American Evita: Hillary Clinton's Path to Power by Christopher P. Andersen Read Free Book Online

became a cause célèbre. At Yale and other campuses, posters went up on dormitory walls showing Newton sitting on a rattan throne, a rifle in one hand, a spear in the other. Hillary was among the thousands of students who proudly wore buttons that demanded that California authorities FREE HUEY .
    Newton’s defense team would argue that there was a distinct possibility that the backup officer, not their client, had actually shot his partner in the scuffle. In what would soon become a standard tactic, they contended it was not Newton who was on trial but the system .
    Newton was found guilty of manslaughter, but the conviction was overturned on a technicality. The new darling of the Left, Newton went to live in a glass-walled penthouse overlooking Oakland’s Lake Merritt. There he and Seale held court, guzzling vodka and expounding endlessly on the coming revolution before a rapt audience of students, journalists—and several of Hollywood’s leading directors, screenwriters, and actors.
    Hillary sympathized with the Panthers, and saw them as a legitimate political force to be reckoned with. They were, in fact, fast becoming a criminal menace. In addition to dealing drugs and taking protection money, the Panthers would be involved in numerous shoot-outs with police across the country.
    As for the handsome, charismatic Newton, he turned out to be a chronic alcoholic and abuser of drugs. In 1974, he would flee toCuba after being accused of fatally shooting a seventeen-year-old prostitute in the face because she failed to recognize him and of pistol-whipping a tailor for affectionately calling him “baby.” Three years later, Newton returned to face the charges, which were dropped after both trials ended in hung juries. Later, he served time for a parole violation and for misappropriating funds raised by the Panthers for one of their Oakland community projects.
    In 1984, Newton received a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, but only after allegedly threatening to kill his professor if he didn’t receive passing marks. And there would be continuing skirmishes with the law until August 1989, when Newton was shot to death after being locked out of an Oakland crack house.
    In 1970, however, the Black Panthers were lionized by Hillary and her like-minded friends. It was a cocktail party held in the Panthers’ honor at the Manhattan apartment of Leonard Bernstein that formed the basis of Tom Wolfe’s bestselling book Radical Chic.
    Chic was not the word to describe Hillary Rodham—far from it. She was practical, focused, and, though she would scrupulously avoid mentioning it in later years, committed to doing whatever she could to aid Bobby Seale and his fellow Panther defendants in their murder trial.
    Before she could decide on a course of action, however, four students were gunned down during antiwar demonstrations at Kent State. On hearing the news, Hillary rushed out of the law school in tears. A few days later, she traveled to Washington to speak at a banquet marking the fiftieth anniversary of the League of Women Voters. Wearing a black armband, she scarcely kept her emotions in check as she railed against the war, Richard Nixon, and capitalist America. “How much longer can we let corporations run us?” she demanded. “Isn’t it about time that they, as all the rest of our institutions, are held accountable to the people?”
    When she returned to Yale, Hillary signed up for a project begunby one of her professors, outspoken leftist Thomas (cheerfully referred to by students and faculty alike as “Tommy the Commie”) Emerson. Hillary was assigned the job of making certain that there would always be a law school student on hand at the Panther trial to monitor the proceedings and point out any civil rights abuses on the part of prosecutors to the American Civil Liberties Union.
    Hillary and her fellow students did not confine themselves to compiling information for the ACLU, however. Emerson