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Open and Unflappable

White lilies perfumed the air outside the State Dining Room last Friday afternoon as Hillary Rodham Clinton walked in, sat down in a shiny wooden armchair under a portrait of a pensive Abraham Lincoln and asked, "Are we ready?"

Ready? By the time it was suddenly announced at noon that she would hold a genuine press conference later in the day, most reporters had been waiting 3 1/2 months to fire questions at the First Lady about Whitewater. What happened was a riveting hour and 12 minutes in which the First Lady appeared to be open, candid, but above all unflappable....

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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