Witnesses and other participants in these meetings on deep background, which is a journalism term for conducting the interview but not identifying the source by name in the book. so the book is written almost like a screenplay but it s all based on these rigorous interviews and also based on diary entries, memos he s obtained, in some cases government documents. that letter that gary cohn reportedly took off the president s desk, woodward prints a pdf copy of the letter in his book. he actually has that letter that was swiped from the president s desk. so there is a real reporting foundation here behind the narrative in the book. i was just going to say, much oblige to you and the big three for starting us off on a tuesday night. phil rucker, jeremy bash, barbara mcquade. coming up, more revelations from woodward s new book including how defense secretary mattis reportedly described the president. former cia director john brennan in the wings to join us next.
We re seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky. we re getting star bursts in the black sky. the significance in journalism term it was the first time that you had intensive live coverage of the war. iraq was the ninth floor of the ra she d hotel. we were one of the tallest buildings in baghdad, we knew whatever was going to happen we d be able to see the drama. military offenses over night has been described as the longest attack in history. one comment, clearly i ve never been there but . saddam hussein and the people of the arab nation says the mother of all wars have started. we told you earlier in the week that information ministry has received its own satellite dish and the foreign ministry
Pretty extraordinary times to be covering an extraordinary white house. well, i do believe that the congressional deadline is a powerful force here. the president could have cleared this up instantly in the day after he made the first tweeted assertion. they chose not to do that for whatever reason. and because of that deadline, let me just say that initially the plan for the off camera gaggle which is a shortened form of a briefing, a gaggle is a journalism term of art it s supposed to be the warm-up for the on camera briefing so they get a sense of where all of you guys were where all of us are in our heads, what stories we re trying to cover. that s usually all you get these days, right? yes. and in this instance though they did make it on audio. i said to colleagues i wonder if it s because they re going to tell us something that they do want on the record, even if it s not televised. and shortly before the scheduled gaggle briefing, i went looking for someone who could confirm