"Vast right-wing conspiracy" is a phrase popularized by a 1995 memo by political opposition researcher Chris Lehane and then referenced in 1998 by the then-First Lady of the United States Hillary Clinton in defense of her husband, U.S. President Bill Clinton, characterizing the continued allegations of scandal against her and her husband, including the Lewinsky scandal, as part of a conspiracy by Clinton's political enemies.
Into the 21st century, the term continued to be used, including in a question posed to Bill Clinton in 2009 to describe verbal attacks on Barack Obama during his early presidency. Hillary Clinton mentioned it again during her 2016 presidential campaign. Additionally, conservatives used or adopted the term to mock it.
Earlier uses
While popularized by Hillary Clinton in her 1998 The Today Show interview, the phrase did not originate with her. In 1991, the Detroit News wrote that "Thatcher-era Britain produced its own crop of paranoid left-liberal films. ... All posited a vast right-wing conspiracy [emphasis added] propping up a reactionary government ruthlessly crushing all efforts at opposition under the guise of parliamentary democracy." An Associated Press story in 1995 also used the phrase, relating an official's guess that the Oklahoma City bombing was the work of "maybe five malcontents" and not "some kind of vast right-wing conspiracy."
Popularization
1995 memo
A 332-page memo titled "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" was commissioned by Mark Fabiani and written by Chris Lehane in 1995. It was the first document to describe the conspiracies surrounding the Clintons. It described how conservative media outlets such as The American Spectator spread conspiracy theories about the suicide of Vince Foster, the Whitewater controversy, and other events. According to the memo, these conspiracies spread from conservative think tanks to British tabloids and then to the mainstream press.
The Today Show interview
In response to ongoing accusations surrounding the Clintons' investment in a real estate development known as Whitewater in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Attorney General Janet Reno had appointed an independent counsel, the Republican Ken Starr, to investigate those accusations in 1994.
Starr's investigation began to branch out into other issues, from Filegate to Travelgate and Bill Clinton's actions in the civil case of his alleged sexual harassment of Paula Jones prior to his presidency. In the course of the last of these, White House intern Monica Lewinsky signed an affidavit that she had not had a relationship with Clinton. Lewinsky's confidant Linda Tripp had been recording their phone conversations and offered Starr tapes of Lewinsky describing her feelings for, and alleging intimate encounters with, the president. Clinton was asked to give a deposition, and accusations that he lied about an affair under oath first made national headlines on January 17, 1998, when the story was picked up by the conservative-right e-mail newsletter The Drudge Report. Despite swift denials from Clinton, the media attention grew. On January 27, 1998, Hillary Clinton appeared on NBC's The Today Show in an interview with Matt Lauer.