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Interview With Sidney Blumenthal

Aired May 23, 2003 - 15:21   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.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: When it comes to Hillary Clinton's famous charge that her husband was a victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy, former Presidential Adviser Sidney Blumenthal is a true believer.
In his new book "The Clinton Wars" it is largely about effort to destroy the Clinton presidency. I asked Blumenthal if he believes that Clinton did not bear any responsibility for what went wrong in his administration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL, AUTHOR, "THE CLINTON WARS": No, of course not, especially about the private relationship that he had with Monica Lewinsky. And I told him that, and no one was more regretful than Bill Clinton about that in the end.

But I do want to say that, you know, I, as an adviser to the president and many of my other colleagues really had to make decisions on the spot. You know, when this crisis was foisted upon us, and we had to decide and balance what the values were, for us, and for me, it was a question of a relationship that was about the Clintons' marriage. It was private -- it belonged to them. It wasn't about me, versus what I thought was a partisan prosecutor working an extreme Congress to create an unconstitutional impeachment that was an attack on the presidency. And for me, those things were very clear, where I had to stand.

WOODRUFF: Having said that, people come away, have come away from this book and said Sidney Blumenthal is an apologist for the Clintons. Is that how you view yourself?

BLUMENTHAL: Well I've tried to present as much as I could from the inside out. This is the other side of the story, much of which has not appeared in the news. It's as accurate and honest and candid and factual as I can make it. And that's the value of these kinds of memoirs. They have to be written by people who were there. And I don't feel badly at all about being accused of being loyal. I was there to the end.

WOODRUFF: You don't think you were blinded by the loyalty that you felt to the Clintons?

BLUMENTHAL: Well I think readers can judge for themselves and evaluate the material themselves. I don't think I was blinded at all to the complex man and circumstances that we faced.

WOODRUFF: When you were a writer for "The New Yorker" you were already advising the Clintons. People have said to me, is that a conflict of interest?

BLUMENTHAL: Well I think there's a lot of confusion about it. I regarded the journalism that I did in a great Washington tradition. I had access to the Clintons, not complete access. I was friendly with them, and we had a lot of conversations. But I stopped writing about them in 1994, years before I went into the White House. And I never had a conflict where I was...

WOODRUFF: So you don't feel there was ever a time when you were a journalist but having crossed the line and giving advice to somebody in political life?

BLUMENTHAL: I never crossed the line where I participated in an event and wrote about it -- ever.

WOODRUFF: Let me ask you, finally, about the experience of being in the Clinton White House. And you write about the relentless attacks on that president. You and I were just talking about the Democrats running for president this year and you said they could learn a lesson from what you -- what the Clinton White House went through.

BLUMENTHAL: Well I think my book explains how we got from there to here. It explains a lot about how the attack machine works. And if you look at what happened to the Gore campaign, there were relentless attacks on Gore. There were, in my view, many false charges made about him, many false stories. And eventually, it wore the Gore campaign down, and he became, I think, disoriented in the second debate, which created uncertainty about his image and his character.

This is a person of sterling character, whose character was being questioned because he was responding to these attacks. The Democrats really, really need to remain focused on where these attacks are coming from and realize that their response to the attacks is part of their message.

WOODRUFF: And you're saying they're not doing that right now?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, I think the attacks have not yet really ramped up. They will when some Democrat emerges from this pack, which is a huge pack. And they have to remember that if they don't stand up for themselves, voters will wonder whether they can stand up for them. They're running for a representative job. Bill Clinton figured this out and the other Democrats need to figure it out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal. The book is "The Clinton Wars."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 23, 2003 - 15:21   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: When it comes to Hillary Clinton's famous charge that her husband was a victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy, former Presidential Adviser Sidney Blumenthal is a true believer.
In his new book "The Clinton Wars" it is largely about effort to destroy the Clinton presidency. I asked Blumenthal if he believes that Clinton did not bear any responsibility for what went wrong in his administration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL, AUTHOR, "THE CLINTON WARS": No, of course not, especially about the private relationship that he had with Monica Lewinsky. And I told him that, and no one was more regretful than Bill Clinton about that in the end.

But I do want to say that, you know, I, as an adviser to the president and many of my other colleagues really had to make decisions on the spot. You know, when this crisis was foisted upon us, and we had to decide and balance what the values were, for us, and for me, it was a question of a relationship that was about the Clintons' marriage. It was private -- it belonged to them. It wasn't about me, versus what I thought was a partisan prosecutor working an extreme Congress to create an unconstitutional impeachment that was an attack on the presidency. And for me, those things were very clear, where I had to stand.

WOODRUFF: Having said that, people come away, have come away from this book and said Sidney Blumenthal is an apologist for the Clintons. Is that how you view yourself?

BLUMENTHAL: Well I've tried to present as much as I could from the inside out. This is the other side of the story, much of which has not appeared in the news. It's as accurate and honest and candid and factual as I can make it. And that's the value of these kinds of memoirs. They have to be written by people who were there. And I don't feel badly at all about being accused of being loyal. I was there to the end.

WOODRUFF: You don't think you were blinded by the loyalty that you felt to the Clintons?

BLUMENTHAL: Well I think readers can judge for themselves and evaluate the material themselves. I don't think I was blinded at all to the complex man and circumstances that we faced.

WOODRUFF: When you were a writer for "The New Yorker" you were already advising the Clintons. People have said to me, is that a conflict of interest?

BLUMENTHAL: Well I think there's a lot of confusion about it. I regarded the journalism that I did in a great Washington tradition. I had access to the Clintons, not complete access. I was friendly with them, and we had a lot of conversations. But I stopped writing about them in 1994, years before I went into the White House. And I never had a conflict where I was...

WOODRUFF: So you don't feel there was ever a time when you were a journalist but having crossed the line and giving advice to somebody in political life?

BLUMENTHAL: I never crossed the line where I participated in an event and wrote about it -- ever.

WOODRUFF: Let me ask you, finally, about the experience of being in the Clinton White House. And you write about the relentless attacks on that president. You and I were just talking about the Democrats running for president this year and you said they could learn a lesson from what you -- what the Clinton White House went through.

BLUMENTHAL: Well I think my book explains how we got from there to here. It explains a lot about how the attack machine works. And if you look at what happened to the Gore campaign, there were relentless attacks on Gore. There were, in my view, many false charges made about him, many false stories. And eventually, it wore the Gore campaign down, and he became, I think, disoriented in the second debate, which created uncertainty about his image and his character.

This is a person of sterling character, whose character was being questioned because he was responding to these attacks. The Democrats really, really need to remain focused on where these attacks are coming from and realize that their response to the attacks is part of their message.

WOODRUFF: And you're saying they're not doing that right now?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, I think the attacks have not yet really ramped up. They will when some Democrat emerges from this pack, which is a huge pack. And they have to remember that if they don't stand up for themselves, voters will wonder whether they can stand up for them. They're running for a representative job. Bill Clinton figured this out and the other Democrats need to figure it out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal. The book is "The Clinton Wars."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com