The book portrays Hillary Clinton as erratic and uncontrollable, a volatile first lady.
But its author, Gary Byrne, a Secret Service agent during the Clinton administration, has rankled his former colleagues, who are denouncing his assertions as false and arguing that Byrne has a political agenda centered on disparaging Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
“There is no place for any self-moralizing narratives, particularly those with an underlying motive,” the board of directors of the Assn. of Former Agents of the U.S. Secret Service wrote in a statement Tuesday.
The public condemnation of the book was an extraordinary move by the group, which has largely remained out of the political fray since its founding in the 1970s.
Critics of the book, “Crisis in Character,” have noted that Byrne, who served as a uniformed Secret Service officer, the lowest level of security at the White House, would not have had the close access to the Clintons that protective agents do.
“Operationally, one who has the working knowledge of how things are done there would realize that certain of those statements do not coincide with the operational plan,” Jan Gilhooly, the group’s president and a former Secret Service agent, told Politico.
In the book, Byrne, who has been retired from the Secret Service for more than a decade, describes Clinton as moody and unrestrained, often shouting obscenities both at former President Bill Clinton and agents.
“What I saw in the 1990’s sickened me,” Byrne wrote in the book’s introduction, according to excerpts provided to the New York Post. “Clinton is now poised to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, but she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office. … From the bottom of my soul, I know this to be true.”
Byrne’s book became fodder for Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, whose campaign emailed some of its claims to supporters Tuesday.
The book “should be put in the fantasy section of the bookstore,” said Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton.
Byrne did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In its statement, the Secret Service group said, “One must question the veracity and content of any book, which implies that its author played such an integral part of so many [claimed] incidents.”
The group added, “Why would an employee wait in excess of 10 years after terminating his employment with the Service to make his allegations public?”
