... On August 29, 1996, Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign after tabloid reports stated that he had been involved with a prostitute, Sherry Rowlands, as reported by The Washington Post. A New York tabloid newspaper, the Star, had obtained and published a set of photographs allegedly of Morris and the woman on a Washington, D.C., hotel balcony. News of the impending publication broke during the third day of the 1996 Democratic Convention. The Electronic Telegraph reported unverified claims that in order to impress Rowlands, Morris invited her to listen in on his conversations with President Clinton. It was reported that Rowlands worked for $200 an hour and that after he solicited her for sex, Morris gave Rowlands access to President Clinton's campaign speeches before they were delivered and also let her hear the President's voice during a telephone conservation.[20] According to Rowlands, Morris had a fondness for sucking toes.[21][22][23] It was also alleged he had an out-of-wedlock child from an affair with a Texas woman.[24]
Morris resigned on the same day that Bill Clinton spoke and accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. In his resignation statement, he said that "while I served I sought to avoid the limelight because I did not want to become the message. Now, I resign so I will not become the issue."[25] In his response, President Clinton praised Morris as a "friend", and publicly thanked him for his years of service. Privately, several of Clinton's aides were furious that in his resignation statement Morris credited himself with helping the President "come back from being buried in a landslide" and that Morris ended by comparing himself to Robert F. Kennedy.[26]
Morris was featured on two consecutive covers of Time magazine. The September 2, 1996 issue, which was released before the prostitute story broke, featured Morris as "The Man Who Has Clinton's Ear".[7] The following week, the cover featured Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann, and the headline read "The Morris Mess: After the Fall".[26]
In his book Why Just Her, on his defence of the "Washington Madam", Debra Jeane Palfrey, Montgomery Blair Sibley wrote that Morris was a client of Palfrey's escort agency, and the first individual he planned to call in Palfrey's defence.[27]
Later work
In his 1997 book, Behind the Oval Office, Morris wrote that, following an argument in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion in May 1990, he strode toward the exit and was tackled by Clinton. In 2003, Morris further stated that Clinton cocked his arm back to throw a punch, but Hillary Clinton pulled her husband off Morris. In both versions of the story, she consoled Morris and apologized to him, stating that Bill behaved as such only with those he cared for most. According to Morris, she did this to keep him quiet about the incident. He says the incident was the reason for denying Bill Clinton's request to work on the 1992 campaign.[28]
Morris has become a vocal and regular critic of the Clintons since his departure, in particular Hillary Rodham Clinton and her bid for the presidency. Morris has written extensively about the Clintons (see below) and also contributed to Hillary: The Movie, a documentary about Rodham Clinton when she was still a 2008 Presidential candidate.[29] Later, after Bill Clinton's comments about the similarities between Barack Obama's popularity and that of presidential candidate Jesse Jackson in 1988, Morris put out an article on his blog that asserted that this was Clinton's way of injecting race into the political campaign.[30]
Morris is also related to Roy Cohn.
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