St Paul Pioneer Press

    A new biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton alleges she masterminded efforts to cover up Bill Clinton's draft record during the 1992 campaign - and coolly executed a "20-year project" to place both spouses into the Oval Office regardless of their marital woes.

    The book portrays Clinton as a politically savvy manipulator who is, in turn, manipulated by an even savvier manipulator named Bill Clinton.

    Gerth and Van Natta's 400-page biography is timed to arrive in bookstores June 5 - the same day as Carl Bernstein's 650-page "A Woman in Charge."

    Clinton's rapid-response media operation began issuing talking points questioning the veracity and newsworthiness of both books. ((Maybe Chris will post them here--G)

    But the elan hides real concern among her supporters that the books might revive long-held views that she accepted her husband's infidelities as a trade-off for her own presidential ambitions. Bernstein's book, which he began in 1999, before Clinton won election to the Senate, is more of a soup-to-nuts biography, with new information about Hillary Clinton's 30-year struggle to cope with her husband's infidelities.

    Gerth and Van Natta allege that Hillary Clinton told then White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta of a Clinton family plan to serve successive eight-year terms in the White House.

    During a 1996 ride on Air Force One, Panetta said Clinton revealed the project "had begun in Arkansas with the goal of establishing a long-term change in where the Democratic Party was heading."