Thank you for being with us. I want to begin where you begin in the book where president clinton is in chappaqua, new york on january 21, 2009, no longer the president of the United States and you write with the nationwide fury over mark richs pardon in 2001 bill clintons adversaries in politics and the media realize how much they enjoyed lashing regardless of his presence in the capital, if anything a compulsion to pursue their old quarry seemed to be swelling now that he was no longer leader of the free world but just another defenseless citizen. True, that is what happened. From the day he woke up in chappaqua where we start the book, the press was chasing him about mark rich and over time, really a few days, the outrage that built over that became so powerful that it drove his Approval Rating down 20 points in a matter of days or weeks and his speeches that were scheduled were being canceled in this country one by one, he gave one speech at Morgan Stanley and lit up their phone line so heavily the head of the company apologized. It was a very dark time for clinton. And other stories that came out, some of which were false, the story of the looting and vandalism of the white house by clinton staff turned out to be wrong but a lot of airtime that damaged him further. Then there was the issue of his office space that he was going to rent in midtown manhattan that was expensive. They thought better of that, something for which they never retreated but again it was headlined and a lot of negative commentary not just from the right but from the center and even from democrats there was quite a bit of anger and dismay at that time. Host one moment you wrote about on that january 21, 2001, morning they wake up, bill and Hillary Clinton, they have their security detail going to a local diner and what happened . Guest president clinton woke up, nobody to make coffee, the guy came from the white house to work for him, not around to make the coffee, clinton, chelsea there, hillary was there, Terry Mcauliffe and his wife were there and doug and came from the white house to work with clinton has well. They were all in the house and clinton did lets go get some coffee so clinton, they got into a suburban not suburban but a different car and another secret service car behind them and went to the town of chappaqua on the main strip there and he got out and told a man to clear away his security, he wanted to go in and be more of a normal citizen on his first day as a is a and got a nice greeting in the deli but when he came out the press was waiting and that went on all day. At the house they were staked out and he had nobody. He no longer had the apparatus he had as president except the secret service, physically he was protected but in terms of the press there was no press secretary, no communications office. In the white house there are literally as you know scores of people who deal with this kind of issue when the president is under attack in the media and clinton had nothing. Some came in to help out. The phrase you write about in the book is a derogatory term. Bad show. Some of the staffers realize what they were getting into. The pardon of mark rich was another example of selfinflicted wound will clinton put on himself that damaged his presidency . Guest i go into the real reasons, had very little to do with the Media Coverage suggested at the time. All the Media Coverage without exception played to the theme that this was a quid pro quo from mark richs exwife denise rich who had been a generous donor to the Democratic Party and the campaigns in years past and somehow the theory was if you compress the timeline enough you could imagine she had given him the money to do the pardon for her exhusband was what was really happening at the time just before he gave the pardon to rich and his partner was clinton was deeply involved in middle east peace negotiations trying desperately to get an agreement inked before he left the white house with a hood barack on one side and Yasser Arafat on the other and they were very close. I am sure you remember and many viewers will come as close as we have come to a real agreement to settle in the middle east conflict. A hood barack became close to clinton in this process, made many concessions, so many concessions he was certain to lose his role as Prime Minister in the upcoming election in israel asked clinton on three occasions to pardon mark rich. The reason was, when i interviewed him in tel aviv, first time he has gone on the record about this is mark rich had been an asset of assad for many years, done all kinds of work for is really intelligent and some Us Intelligence what principally things like rescuing jewish families in places like yemen and iraq, there are still jewish families, not many left but back then there were still hundreds of them in danger, in iran as well and mark rich ironically, the same thing for which he got in trouble with the Us Government made him useful, his ability to communicate with these hostile governments. How he did it is another subject but he was able to operate in those countries and get officials to look the other way when he was doing things like taking jewish citizens out, in the eyes of the israeli government, he was what they call a psion, a helper, not an agent, somebody who helped them a lot. A hood barack believed they owed him and clinton felt he owed barack for the strives they made towards peace. The Peace Process was not over, they were still they went to egypt to continue to negotiate and clinton felt it was important to do this after what he had done for him. The problem that arose afterwards that clinton didnt feel free to talk about publicly, he alluded to the fact some people in israel wanted this to happen but couldnt talk specifically about it because barack was already in trouble and didnt want to blame somebody else for a decision he had made. Why did you write the book if you guest i wrote the book because in 2005 i was assigned to profile clinton by esquire magazine, this is when he was about to start the Clinton Global Initiative in september of 2001. That summer i went to africa with him and hadnt been paying a lot of attention to the foundational what they were doing but i went over and some other people toward several countries, saw what they were doing particularly providing aids treatment in the poorest countries and thought this is christine. I wrote the piece for esquire, a bestselling story that year. And over the next couple years, following what he was continuing to do i went to cgi a couple times and realize there is a book in this. Host this is a quote from your book, Richard Lugar is a member of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee and during the confirmation hearing of Hillary Clinton, the issue that now is matching the campaign, foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation gains favor with the secretary of state even wellintentioned foreign donations carry a risk for us Foreign Policy. Guest dont know if there was a risk for Foreign Policy but senator lugar was correct there was going to be a risk for perception given the way the foundation has been covered by the media. Most of the foreign donations came long before she was even considered secretary of state. Those donations from us allies like norway, canada, sweden, the united kingdom, were focused on clintons aids work because he called up the Prime Ministers of those countries 20022003, and said we are going to provide aids treatment even though the world has decided it is too expensive and we will let all those people die. Instead i will figure out a way to do this but i need money to do it. These Prime Ministers who knew him, tony blair and others, the norwegian Prime Minister, said you are in and they provided tens and eventually hundreds of millions of dollars. Were they trying to influence Hillary Clinton in advance . I dont think so, no one had any idea she would be secretary of state. That is the great bulk of that money came between 2001 and 2009. The other thing about this issue is people can be upset with Hillary Clinton but as i explained in the book, she didnt want to be secretary of state. Barack obama had to press her very hard to get her to agree. I have a draft statement she put out that she was working on the declined the offer. Host they couldnt reach each other. Guest he persuaded her, she felt as i think most americans do when the president asks you to do something you say yes. She said to him at the time what do we do about my husbands foundation . Millions of people whose lives depend on the work he is doing. What do we do about that . It was obama whose team came up with the parameters they put around the foundation. A memorandum of understanding how that is going to work, i would say 8 of the time they lived up to that memorandum and when they didnt live up to it they corrected it so if you are unhappy, and senator lugar or anyone else is unhappy with the way this worked out, would have to address the president because it was he who set up these conditions. Host we will get to your calls in a moment. We welcome cspan radio listeners, our guest is joe conason who has a new book on bill clinton. This is one of the headlines from the daily caller, they point out over 200 million in Clinton Foundation donors brought in 205 invitations to white house state dinners. I put that up because it goes to the point how this is covered by the media from all sides. Guest i dont put a lot of credibility into the daily caller. I think their motives are very clear. They are who they are. I would say you need a more independent evaluation of any statement about the Clinton Foundation or anything else. It strikes me that in a lot of the Media Coverage, great weight is given to Something Like whether someone was invited to a state dinner at the white house and there could be 1 million reasons why anyone who is a Foundation Donor would be invited. Maybe they supported Something Else the clintons did. I would be shocked if there was a list of quid pro quos of people who gave to the foundation but why arent they more interested in what the actual work of the foundation is . Asked why i decided to write the book. I saw what they are doing. It is stunning to me how little interest there is in the fact that he raced everything else, they saved 11 Million Peoples lives in africa, the caribbean and asia who otherwise were going to be left to die and made a big contribution to stemming if not ending the aids pandemic which was set to kill 100 Million People and they worked closely on that in the end. There was conflict in the beginning. I discussed this in the book, an interesting story but i believe, many people do, president bushs greatest a compliment as president because it dealt a threat to the future of the world. President clinton played a big role that, ask independent experts and they will tell you. Why are we not at least as interested in that as we are in fairly trivial stuff about the foundation and email, she talked to the crown prince today, maybe that will be tomorrow, what difference does that make . I dont know. Saving peoples lives made a huge difference not just in the future of africa but the future of the entire world. Host man of the world the further endeavors of bill clinton, higgins bill, missouri, democrats line, good morning. Caller good morning, happy you are taking my call. I have a question, i have been listening to everything you are saying, very substantive. To that point, candidate Hillary Clinton believes every time she weighs in on anything she is very substantive, you can see that she has a plan that has been well thought out. On the other hand the candidate on the other side, donald trump, i think she is running one of the worst campaigns i have seen in my lifetime. I am not that old, but i think running it like a tabloid style any news is good news, it has been working for a Certain Group of folks in this country and i dont think hillary is lucky to have him as the candidate on the other side. He is running mainly to run his business interest and cash in at the end even by losing, i dont think he is going to make enough money as president , he wants to start his own tv network and the Internet Network with breitbart folks and russian tv too. Guest the latter part of it is interesting where you said he is running to enhance his business was we saw that in washington when he lured reporters to his new hotel which was opening and didnt hold and actual press conference about the birther issue. There is something to that which i have no donald trump for years. I dont try to psychoanalyze him. It is too hard. Host our guest is the editorinchief of the national memo, he has written a number of books including the right wing Propaganda Machine and how it distorts the truth, New York Times bestseller list, formally editor in chief of the new york observer, amy joining us from california. Caller my comment is guest of yours is completely biased, sounds like a bugle, he says look what the foundation has done. That is the foundation, that is its job you need a pat on the back for the job you were supposed to do anyway, i dont leave he is being objective. I believe he is pedaling for the clintons, he traveled to africa, hello, what about the little comments, the situation, the irani and company, they enriched themselves, of course they did with speaking fees. The way of going about it, there will be a paper trail, they know what they are doing, it is obvious, people see this. That is what we are talking about. Guest she alluded to a couple of issues that were raised in an earlier book called clinton cash about the foundation. Erickson, telephone company, uranium deal that involved a russian company. Guest host let me put up a quote from your book, the most damning material in clinton cash turned out to be factually inaccurate, melodramatically exaggerated or both within weeks after publication, major Media Outlets reported significant errors. Guest no question about that. I examined clinton cash very closely in my book and the stories she mentioned, there is no substance to them at all. You can go into detail if somebody wants to but the fact is the uranium deal, does the linchpin of that accusation, Hillary Clinton, money was funneled to the foundation because she was going to cast the vote, she was going to give the uranium deal, approved uranium deal, secretary of state. The truth was that deal had to be approved by the committee on Foreign Investment in the United States which most people dont know about. A major cabinet subcommittee that approves business deals that might affect national security, it is chaired by the Treasury Department, it is really controlled by the Treasury Department and pentagon, not the state department. They could not have controlled, vetoed or done anything to stop this deal which was approved again by the same committee after she was no longer secretary of state. The idea millions of dollars were funneled into one vote on that committee is ridiculous and anyone who knows how the Committee Functions knows that and the story was blown out of the water so people the caller is right, people will talk about what they want and believe what they want but as far as my bias is concerned, yes, i saw what the president is doing, president clinton is doing, i was interested in it. If that makes me biased i plead guilty. I believe you read the book, there is 20 of criticism of clinton in the book. Host algeria and morning joe, joanna joining us from damascus, maryland, good morning. Caller George Stephanopoulos wrote a book years ago after the clintons left the white house and there was a line i thought was interesting that i would ask if you agree with, he said bill clinton is hard as nails, sorry, self w soft as jello on the outside and hard as nails on the inside and secretary clinton is the opposite, hard as nails on the outside and soft as jello on the inside. Wonder if you agree with that assessment. I read georges book, called all too human. It is a very interesting piece of work. I think bill clinton is a compassionate person. I think Hillary Clinton is too. Like any other human being they have their hard moment and soft moments. You can see both if you spend any time around them at all. I will tell you that the perception of Hillary Clinton as somebody who is steely and calculating all the time is certainly wrong. Based not just on what i know of her but what other people who have known her for many years much better than i have and told me, people from arkansas will tell you how many times she called to find about a sick Family Member or what was happening with their child in school, who was having trouble, somebody you can find scores of people in arkansas and new york to tell you how much she displayed compassion host morgantown, west virginia, for joe conason. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I want to get your analysis, assessment of mrs. Clintons use of perso