Weeks later, a small group of campaign aides, along with Mrs. Clinton, met at the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, and they made a pivotal decision: They would hire Jack Palladino, a private investigator known for tactics such as making surreptitious recordings and deploying attractive women to extract information.
An aide to the campaign, who declined to be publicly identified because the aide had not been authorized to speak for the Clintons, said Mrs. Clinton was among those who had discussed and approved the hiring, which shifted the campaign to a more aggressive posture.
Mr. Kantor, the campaign chairman, said he did not know whether Mrs. Clinton had specifically approved Mr. Palladino’s employment as the other aide recalled. But he said that she had seen a need for outside help.
“She believed we had to deal with the issue directly,” Mr. Kantor said.
Mr. Palladino, who did not respond to requests for an interview, reported to James Lyons, a lawyer working for the campaign. In a memo that he addressed to Mr. Lyons on March 30, Mr. Palladino proposed a full-court press on Ms. Flowers.
“Every acquaintance, employer, and past lover should be located and interviewed,” Mr. Palladino wrote. “She is now a shining icon — telling lies that so far have proved all benefit and no cost — for any other opportunist who may be considering making Clinton a target.”
Soon, Ms. Flowers heard from ex-boyfriends and others who said they had been contacted by a private investigator.
“They would say that he would try to manipulate them,” Ms. Flowers recalled, “or get them to say things like I was sexually active.”
Karen Steele, who had worked with Ms. Flowers at the Roy Clark Celebrity Theater in Branson, Mo., was among those who received a visit. “I remember I got questioned about brothers Gennifer and I once dated,” she said. “It wasn’t warm and fuzzy.”
Going on Offense
The information gathered by Mr. Palladino was given to Betsey Wright, a former chief of staff to Mr. Clinton in Arkansas who, with Mrs. Clinton’s support, was put in charge of dealing with accusations of infidelity.
“Betsey Wright was handling whatever those issues were,” Susan Thomases, a friend of the Clintons who had served in the campaign, told the oral history project. “And it had been very comfortable because Hillary had let her do it.”
Through Ms. Wright, the digging into Ms. Flowers and other women would be passed on to reporters.
Ms. Wright declined to be interviewed, saying in an email, “It is reprehensible that The New York Times is joining The National Enquirer and Donald Trump by dredging up irrelevant slime from the past.”
At the time, Ms. Wright
boasted to The Washington Post of Mr. Palladino’s success in countering what she memorably called “bimbo eruptions,” and in defusing two dozen accusations of affairs, which she contended were false.
In the cover story of an issue of Penthouse in which Ms. Flowers posed nude — she would earn at least $500,000 selling her story to media outlets — Ms. Wright pushed allegations about her gathered by Mr. Palladino, including “résumé hype, attempted blackmail, manufacturing a self-styled 12-year affair with Clinton to salvage a flopola singing career.”
Ms. Wright read to the Penthouse reporter a statement, taken by Mr. Palladino, that “when the richest of her many lovers would not leave his wife, or come across with more money, she staged a suicide attempt with wine and Valium.”