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KOOKY KT’S SPY TALE; HILL’S HELICOPTERS WATCHING ME: RIVAL

ALBANY – A Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is bizarrely claiming that the former first lady has been spying in her bedroom window and flying helicopters over her house in the Hamptons, witnesses told The Post yesterday.

Former Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen “KT” McFarland stunned a crowd of Suffolk County Republicans on Thursday by saying:

“Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures,” according to a prominent GOP activist who was at the event.

“She wasn’t joking, she was very, very serious, and she also claimed that Clinton’s people were taking pictures across the street from her house in Manhattan, taking pictures from an apartment across the street from her bedroom,” added the eyewitness, who is not involved in the Senate race.

Suffolk County Republican Chairman Harry Withers, who hosted the reception in East Islip, confirmed McFarland’s paranoid statements.

“Yes, she said that,” Withers told The Post.

McFarland spokesman William O’Reilly responded that the GOP hopeful was just kidding around with her far-fetched claims.

“It was a joke, and people laughed,” O’Reilly insisted.

But three witnesses who were present said nobody in the audience cracked a smile.

“The whole room sort of went silent when she said it,” one person said.

“You could see peoples’ jaws drop after she said it. A guy next to me just turned to me and said, ‘I guess she didn’t take her Xanax today,’ ” the witness added.

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson denied any spying was going on.

“We at the Hillary campaign wish Ms. McFarland the best and hope she gets the rest she needs,” he said.

But Wolfson couldn’t resist a sharper gibe at McFarland’s oddball remarks.

“Some campaigns hand out campaign buttons; the McFarland campaign hands out tinfoil hats with antennas,” he quipped.

McFarland’s Republican primary opponent, former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, was present at the event, and said he came away bewildered.

“I’m standing there, and I kind of put my head down and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ ” Spencer said.

McFarland, a Park Avenue matron who has never run for public office, has had a string of problems since announcing her candidacy earlier this month.

The Post reported last week that she had failed to vote in numerous New York elections and had even missed voting for President Ronald Reagan in 1984, when she claimed to be an important Reagan administration official.

The Post also disclosed that McFarland had occasionally voted at both her Southampton and Manhattan addresses in violation of the state Election Law, which allows ballots to be cast from only address.

It was also revealed this week that there are several discrepancies in McFarland’s résumé and that she had falsely claimed to be the highest-ranking woman in the Pentagon at a time when two other women held higher-ranking posts.

Earlier this week, former Republican U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato called McFarland’s campaign “a joke” and “a candidate in her own mind.”

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

Editorial / Page 18