Bill Clinton revives an old conspiracy tale as he prepares to hit the trail

Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have long believed in a unified-field theory about their opponents — one that she memorably dubbed a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” And they have their own theory of the moment it all began.

The former president, who is about to take a more visible role in his wife’s presidential campaign, told the tale again in a broadcast over the weekend in which he described getting a menacing phone call from inside the George H.W. Bush White House.

It was 1991, as the then-Arkansas governor was mulling whether to challenge a popular incumbent president, he said.

The caller said, “We’ve looked at the field. You’re the only one who can win,” Clinton recalled in an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN. “The press has to have someone every election. We’re going to give them you. You better not run.”

Except that the man whom Clinton claims was on the other end of the line insists nothing of the kind ever happened.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks in Iowa in September. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

“There is no shred of truth to it whatsoever. I never made any such call,” said Roger B. Porter, a mild-mannered policy wonk who at the time was assistant to the president for economic and domestic policy and is a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward also investigated the story for his book “The Agenda,” about the turbulent early years of the Clinton White House.

Although both Clintons have told “nine or 10 versions” of the phone call, Woodward too is convinced that “there is nothing to it” — and went so far Monday as to call it “preposterous.”

The former president, who has stayed largely offstage during his wife’s second run for the presidency, plans to step up his campaigning on her behalf.

He filled in for her at two events in Chicago on Sept. 17 when her campaign schedule changed. He will headline fundraisers in Atlanta and Kansas City this week and in Detroit later in October, the Associated Press reported Monday.

His higher profile comes at a moment when Hillary Clinton is facing a stronger-than-expected challenge for the Democratic nomination from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and could get a formidable new opponent if Vice President Biden gets in the race.

Her standing in the polls has fallen amid a controversy over her use of a private e-mail account and server, rather than a government one, while she was secretary of state.

“It always happens,” Bill Clinton said in the CNN interview. “You’re seeing history repeat itself.”

In his latest telling, the Whitewater investigation — which led to the appointment of an independent counsel and ultimately to Clinton’s impeachment for perjury about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — can be traced to the phone call he described receiving in 1991.

“All of a sudden something nobody thought was an issue, Whitewater, that never turned out to be an issue, winds up being a $70 million investigation,” Clinton said. “And all the hammering happened and you ask voters, do you really believe this amounts to anything? No. But do you trust him as much? No. There must be something.”

Clinton did not name Porter in the interview on CNN, but he did in his 2004 memoir, “My Life.”

“I’ll never forget the first words of the message he had been designated to deliver: ‘Cut the crap, Governor,’ ” Clinton wrote. He said Porter warned that the Bush political operation would “destroy me personally.”

Porter, who had worked with the Arkansas governor on education policy, said he was mystified when Clinton’s memoir came out.

“I don’t use language like he uses in the book,” the Harvard professor said. “His association with the truth is often a really tenuous one, but he’s got a lot of good qualities, too.”

Porter said that he had asked other officials of the Bush White House if they knew of anyone who might have made such a call. He said they did not, and then they joked with him: “If we were going to send somebody, we wouldn’t have sent you.”

At Harvard, Porter has for decades taught a well-known class on the American presidency, which he inherited from Kennedy School founder Richard Neustadt, an adviser to three Democratic presidents.

Clinton’s spokesman, Angel Urena, declined to comment on the latest iteration of the story, other than to send an Internet link to a 2004 Harvard Crimson account of the dispute between Clinton and Porter.

In an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Hillary Clinton was asked about her husband’s contention that the controversy over her use of private e-mails was nothing more than a concoction by the Republicans and the media.

“You know, I love my husband, and you know, he does get upset when I am attacked. I totally get that,” Hillary Clinton said.

“But we also get the fact that look, this is a contest. And it’s fair game for people to raise whatever they choose to raise,” she added. “As he said, I think in that same interview, you know, ‘They’re not giving this job away.’ You have to get out there, you have to earn it.”

Alice Crites and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.