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Shoe Thrown at Hillary Clinton
Published on
Friday, 11 April 2014
7:49 pm
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world news
Las Vegas: Hillary Rodham Clinton
ducked a thrown shoe, expressed surprise, cracked a couple of jokes that drew
applause and continued her keynote speech on stage in front of a Las Vegas
convention audience.
Moments later,
still in the stage spotlight, the former secretary of state reflected calmly on
what she called "an atmosphere and attitude in politics" that she
said rewards inflexibility and extremism.
"That is not
the way democracy works," Clinton said as she fielded apologies and
questions Thursday from Jerry Simms, the outgoing chairman of the host
Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.
"People
bring their beliefs and their concerns to the table, and work them
through," Clinton said.
Meanwhile, a
woman was taken into federal custody after admitting she threw the shoe. She didn't
say why she did it.
"Is that
somebody throwing something at me?" Clinton said after the object flew
past her on the stage at the Mandalay Bay resort. "Is that part of Cirque
de Soleil?"
Most in the
audience of more than 1,000 people understood the reference to the popular
series of Las Vegas Strip shows featuring acrobats, magic and whimsy.
"My
goodness, I didn't know that solid waste management was so controversial,"
Clinton laughed. "Thank goodness she didn't play softball like I
did."
Brian Spellacy,
U.S. Secret Service supervisory special agent in Las Vegas, said the woman in
custody was being questioned and would face criminal charges. Spellacy declined
to identify the woman.
Spellacy and a
spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said it wasn't immediately clear
what charges she would face.
A black and
orange athletic shoe was recovered from the stage, Spellacy added.
Ilene Rosen, the
wife of a conventioneer from Denver who was seated in the second row, said she
saw an orange object fly toward the stage from a side aisle and papers
fluttering in the air.
Rosen said the
woman had walked to a rope line within six rows of the front of the seating
area, threw the items, turned around, put her hands in the air and walked up
the aisle toward the back of the room. Security officers quickly caught up with
her.
In the hotel
hallway, the middle-aged blonde woman sat calmly on a sofa, wearing a blue
dress and thong sandals. She said she threw a shoe and dropped some papers, but
didn't identify herself to reporters or explain the action. Security officials
then ushered reporters and photographers away.
Spellacy and Mark
Carpenter, spokesman for the recycling institute, said the woman wasn't a credentialed
convention member and wasn't supposed to have been in the ballroom.
An attendee
sitting near Rosen later handed a reporter a piece of paper that he said the
woman threw. It appeared to be a declassified copy of a Department of Defense
document labeled confidential and dated August 1967; it referred to a Bolivian
Army operation called "Cynthia" in Bolivia.
The shoe-throwing
incident reminded some of former President George W. Bush dodging two shoes
thrown by an Iraqi journalist during a news conference in Baghdad in December
2008. Shoe-throwing is considered an insult in Arab cultures.
Clinton, the
former first lady and Democratic senator from New York, has been traveling the
country giving paid speeches to industry organizations and appearing before key
Democratic Party constituents.
During a speech
in San Francisco on Tuesday, Clinton said she was seriously considering a
presidential bid and all it would entail.
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