it being this subject, i think, you know, i am a moderator. i am not supposed to get involved. thanks a lot. >> thank you. [applauding] .. black book and is published by

hyperion. the author, brian ross. guice president and cheney being selected and you had to share those doubts in front of him. was that like? >> it was an interesting moment because when governor bush, then governor bush was selling in on the vice presidential choice he liked cheyney opposed to the other nine he liked the guy in charge of the process so he called me at home to come off the road and he said i want you to come over and he knew i was against cheney. there were five or six of us who knew about this. he's for us all to secrecy. he said i want you to come tomorrow morning to the governor's mansion and three of the case for cheney. and just said, and be prepared, tell me why you don't think ought to be cheney. so i went to the governor's mansion and sat a small room in

the austin library with him and sitting about just as close as i am to you and first 30 or 35 minutes, maybe a few spaces further apart, i laid up the case against cheney and had eight reasons why starting with we didn't need to worry about wyoming that cheney had been a very conservative member of congress for more human and we would have to defend his voting record including voting against a resolution calling for the release of nelson mandela for prison and he had a heart attack starting at the age in his mid-30s and we would have to defend questions of his health and fitness and so forth. we went on for 30 or 35 minutes and as i leave the case occasionally governor bush would say i agree with that but what if i say this or i disagree with that and what would you say if i said that? it would on 30 or 35 minutes and at the end when i exhausted my list he said to you have anything else? i said no. he turned to the guy next to him and said dick, do you have any questions for karl? when he invited me over he didn't say i'm going to have

dick cheney over and you are going to lay out the case in front of him. it goes to show a couple things about bush. one, he viewed this as a governing decision not a political decision to recall me the next day and said you were right on most or all that stuff. but that's politics. my job is to worry about something happened to me whom what the country have confidence in. second of all it should push's style which is he likes to have people around him who have strong opinions and may or may not agree with his and are willing to leave them out in a respectful straightforward way in front of others who might have a different opinion. and it was quite an experience. >> host: did your opinion of dick cheney change over the years? >> guest: my opinion of him when i left the room i felt great if irritated the guy. he's likely to be the next vice president. as we walked out he said i agree with some of which you had to say. we became friends and he never held it against me. it says something about cheney. he says that was my job, to think through those questions and he wasn't going to take it

personal. >> host: what is a rookie in campaign? >> guest: it's not what it's normally detected. in the chapter for a talk about the ugly things people say are the heart of supposedly the kind campaigns i ron, most of which are fear based, mud ball politics and i have a couple of quotes from people who commented. one is my personal favorite the guy says rove and his minions never stops surprising me coming up with something that would even shock a 60 year old greyhound bus station hooker, and of quote. those views are based on a very, very negative view of the electorate. you know, this fundamentally say the electric can be won over by the kind of politics and i don't see the american voters, particularly high-profile race is like for the senator for governor or for president are motivated by those kind of base instincts. in fact i think they reject them. people who cross those lines and from those kind campaigns tend to lose. in fact tend to lose a lot.

but a routine campaign is one based around first of all a big of an ticker idea. what is it that man or woman running for office wants to achieve because of the end of the day that is what voters are we to principally judge them by is what is their physician and also do they have the capacity, but can't come experience, persona that gives people confidence they will be able to achieve the vision? it's not easy to do. the best way to look at the political campaign is to say considerate as the emperor's new clothes, the childhood faber we were taught. at the end of the parade they will see you as you are and hopefully on one of your better days but they are great to see you as you are and some candidates who lack a central value or core belief and run on the basis of something completely phony tend to lose. >> host: then why -- wiley is there a feeling about you buy a lot of folks that you're negative and decisive? >> guest: i tell you why deal with some of these myths, for a

sample in south carolina john mccain's can handheld bush responsible and by, you know, -- i was easier to attack than bush. i was supposedly responsible for this e-mail from a professor at bob jones university that alleged john mccain fathered and out of wedlock black beady and it was ugly. it was a vicious little sneer. but a couple of things. one is i had nothing to do with it. even jonathan carvel that time working at cnn finally got ahold of a professor who basically said i did this on my own and so what, i have a right to do it. but a was a vicious bigoted smear on john mccain. the kind of thing that, look, south carolina voters are not attracted by that. was the kind of thing on the surface of it it didn't help anybody who didn't want john mccain made president. it was the kind of people to leave coaching people naturally reject. then what happened is as mccain stood up and said

george bush is behind this. south carolina republicans liked mccain and bush. they liked them both. not one and a thousand would believe george bush was capable of doing that. my personal view when it happened was i was afraid because i thought mccain would seize upon it to talk about himself. the story behind he and his wife's adoption of a young baby from a banquet negative orphan run by mother mary teresa is a story of compassion and love, just the kind of thing in a campaign would explain a lot about who john and cindy mccain worry and served as an enormous plus for them but still hold on let's wait a minute. here's what i want the people of south carolina and america to know about me. instead he said bush did this and shame on bush and i have no evidence pushed it but shame on bush. as a result was the whole mind set. it wasn't just this one event.

this attitude made itself evident in other ways in south carolina that i talked about in the book and lost the primary for the can and lost the nomination in the presidential election. >> host: you also relate an incident he had a chance to meet with john mccain later on. >> guest: in 2004, mccain offered through a longtime aide and person that i knew that mccain would campaign for and they made an appearance with president bush in washington state which was non-political and in a campaign rally and the president said on this first swing i don't want to belong but you can work out your problems with mccain leader and he laughed, he thought that was funny. and so the first trip by spend with mccain is in florida. we flew to pensacola florida, then took a bus to riceville ansi site at the end of the day in panama city. when we got on air force one at andrews the president had a cia

briefing so he said go back and talk to mccain. entertain mccain on telling ready. this is sort of awkward because mccain and mccain's campaign and even his wife, his wife famously said, she said -- she was asked if she had a chance what she stabbed me in the back and she said no i wohlstetter him in the front. there were high emotions. so we go back to the cabinet and start to talk and it's a little nervous conversation, but then we start talking about pensacola, where mccain had his naval aviator flight training, and he started talking about his days there, and it evolved little sports cars and lots of alcohol and exotically named women and was funny. i've never laughed so hard in my life. he was a wild young aviator. so we then flew into panama city. actually pensacola, where he had done his training and we went to a stadium facility that held about 10,000 people and was packed to the gills with people

and when they announced mccain there was a sea of malaise and a discombobulated mccain. it was a wild scene and this is where the two of them take off their jackets and bush raises his arms, became joint and raised the arms of the president realizes mccain because of his war injuries can't raise his arms above here. he is waiting and mccain is so overcome and tries to say something to the president and this is the famous foot of the democrats used in 2008 were mccain looks like he has his had buried in push's shoulder. we can pay the rest of the day and it is extraordinary. this is bush country, the panhandle of florida. and the more sheets were sacrificed and turned in to campaign signs that day than ever seen. and children lined the roads and mobs blocked the highway at seaside and stopping, literally physically stopping the buscapade and all along i sitting in the us next to mccain and he starts going look at that, look at that, hitting me in the arm. by the end of the day my arm is

literally black and blue. we in the city with a fantastic rally in the driving rain of panama city, 25,000 people in a town of about 100,000. we welcome it is driving rain. tracie byrd, the country-western singer, she is the only guy who is dry. he's under cover of the stage and as the bus pulls up and mccain and bush to doubt the clouds part, the rain stops, the sun begins to set in the gulf of mexico and the man emerged on the stage. it was a fantastic moment. and we ended up the next day in phoenix and at the end of the day i pulsipher gave me to become a came theodore cufflinks. >> host: would you have used that picture if he were the opposition? >> guest: i think -- i don't think it ultimately helped them. i think it made them look petty and small. it was easy and simple to do. but they made them -- people did

not think john mccain was george w. bush. if you wanted to say republicans there were other ways of doing it. but i thought it was -- in politics you can do things that if you in the campaign everybody thinks we are useful and effective but in a rally there were not. there were other things that drove it. i frankly think obama's redirect the the eckert was focused on centrist policies composed partisanship, by partisanship. those for more effective than him saying john mccain is george bush iii. >> host: this is the book, "courage and consequence" my life as a conservative in the fight. karl rove is the author. toussuire 027-37-0001 for those in the east time zones and (202)737-0001. unfortunately we are not taken any tweaks today. so we will put that to the site for right now. you write that you like being in

the middle of a political firestorm, but -- >> guest: i don't know if i like being hit. i found myself in them. you need to either become comfortable them or find another line of work. >> host: but patrick fitzgerald quote scared the hell of a few? >> guest: he did, special prosecutor, absolutely. let's step back. we now know some things and we knew part of them at the time. we know that, you know, the allegation was that of a leaked valerie cheney's name. i didn't. the allegation that was done in order to damage her husband politically. we now know that richard r. medish did it in order to explain why in response to a question by joe wilson was sent to africa. the allegation was this was a violation of law that tisch's lead was of law, we know from the activities there was no underlining a fence.

we also know what joe wilson said in the july 6 op-ed in "the new york times" was from. he said he had been sent to africa to investigate the claim of the british intelligence that saddam hussein attempted to acquire the uranium in africa at the behest of cheney, not true. he was wrong when he alleged the report was shared with administration officials the president and vice president at the highest level, not true. when he alleged condoleezza rice had personally blocked from being presented to the president that's not true, never made it to the white house. when he personally talked with members of the staff and that they assured him it had been blocked in the passage that was simply not true. he was wrong when he said he disproved the british claim. she never understood and never knew what the basis of the british claim was three he was wrong when he said it was

conclusive in proving that saddam never attempted in fact when he came back he came back in order report of a previously an attempt by saddam hussein's chief of people working with third party to force the government to accept a trade delegation and they said we will treat one thing, uranium is on the international sanctions list we are not taking the trade delegation. we know that he was wrong in fact flat out lied when he said that he was the guy that disproved the so-called italian forgeries, documents that show of eight months after he returns from africa that he had no role in the spring in fact when he was later questioned by the senate intelligence he said he had a literary alliances and yet at the end of this to investigate the claim that his wife's name had been leaked there was a three yearlong investigation and in the book i write about it in detail and after four visits to the grand jury over a two-year period the

special prosecutor patrick fitzgerald says to my attorney we are inclined to indict your client, visit me in chicago and we will discuss it. when my lawyer a brilliant man and a decent human being goes to chicago and meets with him he is astonished to find what fitzgerald is focused on and his stumbling block is. >> host: you refer to how much that cost you. have you ever said publicly how much? >> guest: no. >> host: a lot? >> guest: union financially? no. >> host: six figures, seven figures? >> guest: none of your business, lots. >> host: george, new york city. you're first up with karl rove. >> caller: i am so glad to be able to speak with you. congratulations on the book. i believe that history is coming to show that george bush was not just a good president, that he was a great president. >> host: why is that? >> caller: i believe that he stuck to his conviction, he

believed what he believed and he made his decision and went forward and i really respect that. i actually am from houston texas and i was on the red raiders little league baseball team and used to play against neil bush who was a pitcher and he was a very good picture and i respect you coming on the show today because i know you're going to get a lot of calls that are going to say that you caused a meltdown financially, that you lied about the weapons in iraq and even that you caused 9/11, and i would like you to know there are millions of people out here who support you and who are going to listen to those calls and just think got here is another person who really is and

informed. i blame a lot of this on the press. i think they have a terrible blindness, liberal bias. come on, george stephanopoulos -- >> host: all right george we've got lots on the table. karl rove. a guest, it's interesting. history overtime mix different judgments about presidents. harry truman left 22% approval and now history looks at him as a four sided statesman who put in place the institutions and tools used by his successors, republicans and democrats to fight and ultimately win the cold war and we are going through a little bit of revision right now where people are looking back at earlier president and the 11th president making decisions about it based upon the historical record. i hope it doesn't take that long for george w. bush record and frankly i had an interesting experience of the airport theatre de real quick. a guy comes over and says your karl rove. i didn't vote for bush either

time. he said i voted for obama. good, he won. i said i've learned something last year it's not as easy as it looks, is it? no, it isn't. he said tell bush thanks for keeping the country safe. i think there will be a lot of that coming along in the country. >> host: he referred to the media. you talked with the media like in the plea i played better than broad themes. >> guest: there's a wonderful book by a guy named patterson called all of order in which he charts the focus on the presidential campaigns on process not substance and i think this is a feeling of the system we are more interested in the latest poll or inside the warfare in the campaign as opposed to the big issues and pronouncements of the dividing candidates charging the various courses in politics. >> host: next call for karl rove author of courage and consequence, bloomington's illinois. >> caller: hauer you doing. mr. rove, it's nice to talk to you. thanks for coming on c-span.

>> host: please go ahead. >> caller: question, do you believe the executive branch has higher authority in times of war or do the other branches when you've been asked to speak to the other house and you refuse that is a bad precedent for any administration for the form of transparency between the two. >> guest: that's a good question. you actually had to. let me divide them and take them one at a time. the question is does the its degette branch at time of one war have higher authority and i say yes both constitution and practice for example the constitution deliberately makes clear the president of the united states is commander-in-chief of the military. this was to make sure there was no division between the authority that had that experience with some of the powers of the continental congress exercised over the

direction of the military so they made a deliberate attempt to clarify that it was the president who as the civilian elected official held privacy over the military. congress retains the power of the budget and the purse strings but they want to make certain the president was in charge. this has been disputed in times for example during the civil war mike the was a special commission joint congressional committee on the conduct of the war which attempted to micromanage the conduct of the civil war which lincoln had to constantly battle with. the second question that you talk about is my refusal to speak before congress in response to congressional subpoenas from the house judiciary committee regarding the u.s. attorney's controversy. and in this instance i wasn't a free actor. it wasn't my decision not to respond to the subpoena. i did so at the direction of president george w. bush who retains a right under our constitution to have confidential advice given to him by his senior aide to read this

is wallace tells of the separation of power doctrine and upheld by the supreme court which is held the the top aide to the president, most senior advisers generally the assistance to the president are like part of the president's persona and so we are not subject to the call of congress at their discretion. now, because of what is involved, the u.s. attorney situation, the president said do not respond to the subpoena but they did give the way to provide the information to congress in a way that would protect the form of the president's privilege while getting the information they wanted in over the core of a year and a half or 21 of the five separate occasions options for doing that. congress remained stalled intent upon trying to breach this wall between the executive and legislative by requiring presidential aide of any nature to be brought before the congress at the conference call. when president obama got into

office of march, 2009, she basically -- his people basically said accept the offer and they told the house judiciary committee to innocence accept the offer we had made for two years of having to provide the information under oath but not in response to a congressional subpoena so it protect the president's privilege, the form of it while at the same time giving congress what it once and because of this intervention by president obama that direct congress to accept the deal they've been offered. i went before the house judiciary committee staff and was questioned by a democratic congressman from california and a republican congressman from virginia and buy stuff for two days and that testimony is available by website, rove.com for anybody so bored out of their board they would like to go and read it, and i thought it was wise of president obama to go and tell the democrats in congress to agree to accept what had been offered them for two years and as i say it makes for

boring read it needed was an important principle. >> host: you write one of the greatest mistakes of the bush administration was not responding to critics of the reasons going to war in iraq. >> guest: july 15th, to those three, ted kennedy gives a speech saying bush lied about wmd. later that day democratic senate leader tom daschle holds a news conference of which he repeats the charge. the next day john kerry makes a speech again reiterating the charge and john edwards and a committee hearing mixed the same charge and at the end of the day they are joined by congressman gene harman, the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee. thereby begins several years in which the democrats allege that push lied about weapons of mass destruction. and i try and make the point in the chapter of the book that if you believe that bush lied in you've got to deal with the fact that a large number of democrats, bill clinton, al gore, hillary clinton, the of

four named five people i mentioned, bob gramm, the democratic chairman of the intelligence committee, jay rockefeller, leader the ranking member of the committee and a member of the committee at the time, even opponents like barbara boxer all said that iraq had wmd. this was consensus of the community shared broadly throughout the government commissure broadly throughout the government of clinton and probably into the government of bush and shared widely through western intelligence communities. and the preponderance of evidence was that he had wmd so in fact there are 110 democrats who vote for the war resolution, 149 oppose it. of the 110, 67 stand on the floor of the house or the senate and say saddam hussein had wmd. if you want to say bush like you've got to assume every one of those people live including ted kennedy and barbara boxer who opposed the resolution. we now know that he didn't have it. he had lots of material. we found 500 tons of yellow cake uranium yellowcake.

we found biological and chemical delivery systems and tens of thousands of artillery shells and other delivery vehicles that had contained biological and chemical weapons that had degraded over time but we didn't find wmd operative in the usable which is what we feared in fact as we approached baghdad the third infantry approach of baghdad we hear the chattering on the radio from the iraqi saying what are we going to depression to use the weapons. we now know because to reports one by charles and won by david kay weapons inspectors that saddam hussein did retain an active and robust interest in these weapons. his attitude was look the west is going to lose interest in the sanctions on iraq. food is going to eventually erode and all i am going to do everything i can to be voted. i'm going to divert tens of millions of dollars in year out of the program to undercut. i'm going to take the money and spend it on keeping together the dual-use facilities by chlorine gas planets in the engineer scientist technicians who know

the systems and how to deliver them so that when that sanctions erodes i can reconstitute these programs. the chemical and biological programs, some of them would take weeks to restart. the nuclear program would take a lot longer and his attitude was look this is important to me. i know to the cony people to think about this stuff and maybe he thought he did have the stuff. in my neighborhood, because it keeps people from messing with me, my own people that keeps them in line because they know i've used this on my own people and i've killed hundreds of thousands of people using all kind of methods, and also keeps the west from messing with me because it is a deterrent. they don't want to mess with me if i've got this stuff and we had to act on the basis of the information that we knew and the information that we had was he had them and it was a threat. i would remind you intelligence gets it from the other way to back. after we took up taliban and as pressures ratcheting up on iraq

and libya says, a market of visas high bidder kaufman programs and we found western intelligence estimates of how dangerous his programs were wrong. the interest amid how what a nice to his kunkel and biological programs were and how far along as a nuclear program was. >> host: susan e-mails and i am the mother of a u.s. marine who served in the infantry unit in iraq and ramadi during 07. i believe you and your cronies are horribly wrong on the issue of waterboarding and the slippery slope of condoning waterboarding leads to escalating evil by those who think they are well-intentioned. >> guest: i respect that but i disagree. we've water board u.s. military personnel every year in order to help them trained for a station and escapes and waterboarding was used in a very carefully described and prescribed weight.

i put the memo on my website, rove.com said people can read them and see how careful these lawyers at the department of justice were making certain our commitments and our international commitments were met. and it was used only in the case of three high-value targets in the information we received once the technique had been used and resistance broken safelights both here and abroad and foiled plots some of which are known to the public and some of which are not. >> host: gail in west river maryland, good afternoon or good morning. >> caller: good morning. mr. rove, if you should have named your book "life and disaster." >> host: y? >> caller: first of all, we all know that the administration came into office already determined to invade iraq. we would have to this believe dozens of books to believe your

read writing of history that's in this book of yours and first of all let's not forget that it was the memo from the vice president's office to armitage that began to stir up all the stuff about valerie plame, and you were the source for both cooper and novak, confirming source, liddy was the confirming source for miller and we also know that roger or michael from the american enterprise institute was suspected of being involved with that of italian group of thugs who broke into the major office -- >> host: a lot on the table there. let's get a response from carl rove. >> guest: obviously she hasn't read my book and i appreciate some people are hyperventilated about this but first read the book before you start making judgments. as a joke to suggest president bush is determined from the moment that he arrives to invade

iraq. that is paranoia of the worst sort and with all due respect to the c-span listeners she ought to stop drinking swamp waters because it's getting her back feeders. the vice president memo to armitage, no, i don't think the vice president since the memo to armitage but he does call the cia and in essence says i want to find out more about this claim. he examined the evidence. bob novak, i was not the source, we know that richard was the source. my contribution and conversation with bob novak is when he tells me that valerie plame said her husband to lighter, recommended keogh there. first i can't figure out who he is talking about because i didn't know willson's wife's famous dollar read plame. if novak said to me i need you to confirm something i would

have said i can't control what i don't know but i heard a but i can't confirm it. and again, my point is the allegation was that while the tournament i didn't. the allegation that was some political purpose, we now know that novak asked armitage why was he sent to africa because he had no background in these issues and doesn't seem well-suited for in intelligence gathering mission, high-profile sort of bombastic egotistical ambassador why did you send him and so it was not done for political purposes, and again there was no underlying offense. if there was an offense, richard armitage would be in a different place than making a living by being an international consultant because obviously there was no underlining offense but this is the kind of intense polarized when people thought it was me they cared about this.

they camped out in front of my doorsteps with bullhorns and protesters and news crews. in august of 2007 or 2006 it was revealed was richard armitage, suddenly the interest went away. there was a part of the washington seiters not political guide came to washington from texas with bush. >> host: a good portion of this book is dedicated to the joe wilson affair. the chapter called joe wilson and another chapter called anything for a scalp. president bush is absent from all of that. >> guest: know, he's in there. in fact, early on when this starts to bubble up, when it becomes a matter of public controversy with day lee, violation of federal law that there's an investigation into the circumstances around the valerie plame ne becoming public. i went to the chief of staff and white house counsel and said

this is the contact i had with robert novak immediately and the president calls me from the oval office and says tell me which i did. interestingly enough the white house never knows about richard armitage's conversation with bob novak. it's unclear during the process of july or september, 2003 secretary of state powell becomes aware. at the end of september he appears on abc this week and says we don't know anything about this. >> host: you dedicate this book to andrew and darbee, lewis and reva. who are they? >> guest: they are my son and former wife and louis and rba are my parents. >> host: darby please save big part in this book. is washington hard on marriages? >> guest: she is a remarkable person. we are very close. we have great affection for each

other but washington was hard on her and hard on our marriage as a result. >> host: tell us about reba. >> guest: she was my mother. she and my father met in their early 20s. he was a student of colorado school of mines. they were very different. she graduated high school and never went to college. he was a very smart -- graduated, became a mining engineer, a geologist and was interested in classical music and reading and art and she wasn't but they were very much in love for a number of years it was a rovian and five children and it was a remarkable relationship. >> host: she committed suicide? >> guest: she did. they separated and 12 years later at the age of 51 with silt

-- turned out to be a failed marriage she drove in the desert and affixed a hose to the tail pipe and put it in the cab of the pickup truck and turned the car on and killed herself. >> host: how long did it take to just? >> guest: i don't think you ever can adjust to that. i know it hit some of my siblings who lived near her and were much more in touch and closer to her than i was. i was living here and in texas and rarely saw her. but it affects everybody. i mean, when the book came out one of her grandchildren, one of my nieces reached out and told me things about how she was still trying to grapple with it today and she was a very small child when it happened. >> host: jeneane, palm coast for a. you are on the air with karl rove. >> caller: mr. rove, in your book you state that president bush would not have invaded by iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction.

that's not exactly true. the downing street memos show that in january, 2003, two months before we attacked iraq, bush told a minister tony blair that he was determined to invade iraq with or without proof of wmd. the memo documents that both bush and tony blair agreed there were no wmd and bush even suggested painting an american surveillance with you in colors hoping to entice the iraqi is to shoot it down using that as justification for attacking iraq >> guest: that's nutty. >> host: that's it? >> guest: yeah, that's it. look, the idea that george w. bush and tony blair engaged in a conspiracy to invade iraq living there was no wmd -- >> host: have you ever heard that one before? >> guest: no, i haven't, but it's nutty.

>> host: why do you capitalize the left when you talk about little politics -- politicians or politics? >> guest: it's just the left and right. it's sort of the places on the political spectrum. >> host: next call -- >> guest: actually there's a thing called the editor and styles manual. you can't hold me responsible for every style in the book. >> host: what was the process like writing this book? >> guest: the first book -- >> host: how much of this -- i mean, how much editing was done on this book? >> guest: a lot. i had a fantastic editors. i was fortunate and had a fellow read it and make recommendations to the colleague of mine at the white house. my editor, person let simon and schuster is brilliant. and she was very tough. i mean it was challenging. she would read something and say i want thito conclusion but here are things you need to deal with. and then we brought in a line editor to short this up who is my editor of "the wall street journal" who is a genius and

purcell and i were in the awe of what we suggested to me get shorter and crisp and fast paced. then i had the on know and copy editor at simon and schuster and as you may know in the publishing business the as i recall being in a true and some firms like simon and schuster is a practice not to tell you who that is and never let you need them so all i know is this person has nice handwriting and rights very clearly in red pencil and was a very sharp rector we had ago by the lawyers and went through one massive at it with priscilla and i3 >> host: how much is riding by the lawyers since it dealt with the white house? >> guest: a lot. as you see in the book its 521 pages but it has like 40 some odd pages of footnotes and i had even more pages of footnotes available and so the editor or the lawyer was pretty good because he had a lot of material that he could fall at gone --

fall back on his or changing words and softening its a little bit but he had a lot of back up. >> host: troy, los angeles peery one >> caller: good morning. i was curious why in your what you didn't address the 2004 atlantic magazine profiles that claim that in the 1990's and started a whisper campaign against those political opponents and alabama and which you claim he was a pedophile. >> guest: have you read the book? >> caller: yes i did. >> guest: then you miss something because i do a better set in the book and this is involved in the alabama supreme court case and the allegation is that we attack this person as being a pedophile because he was involved in a very influential and respected group in alabama devoted to children's issues and again it's completely false. if we made that kind of allegation you would think it would have appeared in a single

newspaper story in alabama and it didn't. there's not a single story that talks about this. it involves a whisper campaign. well, look, you can't affect the outcome of a race in a state with millions of voters as there are in the state of alabama by starting a whisper campaign. it assumes something about the voters that is demeaning to the voters that an unidentified unsubstantiated rumor that the allegation was a was being spread through all students is going to be widely accepted and believed and be heard by hundreds of thousands of voters and change their opinion. you've got the chapter, chapter chapter 34. host kaput y -- >> guest: i also talk about it on the chapter of the rovian campaign. >> host: why then are there so many of the stories about you out there? is there a starting point to all

of this? >> guest: there's one particular writer for the atlantic a campaign involving the 1996 campaign involving harold at sea a college professor at the university of alabama law school running for the supreme court in alabama my one tactics i got involved with was to print of large numbers of fliers attacking harold c. with the idea being they would be widely spread around and would generate a wave of sympathy for harold, and again their right to question a little bit global because again there is no such flyer and the idea again you're going to affect millions of people by taking as he describes garbage bags full of the flyers and throwing them out on people's lawns is absurd but there isn't a single story that appears in the entire campaign about this and nobody, i call people in alabama that said have you ever this before and nobody that i ever talked to was avert

familiar with the charge and then what he missed was in this particular campaign the democratic candidate runs an ad attacking harold that cbs news after the election picked out as the worst multiple end of the entire campaign and the writer for the atlantic while he comes up with the duty scheme of rove concocted a flyer that would generate positive wave of sympathy and response and affect millions of people around the state while he comes up for that which there isn't a bit of evidence leaves out entirely the sluve ball had thrown up against harold c. in the final week of the campaign that was so egregious and over-the-top after the election cbs's of all the trash we saw this year this is the most egregious. >> host: you are a student of history. are there other political consultants who have kind of got in your attention in some circles? >> guest: lee atwater was on the receiving end and dick who

was consulted many years ago, there were allegations of james farley for the democrats under franklin roosevelt but look there is nothing -- you can't compare what went before with what we have today because we have cable tv and we have c-span, the internet, we have a plethora of channels and politics that is highly polarized and people can say the most outrageous things and somebody would print. for example there is one story on a recount in the book about made by jake tamper who suggested i had taken the bush campaign debate material and sent them to the al gore campaign in 2000. we later found it was a disgruntled employee of the media advisory who got her hands on it and send it to tom downey but he said this sounds like roads and then quotes a number of people to say it sounds like rove trey there is no evidence

that simply repeating the charge. now i put it in the book that he took umbrage and said i didn't really say that he did, in fact i said he didn't do it and then he goes on and says but i was looking for the paid to write this about be the style. that's my point. people write about this and assume if there's no evidence he did it that is proof enough for me by god he is that good we can't get his fingerprints. >> host: brough tannin michigan you are on with karl rove, whose book is "courage and consequence". >> caller: lots of respect for you and president bush. we do have differences. i spent time in the middle east and don't plan to know everything but especially after -- let's not get confused, me get confused. the department of homeland security i was totally against that because in affect what we have done is obviously we have another layer of bureaucracy we are still not connecting the

dots. we still don't hold people accountable. the changes not only 51 but the biggest change in the society now is let's go back to the poll. he failed and i say he failed because he didn't protect the ship. i have been there numerous times and we were never on so much height and alert as when we pulled in. we knew what we were getting into. no one could ever have gotten close to the ship with an abiding first. they just could not have done that. >> guest: i think he's right that there are instances where we failed to either connect the dots or we fail to put in as the case of the coal pickets to keep the boats away and that in essence suicide bomber the boat was a bomb built in that got too close to the coal and people died. what i -- i understand this issue about not wanting to have another layer of bureaucracy but

with the homeland equations security department did was take a wide number of agencies spread throughout the government who had a roughly similar mission this to say protecting the homeland and brought them together in a place their activities could be coordinated and consolidated. it didn't make any sense to have -- units spread through the commerce department and the agriculture department, in the transportation department and elsewhere if they all had the same mission. we had border agencies stand-alone or within the treasury department. you are better off being together and being able to coordinate activities. that isn't to say that it's perfect because any time you try to jam that much the government together and then rationalize it is a complicated puzzle and also if you get the management issue right the counterterrorism center which is responsible for taking a flood of data like it is hard for the ordinary person to get their hands around even the concept of a falcon of that

data and analyzing in a way that they could get a disturbing pattern is pulled out and become obvious is a very complicated task. and even when you have the best people in the world motivated by the best instincts and we've given extraordinary training you're still cling to have mistakes. we saw this with a christmas day donner for example. why is it the state department didn't pass on the warnings it received? why is it there were off warning bells going off when you have to guide it buys a ticket in one country to board a plan and the mother country and is paying cash with a one-way ticket coming in to the united states? and it is a sobering reminder of the have to do is get a right once and we've got to get it right every time. >> host: you might be on the debate team in high school taught me being on offense is important and once you were on defense it was hard to regain control of the dialogue. >> guest: it also taught me you need to think through how in argument is going to play out so you can analyze how things might

flow so you can continue to bend it in your direction. >> host: frank, do we maryland. you are on with karl rove. please go ahead. >> caller: hello. god bless america. i guess i am supposed to be surprised that mr. rove is tempered and [inaudible] so much respect to you -- i didn't think you take a call of the air without pre-editing. i give you that. i want to ask a question and hope i get an answer. much before september 11th, the minister reported a letter was sent to president clinton signed by cheney, rumsfeld and the neocons for the overdraw of

saddam. if that is true, how do you say [inaudible] >> host: is he referring to the gary schmidt letter to president clinton? >> guest: there was also bipartisan consensus under president clinton that regime change should be the policy of the united states and the united states congress passed resolutions calling on that backed by the administration in fact i believe require a signature by president clinton and the iraqi liberation is the title of the bill but there was a broad consensus, bipartisan in nature if you go back to the 90's you can see to see emerge with democrats and republicans representing a threat. he invaded kuwait and threatened saudi arabia. he'd been expelled by kuwait after the united nations

authorized colish and action led by the united states and then over the course of the 90's, he said it formed i think the total list 14 by one count and 70 by another saying live up to the terms of the surrender agreement he made in the aftermath of the first gulf war. in the late 90's is when blacks representing the weapons inspection regime finds biological and chemical stock of material and an active weapons program. it is in the mid to late nineties we uncover a robust nuclear program after the body is surrendered after the first gulf war and agreed to give up the material. so this -- there is a bipartisan effort underway in the 90's that is the backing of the clinton and gore administration that regime change in iraq must be the policy and should be the policy of the united states. that is different than saying we're going to eight invade. that is why the resolution authorizing the use of force if

you fail to comply with one last set of demands from the united nations was so important. >> host: what he thinks the term neocons? >> guest: i am not certain what it means. it sounds to me a old neoconservatives was originally a domestic term. i think coined by irving kristol and was a liberal mugged by reality. i think that it has been used in a different way to apply to foreign policy, a foreign policy school that says the expansion of democracy is in the security interest of the united states. a world more space and free is also going to be a world that is more stable and peaceful. >> host: do you still talk to president bush recently? >> guest: i do, and we e-mail back-and-forth about every day. >> host: what are you reading? >> guest: i'm reading too much right now. i am reading a wonderful book about letters. i'm reading in fact i think you have a program on it, i'm suffering a senior moment here,

a book tour moment. i'm reading gordon what's empire of liberty and i am nearly finished with the persian expedition. >> host: next call for karl rove -- gist kaput mention one thing. i made the mistake of saying fox and friends saturday morning that my goal was to read a book a week this year. so many people have e-mail me this next week i'm going to start putting my reading list at roved of calms people can see what i'm reading. >> host: angela minnesota, you are on with karl rove. >> caller: hello, mr. rove. i would like to know if he would give me the chance to rename carvel rove's book. >> host: we will have to ask steve if he will do that. guessed correctly is up to simon and schuster. >> host: angela first of all i am not steve macdill had -- >> guest: this is peter and his feelings have been hurt, angela. >> host: go ahead with your

questions to karl rove for what he would like to rename the book. >> caller: okay. i would like to rename it the on the truth about the iraq war, and mr. rove, mostly the biggest thing i have a question to you about is i totally disagree with you on the statement that you see the only people we tortured worthy high valued detainee's or whatever because it is a proven fact and a documentary called "iraq for sale" that was done by contractors oliver iraq and afghanistan. >> guest: i disagree. first of all, i don't agree with the word torture. our laws do not allow torture, and these techniques enhanced interrogation techniques were designed to elicit cooperation but within the limits of our laws and international commitments. and look i appreciate she doesn't agree with me on iraq but i find it hard to believe that she has even read the book.

all i ask is a fair reading and we could have a reasonable disagreement with these sort of i want to free title book without having read it to try to be short minded. >> host: could she have that dialogue with you on your website? >> guest: on my facebook page and then i do have karlrove.com where i accept e-mails if people are rude and obscene it goes to the trash, so don't even bother sending it. >> host: allen, gary indianan. >> caller: good morning. i know oftentimes there is a statement or statements made about how safe the country was after september 11th. but i would like karl to explore the idea how safe we were september 10th and before the tenet richard clark's admonitions about the dangers of terrorism taking over aircraft and doing damage in this country

and i am also kind of curious about what karl's take would be on the cycle, that appears to have happen when you elect a person like president bush with virtually an empty suit -- >> host: why do you say that he is an empty suit? >> caller: its previous when you rely on looking to other foreign leaders for direction as he did with putin it's kind of trouble some when you rely on things like that because you can't rely on an education of history were something of a more serious nature. you are liable to repeat the cycle, some where you try to outdo the father -- >> host: let's give response from karl rove. >> guest: first of all, before

9/11 we were not as safe as after 9/11 and he put his finger on one of them, which was we had a divided on the fbi and the cia not being able to share information so we were not able to act upon information that the cia might have that the fbi might have that the other one might be able to share that light on how dangerous the information was. after 9/11 we took on the so-called wall that had been erected by the system to become assistant attorney general that said you cannot share cia and fbi can't share information. we had to do one thing after 9/11 that could only do one thing and that was the would be it. but lots of other things. for example before 9/11 and the patriot act you could have what was called a roving wiretaps to follow a drug dealers use of self phones where he would buy these prepaid alfonson and use them and discard the you could do it on interest. we could use a peak and sneak --

sneak and peacock warrant on mafia figures, organized crime figure of monetarist. we could use a business records research to get at the record of the doctors suspected of medicare fraud but not on the terrorist so we did things after 9/11 and passed incidentally by a very large bipartisan vote and recently renewed by the large bipartisan but the patriot act that gave this tools to make the country more safe. look this idea of a psychodrama alkyd and sound to me like a licensed therapist and even if he was a licensed therapist i don't think that he has sat in a room and interviewed the father and the sun but he is typical of people left to make this thing. let's go back to the only specific thing he said. i'm going to just ignore this thing this psychodrama but let's go to one specific thing he said that is the comment by president bush when he is asked at a meeting, a press conference i believe in slovenia where he is meeting with putin for the first

time and associated press reporter named ron says to president bush do you trust him. and we are standing there with the leader of russia trying to establish a good working relationship with this major power. you've got choices. you can say yes or no. bush chose yes. imagine what had happened if he had equivocated and said i don't know if i can trust him. what if he said no i can't trust this guy? what kind of personal relationship and what kind of diplomatic relationship with the united states have with this major power? i think the president took the right tone which was to say i think we can have a good relationship with him. i looked in his eyes and i believe we can trust him. that's the way in which u.s. -- a personal relationship which will help further the diplomatic relationship with a major power, and did we think he was our friend and ally on each and every moment? no. were we waryf