Clinton revealed in book

LITTLE ROCK — While Bill Clinton was the leader of the free world, a new book details how his mind often wandered back home to Arkansas as he ruminated on everything from Hot Springs to Razorback basketball to Whitewater, along with the major issues facing the country.

The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Taylor Branch, released Tuesday, offers a fresh glimpse into President Clinton's reflections on events that unfolded throughout his presidency, as well as the personalities surrounding him.

Many of those are Arkansans, some with highprofile jobs and others with lesser-known insider roles.

There's Rodney Slater, the transportation secretary from Marianna who is now a Washington lawyer, reminiscing about the all-night rehearsals for Clinton's first inaugural address.

There's Bruce Lindsey, the presidential confidant and Little Rock lawyer, ar-ranging a late-night game of hearts.

And there are Hillary Clinton, wearing her robe at bedtime, and Chelsea Clinton, singing a medley of show tunes, popping into the meetings that were held in the private White House family quarters.

But mostly there's Bill Clinton, holding forth in what could be called bull sessions with Branch, a long-ago friend who worked with the future first couple when all three were aides for George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign in Texas.

Although their friendship had lapsed, Clinton sought Branch after his election to work with him on an oral history project. Beginning before Clinton took office, the pair recorded 79 previously undisclosed sessions on cassette tapes that the president stored in his sock drawer.

While Branch did not have access to the actual tapes, which are now stored at the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, N.Y., he recorded his own reflections on each conversation during his hour-long drives from the White House to his home in Baltimore, which resulted in his 707-page book.

The sessions touched on everything from policy issues of the day to personal reflections. No topic was too big or too small for discussion.

Whitewater first came up on Nov. 22, 1993, when "Clinton shrugged off newspaper stories recurring lately about a 1978 land deal in Arkansas," Branch wrote.

"He waved off Whitewater as a trifling nuisance," Branch continued. "My notes say, 'He didn't seem particularly upset or irritated.' Nor was I. Neither of us had a clue that Whitewater soon would become the linchpin for investigations to mark and convulse his presidency."

And there was more: "In a further irony, talk of Arkansas did prompt a clairvoyant digression into more personal attacks."

Clinton then went on to discuss, according to the book, how the "agitation over Whitewater" was being fostered by the same two "dedicated enemies" he blamed for stories linking him romantically to Gennifer Flowers - his former Oxford classmate Cliff Jackson and his former Republican gubernatorial rival Sheffield Nelson.

The themes of Whitewater - and all the controversies that plagued the Clinton White House, from the travel office firings to the Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit to the ultimate impeachment of the president - crop up repeatedly throughout the book.

Explaining his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Branch quoted Clinton as saying, over and over: "I think I just cracked."

The manuscript also reveals Clinton's frustration with the media and its coverage of those controversies, from CNN to The New York Times to the Washington Post.

But the president saved particular ire for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, calling his hometown newspaper his "chief tormentor for decades."

When Clinton was considering whether to appoint the late federal Judge Richard S. Arnold, who had previously been diagnosed with cancer, to be the first Arkansan on the U.S. Supreme Court, the Democrat-Gazette was among those that supported the idea.

"It had amused [Clinton]at first that his nemesis made common cause in friendly editorials on behalf of Judge Arnold," Branch wrote.

Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman, the book said, had "lobbied friends in the right-wing press," such as editors at the Wall Street Journal to support Arnold for the nation's highest court. Hussman's sister had been Arnold's first wife.

"This was all fine, said the president, but these newspeople were blindly selective about the personal consequences of their politics," Branch wrote.

Clinton had been following the Democrat-Gazette's news coverage of the Troopergate controversy from the White House, and he hadn't liked it.

"He said the Journal editors had hounded [White House deputy counsel] Vince Foster to death with malice, and this was just as bad."

Branch said White House Chief of Staff Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty, who grew up in Hope with Clinton and Foster, was "aghast" at Clinton's plan to confront Hussman.

"But the president called Hussman anyway, determined to upbraid him for entangling so many lives in Faulknerian plots," Branch wrote.

Hussman, reached late Tuesday while traveling on business, offered a different recollection of that phone call. The publisher acknowledgedthat he had been actively supporting Arnold as a potential Supreme Court justice and said McLarty had called to say the president wanted to talk with him about that.

It was after midnight in Little Rock - making it after 1 a.m. at the White House - when the call came, Hussman said. While Clintonacknowledged Hussman's efforts on behalf of Arnold, the president wanted to talk about something else.

"He launched into, I wouldn't call it a tirade, but he was very upset and resentful" about the allegations of sexual impropriety being made by Arkansas state troopers," Hussman said. The troopers had alleged that they had arranged sexual liaisons with women for Clinton when he was governor. Clinton then vented about the situation, he recalled, blaming it on Sheffield Nelson and the Republicans.

"When we hung up, I never got the impression he was angry at me," Hussman said. "It's true he vented his anger about the allegations being made by the troopers. But I never took that as criticism of me or our newspaper."

Hussman said he reiterated his support for Arnold, who early in his career had served as general counsel for theHussman family's newspaper company. And he continues to "absolutely" think Clinton should have appointed Arnold to the high court.

"He would've been on the Supreme Court 10 years before he died," in 2004, Hussman said. "He would've made the people of Arkansas proud." Taylor Branch will be speaking and signing copies of The Clinton Tapes at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service's Sturgis Hall in Little Rock on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m.