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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Two women who once accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct toured his presidential library Wednesday on a trip paid for by the publisher of a book critical of Clinton and his wife Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (search).
Kathleen Willey (search) and Juanita Broddrick (search) criticized what they called a campaign of intimidation meant to silence them after they came forward with their allegations.
“If she (Mrs. Clinton) is such a champion of women and women’s rights and women’s empowerment, then she needs to explain her role in what they tried to do to us,” said Willey, a Virginia real estate agent.
She has said the then-president fondled her when she met privately with him at the White House in 1993 to seek a job.
Broaddrick, an Arkansas nursing home owner who claimed Clinton sexually assaulted her at a Little Rock (search) hotel in 1978 when he was Arkansas attorney general, said Hillary Clinton “did everything she could to protect him to keep her own power.”
A spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
The senator is up for re-election next year and is considered a possible candidate for president in 2008.
Skip Rutherford, head of the foundation that built the $165 million tribute to Clinton’s presidency, declined to respond to the women’s remarks.
“It’s a free country. People pay their admission, they can come to the library,” Rutherford said.
The women’s trip expenses and $7 admission were paid for by World Ahead Publishing. The women were accompanied by Candice Jackson, author of “Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine.”
Willey said World Ahead would also publish a book she’s writing.