In Hillary Clinton's Datebook, A Shift

Video

Clinton's Records as First Lady Unveiled

More than 11,000 pages of schedules from Hillary Clinton's years as first lady have been unveiled for the first time. The schedules show Clinton's involvement in some substantive issues but also many traditional first lady activities.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

Under federal law, Bill Clinton's representative, Bruce R. Lindsey, reviewed the documents before their release. But the archives agency said that the redactions were made by its professional reviewers according to standards set by law and that Lindsey did not ask for anything to be withheld.

"He proposed that we open more than we proposed to open," said agency spokeswoman Susan Cooper. "He did not ask us to close anything that we proposed to open."

Riding the 'Spousal Bus'

The records show that the inaugural balls were scarcely over before Hillary Clinton launched her plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system. On Jan. 23, 1993, three days after moving into the West Wing, she held the first of scores of private meetings with Williams and another aide, Ira Magaziner. By Feb. 4, the first lady was meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and was assembling a task force that attracted controversy for operating in secrecy and antagonizing industry groups.

Clinton traveled the country selling her ideas and met privately with dozens of members of Congress, her schedules show. In April, she and the president appeared on the South Lawn, and each spoke at a task force reception for about 1,050 people, with a band playing "Ruffles and Flourishes." Her days were busy with testimony and efforts to appease congressional leaders who had complained of being bulldozed. In the end, the health-care task force was disbanded and its plans scuttled.

Her schedules also show private sessions in early 1993 with national economic adviser Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, two men who were to become the nation's most important economic figures in the 1990s.

"Looking at the '93 documents, especially early on, you would have thought you were looking at a president's schedule," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "Things seemed to calm down after the health-care thing blew up in their faces. She stepped back."

There are only a few hints in the schedules of the investigations that plagued the Clinton presidency. After the Whitewater investigation was disclosed on Oct. 31, 1993, a private meeting was held for 16 political staffers in Williams's office the next morning.

The schedules became less detailed in late 1993. Foster's death and the naming of a special prosecutor with subpoena power to investigate Whitewater had a chilling effect on putting things in writing, Clinton aides have previously said.

On foreign policy, Clinton has touted her experience, including trips to more than 80 countries. But any policymaking role is difficult to discern in the documents. When she traveled abroad with her husband, she attended official dinners and photo ops with him but followed the traditional pattern of maintaining a separate schedule that took her to schools, clinics and art galleries while he met with heads of government. During summits, she was relegated to what the schedule calls the "spousal bus."

Her trips without him, judged by the schedules, were for the most part classic first-lady fare. During a lengthy tour of Africa with her daughter in 1997, for example, Clinton stopped in Senegal, where she visited the Goree Island slave house, a girls' school, a "typical village" and a Peace Corps facility. After a roundtable discussion with Senegalese women, she paid a 30-minute "courtesy call" on the president before heading to the airport.

Clinton has said she "helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland" during five visits there during her husband's administration, both alone and with him. Direct participants in the negotiations have differed, and the documents contribute little to resolving the matter. On her fourth visit, in May 1999, she delivered a speech in Belfast vowing that "we will stand with . . . those who take risks for peace."

The records offer little clue as to her participation in the most explosive foreign policy crises of the administration. The August 1998 terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania occurred while the White House was preparing for Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony on his relationship with Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton's schedule is blank on the day of the bombings and for four days afterward.

Staff writer Susan Schmidt, research director Lucy Shackelford, and staff researchers Alice Crites, Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.