In your book about al gore and the gridiron dinner. What was it . In the last year of the clinton presidency, bill clinton, the president , decided he would bag the gridiron dinner, where the president usually goes to speak. And he didnt like it much. It was the second time he didnt. And taking his place was al gore. I got a phone call just a few days before the dinner, wondering if id help in Vice President gores speech. I got a call from my friend, bob shrum, who was a media guy for gore. And what they wanted me to do was have a phony interview with him, where i would ask all kinds of questions not with him, but with president bush and they would have president bush saying general. Now, that was a little piece of tape that they got from an interview that george w. Bush had done earlier with a smart aleck guy up in massachusetts, who had asked him, do you know the name of the president of pakistan, general musharraf. And poor bush said, general, and he couldnt think of his name. So, they had all of these questions. And the answer to every one of them was general. It made a fool out of bush. He asked, if i, as a conservative, would be the fall guy and ask the questions. And i said, well, whats in it for me . And i said, would Vice President bush submit to an interview with me on evans and novak after it was novak, hunt and shields, i believe, at that time, on cnn . He hadnt agreed to an interview with me since 1988. And so, shrum said, absolutely. And i said, no. I said, ive got to get an assurance from the Vice President. And so, the Vice President called me at my apartment that night and assured me that he thanked me for doing this stunt, which kind of made me as a patsy but he would give me the interview. And checked after next week. And i checked the week after that and the week after that. He never would give me the interview. And he said he just didnt want to do it. So, i thought he was a big phony and a floorflusher for doing that. Another year at the gridiron, there was a song called thank heaven for little girls. It was a song that didnt get and i was the president of the gridiron that year. And there was a very clever song that everybody would have loved, because president clinton was having all the Monica Lewinsky trouble. And everybody would start roaring the minute they played thank heaven for little girls. But i killed the song as the president , because i was sitting next to the president for four hours that night. I was the president of the gridiron club. And i didnt want to be embarrassed. What was he like for four hours sitting next to . Well, to be honest with you, mr. Lamb, i wasnt talking to him for four hours. On my other side was the publisher of my newspaper, lord black who is now in a lot of trouble, but thats another story and they talked for most of the three hours about franklin roosevelt, i believe. Black had written a biography of roosevelt. So, the president was down to talking to me for just about an hour. And, you know, i wasnt tops on his hit parade. It was cordial. And i tried to lead him on in saying that the payroll taxes were too high, and he would look into that and he was interested. But he really wasnt. Nothing was ever done. And we talked a little. Im a basketball fan, and hes a basketball fan. We talked a little basketball, and made a few other comments, but nothing very exciting. Do you call this a memoir or an autobiography . Its a memoir. You also speaking of conrad black, whos been on trial in chicago for several weeks but you also and he owned the chicago suntimes you also tell the story about wanting him to jointly go with you at the university of illinois, your alma mater, to fund a chair. Explain that one. Well, i owe a lot and my family, my grandfather was an immigrant and i owe a lot to the university of illinois. My father and his three brothers were graduates, and im a graduate of the university of illinois. And i wanted to fund a chair in western civilization and culture, so that theyd be talking about dead white studying dead white men in perpetuity. And i found out it cost 1. 25 million to fund a chair. So, i went to lord black he wasnt lord black then, he was just conrad black and said, lets make this the Chicago Sun Times chair in western culture and civilization. Well each spend 650,000 on it. And he said, thats a great idea. Send me a letter and well get it done. I sent the letter, didnt get any reply. A lot of back and forth. Finally, another guy, who is now in jail the actual publisher of the suntimes, mr. Radler they said, this is a chicago matter. Youve got to see him. I went to see him and he says, no. Not on your life. We would never do anything like that. So, i had to pick up the whole tab myself. It turned out well, because it would have embarrassed the university of illinois to have a crook funding the chair. Youve done several things in your memoir that often you dont see. One of them is, you have told us all throughout this how much money you make. Thats right. Why did you decide to do that . Well, people are very interested in it, and ive never told anybody. And you will find, if you read it, that i made a lot less money than people thought i made for much of my life. I made very little money when i started off in the newspaper business, and even when i i wasnt making much money even when i started the column. I made a lot more money than i ever thought i would make as a journalist. Probably less than people thought i would make. But i think people are interested in that. Brian, i think that a lot of journalists write memoirs, and they dont tell you a thing. Maybe its the kind of business were in. Theyre very secretive. People who are ballet dancers and poets and artistes tell everything. They tell too much, if you want to know. So, i tried to hit a happy medium, so i tell something about my personal life, including how much money i made. You tell us that youre worth in the high singledigit like, 7 or 8 million. Yes. You tell us that, in the last year at cnn, you made 625,000. From cnn alone. From cnn alone. And you made 1. 2 million in i make less than that a lot less than that now. But what were you doing at cnn that made you 625,000 . I did various things. I was the coexecutive producer of capital gang, which was a lot of work. I spent an enormous amount of work on there. I was a regular on crossfire, two or three times a week. I had my own program called the novak zone, in which i did strange things like jump out of airplanes and drive boats, and things like that. And then i was a regular on the politics show, the inside politics shows, anchored by judy woodruff. I was on there once or twice a week. So, they got their money out of me. How much does a columnist make . For instance, i know you were with rowlie evans for years. But how much were you paid for the column itself . When i was with rowlie . When you first started. When i first started with rowlie, i was paid 12,000 wait a minute, 15,000 15,000. What year . That was 1963, which wasnt a lot of money even then. It was ok, but that did you split it with him . Or did no. That was what we each got, 15,000. At the height of the column, when you were making the most money, what kind of money were they paying you for the column . 100,000. And when would that be . Right now . Yes. How is that, do you think, for all the work you you write how many days a week now . I write three columns a week. You cant get rich being a columnist by itself. And thats much more than most columnists make. How long have you written a column . Since 1963, may 15, 1963. Its the secondlongestrunning column in america. You have, on page 432 of your book, a story about tip oneill saying he Left Congress in 1986. And he wrote a book called man of the house. And that theres a story in there about rowlie, Rowland Evans and you which constituted im quoting the worst lie about us ever committed to print by a public figure. He said that, when he became majority leader, before he was speaker, rowlie and i went to see him and we offered him a deal. He said that if he would give us news tidbits, wed pave his way to be speaker of the house, and he kicked us out of his office. Its an absolute lie. We did get to see him when he became majority leader. We congratulated him, hoped wed be able to see him. But we had a very Good Relationship after that. We wrote columns on it. He appeared on a forum that evans and i put on twice a year, the evansnovak political forum. He was on television with us. Every time hed see me hed cuff me on the head, which i didnt care for, but that was a sign of affection. And so, this was an absolute falsehood. And the reason was that we were doing an interview show for rko television, and he got himself in trouble in things he said nothing we did on that show. And i think it soured him on us. But he was known as a liar, and he certainly lied about us. You also do something that i dont know that ive ever seen before. You name tons of your sources. Yes. I had always thought that, when i wrote ive thought a long time i was going to write a memoir, and that i would divulge all my sources then, as i tripped into retirement. But im not going to retire. So, what i did was, i named dead sources. People who have died, i named. And people i think that really this cant hurt them, i name them. I still i dont name some of the sources. Im not really secretive about it. I try to tell you how i got stories and try to take some of the mystery on how a columnist or a reporter, who gets a lot of the exclusives actually gets the exclusives. You had something change between the time that you wrote the galleys, which we have been able to look at for some time, preparing for the interview, and when the final book comes out. So, im going to start on the source by asking you who mr. X was. In 1972, after George Mcgovern ran, won the massachusetts primary by a landslide, and it looked like he was going for the nomination, and a lot of democrats were very concerned. And i quoted a very liberal senator, without giving his name in the column, as saying that when the working people of the country find out that George Mcgovern is for legalization of marijuana, amnesty for draft dodgers and for abortion, they would turn sour on him, and it would be a disaster for the democrats. And so, that became humphrey, Hubert Humphrey was trying to get the nomination from them and he turned that into he was the aaa candidate amnesty, abortion and acid. And the mcgovern people said i had made it up. Ive never made up anything in my life for a column. They said i had made it up and this was a fictitious senator. This came out way after the election. Rowlie and i went to this senator, had lunch with him at the sans souci restaurant. He said he was running for reelection and the mcgovern people would kill him if we revealed his name. And so, many years later when im writing the book, the guys long gone out of politics, i ask if he would let his name be used. And he wrote i wrote him and he wrote me back and he said, no, it was off the record even this guy was out of politics, and there was no need for keeping it secret. So, we referred to him in the galley proof that you had as first senator x and then mr. X. And who is he . He died between the time that the galleys came out and the book came out, and it was Thomas Eagleton for a short time the running mate of George Mcgovern never dreaming, when he called him when he said those things about mcgovern, that he would be mcgoverns choice to be Vice President until he was kicked off the ticket, because he hadnt told him about a disorder, a nervous disorder he had, that had been treated, and had kept that secret. You remember that story. So, its a shocking story and ironic, that the man who used this aaa candidate, which haunted mcgovern and it haunted me was tom eagleton. Why do you feel you can reveal the source now that hes dead . Because he was the only person who knew about it. It was something that i think all bets are off once a source dies. A lot of sources i do reveal who arent dead, but the ones who are dead, i definitely reveal. I wrote a bunch down. Im going to name them, and then im going to read what you say about them. Ken duberstein. Who was he . You call him a longtime source. He was a longtime source of mine. He was Ronald Reagans last chief of staff. He was a highpowered lobbyist. And he revealed himself in another book as a source, as somebody who was a gobetween between me and Richard Armitage in the Valerie Plame case. Why would he be willing to do that . He revealed i would never have used his name, but his name came out in a book by david corn and mike isikoff. Did you ask him whether you could do this . No. The book has already appeared. His name has already appeared. The second name on the list is karl rove. He was a confirming source on the Valerie Plame story. He revealed himself as having he quoted himself of what he told me, so that the confidentiality was gone by his own statement. What do we mean when we say source . A source is somebody who tells you something about news. A reporter relies on sources. How long have you known karl rove . How long has he been a source . Karl rove has been a source since he was a young fellow as a consultant in austin, texas, in the 1970s. Whats the rule . What are the rules when you have a source . Did you name him in any of these columns . No. But everybody knew he was my source. What was not known was that he was a confirming source on the Valerie Plame story. But that information came out through him and his lawyer. Bill kristol. You write a lot about bill kristol. But youve had kind of a falling out. This is a very complicated story, but one of the leading neocons, david frum, wrote an attack on me in the national review, listed me and pat buchanan and other people as hating america, which is just ridiculous, an assault, because i was not in favor of the intervention in iraq. And frum had some grievances against me, and he wrote this piece. And when i heard this was running in the national review, i just called up bill kristol, who was a great neocon, and i asked him what he knew about this. And he said he never heard of the story. I couldnt believe that he didnt know about it. He never called me back, never returned the call never had another conversation with him. I used to talk to him once a week. He was the only conservative journalist i know who attacked me for the cia leak case, the Valerie Plame case, in which he referred to my action on cspan as reprehensible. And i believe that it had nothing to do with Valerie Plame. But i believe that there was a resentment on my position on israel and on the u. S. Intervention in iraq. Lets stop for a moment about the israel thing. Youre jewish, but converted to catholicism. And what is your position on israel . I am for israel. Im for the preservation of israel. But i believe their policy has been dangerous and selfdestructive, and my name has appeared in hundreds of columns which have been critical of israeli policy. Almost all those columns were written by Rowland Evans, but my name appeared on them. I supported him since he retired. And, of course, rowlie has passed away. But i think it is not an antiisraeli position. I was just in israel this year talking to journalists and people who share my opinion that they should take a more forthcoming position on a negotiated settlement. So, its just a difference in opinion. But the many jewishamericans, who are really more aggressive and unrelenting than israelis, have been critical of me, including some of the neocons. I cant understand why mr. Kristol had turned on me, but maybe thats the reason. When was the last time you saw him or talked to him . Oh, i see him at receptions and things, and i say hello. But we dont really converse. I mentioned converting to catholicism. A source was somewhat responsible for you converting to catholicism . Well, the person who first set me down that road although i believe it was the holy spirit who really guided me was jeff bell, who is a supplysider. He ran for the senate twice in new jersey. He was an aide to Ronald Reagan and jack kemp. A close friend of mine, as well as a source. And he started to proselytize me for catholicism. It was a long road after i almost died of spinal meningitis in 1982. I actually was referring to the priest at st. Matthews cathedral. Oh, the priest. That was monsignor peter vaghi. He was really more of a source of rowlies. He was a republican politician before he became a priest. And my wife and i, before we became catholics, we moved downtown and we started walking over to st. Patricks church, and suddenly found our old friend, peter vaghi, was one of the priests there and later became the pastor. And he was certainly a major factor in my conversion. You say he worked for senator pete domenici. And then what led to him being a priest . He had a late vocation in life. I dont know that he was ever on the staff of he was a lawyer in washington, and i think he was an advisor and a supporter of senator domenici. I dont know if he was ever on the staff. But he was a big very close to rowlie and a source of his. What year did you convert . I converted 11 years ago. 1996. 1996. What year did rowlie die . Rowlie evans . Im bad on remembering those years. How long had he been retired from writing the column . Hed been retired about five years. He retired from the column after 30 years. 1993 . 1993. I think he died about 1998. In the book is about your four cancers. Why do you tell us that, and what are the four . I had Prostate Cancer, lung cancer, a cancer on one kidney all removed. And i currently have a growth on the other kidney that appears to be a cancer, but its not growing. You tell the story about the whole business of the cancer there had been the kidney operation, when you went out to california. On the lung cancer. That was my second cancer. A very good doctor at johns hopkins, where they had removed my Prostate Cancer had a regimen that looked like it wasnt going to be it was going to be very painful. Id be laid up for a long time. Bob mccandless, who was a lobbyist in town and a great friend of mine, had represented transamerica. And one of their doctors was the head of the John Wayne Cancer Institute in santa monica, dr. Donald morton. He said, get this guy. You fle