Paul Fray, the former campaign director who claimed that the first lady called him a “f—ing Jew b——“ after Bill Clinton lost his race for Congress 26 years ago passed a lie-detector test arranged by the New York Post. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Fray is truthful,” said Hubanks, a state-licensed Arkansas polygrapher, who administered the three-hour test last Sunday in Little Rock, Ark.. Hillary Clinton had no comment on the polygraph results, but had previously commented, “Anyone who tries to get someone else to believe this will at least have to say, ‘Well, she says it’s not true.’ You’re darn right it’s not true. It’s absolutely false.”
“I proved it today. I knew I was telling the truth all along. The truth will set you free-and I’m free of this question,” Paul Fray told the New York Post after he was informed he had passed the test.
“I don’t want the people in the state of New York, and particularly the Jewish community, to attach any undue significance to this,” he added. “I want her to win the race. If I was a registered voter in the state of New York, I would vote for her. She will make an excellent senator.”
Fray, 57, offered to take a polygraph test to prove he was not lying and the New York Post took him up and his offer and chose Jeff Hubanks, who has administered about 400 to 500 exams, from a list of accredited examiners.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Fray is truthful,” said Hubanks, a state-licensed Arkansas polygrapher, who administered the three-hour test last Sunday in Little Rock, Ark..
The findings were reviewed Monday by another expert, Richard Keifer, a former head of the FBI’s polygraph unit with 20 years of experience. Keifer told the Post that he judged the results “inconclusive” because they didn’t meet the high federal polygraph standards — but that he found nothing to indicate Fray was lying.
Keifer said Hubanks relied on a controversial questioning technique that isn’t endorsed by the FBI but that it appeared there were no other options in this case to establish a benchmark for measuring Fray’s physiological responses. He credited Hubanks for conducting a “professional exam.”
Hubanks asked two similar questions to determine if Fray was being truthful about whether Hillary Clinton made the anti-Semitic remark. The questions were: “Did you hear Hillary call you a “f—ing Jew b——?” and “Did you hear Hillary call you a “f—ing Jew b—— in 1974?” Under the FBI’s scoring system, Keifer said, Fray’s combined answer to two questions about the slur would be evaluated as inconclusive but the rating system used by Hubanks indicated Fray’s response is truthful.
“The one thing I didn’t see was deception,” Keifer said.
Fray’s allegation first appeared last month in the book, “State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton,” by Jerry Oppenheimer, a celebrity biographer. The book is published by HarperCollins. Oppenheimer wrote that the anti-Semitic slur was uttered by Mrs. Clinton, who was not yet married to the president, on Election night in 1974 in a fight in the back room of Bill Clinton’s congressional campaign headquarters in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Fray’s wife and a campaign worker, Neil McDonald, both confirmed Fray’s account.
The president — who also was present — denied last month that his wife made the ethnic slur but conceded the first lady may have used the word “bastard.”
The first lady brought the remark to the forefront of her U.S. Senate campaign in New York when she called a news conference on her Chappaqua, N.Y. front lawn and angrily and tearfully said “I wanted to unequivocally state it never happened.”
“My policy for the last eight years has largely been just to absorb whatever insult, whatever charge, whatever accusation anybody says, and not respond because they are so outrageous and so unfair,” Hillary Clinton said. “Anyone who tries to get someone else to believe this will at least have to say, ‘Well, she says it’s not true.’ You’re darn right it’s not true. It’s absolutely false.”
Clinton’s campaign declined to comment on the polygraph test results at the time.
