FBI agent who alleged Bill Clinton sexual escapades reemerges in tea party
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45590.htmlBy KENNETH P. VOGEL | 11/27/10 4:15 PM EST
Gary Aldrich, a former FBI agent whose widely discredited exposé of the Clinton White House launched him into a second career on the margins of the conservative movement, is reinventing himself again — this time as a player in the grass-roots tea party movement.
In recent months, Aldrich has aggressively worked the tea party circuit, advising activists how to avoid liberal media attacks, seeking support from some of the movement’s most prominent leaders, throwing himself into inter-movement skirmishes — and even boasting of using his FBI-honed skills to investigate rivals of a group he endorsed.
His own obscure nonprofit group, launched as a whistleblower protection outfit in the wake of his attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton, has re-branded itself as a tea party sponsor and, in the past couple weeks, has made a play to increase its market share.
But when it was revealed last week that Aldrich’s Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty was in talks about potentially taking over a more prominent tea party group started by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, it raised eyebrows among tea party leaders — and gave opponents another reason to brand the tea party as extreme.
Some people, like Red State’s Erick Erickson, had barely heard of Aldrich.