ATLANTA -- Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Atlanta on Tuesday to deliver the closing general session speech at the 2013 NACS Show. The convenience store association issued a notice prohibiting the press from covering the closed event. It also prohibited recording or photographing the event, as well as posting on social media.
According to a report by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which had unofficial sources at the event, Clinton did not make any mention of 2016 presidential ambitions.
But Georgia State Representative Tom Taylor (R) told the newspaper that she dropped a huge hint. "I know she's running for president now, because toward the end, she was asked about the Osama bin Laden raid. She took 25 minutes to answer," he said. "Without turning the knife too deeply, she put it to [Vice President Joe] Biden."
[Editor's Note: Although a representative of CSP who attended the event vouched for the accuracy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's story, out of respect for NACS, CSP will not add anything more to this report.]
Clinton mentioned the vice president's opposition to the bin Laden raid several times, while characterizing herself and Leon Panetta, then director of the CIA, as the action's fiercest advocates, Taylor said.
About 3,000 to 4,000 convention-goers packed the Thomas Murphy Ballroom in the Georgia World Congress Center to hear Clinton, said the report. The bin Laden query was the last of a Q & A session with the audience.
Another attendee, who preferred to remain anonymous, described for the paper Clinton's talk as a lengthy "rah, rah, pro-entrepreneurship, feel-good message" that inevitably pivoted toward her hope that the federal government shutdown would soon be resolved, making observations about President Bill Clinton's experience with House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Click here for the full Atlanta Journal-Constitution report.
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