The FBI says it will review the request from House Republican leaders that the agency investigate their suspicions that White House officials are planting stories about lawmaker's sex lives to deflect impeachment pressure against President Bill Clinton. The Republicans specifically mentioned White House adviser Sidney Blumenthal as one suspected source of the Hyde story, but Blumenthal denied any role.
Any suggestions otherwise are completely false.
The story of the relationship between Hyde, when he was in his late 30s and a rising Republican star in the Illinois legislature, and Cherie Snodgrass, a married woman 12 years younger, broke Wednesday in the San Francisco-based Internet magazine Salon. The magazine said it looked into the story after one of its editors received a telephone tip two weeks ago from a retiree named Norm Sommer, who said he learned of the affair from Snodgrass' ex-husband, Fred. Now here's a man who committed adultery with a woman of 28 or 29 at the time, with three small children. According to the magazine, the affair lasted from 1965 to 1969 and ended after Hyde's wife found out about it. His wife, Jeanne, died of breast cancer in 1992.