clinton has said she would not return as secretary of state if Obama wins reelection in 2012. Klayman believes Clinton is angling for the presidency in 2012, and speculates “that she herself may again be working on the so-called ‘birther’ issue, which she first raised during her 2008 presidential campaign. For if Hillary can finally obtain proof positive that President Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as he claims, then she will not have to send him on a day trip to Fort Marcy Park [the site of Foster’s suicide] to retire him as president. What could be cleaner?” [WorldNetDaily, 3/19/2011]