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American Morning

Self-Avowed Ex-Conservative David Brock Taking Himself Down in New Book

Aired March 14, 2002 - 09:34   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Reporter David Brock made his name by launching partisan attacks on liberals. Now, Brock is taking himself down. In the book, "Blinded by the Right: The Conscious of an Ex-Conservative," the one time, right-wing hatchet man details his rise in the right-wing movement and his political change of heart.

David Brock joins me now.

Good morning. Thanks for coming in.

DAVID BROCK, AUTHOR, "BLINDED BY THE RIGHT": Thanks for having me.

ZAHN: I wanted to start off by sharing with you a small part of a review that "New York Times" columnist Frank Rich did in his view of your book.

He says, "By his own account, Brock has lied so often that a reader can't take faith on some of the juicier newsbreaks from the impeachment era in his book."

So why should anybody believe you now.

BROCK: Well, Frank Rich also says in that piece that the parts of the books where I write about him are accurate, and other people have also said the same. So I think the book has stood up so far to scrutiny, and I think that, you know, I basically had two choices here when I defected from the conservative movement. Neither one of them were really good. One was to sweep all this under the rug, not tell the truth about what I had done and what others had done and move on, or come out voluntarily and disclose what I did, and I think that that's the most credible thing.

ZAHN: What is the worst thing you did?

BROCK: Well, I think there's basically two things. I think the attack on Anita Hill in my first book was totally off base.

ZAHN: You were later forced to admit that you printed a lie. Maybe it was after the publishing of the book, that you were well aware of this information about the pornographic videos and some other information, and you chose to mislead. BROCK: Yes, I wasn't forced -- what I say in this book -- I wasn't forced to admit that. I admit that. Nobody knew that. About two years after my Anita Hill book came out, I believed that book was true when I wrote it, but I did find out damaging information about Clarence Thomas, and I hid that in a review that I wrote for "The American Spectator." I concealed damaging information about Clarence Thomas, and that was basically lying in print. That's the one time I did it, and after that, I hit rock bottom, wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, and I think that stood up pretty well the test of time, and was credible.

ZAHN: What do you have the strongest regrets about?

BROCK: Well, I think, you know, if I really look back on it, entering the conservative movement in the first place. When I got out of college, I got a job at "The Washington Times," never really had good journalistic training and spent 12 years doing the wrong thing with my life, attacking liberals on a partisan agenda.

ZAHN: What about the Troopergate story?

BROCK: Well, I think Troopergate, if you look at the historical impact at the point of Troopergate, because as you know, it mentioned a women named Paula, which was Paula Jones, which lead openly to impeachment. And Troopergate really is the center of the conspiracy that I write about in the book. As you know, Mrs. Clinton called it a vast right-wing conspiracy. A lot of people laughed that off. There was a conspiracy, and much of this book documents it. It begins with Troopergate. The people behind Troopergate wanted to get Bill Clinton impeached five years before the name Monica Lewinsky was ever known to anybody, and there was a relentless, well-funded campaign to do that, which ultimately came to center on the Paul Jones' case.

ZAHN: But doesn't that ignore the fact that Bill Clinton brought a lot of the problems on himself? I mean, you not suggesting that the right-wingers planted Monica Lewinsky in the White House, are you?

BROCK: No, no, certainly not. I don't think -- it doesn't suggest that the president didn't get himself into some trouble. I think what it does suggests that is there was a concerted effort that was, in my opinion, abuse of the system trying to destroy the system, which represented a greater threat to the country and to the Constitution than Bill Clinton lying about sex. And I think if people read this book, they will see that the effort by the right was far more chilling than anything Bill Clinton was accused of doing.

ZAHN: Now that you are wading in the more liberal pools right now, are you any prouder of the Democrats' record, just on any particular issues? You know, we knew out of the State of the Union Address, you had some key Democratic operatives out there with the plan, you know, pin the economic downturn on Bush, even though the Bush administration maintains it inherited it.

BROCK: Sure. Right, I think that people want to say this is all politics as usual. And you know I'm criticizing and conservative do the same thing. Not in my experience. I think the Republicans have always played rougher and dirtier, and I think that over the 10 years that I was in the right wing, which is really all I know about, clearly, there's nothing comparable on the liberal side, and I don't think there's been anything comparable really as far as I know in our history.

ZAHN: In closing, you talked about reaching rock bottom. Do you think you'll ever be able to redeem yourself, since credible seems to be such a huge issue looming large over this shadow of your head?

BROCK: Right. Sure. Well, you know, redemption is a matter for, I think, higher authorities. What I have tried to do here is clear my own conscious, set the record straight, and you know be able to move on, and so that's what I am trying to do. I think if people read the book, they're going to have to judge whether it's sincere or not on their own.

ZAHN: And say the name of the book again, because we had the shortened version of it.

BROCK: "Blinded by the Right: The Conscious of an Ex- Conservative."

ZAHN: David Brock, thank you for coming by. Appreciate your time this morning.

BROCK: Thank you.

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