As White House Press Secretary from 1995 to 1998, he was often what he called "the chum in the feeding frenzy," especially during the Lewinsky scandal. He left the White House in October 1998, joking to reporters, "Free at last!" Interview conducted June, 2000 by Chris Bury Give us a sense of what the White House press operation was like when you were brought in, and a sense of why you were brought in. I think there was a lot of contention in the atmosphere in that the press operation wasn't always on top of what was happening at the White House, through no particular fault of DeeDee or anyone else, although she sometimes got slammed unfairly. I heard from a lot of reporters that this White House just seems to not really get what we do, or really doesn't care what we do. So, I inherited an environment where there were some frayed emotions and feelings. The main thing I tried to do at the outset was to establish some measure of friendliness--well, not friendliness--amicability in the relationship. It's an adversarial relationship, but we try to make it a little more amicable. Do you remember the advice you got from Marlin Fitzwater before you took the job? He gave me a lot of very good advice. One that I failed to follow to my own detriment was that any time you're standing at the podium talking about the leadership of Congress, you're probably getting into trouble because you're being too political. His advice was to not be so rawbone political when you're standing at that podium. He also gave you some advice, according to the Woodward book, that you should have your spies basically everywhere, that you really had to have a certain intelligence network. Yes. Marlin is a great believer that you have to have your own system for verifying the information that you get. You ought to trust but verify. ... The White House is a huge organization, first and foremost. It's a funnel point for a lot of the work of government, and we had, as all White Houses do, different people with competing agendas bringing their information in. You needed to make sure you knew what you were talking about and make sure you reflected other viewpoints and didn't just accept one version of a series of events or a speech or a new policy or something. After the Republican Congress comes in in '94 and after a series of defeats leading up to April of '95, the president in a press conference declares, "I am still relevant." What was your take on what he said then? It's not the phrasing any of us would have picked. It was the idea that, in fact, we were trying to communicate. But it's like that old adage: You never stand up and say "I'm a funny guy." You tell them a joke and get the audience to laugh. Particularly because of the Murrah Building [bombing] in Oklahoma City, he began to have some opportunities to demonstrate he was relevant and he was capable of really seizing back control of the agenda in Washington and doing battle with this new Republican Congress and defining the agenda for the country. When he said that, you, as press secretary, what was going through your mind? You just sort of say, "That's the one I wish I could have taken back." Because you just knew that would crystallize a lot of the feeling that the president had dropped off the radar screen. Crystallized as a headline right away in your mind? Crystallized as a headline in the press, saying this is what Clinton has been reduced to. He has to stand up and proclaim his own relevancy and he's the President of the United States. But remember, in a way, he was exactly right. The important thing was he began to get the opportunity to demonstrate that he was relevant and he clawed his way back out of that hole that he was in following the mid-term election in 1994. Beginning actually with the election and through '95, the White House staff learns that the president is getting some advice that at first is secret advice. From "Charlie," the code name that Dick Morris used when he called in to render advice. Long before the president introduced everyone to the idea that Dick Morris would be a member of the strategic team, it was clear that he was getting advice that he was taking to heart from some external source. And it was frustrating a little bit in the spring of 1995 to know that there was some other group of advisors or some kitchen cabinet or some process that was not part of the defined process of the White House. It was frustrating and exasperating a lot of people, Leon Panetta especially. Finally, Leon insisted we get this process working coherently [and] bring whoever is on the team and make sure that we're getting the advice. At that point, Dick became more of a member of the campaign's strategic council, really setting some direction for the coming reelection campaign. What was your reaction when you found out that the president had returned to this secret advisor? I had heard about Morris before and heard amusing anecdotes about him, but I'd never met him. I really remember meeting him for the first time. He's an interesting guy, he's bright and there's no question about that. He's really got a very good strategic sense of politics. He has a very good feel for what really moves that part of the American--those who are not particularly partisan, not particularly wedded to either political party. They're up for grabs in most elections, particularly in national elections. He has a very keen understanding of them. But I remember sitting there listening to this guy and saying, "I understand why Bill Clinton, the political animal, really finds this guy of some utility because he's really a brilliant strategic thinker." At the same time, in a place where turf is so important-- Where turf is important and Dick has a unique interpersonal style, too. He's kind of a weird little guy. As we're trying to get behind the cosmetics and really understand the nature of the argument he was making, Morris was making a right-on argument about where the center of the political spectrum was, where the high ground of American politics would be in the 1996 election. He helped Clinton define the ground we wanted to defend as an incumbent running for reelection in 1996. As you were mentioning a moment ago, also in April, later, you have the Oklahoma City bombing. For a president who has been getting bad press really since the elections, what does this do for your-- It was a defining moment in many ways because it was the moment where we, all Americans, needed a president to come and help us understand this horrible event. We needed someone who would speak to our capacity to get beyond the tragedy, our capacity to think through the realities of the kind of world we live in where something like this could happen. We needed a president, quite frankly, to shut down some of the anti-Arab hysteria that almost swept this country. ... By Bill Clinton stepping in and filling that role more than adequately at that moment, that was a turn-around moment for his presidency. Later that fall, the sort of seismic event is the battle over shutting down the government in November. For you and others on the staff, is there a moment there when you realized that you'd won or that you've got the Republicans on the run for the first time in a year? Not a moment. We weren't quite sure what the outcome would be. We knew we were going right into brinkmanship with Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress. We knew that the shutdown was going to have a very dramatic impact on the thinking of the American people. ... But no one anticipated the degree to which the Republicans would be held responsible for shutting down the government, the degree to which people would respond favorably to some of the arguments the president was making. Bill Clinton had not come into sharp focus for most Americans. Who is this guy? Where is he on the political spectrum? How does he relate to me and my needs? That was the moment in which they finally said, "He's fighting for things that I care about. He's standing up to these Republicans in Congress that want to take the country in a direction I don't believe in." That was a very critical moment. ... It happened when most of the White House staff had been sent home. It was against the law for them to show up because under some federal statute they couldn't get paid and we had interns serving in staff positions, including the intern who came to deliver the pizza about that exact time. We'll get to that later-- --since we're doing this chronologically. There's also a classic Washington story that serves to symbolize this whole thing for most Americans. Do you remember your role in getting out the story of Gingrich on Air Force One and whether there was a specific strategy session to take advantage of it? To let people know that he had been whining about not coming off the front or something? I'll be honest with you. I don't recall a strategic point of view about it. Nothing happens that doesn't get noticed when the president travels or when you're out on the road like that. The [press] pool was watching very carefully what the chemistry and the reaction would be between Gingrich and Clinton. They noticed that he did not come off the front of the plane and I think they probably began making some inquiries about it. I remember first hearing that the Speaker was a little bit peeved at his treatment from reporters. That's when the story came our way, rather than the story going out the other direction, is my recollection. Do you recall how you used it after that? No. I remember a lot of people thinking that they had flown back after a funeral that had some emotional toll [on] Bill Clinton. The feeling was that Speaker Gingrich had certainly stepped a little bit over the line. One thing I do remember that had a very powerful impact in the White House was, either the New York Post or the New York Daily News had a big front page picture of Newt Gingrich as crybaby Newt or something like that. That circulated pretty quickly around the White House. Do you recall the president's attitude during the shutdown and your conversations with him? He was very, very keen on making sure none of us overstepped the bounds of what was legitimate, partisan commentary. He more often than not was trimming my sails when it came to commenting on Newt Gingrich and the Republicans. I had a more naturally, combative, partisan instinct and the president was usually the one who said, "Look, that's too over the top because I still need to negotiate with these people." As Gingrich has said, as Lott has said, [I think the president was obviously] having some conversations back and forth with the leadership privately to try to bring the whole budget negotiation to some conclusion. And I think he was a little bit afraid. The Republicans used to watch our press comments and press conferences at the White House very carefully and, of course, vice versa. The president didn't want us in front of him making policy. He wanted to be shaping the events and the conversations he was having directly with the people on the other side. Do you remember a fight within the White House about that time on whether or not the president ought to cut a deal or whether he ought to stand firm? I remember several. My memory is a little fuzzy now, but over the course of those days, there were several points [when the] government was going to slip over and run out of money and we were going to have to start closing down. Each time that happened, there was some ... good, legitimate debate with people who had different points of view. In January of '96, there is a new development on the scandal front, for lack of a better word. It's discovered that the [Rose Law Firm] billing records that had been subpoenaed by everybody had been discovered. Do you remember how you found out about that and what your thinking was? I don't remember. I think I probably heard about it from a woman named Jane Sherburne, who was one of the legal counsels working specifically on the Whitewater matter. One of my conditions for taking the job [as press secretary] was that I did not want to become the day-to-day point person for the press on Whitewater. ... We needed to have someone who would be the designated press contact on questions that developed out of the Whitewater independent counsel inquiry. We had almost a separate press operation to do that. I think it was from that team--Jane Sherburne, Mark Fabiani and those folks--that I first heard. You could just roll your eyes and say good luck. There was a real easy way to portray the information negatively and the president's opponents did that. Of course, I don't think the press was willing to cut the White House, and particularly Mrs. Clinton, any slack on the suddenly discovered billing records. According to the Woodward book, there is a pretty strong debate that breaks out about whether to make an announcement. And in the Woodward book, it says that you basically have to bludgeon the legal team in order to get the information out that they-- I remembered on many occasions, not just maybe that one particular instance, of saying, "You've got to get whatever factual information you've got on this out the door and you need to tell [the press] before they hear it elsewhere." I don't remember what they actually ended up doing, how the story came out. You send an explosive piece of information to the Republican Congress, it will most likely leak in very short order. So, why not tell the story yourself? Why not put the information out there so that it's coming from you and not from your opponents who will characterize it in the least favorable light. That argument happened over and over and over again. There was a faction within the legal team that said, "That's just not proper. It's not proper for us to do it in public." It's strange. This had far less to do with political press strategy and much more lawyers who just have this kind of buttoned-up way of doing business. They felt like they should do it according to the book. It wasn't until much later in the process where everybody at the White House finally figured out there is no way that this Republican Congress is ever going to treat any of the information coming from the White House fairly. It's going to be combat from day one. That week, there was--Time or Newsweek, I'm not sure which--had the cover with Hillary and that weekend Bill Safire called Mrs. Clinton a congenital liar. How did Mrs. Clinton react to that? I don't know. I don't recall having a conversation with her. I know the president was very, very angry about it. Remember, Mrs. Clinton had been very badly bruised by the health care episode in 1994. By the time I arrived there in 1995, she was much less of a presence within the White House West Wing. She still had very good and effective staff. They asserted her interests on various things that were procedure-oriented within the White House, but she was not the kind of presence within the decision-making councils in the White House that she's described being in the '93, '94 period. She didn't talk to you about the press treatment that we-- I would have interactions with her staff and I'd usually more or less express sympathy saying. Their attitude usually was, "Hey, a lot worse has been written about her." But it was the president who was furious. I took my cue from what he wanted to have said, less of what Mrs. Clinton wanted to have said. What did the president want you to say? I remember the briefing very well. I remember the briefing, too. I cribbed something that Harry Truman once said. I think he was reacting to a critique of a musical performance by his daughter. [Truman] said that he would like to deliver the response to the bridge of the nose of the critic. And that's something that stuck in my mind. It wasn't exactly what Bill Clinton told me to say, but it was close enough, expletive deleted. It worked just fine. Now that you don't have to worry about a briefing, what was it the president wanted you to say? It was not for family television.