Clinton Seeks to Contact Man Said to Be Kin
President Clinton said Monday that he is trying to get in touch with a California man who claimed over the weekend that he is the President’s half-brother, a relative the President apparently never knew about.
Clinton, in an interview with WCBS radio in New York, declined to make a direct comment on the claims made by Henry Leon Ritzenthaler, 55, saying he wanted to talk with him first.
“I would be glad to give a reaction, but let me say I’ve tried to call him today and have not talked to him and I think I’ll talk to him before I make any public statement,” he said.
Ritzenthaler, of Paradise, Calif., said in an interview with the Washington Post Sunday that he and Clinton, 46, share the same father, William Jefferson Blythe.
Blythe divorced Ritzenthaler’s mother and later married Virginia Cassidy, Clinton’s mother, in 1942.
However, Blythe’s sister, Vera Ramey, says Ritzenthaler is not Blythe’s son. She told the Post a married man fathered the child and that Blythe claimed paternity to prevent a family scandal.
Betsey Wright, a Washington lobbyist who kept Clinton’s personal records during the presidential campaign, said she heard rumors last year of a half-brother.
“We heard so many different stories and rumors and Bill’s attitude about his father was: Let his father rest in peace,” she said.
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