LAT: David Geffen, Bill Clinton were often at odds

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Geffen, Clinton were often at odds
The billionaire shocked many when he criticized the former first lady. But his friendship with the former president was rocky.
By Stephen Braun and Dan Morain, Times Staff Writers
March 4, 2007

WASHINGTON — Long before the fractious public airing of their poisoned relations, the political friendship between David Geffen and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton was an unconventional alliance with a cloudy future.

The outspoken Hollywood mogul Geffen lavished nearly $1.2 million on the Clintons and other Democrats during the Clinton White House years, gaining extraordinary access to the president while hosting the couple at intimate dinners at his Malibu beachfront home and sleepovers at his estate in Beverly Hills.

But their relations were in constant flux. Intimates of the two said that flashpoints surfaced often: Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. The president's scolding of Hollywood after the Columbine school massacre. The Monica S. Lewinsky affair and Clinton's impeachment. And finally, the 11th-hour flurry of controversial pardons that excluded a convicted murderer whose release Geffen had championed.

Their alliance was marked by genuine affection, colleagues say, and a large measure of self-interest. Whether its meltdown has any lasting significance remains to be seen, but Geffen's recent broadside against the Clintons left the political world agape.

Aimed chiefly at Hillary Clinton, who was mostly a bystander to the friendship, Geffen's waspish comments to a New York Times columnist gave voice to the kind of sentiments — that she is polarizing, dishonest, far too ambitious — that her presidential campaign expected from the right, not from a political soul mate....

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-geffenclinton4mar04,0,3124358,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines