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A review by amber_lea84
Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate by Gary J. Byrne
3.0
The title of this book is misleading because it’s really a memoir. A good third of the book has nothing at all to do with the Clintons and is just Byrne recounting his life.
I really appreciate that Byrne gives a lot of background on himself and insight into the way he operates, because this book is mostly about how he feels about the Clintons, as opposed to a bunch of information you didn’t already know about them. It’s easy to understand his perspective because he gives you what you need to follow his thought process.
Bryne is a rule follower with a lot of respect for order and authority. He started out his career as a uniformed SS officer under Bush Sr, who was obviously a good fit for him, and then he started working for the Clintons who ultimately drove him out of the White House. I think he was in a legitimately tough situation, because I pretty much believe his account of how the Bushs were kind and respectful and the Clintons were adversarial. I can see how the tension developed and why Byrne felt moved to write this book.
I see this book as Bryne’s truth. Which sounds idiotic, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it. I think the media criticisms of this book are probably true, that a lot of this book is based on rumors he heard and wasn’t necessarily present for, and that he placed himself closer to the action than he actually was, but I don’t get the impression he’s intentionally lying. At one point somewhere in the middle of the book he’s telling a story and he keeps going from being the driver to being the passenger back to being the driver again, which is clear evidence that his memory is suspect. He also tends to tell stories as if he knew what was going to happen before it did, which is pretty hard to believe at times. For example, he really tries to make it sound like he saw the incident with the blue dress coming, not because he had any information about any of what was going on with the dress or Linda Tripp, but just because he had a moment where he was like, “Dear god, one day the president is going to jizz in the wrong place and someone is going to escape with the evidence!” It’s weird. He does it like two or three times. He writes as if he had a revelatory moment where he saw into the future and lost sleep over it and it’s a bit of a stretch. Also, there were definitely things he said that seemed like they were inspired by a recent viewing of House of Cards.
Like I said earlier, this book is basically an account of his feelings toward the Clintons. And a lot of his complaints about them were for the things he saw as important. (For example, it really bothered him how little care they had for the White House as a historical landmark, and he thought they were too casual about things in general.) So a lot of what you think about what Byrne saw comes down to whether or not you agree with Bryne about what matters. Do your priorities align more with the Clintons or Byrnes? I find some of his complaints a bit comical. He spends about a third of this book recounting how he tried to keep Monica from sneaking into the president's office and I couldn’t help but find this really amusing. It almost reads like a Tweety and Sylvester skit.
My biggest criticism of Bryne is that he often falls into the trap of thinking that other people thought of him and the Uniformed Division more than I’m sure they did. He’s often certain that other people had malicious motivations toward him, or the UD, when there was no way for him know that, and in all likelihood the real problem was that whoever it was just didn’t consider him/UD officers at all. There seems to be more paranoia behind his perception than was required by the job.
The book starts pretty strong, but about a third of the way through a lot of typos start creeping in, and then after that some stories become kind of rambling and strange. I get the impression there was a lot of proofreading in the beginning and almost none by the end. Though, the writing is pretty impressive for a non writer with dyslexia.
It’s a hard book to rate because as far as the quality of the book goes, I’m inclined to want to give it one or two stars because I can’t accurately judge the quality of the information or Byrne’s judgement, but I enjoyed reading Byrne’s perspective. I like Byrne. He seems a bit simple, and he’s clearly a republican loyalist and I would hate to work directly above him, and if I ever worked with him I’d be afraid he thought I was just an affirmative action hire...but I like him. He has kind of a dopey uncle vibe -- you know he’s wrong about stuff, but you love him anyway because he’s a good guy who means well.
I really appreciate that Byrne gives a lot of background on himself and insight into the way he operates, because this book is mostly about how he feels about the Clintons, as opposed to a bunch of information you didn’t already know about them. It’s easy to understand his perspective because he gives you what you need to follow his thought process.
Bryne is a rule follower with a lot of respect for order and authority. He started out his career as a uniformed SS officer under Bush Sr, who was obviously a good fit for him, and then he started working for the Clintons who ultimately drove him out of the White House. I think he was in a legitimately tough situation, because I pretty much believe his account of how the Bushs were kind and respectful and the Clintons were adversarial. I can see how the tension developed and why Byrne felt moved to write this book.
I see this book as Bryne’s truth. Which sounds idiotic, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it. I think the media criticisms of this book are probably true, that a lot of this book is based on rumors he heard and wasn’t necessarily present for, and that he placed himself closer to the action than he actually was, but I don’t get the impression he’s intentionally lying. At one point somewhere in the middle of the book he’s telling a story and he keeps going from being the driver to being the passenger back to being the driver again, which is clear evidence that his memory is suspect. He also tends to tell stories as if he knew what was going to happen before it did, which is pretty hard to believe at times. For example, he really tries to make it sound like he saw the incident with the blue dress coming, not because he had any information about any of what was going on with the dress or Linda Tripp, but just because he had a moment where he was like, “Dear god, one day the president is going to jizz in the wrong place and someone is going to escape with the evidence!” It’s weird. He does it like two or three times. He writes as if he had a revelatory moment where he saw into the future and lost sleep over it and it’s a bit of a stretch. Also, there were definitely things he said that seemed like they were inspired by a recent viewing of House of Cards.
Like I said earlier, this book is basically an account of his feelings toward the Clintons. And a lot of his complaints about them were for the things he saw as important. (For example, it really bothered him how little care they had for the White House as a historical landmark, and he thought they were too casual about things in general.) So a lot of what you think about what Byrne saw comes down to whether or not you agree with Bryne about what matters. Do your priorities align more with the Clintons or Byrnes? I find some of his complaints a bit comical. He spends about a third of this book recounting how he tried to keep Monica from sneaking into the president's office and I couldn’t help but find this really amusing. It almost reads like a Tweety and Sylvester skit.
My biggest criticism of Bryne is that he often falls into the trap of thinking that other people thought of him and the Uniformed Division more than I’m sure they did. He’s often certain that other people had malicious motivations toward him, or the UD, when there was no way for him know that, and in all likelihood the real problem was that whoever it was just didn’t consider him/UD officers at all. There seems to be more paranoia behind his perception than was required by the job.
The book starts pretty strong, but about a third of the way through a lot of typos start creeping in, and then after that some stories become kind of rambling and strange. I get the impression there was a lot of proofreading in the beginning and almost none by the end. Though, the writing is pretty impressive for a non writer with dyslexia.
It’s a hard book to rate because as far as the quality of the book goes, I’m inclined to want to give it one or two stars because I can’t accurately judge the quality of the information or Byrne’s judgement, but I enjoyed reading Byrne’s perspective. I like Byrne. He seems a bit simple, and he’s clearly a republican loyalist and I would hate to work directly above him, and if I ever worked with him I’d be afraid he thought I was just an affirmative action hire...but I like him. He has kind of a dopey uncle vibe -- you know he’s wrong about stuff, but you love him anyway because he’s a good guy who means well.