Stephanopoulos used threat to stifle Clinton son story, Danny Williams Clinton son?, “I guarantee you that if you do this you’ll never work in Democratic politics again.”, Allegation that Bill Clinton had fathered an illegitimate son, Newsmax December 28, 1998

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From NewsMax Newsmax December 28, 1998.

“Stephanopoulos Used Threat to Stifle Clinton Son Story”

“”I guarantee you that if you do this you’ll never work in Democratic politics again.”

That was the threat issued by George Stephanopoulos to Steve Dinari, director of Ross Perot’s Illinois campaign, when Dinari informed him that he was ready to go public with a credible allegation that Bill Clinton had fathered an illegitimate son.

It was the day before the 1992 election. Stephanopoulos was in Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters nervously anticipating the next day’s returns when a secretary told him that Dinari was on the phone and “he wants to talk to someone confidentially.”

Stephanopoulos’ side of their conversation was captured on videotape by a film crew preparing a documentary on the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, which was released the next year under the title “The War Room.”

Dinari informed Stephanopoulos, then campaign communications director, that he had names, addresses, and phone numbers of people who could back the story up. In a tense moment of election-eve panic, the Clinton wunderkind barked into the phone:

“It’s completely bullshit! If you went on the radio and said that Bill Clinton is the father of an illegitimate black child, you will be laughed at. People will think you’re crazy. … You will be embarrassed before the national press corps. People will think, nobody will believe you, and people will think you’re scum.”

Then Stephanopoulos changed tack, pointing out to Dinari that his cooperation on the Danny Williams bombshell would not go unnoticed: “If you don’t do it, it will cause you some temporary pain with people who tomorrow aren’t going to matter. And you have a campaign that understands that in a difficult time you did something right.”

With a video camera rolling just a few feet away, Stephanopoulos was quick to qualify his hint of possible favors for Dinari’s silence, adding: “I mean, it doesn’t mean anything. We can’t do anything for you specifically or anything like that.”

Nine months earlier, Globe magazine carried a report on Little Rock prostitute Bobbie Ann Williams, who alleged that during one of 13 sexual encounters with then-Gov. Clinton in 1984, she conceived her son, Danny. Photos as well as eyewitness accounts attest to Danny’s resemblance to Clinton.

Both Bobbie Ann and a corroborating witness, her sister Lucille Bolton, submitted to lie-detector tests to bolster their accounts. Both passed.

Dinari was told by Stephanopoulos that the story had already been investigated and rejected by “every major national news organization,” which, according to several sources close to the Danny Williams story, is altogether untrue.

In interviews with NewsMax.com this fall, Bolton, who acts as family spokesperson, said that only Globe magazine had looked into the story in 1992 and that in the intervening six years NewsMax.com was “the only one I’ve talked to.”

Robert “Say” McIntosh, the Little Rock community activist responsible for publicizing the story locally, told NewsMax.com that the Arkansas Democrat Gazette as well as other news organizations he contacted refused to cover the explosive allegations.

Bolton told NewsMax.com that Danny now “wants the truth to come out” and that his current guardian, Shirley Howard, would like to see the president submit to a paternity test.

Stephanopoulos would use the same tactics four years later, when similarly damaging charges surfaced in a book by an FBI agent who had just retired from his post at the Clinton White House. Gary Aldrich’s “Unlimited Access” featured allegations of illicit presidential sex and an insider’s view of an unprecedented breakdown in White House security.

Aldrich’s bombshell book sent Clinton damage controllers into overdrive, with White House spinmeisters armtwisting network news executives to keep its author off the tube. Reportedly, threats to cancel upcoming interviews with Clinton and wife Hillary were issued by the White House communications team, which Stephanopoulos headed up.

Only ABC News gave Aldrich a venue, even though his book was well on its way to the top of best-seller lists across the country. And ABC agreed to interview the 25-year FBI veteran on “This Week” only after the White House had persuaded the network to permit Stephanopoulos to follow with an immediate on-air rebuttal.

After the broadcast, Stephanopoulos boasted, “We killed it” — a reference to the damage he believed he’d done to Aldrich’s credibility. But in the ensuing two years, the FBI agent-turned-best-selling-author has been substantially vindicated by revelations pouring out of the campaign finance and Monica Lewinksy probes.

Will the White House revert to type now that the Danny Williams story has returned? Lucille Bolton reported that Danny’s family has had peculiar run-ins with Little Rock police as well as with men identifying themselves as FBI agents — just since the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.

As always, the Washington press corps remains obediently silent.”

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