By Bill Shein
October 16, 2015
As Hillary Clinton heads toward an appearance before The Permanent Joint Congressional Select Committee on Investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton Until Long After They’re Dead to discuss her private e-mail server, it’s time for the American people to know the truth. So here it is:
For nearly four years, I was Hillary Clinton’s live-in IT guy. And have I got some stories to tell.
Thanks to the friend of a friend who knew a guy who had a friend, I joined the Clintons’ household staff in Chappaqua, New York in 2011. Basically, I was their IT butler, on call 24/7 to manage their technology: PCs, laptops, iPads, devices, Xbox, and – just like in every other American household – to be the one who remembers the damn Netflix password.
I was vetted by the FBI and screened by the Secret Service. The Clintons’ team of lawyers quizzed me on my knowledge of computers, network security (but only a little bit), and, of course, my ability to configure and manage a Microsoft Exchange e-mail server. I also successfully completed a physically challenging obstacle course created by the Army Rangers – still not sure why.
The final test was a brutal, six-hour interview during which I was told to calmly answer every question with, “I’m sorry, Congressman, but I just don’t recall.” I did, and I was hired.
This was no patronage job: I’ve worked with computers, professionally and otherwise, for more than 30 years. In 1982, my teenager’s bedroom was filled with Radio Shack TRS-80 computers and piles of floppy disks. I relaxed with computer magazines, assembled and disassembled all kinds of devices, and wrote programs in BASIC to manage all the details of both my paper route and my stamp collection. At 17, I made money for college by developing payroll and inventory-management software for several large companies.
This was a time before computer geeks were cool and therefore attractive to girls. Why wasn’t excitedly describing the difference between RAM and ROM and bragging about the massive 360-kilobyte storage capacity of my new double-sided, double-density floppy-disk drives attractive to my teen crushes? I guess I was decades before my time. Because today, no doubt the “Computers-Paper Route-Stamp Collecting” trifecta of interests makes one attractive and irresistible, right? What? Hello?
As Hillary Clinton’s live-in IT guy, my days were spent resetting passwords, installing software updates, and writing code to manage mailing lists. At Mrs. Clinton’s request, I created a massive Excel spreadsheet called “2016.xlsx” with a nifty macro that automatically changed the name of anyone on the Forbes 400 list of billionaires into flashing green text and increased the size of their phone number from 10- to 72-point text.
On any given day I was called on to unjam the printer, explain why the Adobe Flash browser plugin needs to be updated so often, figure out where that downloaded file was actually saved, and warn the secretary of state that e-mail from “the wife of Nigeria’s former interior minister” was not authentic – except for one very awkward, nearly global-crisis-creating time when it was.
Sometimes I’d demonstrate handy keyboard shortcuts like CTRL-C to copy and CTRL-V to paste. “Oh, that’s a real time-saver, Bill. Thank you. But why the letter ‘V’ to paste?” she asked.
“I really don’t know, ma’am,” I said. I called her “ma’am” because that’s what they called the First Lady on “The West Wing.”
Sometimes the former president knocked on my door at 4:00 a.m., his singular gravelly voice calling from the hallway. “Bill,” he’d say, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, “you weren’t sleeping, were you? Microsoft Word is double-spacing everything I type, and I need single-spacing. Can you help?”
We had a little routine. I’d yawn, smile, and say, “I feel your pain, Mr. President.” We’d both laugh at my terrible joke, and he’d put his arm around me as we walked to his study. At his computer, I’d adjust a few settings and all would be resolved.
“Thank you, Bill,” the president would say. “You’re a genius.” I’m not, but who doesn’t like to hear that from a former president?
Once, basking in the confidence of being called a genius by Bill Clinton, I asked him how he felt about helping to deregulate Wall Street in 1999 and 2000, laying the groundwork for the massive financial crisis and economic collapse to come. His response? He stared at me icily, without blinking, for nearly an hour.
After that, for the sake of job security, I kept my political views to myself.
And yes – not to bury the lede – I also managed the controversial server that Hillary used for both work and personal e-mail while secretary of state. We settled on “clintonemail.com” for the domain name, though I suggested others: nothingtoseehere.com, jeb-bush-sucks.com, clintondynasty.org, and ohboywereallycashedin.com. She picked the boring name, I got it up and running, and the rest is history.
But why the scandal? I mean, didn’t Mrs. Clinton recently release (a portion of) her formerly electronic and easily searchable e-mail database as 55,000 pages of impossible-to-scan, deep-yellow parchment paper, onto which each email had been individually hand-copied in nearly illegible calligraphy – and all of which will surely take months or years to decipher? Immediately after which I wiped the server’s hard drive and set the whole thing afire? After which her lawyer told me to crush the burnt-out server shell into a fine dust which was later tossed from the window of a small airplane flying at 8,000 feet? (Over Nigeria.)
Seriously, what’s the problem? The haters are always going to hate, I guess.
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Bill Shein recently sent his resume to all 3,219 people running for president.
(A version of this column originally appeared in The Berkshire Record newspaper on June 5, 2015.)