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• Mr. Suskind's official site
• Excerpt from The One Percent Doctrine
• About The Way of the World

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Author describes his new book which claims that the White House fabricated intelligence to make its case for the war in Iraq. (3:52)
 

Full Interview. (14:24)
 

Tavis: Ron Suskind's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose "New York Times" bestsellers include "The One Percent Doctrine" and "The Price of Loyalty." His latest, in stores yesterday, is called "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. He joins us tonight from Washington. Ron, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Ron Suskind: Good to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: I want to get to that truth and hope in a moment here (laughs) but let me start by asking you a question that I am certain you are going to get tired of being asked about, but I'm glad to have you tonight.

So you've got a number of bombshells in this book. One of them is that the White House, Mr. Bush and his White House, ordered the CIA to concoct a fake letter. If it turns out that this story is true, that would be, in fact, an impeachable offense by this particular White House.

There are persons now who you quote - persons, your sources, I should say - in the story who are now changing their story about what they said to you, what they didn't say. That's the best set-up I can give. You take it from there and explain to me what you talk about in the book and what's happened in the last few days.

Suskind: Well, there are lots of sources in the book; more than 100 folks, many of them, obviously, on the record. These two, in fact, are on the record. We talked for months and months, met, sat down together. Lots of the conversations are taped, lots of notes, and they basically go through a story of the Iraqi intelligence chief, how we met with this guy in a back channel meeting, us and the Brits in early 2003 for three for months before the war - January.

Started meeting with him. He said there were no WMDs - his name's Habush, the guy. Also, he gave us a window into the mind of Saddam Hussein. And all this stuff we learned later. Some was suspected before the war, too. And of course what happens is is we cut the channel off when he tells us what we don't want to hear, but in fact we resettle him, we have a deal with him, this key source, if you will, and we resettle him in Jordan in a secret hideaway and pay him $5 million, the U.S. government pays him.

The book shows that that's probably hush money. We were afraid about him popping up on the screen, one of the sources says. And then in the fall we didn't know what to do with him. We kind of didn't want to talk to him. He had ever-more explosive information, after all, that we knew ahead of time, so much that was discovered, at least publicly, later.

And then in the fall of 2003, the White House came up with an idea of what they might do with him, which is concoct the letters, name's Habush, a letter from this guy, the Iraq intelligence chief, to Saddam Hussein, dated January 1, 2001, a few months before 9/11, saying, in fact - remember, this is that bad summer when Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame popped up and it was clear to the world there were no WMD.

The White House had a solution: Create a letter hand-written by this guy saying Mohamed Atta trained in Iraq prior to 9/11 and that Saddam Hussein is out busily buying yellowcake uranium with the help of al Qaeda. This was ordered by the White House, passed down to the CIA - again, as an order. It went through the CIA channels and popped up in Baghdad, just as intended, and then roiled the global news cycles for a week.

Everyone got conned by it - Tom Brokaw, William Safire of "The New York Times." Ultimately, this last thing, Tavis - this is the key - this is against the statutes that form the CIA and the amendments in 1991. It says that the CIA cannot run disinformation campaigns against the American public. If it could, it would be havoc in a democracy. That means it's against statute and Congress, once it all comes out - and everything in the book, everything in the book is true.

I've been at this for 25 years, lots of people talked about this, lots of people talked about their involvement in enormous detail. And if that is ultimately placed in the hands of Congress, and lots of congressmen are now saying, "Let's start hearings," we could have some impeachment hearings.

Again, I don't know how it'll turn out or what they'll decide, but it could be this fall, the fall of an election year. It would be quite an end, if you will, to this Bush era.

Tavis: As a writer, as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, no less, you knew exactly what was going to happen when you put this book out with that information in it. So talk to me as a writer about how you process putting something in a book like that that you know is going to be a major bombshell about the president.

Suskind: Well, you've got to report it very carefully. I have off-the-record sources who will always stay in darkness, if you will, and then we have many people in the book who speak quite openly.

Now, the key is that they are not the original sources. That's kind of the way it's structured so they can speak freely. They're not the source of the information so they can talk about the context, what they felt on that day, what they felt in terms of what it meant to them, the general thinking of what these disclosures mean, which is important for people to understand - important for everybody - and they're throughout the book.

What's interesting is that now - and I predicted some of this; I hoped otherwise - but especially a couple of the sources who spoke on the record quite fully are under acute pressure at this point. Now these are good guys, who really trusted truth, but right now they are facing the heat, the likes of which, well, they have never faced before - very few of us have - and you're feeling some of them start to buckle.

Tavis: Before I move on to some other stuff in the book, because there is other stuff, believe it or not, in this dense text, what's your sense, then, of what Congress ought to do, what the media ought to do, now that you've put these revelations out there?

Suskind: Well, there are many, many revelations in the book, and actually interesting, the book is hopeful. That's why the word "hope" is in the subtitle.

Tavis: I'm coming back to that, trust me.

Suskind: What a lot of reporters are doing - we're all in this together, all of the reporting community - is they use these things as springboards and they move forward and they gather more information, and that's happening on many of the disclosures in the book.

They go from 2002-2003 all the way to present, and they show the back channel, the sort of secret foreign policy, for the most part, of the United States, and the mix, Tavis, of high, lofty rhetoric and often low, ugly practices, not just to our enemies but to our friends around the world, and it's why, frankly, America's moral authority drained away during these years.

What Americans are realizing now in 2008 in this election year is my goodness, the real source of genuine power in the world is moral energy, moral authority. And how do you get that back when you're a country that has so much collected and often complicated power? It's an enormous challenge almost without precedent. That's what the book's about.

Tavis: You have framed it brilliantly; of course, I would expect no less from a Pulitzer Prize winner. But you framed brilliantly this notion of truth and hope that you try to get to as you talk about this age of extremism that we live in.

Because so much focus has been placed on what we talked about a few minutes ago vis-à-vis the White House and this letter - and I don't want to drive you on this deliberately, I want to give you a chance to color this in yourself - what, then, are you trying to say in the book that's not getting the attention that you would like for it to get?

Suskind: I'll just tell you flat out that the key to this book is, in fact, this ideal as to how the United States can essentially start offering a new face to the world. These disclosures are, in a way, a part of the truth process. Let's get this stuff out, let's get it in daylight so we can have a real discussion.

The goal of that, Tavis, is to get past it, is to learn the lessons, is to admit yes, that was wrong, and we're not going to do that again instead of sort of ducking and faking and not admitting things and saying business as usual.

Tavis: Two questions in that regard. One, is that possible, number one, and number two, who's supposed to do that admitting? It ain't happened yet.

Suskind: Well, I'm trying to force some of it here, and there are other parts of the book that also force parts of the American character to come forward. The fact is that people are saying to themselves, "I don't feel like I used to feel as an American. It's hard for me to see the way the world looks at us. That's more important to me than I thought."

And some of it's about being honest about the business to take care of here in America, because the world really does look to us and say how are things going there in that big experiment in democracy, the most sort of august one in the world in the United States.

And also, how does the United States turn to face the world? In an odd way, what you find here, Tavis, is that the American people, when they read this, say, "Wait a second - that's not really the way I conduct my own life," where the United States so often picks, let's say, power, even unofficial, illegitimate power, over spoken principle.

One of the great characters in the book is a former Pakistani ambassador who then became a UN refugee commissioner. She's a brilliant woman, completely off message. Used to serve Bush, now she's talking freely. She says, "If we're just true to our oath around the world and we're consistent, and we essentially say doing the right thing means you ask nothing in return, just like we did with the Marshall Plan, just like great leaders like Gandhi or King or Bobby Kennedy at the end of his life saw clearly, then we will restore our moral authority and in this era, when small groups of people can gather the destructive power that was once reserved for nations, we've got to win this hearts and minds struggle."

Tavis: Let me offer this as a quick exit question in the few seconds I have left. To your brilliant analysis now, I know that one of your earlier books is a favorite of Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee; I don't know if McCain reads your stuff. But let me just ask you whether or not, very quickly, you think either of them truly get and have the courage, conviction and commitment to act upon it if they do get it, what you've just espoused.

Suskind: Yeah, it's interesting. "A Hope in the Unseen" is that book you're talking about, about an African American kid who goes from Anacostia, the worst high school in America in Washington to Brown University. It's an inspirational book; people all over the country have been reading it for 10 years.

And it's about an American hearts and minds struggle; this is about a global hearts and minds struggle. They're actually fairly closely related. McCain - look, there's potential there, there's no doubt. I'm not a political guy but I see, certainly with Obama, when I go around the world, you see them looking at Obama saying, "He's a guy who maybe can change the way I feel, around the world and here in America, so I can feel more like an American again, more like I thought I'd feel when I was raised here or born here, or when I came to this country."

Tavis: Everybody's talking about the new book by Ron Suskind. It's called "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism." Ron, always a delight to have you on the program. Thanks for coming back to see us.

Suskind: Call me any time, Tavis.

Tavis: Thank you, sir.