Power to work for ‘Monster’ Clinton

Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama's presidential campaign team in March after calling Hillary Clinton "a monster", has joined the president-elect's transition team - in a potentially awkward role.

Power (pictured) is one of 14 foreign policy experts selected to work inside the State Department to help the incoming administration prepare for the nomination of Obama's Secretary of State. Who is, of course, fully expected to be Hillary Clinton.

Neither Clinton's office nor Obama's transition staff were prepared to comment on Power's appointment, but an official close to the Obama team has said Power had "made a gesture to bury the hatchet" with Clinton and it had been well-received.

Power's downfall was considered to be very bad luck by most observers who felt that she was "shafted" by a British newspaper reporter. Power, 37, an Irish-born expert in genocide, was here to publicise her latest book when, in the course of an interview with the Scotsman, she was asked about her new role as a foreign policy advisor to Obama. In the course of which she let slip that she thought Clinton - then running against Obama for the Democratic nomination - was a "monster" and was "stooping to anything...The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive".

Although Power pleaded with the Scotsman that these remarks were off the record, the reporter ignored her wish and when the "monster" tag reached the States, where there is an unwritten campaign rule that Democrat candidates and their supporters don't slag each other off, she swiftly fell on her sword and resigned.