This is a partial transcript from “HANNITY & COLMES”, June 25, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Colonel Oliver North sitting in tonight for Sean, joining us from D.C.
Ollie, how are you doing?
OLIVER NORTH, CO-HOST: Fine, thank you, Alan.
COLMES: Good to see you.
America has gone crazy for Bill Clinton in his memoirs this week.
Joining us now, Fox News political analyst, former Clinton advisor, the author of “Rewriting History,” Dick Morris, who has had a couple more days to review the book since you were on last week.
DICK MORRIS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Now I know why everybody is lining up for his signature. Because it used to cost $100,000 to get his signature and shake his hand. And now you can get it for $35.
COLMES: A cheap shot: the first thing you did was look in the index, look under “Morris, Dick.”
MORRIS: I did. I did.
COLMES: To see exactly what he…
MORRIS: … told me that it’s real quick to read the newspaper when you’re just looking for one name.
COLMES: Right. Well, he keeps calling you brilliant, said you were difficult to work with.
MORRIS: He was fine.
COLMES: And…
MORRIS: He was very respectful.
COLMES: You don’t disagree with any of that?
MORRIS: No. It was fine.
COLMES: Upon further reflection…
MORRIS: Hillary’s memoir, which I’ve talked about in “Rewriting History,” is an attempt by a relatively sane person to cover up who she really is.
Bill’s memoir is an attempt by a basically dysfunctional person that inadvertently and unwittingly reveals who he really is.
Anyone who reads it comes away with the same frustrations that all of us that worked for him feel: this bitterness, this blaming people, this welter of detail, this inability to claw out of detail and conceptualize, this the inability to go beyond a list. And it’s so recognizable. It’s so much him.
COLMES: Dick, you said everybody that worked for him. A lot of people that worked for him are very successful in their own right — Ron Emmanuel, Iran Pecan, Reese Antoine — who speak glowingly of their time with Bill Clinton.
So it’s not exactly true that everybody who worked with him…
MORRIS: No, but everybody who worked with him would recognize those frustrations.
COLMES: Yes.
MORRIS: You pull — you pull your hair out over them. This — the finishing speeches at 4 a.m. in the morning, never getting it together to focus on stuff.
But on a substantive level there’s a very important thing that I think runs through it.
Before this book, “Rewriting History,” I wrote another one called “Off With Their Heads” that blames Clinton for inaction in the war on terror.
And you see it in the memoir. First, he devotes one paragraph to the World Trade Center bombing, as opposed to five pages to gays in the military, twenty pages to the economic program.
Then when he talks about Oklahoma City, he doesn’t even mention the crucial decision they made, which was to erect that Gorelick wall between the prosecutors and the investigators, which stopped us from getting — from getting Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop computer that listed all 19 hijackers.
COLMES: That law was confirmed by Ashcroft — the Ashcroft in the department…
MORRIS: It was a mistake when they did that, too.
COLMES: … and it existed prior to Jamie Gorelick being there.
MORRIS: But it was a mistake then. But…
COLMES: To blame it was Clinton is not fair. It existed before and after Clinton.
MORRIS: There was an opportunity to change it after Oklahoma City, and that was the key controversy going on in the administration. He doesn’t mention it. All he does is talk about the Taggants and the other wiretap stuff, which was very useful that he sent up…
COLMES: You know he did more to combat terrorism than any president up until and when he did bomb the Sudan, and when he did react, he was accused of wagging the dog.
MORRIS: And then finally, that story that has been batted back and forth of whether Sudan offered us bin Laden. In his book, he says that Sudan wanted to expel bin Laden and that we tried to get the Saudis to take him, which is just what Burger said.
Burger then goes on to say, when you say, “Why didn’t we take him,” he says, “We didn’t have any basis for holding him.” And the reason we didn’t is because it wasn’t until the year after, 1996, that we realized he was behind the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, a fact which, by the way, Clinton doesn’t even mention. He doesn’t mention bin Laden’s name about the 1993 bombing.
So all of this stuff really is of a piece with the accusations that have been made about this.
NORTH: Dick, let me get into the mechanics of this book. I think Alan is just bothered by the fact that, unlike you and me, he’s not in the book.
I had to get that in there. I just — I couldn’t resist, Alan.
COLMES: That’s the basis of my being upset.
NORTH: The timing of this book is something that some people have talked about. Is this book timed to have anything to do with this political season? Does this book help or hurt John Kerry?
MORRIS: It hurts him badly. Kerry can’t get a word in edgewise. The poor guy.
In the primary he ran in the shadow of Howard Dean. Then he won the primary. He had a few weeks. And then he ran in the shadow of the 9/11 commission, the shadow of the Iraqi casualties, then the Reagan death and now the Clinton book.
So on one level, there’s no place Kerry can get a word in edgewise.
And then secondly, it — Clinton is so much more charismatic than Kerry. He’s so much more attractive and likeable of a figure and seeing the two side by side does Kerry no good.
And finally, by resurrecting all of this Monica stuff and all of these scandals and talking about them, he makes Bush look good. Bush isn’t going to go out there and say, “Hey, I’m monogamous.” It’s not something he can do. But if you have someone out there talking about Monica, it helps him.
NORTH: Look, you and I both have done some book tours. Alan has done a book tour. You know how difficult it is to sit there hour after hour signing books.
How much longer is Bill Clinton going to put up with this?
MORRIS: I’m doing it now with “Rewriting History.”
Now you — you have to understand Bill Clinton. He loves and needs outside stimuli. He can’t function unless he’s the center of attention. He needs it to metabolize his food.
He’s like a headlight reflector on the highway. You would swear it’s shining but it’s not. All it’s doing is giving you back your rays, reflecting back to you. And when nobody is shining on him, he can’t shine, so he will keep doing this — I’ll bet he starts doing book signings for four more years.
NORTH: Does Bill Clinton expect that this book is going to help his wife’s chances for that ultimate office?
MORRIS: Well, I thought it would. And it is clear that both he and she have sort of matching cover-ups of Whitewater and all of that stuff and Lewinsky.
But he does not give her credit for the stuff she deserves credit for. For example, I just finished reading on the way down here the section about the transition into the new administration in 1992.
And I was with Hillary at that point, penciling in the cabinet names. And she and I would talk every day about who they were going to point and weren’t and she played a key role in that.
You go through 30 pages of that, and nowhere does Clinton give her credit. She doesn’t take credit in her own book for it.
And I think that what it is, is that when I worked with Bill and Hillary, it was clear that people distrusted Hillary’s private, behind-the- scenes power but liked her up front public advocacy. And I think that both he and she are sort of following that advice now in their memoirs. But I think it’s not good for Hillary.
I think the only public record she has is it the Clinton administration. And she should take credit for the good things that she did there, as well as the blame for the bad things that she did. She put together a pretty good cabinet.
NORTH: Does Bill Clinton — Does Bill Clinton have anything left from what he made from this book or did he give it all to lawyers or is he going to give it to the Kerry campaign?
MORRIS: No, don’t pass around the tin cup. The lawyers are $3 million. He got 12 for the book, she got eight, and he has an annual income of ten. So even after the tax increases that Bill Clinton passed, he has plenty of money left.
COLMES: He can almost pay for the $70 million it cost to impeach him.
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