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Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal, whose names have surfaced as providers of information to Christopher Steele in the preparation of the phony dossier on Donald Trump and Russia, have long been her go-to guys whenever dirty tactics are called for.
Their activities were partially documented and exposed in a 1992 memo from Cody's brother Derek to the Clintons pleading for a job in the administration. Derek Shearer was subsequently named ambassador to Finland.
In the memo, Derek describes how he "began working behind-the-scenes with Cody and with Sid Blumenthal to promote your candidacy, to defend you and to attack your enemies," Shearer said he and Cody worked with "Sid (Blumenthal) on his attack piece on Senator Paul Tsongas."
Tsongas, a congressman from Massachusetts had emerged as Bill Clinton's main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. After an impressive win in New Hampshire — where Bill finished third — it looked like Tsongas was on a roll. Then the Shearers and Blumenthal spread false information about Tsongas' health. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1983, Tsongas got a successful bone marrow transplant the next year.
Blumenthal wrote a piece (in his disguise as a journalist) for the New Republic that raised questions about the former congressman's health and Tsongas had to drop out of the race in March 1992, only one month after his New Hampshire win. (Tsongas, in fact, lived until 1997.)
The 1992 campaign for Clinton was haunted by charges by Gennifer Flowers that she had a 12-year affair with Bill. She produced tapes of Bill speaking with her on the phone that validated her contention. Shearer and Blumenthal convinced reporters that the tapes were doctored and the allegations were false. Eventually, in 1998, Bill admitted to the affair.
Derek wrote the president, "as you know, Cody was with you in Boston when the Flowers story broke. I spoke almost everyday of the campaign with Cody, and with Sid, as well as with Susan T. (Thomases), to work on defense tactics on this issue."
After Tsongas dropped out, California Governor (then and now) Jerry Brown emerged as Clinton's major competitor. Shearer bragged about leaking "uncomplimentary material" to the press about Gov. Brown for whom he once had worked.
But it was in dealing with Ross Perot that Shearer and Blumenthal really earned their stripes. Perot, a billionaire, was an independent candidate for president. Attacking the deficit, the national debt and Washington corruption, he surged in the polls. By June 1992, he was running second to President George H.W. Bush with Clinton running third.
Then Blumenthal and Shearer went to work "behind the scenes." Derek recounts being very successful "in working with Cody and Sid on the Perot problem. I coordinated their investigative work on Perot, and I know that our work played a crucial role in getting Perot to drop out of the race in July. It's a long story, but the bottom line is that we unearthed the info about his investigation of his daughter's boyfriend, the assistant prof. at Vanderbilt, and Sid and Cody got the story out."
The story alleged that Perot hired a private investigator to discredit his daughter's fiance. Blumenthal wrote in the New Republic that Perot investigated his future son-in-law because Perot was anti-Semitic, telling friends "You don't think I'd let my daughter marry a Jew."
The smear worked. Perot dropped out of the race in June but re-entered it in September and finished with 19 percent of the vote, a huge showing for a third candidate.
Once Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Blumenthal/Shearer duo moved in. Clinton asked permission to hire Blumenthal but President Obama's brass-knuckled chief of staff Rahm Emanuel found Sid's tactics too much and he barred her from hiring Blumenthal.
As the crisis in Libya worsened, Clinton took the lead in warning about the possibility dictator Muammar Gaddafi committing genocide against his own people. Her warnings were stoked by memos from Blumenthal and Shearer. In memos pirated by WikiLeaks, Sidney exhorts Hillary to act, saying this is her moment and raising the specter of another Rwanda (where Bill did nothing while hundreds of thousands were slaughtered).
In fact, there was no genocide, as we discovered after the war was over.
But Blumenthal and Shearer had an ulterior motive. They were partnered in a firm that wanted to get the contract for security services from the Libyan revolutionary regime and they were using Hillary Clinton to topple Gaddafi and bring their friends to power.
Blumenthal and Shearer have a long history of doing Clinton's dirty work, a story that apparently continued as they potentially made up stories to feed to Christopher Steele in the dossier.
Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.