selected and then you had to share those doubts in front of him. was that like? >> it was interesting moment because when the governor bush, then governor bush was selling on the vice presidential choice, he was given -- he liked cheney as opposed to the others we were looking at. he liked the guy in charge of the process so he called me at home coming in off the road and he said i want you to come over. he knew i was against cheney. there were five or six of us who knew about this and he's for us to secrecy. he said i want you to come to the governor's mansion and lee of the case. and just said be prepared, tell me why you don't think it ought to be cheney's went to the governor's mansion and sat down in a small room in the austin a library with him and sitting just about as close as i am to do and for about 30 or 35 minutes maybe a few cases further apart laid out the case against cheney and i had eight reasons why starting with we didn't need to worry about

wyoming, that cheney had been a very conservative members wyoming and we had to defend his voting record including voting against a resolution calling for the release of nelson mandela from prison that 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 and we went on 30 or 35 minutes and as i laid out the case occasionally governor bush would say i agree but what if i said this and i disagree with that or what would you say if i said that so it went on for 30 or 35 minutes and at the end, exhausted my list he said to you have anything else and he turns to the guy next to him and said to you have any questions for karl. when he invited me over he didn't say i'm going to have cheney and you need to clean up the case in front of him that it goes to show a couple of things about bush. one is that he viewed this as a government decision not a political decision because he called the next day and said you are right on most or all that stuff that's all politics you can deal with that. my job is to worry about if

something happened to me what the country have confidence in. and second of all the showed bush 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 lay them out in a respectful and straightforward way in front of others who might have a different opinion. it was quite an experience. years? >> guest: well, my opinion of him when i left the room i said great as irritated the guy who will be the next vice president. and then we became friends. he never help it against me. he said that was my job. my job was to go to those questions and not take it personal. >> host: with a roving campaign? >> guest: is not what is normally depict it. the ugly things that people say are at the heart of campaigns iran, most of which are fear-based mudball politics. and i got a couple of great

quotes in it from people who have commented on them. rove and his minions never stops never stops surprising me to be of the come up with something that would shot shock a 60-year-old greyhound bus station. those kind of user based on a very, very negative view of the electorate. those fundamentally say the electric can be won over by that kind of politics and i don't see the american voters predict it would be in a hype profile race like are the senate or governor or president are motivated by those kinds of instincts. in fact i think they reject them and people who cross those lines and run those kind of campaigns tend to lose. in fact tend to lose a lot. but a roving campaign is one based around first of all an authentic idea. what is that the man or woman running for office wants to achieve because at the end of the day that is what voters are going to principally judge them by is what is their vision and also do they have the back round or the aryans for the persona

that gives people confidence they will be able to achieve that. it is not easy to do. the best is to consider it as the emperor's new clothes, the childhood favor we waltz out. hopefully they will see you on one of your better days but they are going to see you as you are so candidates who lack the a central value core beliefs and just run on the basis of something that is completely phony tend to lose. >> host: then, why is there a feeling about you by a lot of folks that you are negative and divisive? >> guest: well and for example in south carolina, john mccain 's campaign held bush responsible. i was easier to attack and bush. i was supposedly responsible for this e-mail from a professor at

bob jones university that allege john mccain had fathered an out of wedlock, black baby and it was ugly. it was a vicious little smear. but a couple of things. one is, i had nothing to do with the. even jonathan karl who was at that time working for cnn and finally got ahold of the professor who basically said, i did this on my on and so what? i have a right to do it but it was a vicious, bigoted smear on john mccain. the kind of thing that-- south carolina voters are not attracted by that. it was the kind of thing that on the server so that didn't help anybody who didn't want john mccain made president. it was the kind of thing people naturally reject. then what happened is, mccain stood up and said george bush was behind this. south carolina republicans like mccain and bush. not won in 1000 would leave that george bush was capable of doing that. my personal view when it happened was i was afraid as 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 bangladesh orphanage run by mother theresa is an incredible story of compassion and love, just the kind of thing that in a campaign would explain a lot about to john and cindy mccain were and served as an enormous plus for them. instead, saying hold on, wait a minute here is what i want the people to south airline in and america to know about me, instead he said bush did this then shame on bush and i have no evidence that was dated but shame on bush. it was the whole mindset. this kind of attitude that made itself evident in other ways in south carolina that i talk about in the look and lost the primary for mccain and hence lost the presidential election. >> host: you also had an incident where you had a chance to meet with john mccain later on.

>> guest: in 2004, mccain offered through a longtime aide and person i knew that mccain would campaign for us. he made an appearance with president bush in washington state, which was nonpolitical and the president said look on his first swing i don't want you along but you can work out your problems with mccain later. and he left. he thought that was funny. so the first trip i spent with mccain was in florida. we flew to pensacola, florida and then took a bus to niceville and seaside and ended the day in panama city. woodenly got on air force one at andrews the president had a cia briefing so he said go back and talk to mccain. entertain mccain until i'm ready. this was sort of awkward because mccain's campaign and even cam -- mccains wiped who famously was asked if she had ever had a

chance which he stabbed me in the back, she said no i would stab him in the front. i go back to the back cabin and sit down and start to talk and it is a 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. it involves a little sports car and lots of alcohol and exotically named women. i have never laughed so hard in my life four he was one wild young naval aviator. we been flew into panama city in pensacola where he had done his training and we went to a stadium or a facility that held 10,000 people that was packed to the gills with people. when they announce mccain there was a sea of noise and it discombobulated mccain. this is the where the two of them take off their jackets and bush raises his arms. mccain joined in the press

realize mccain could not raise his arms above here. mccain tries to talk to the president say something to him and this is the famous photograph of the dumber rats used in 2008 at where mccain looks like he has his head varied in bush's shoulders. it was an extraordinary day. this was bush country, the panhandle of florida. more sheets were sacrificed and turned into campaign signs and you have ever seen with children lining the roads and mobs blocking highway 38 at seaside, physically stopping the bus and all along the city, sitting next to mccain and mccain starts going looking at that and having me in my arm. i arm by the end of the day was literally laughing blue. at the end of the day, the driving rain and panama city utley tom of 100,000. tracy bird is a country western singer saying he is the only guy who is dr. no he is undercover

on the stage and just as the bus pulls up and missed cain and bush get out big clouds part, the rain stops in the sun begins to set and these two men emerge on the stage. it was a fantastic moment. we ended up the next day in phoenix and at the end of the day i impulsively gave mccain might theodore roosevelt cufflinks. >> host: karl rove would you have used that picture if you are the opposition? >> guest: i don't think ultimately it helps them. i think it made them look petty and small. it was easy and simple to do, but it made them-- people did not think john mccain was george w. bush. if you wanted to sort of say republicans there were other ways of doing it but i thought it was, in politics you can do things that if you win the campaign everybody thinks you were useful and effective but there were other things that drove it and i frankly think a

rock obama inspiring rhetoric, his relentless focus on centrist policies, his sort of post-partisanship bipartisanship, i think those were far more effective than him saying john mccain is george bush three. >> host: this is the book, "courage and consequence" my life as a conservative in the fight. karl rove is the author. if you live in the east or central timezone, (202)737-0002 and mountain and pacific timezone, will tbs bestand.org is their e-mail address. unfortunately we are-- not taking any tweets today. it is broken so we will put that to the side for today. you write that you like being in the middle of a political firestorm. >> guest: i don't know if i said i liked it. i said i found myself in it. you either need to be comfortable there or find another line of work. >> host: patrick fitzgerald

quote scare the hell out of you. >> guest: absolutely. we now know some things and we knew part of these at the time. we know that the allegation was that i leaked valerie plane's name to robert novak. i didn't. the under secretary of state did. the allegation was that that was done in order to damage her husband politically. we now know that richard armitage did it in order to explain why in response to a question, why joe wilson was sent to africa. the allegation was that this was a violation of law, armitage's week was a violation of law. we now know there was no underlying offense. we also know that what joe wilson said in his july 6 op-ed in the "new york times" was wrong. he said that he had been sent to africa to investigate the claim of the british intelligence that saddam hussein attempted

yellowcake uranium in africa at the behest of dick cheney. not true. he was wrong when he alleged that his report when they came back was shared with administration of rituals the president, vice president at the highest levels of the white house. not true. when you pledge condi rice personally block it from being presented to the president, that was untrue. and he said he personally talked with members of vice president cheney staff and they assured him it had been blocked, that was simply not true. he was wrong when he said that he disproved the british claim. he never understood and never knew what the basis of the british claim was. he was wrong when he said he was conclusive in proving that saddam had ever attempted to do it four in fact, when he came back he came back and reported about a previously unknown attempts by saddam's attempt to force the government to accept a trade delegation and the

government said wait a minute, we only trade one thing and it is on the international sanctions lists. we are not taking saddam's list. we know he flat out lied when he said he was the guy that disproved the italian forgeries. ms. is show up eight months after he returns from africa that he had no role in disproving. in fact when he was later questioned by the senate intelligence committee he said he had a literary license. and yet at the end of this in order 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. after four visits to the grand jury over a two-year period not the special prosecutor, patrick fitzgerald, says to my attorney we are inclined to indict your client. 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 what he is-- is stumbling block is. >> host: you oblique league referred to how much that cost you. have you ever said publicly how much? >> guest: do you mean financially? no. >> host: six figures, seven figures? >> guest: none of your business. lots. >> host: george, you are first up with karl rove. >> caller: hi, i am so glad to be able to speak with you. congratulations on the book four i believe history is going to show that george bush was not just a good cop-- resident, that he was a great president. >> host: why is that, george? >> caller: i believe that he stuck with his convictions. he believed in what he believed and he didn't listen to the polls. he made his decisions and he went forward. i really respect that. i actually am from houston, texas and i was on the red

writers little league baseball team and i used to play against neal lish. he was the pitcher and he was a very good pitcher. i really respect you coming on the show today because i know you were going to get a lot of calls that are going to say that financially, that you lied about the weapons in iraq and even that you caused 9/11. i would like you to know that there are millions of people out here who support you and you are going to listen to those calls and just think, oh god, here is another person who really isn't informed. i blame a lot of this on the press and i think they had a terrible liberal bias. come on, george stephanopoulos-- >> host: we have got lots on the table there. karl rove. >> guest: it is interesting, history overtime makes different

judgments about president. harry truman left with 22% approval and now history looks at them as a foresighted statesmen who put in place the institutions and tools used by his successors, republicans and democrats, to bite and ultimately win the cold war. and you know we are going through a little bit of pulp revision where people are looking back even earlier president and the 11th president in making the decisions about them based upon the historical record. i hope it doesn't take that long for george w. bush's record and frankly i had an interesting experience in the airport yesterday. a guy comes up to me was sort of a scowl on his face. i didn't vote for bush either time. i voted for obama. i said good, he one. i learned something last year, it is not as easy as it looks as if? i said no it isn't. he said help was thank you for keeping our country safe.

>> host: the gentleman referred to the media and you talk about the media liking the play-by-play better. >> guest: there is a wonderful book by a guy named patterson called out of order in which he charged the focus in presidential campaigns on process, not substance and i think this is a feeling failing of our system. we are more interested in the latest poll or the inside of the campaign as opposed to the big issues and pronouncements that are dividing candidates and charting various courses of politics. >> caller: hi, how are your doing? thanks for coming on c-span. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: question, do you believe the branch has a higher authority in times of war at least than the other branches and if so,-- [inaudible]

that is a bad precedent for any administration to set because of the form of transparency between the parties. >> guest: you actually have two questions barry. let me divide them and take them one at a time. the first question is does the executive branch at a time of war have higher authority and i would say yes post-constitution and practice. for example the constitution deliberately makes clear that the president is the commander-in-chief of the military. this was to make certain there is no division. we had a bad experience with some of the powers of the continental congress exercised over the direction of the military so they made a deliberate attempts to verify that it was a president who has the civilian elected official health primacy over the military. congress retains the power of the budget and the purse strings

but they wanted to make certain that the president was in charge. obviously this has been disputed at times. for example during the civil war there was a 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 you talk about is my refusal to speak before congress in response to congressional subpoenas from the house judiciary committee regarding the u.s. attorneys controversy. in this instance i was not a free after. it was not 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 aides. this was well established under separation of powers doctrine and upheld by the supreme court which is held at the top base of the president's most senior advisers, generally the assistance to the president, are like parts of the president's persona.

and so are not subject to the call of congress at their discretion. now because of what this involved the u.s. attorney situation, the president said do not respond to the subpoena but they did give us leeway to provide the information to congress in a way that would protect the form of the president's privilege while giving them the substance of the information they wanted and over the course of the year and a half or two, we provided at least on five separate occasions options for doing that. congress remained intent upon trying to breach this wall between executive and the legislative by requiring presidential aids of any nature to be brought before the congress at the congress is call. when president obama got into office in march of 2090 basic become his people basically said okay, except the offer and they told the house judiciary committee to to in essence accept the offer that we have made for two years of having providing the information under

oath but not in response to a congressional subpoena so it protects the president's privilege, the form of it while at the same time giving congress what it wants. because of this intervention by the president obama to direct congress to accept the deal they had and offered a whimper for the house judiciary committee staff and was questioned by a democratic congressman from california and the republican congressman from virginia and by staff for two days. that testimony is available on my web site, rove.com for anybody who is so bored out of their gourd that they would like to go and read it. i thought it was wise of president obama to tell the democrats to agree to accept what had been offered them for two years and as i say it makes for boring reading but it was important principle. >> host: you write that one of the greatest mistakes in the bush administration was not responding to critics of the reasons going for-- to war in iraq. >> guest: ted kennedy gives a

speech saying bush lied about wmd. later that day tom daschle holds a news conference in which he repeats the charge. the next day john kerry makes a speech again reiterating the charge and john edwards and a committee hearing makes the same charge and at the end of the day they are joined by congresswoman jane harman, the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee. thereby began several years in which the democrats allege that bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. i try and make the point in that chapter in the book that if you believe that bush lied, then you have got to deal with the fact that a large number of democrats, bill clinton, al gore, hillary clinton, the afore named five people i mentioned, bob graham the chairman of the senate intelligence committee, jay rockefeller and later a member of the committee at the time. even opponents of the war like harbor boxer all said iraq had

wmd. this was a consensus of the intelligence community shared broadly throughout the government under clinton, shared broadly under bush and widely through the western intelligence communities. the preponderance of evidence was that he had wmd. in fact there are 100 demo rats who voted for the war resolution, 149 who opposed it. 67 stand up on the house of the florida senate and said saddam had wmd. if you want to say bush lied and you have to assume everyone of those light including ted kennedy and barbara boxer. he had lots of material. we found 500 tons of yellowcake, uranium yellowcake. we found biological and chemical delivery systems. we found tens of thousands of artillery shells and delivery vehicles that contained chemical weapons that had raided over time. but we didn't find wmd operative and usable which was what we

feared. in fact is we broached baghdad, the third infantry approaches back that, we hear chatter on the radio from the iraqi saying where we going to get permission to use the weapons? we now know because of two reports by weapons inspectors that saddam did obtain an active response to these weapons. his attitude was the west is going to loose interest in sanctions. oil for food and i saddam is going to do everything i can. i am going to take that money and spend it on keeping together the dual use facilities like chlorine gas plants and engineers scientists and technicians who know the systems and how to deliver them so that those sanctions, 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. his attitude was look, this is

important to me. i need people to think i've got the stuff and maybe he thought he actually did have the staff. in my neighborhood because it keeps people from messing with me. my own people, keeps them in line because he knows i have used this on my own people and killed hundreds of thousands of people, and it also keeps the west from messing with me because it is a deterrent. they don't want to mess with me if i have got this stuff. we had to act on the basis of the information we knew in the information we had was that he had them and it was a threat. i would remind you, intelligence gets it wrong the other way too. after we took out the taliban and is pressure is ratcheting up on iraq, libya says, moammar qaddafi says i better cough up my programs. we found western intelligence estimates of how dangerous his programs were were wrong. they underestimated how

weaponized his chemical and biological programs were and how far along his nuclear program was. >> host: susan e-mailed to you, i am the mother of a u.s. marine who served in the infantry unit in iraq and ramani during a seven. 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. i disagree. u.s. military personnel are waterboarded every year in order to help them train for invasion and escape. waterboarding was used in a very carefully described in proscribed way. i put the memos about its use up on my web site, rove.com so people can read them and see how careful these lawyers at the department of justice were in making certain our commitments under our law and our international commitments were met. it was used only in the case of

three high-value targets and information received once the technique it and used in resistance had been broken save lives both here and abroad and fo plots some of which are known to the public and some of which are not. >> host: galan west river, maryland. good afternoon. good morning. >> caller: good morning. mr. rove, i think you should have named your book lies in disaster. >> host: wife, gail? >> caller: first of all we know your administration came into office already chairman-- determined to invade iraq. we would have to disbelieve dozens of books to believe you are rewriting of history that is in this book of yours. first of all, let's not forget it that was the memo from the president's office to armitage that began to stir up all the stuff about valerie flame and

you were the source for both cooper and novak, a confirming source. libby was big confirming source for miller, and we also know that michael ledeen from the american enterprise institute was suspected of being involved with that italian group of thugs who broke into the nicer office. >> host: gail, lott on the table there. let's get a response. >> guest: obviously she is not read my book and i appreciate that some people have to ventilate had read the book before you start make in judgments about that. first of all it is a joke to suggest president bush was determined at the moment he arrived in office to invade iraq that is paranoia of the worst sort and with all due respect to your c-span listener she got to stop drinking swamp water because it is giving her bad favors.

second, the vice president, i don't think he sends a memo to armitage but he does call the cia and say you know in essence, i want to find out more of how this claim. he examined the evidence. you know, bob novak, i was not the source. we now know richard armitage was the source. my conversation with bob novak was when he tells me that valerie flame sent her husband to, and recommended he go to. ifrs i couldn't figure out who he was talking about because i didn't know his wife was valerie. i said i have heard that. is novak said to me i need you to confirm something to me i would have said i can't confirm it. i don't know but i have heard it but i could not have confirmed it. again my point is, the allegation was that i leaked her name. we now know that i didn't. the allegation that it was done

for political sir---- why was he sent to africa because he had no background in these issues, and doesn't seem well suited for an intelligence gathering mission and high-profile bombastic egotistical former ambassador, why did you send him to? again, there was no underlying offense. if there was not answered ensign richard armitage would he in a much different place than making a living by being an international consultant. obviously there was no underlying offense. but i no, this is the kind of, this is the kind of intensely polarized-- when people thought it was me they cared about this. they camped out in front of my doorstep with old horns and protesters in newsgroups but in august of 200742061 it was revealed it was richard armitage, suddenly the interest went away. washington insiders, not that

political guy that came up to washington. >> host: a good portion of this book is dedicated to the joe wilson affair, a chapter called joe wilson and another chapter called anything or a scalp. president bush is absent from all of that. >> guest: he is in there. in fact early on, when the stars the bubble up and starts to become a matter of public controversy with a week, a elite infinitely a violation of federal law that there is now an investigation into the circumstances around valerie plame's name becoming public, i went to the chief of the staff in the white house counsel and said this is the contact i have with robert novak. and the president calls me from the oval and says tell me. and which i did. interestingly enough the white house never knows about richard

armitage's conversation with bob novak. it is unclear exact we win the process of july, august and september of 2003 secretary of state powell becomes aware of it. at the end of september he appears on abc this week and says in essence we don't know anything about this. >> host: you dedicate this book to enter, derby, lewis and read the. >> guest: lewis and rebar my parents. >> host: derby plays a big role in this book. she is throughout this book. is washington hard on marriages? >> guest: it is. she is a remarkable person. we are very close. we have great affection for each other but washington was very hard on our marriage as a result >> host: tell us about reba. >> guest: she was my mother. she and my father met when they were very young. he was a student at the colorado

school of mines. they were very different. she graduated from high school and never went to college. he was a very smart and graduated and became a mining engineer, a geologist. he was interested in classical music and reading and art and she wasn't, but they were very much in love. and for a number of years it was -- they had 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 after what turned out to be a failed third marriage, she drove into the desert north of reno, nevada and took the tailpipe and affixed a hose to it, put it in the cab of her pickup truck, killed the car on-- turned the car on a killed herself.

i don't think you ever can adjust to that. some of my siblings who live near her and were much more in touch with her and closer to her than i was, i was living in texas and rarely saw her-- but it affects everybody. when the book came out and one of her grandchildren, one of my nieces reached out to me and told me things about how she was still trying to grapple with it. she was a very small child when it happened. >> host: janine, palm coast, florida. you are on the air with karl rove. >> caller: mr. rove, in your book you state that president bush would not have invaded iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction. that is not exactly true. the downing street memo shows in january 2032 months before we attacked iraq was told prime minister tony blair that he was determined to invade iraq with or without roof of wmd.

both bush and blair agreed there were no wmds and bush even suggested taking an american surveillance plane, hoping to entice the iraq east to shoot it down using that as justification for attacking iraq. >> guest: that is nutty. >> host: that is that? >> guest: that is it. you know, the idea that george w. bush and tony blair engaged in a conspiracy to invade iraq knowing that there was no wmd there, you no-- >> host: have you ever heard that one before? >> guest: know i haven't but it is nutty. >> host: why do you capitalize the left when you talk about liberal politicians are politics? >> guest: it is the left and the right. it is sort of the places on the political spectrum. actually, there is also a thing

called the editor in the style manual and you can't hold me responsible for every style manual question in the book. >> host: what was the process of writing this? how much of this, i mean how much editing was done on this book? >> guest: a lot. i had and have to editors. i was really fortunate. i had a fellow greeted and make recommendations. my editor at simon & shuster is brilliant, and she was very tough. it was challenging. she would read something and she would say i want this to be your forcing conclusion but here are things you need to deal with. then they brought in a line editor to shorten it all up it was my editor at "the wall street journal", who was a genius. priscilla and i were in awe with what he suggested to make it chris burke, sharper and fast-paced. then i had the unnamed copy editor at simon & shuster, as you may know in the publishing business they assign you a copy

editor and in some firms like simon & shuster apparently it is a practice to tell you not-- not tell you who it is. all i know is this person is very nice handwriting and right really in red pencil and was a very sharp sharp writer. then we went back to one massive fed up with priscilla, rendon and i. >> host: how much vetting by the lawyers dealt with the white house? >> guest: a lot and it's easy in the book it is 521 pages but it has 40 some odd pages afoot notes so i had even more pages of footnotes available. so, the editor, the lawyer was pretty good because he had a lot of material that he could fall back on. his were mainly changing words, softing a little bit, but he had a lot of backup. >> host: chore in los angeles. good morning. >> caller: get warning. i was curious why do you and

your book you didn't address the 2004 magazine profile of view that claims in the 19 '90s he started a whisper campaign against a political opponent in alabama in which you claim that he was a pedophile. >> guest: have you read the book? >> caller: yes i did sir. >> guest: then you miss something because they do address that in the book. this is involving and alabama supreme court case on the allegation is that we attacked this person as being a pedophile because he was involved in a very influential and respected group in alabama devoted to children's issues. again it is completely false. if we made that kind of allegation you would think it would have that appeared in a single newspaper story in alabama and it didn't. there is not a single story that talks about this. ostensibly it involves a whisper campaign. low-key can 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 really demeaning to the voters, that an unverified ab substantiated rumor that i think the allegation was it was being spread through law students is somehow going to be widely accepted and believed and be heard by hundreds of thousands of voters and change their opinion. there it is. chapter 34, the rove myth. i also talk about it i believe in the rove campaign. >> host: you also talk about don siegelman. why then are there so many of the stories about you out there? is there a starting point to all this? >> guest: this one particular writer for the atlantic is particularly gullible. he has bid on a couple of these. he also bit on the theory that in a campaign involving, the 1996 campaign, a college

professor at the university of alabama law school who is running for the supreme court of alabama, one tactic i got involved with was to print up large numbers of flyers attacking harold c. with the idea being that these would be widely spread around and would generate a wave of sympathy. again, the writer in question was a little bit gullible because again there was no such fire and the idea you are going to affect millions of people by taking as he describes in there, garbage bags full of these flyers and throwing them out on people's lawns is absurd that again there is not a single story that appeared in the entire campaign about this and i call people in alabama and said have you ever heard this before? nobody that i talked to us ever familiar with this charge. then what he missed was in this particular campaign, the democratic candidate runs an ad attacking harold see that cbs news after the election picked

out is the worst mud ball out of the entire campaign and this writer for the atlantic comes up with this goofy scheme of rove concocted a flyer that attacked harold sieg but would generate positive sympathy in and response and affect millions of people around the state while he comes up with not a bit of evidence leaves out entirely this mudball ed thrown up against harold in the final week of the campaign that was so if regis and so over-the-top that after the election cbs has evolved the trash we resolve this year this is the most egregious. >> host: you are a student of history. are there other political consultants who have kind of got your reputation in some circles? >> guest: lee atwater was on the receiving end. tick-tock who was a democrat consulted many years ago. there were allegations of jim farley from the democrats and under franklin roosevelt, but look, you can't compare what went before with what we have today because we have cable tv and we have c-span and the

internet. we have a plethora of channels and we have a politic that is highly polarized and where people can say the most outrageous things and somebody will print it. for example there is one story that i recount in the book about an attack made on me by jake tapper who suggested that i had taken the bush campaign debate materials and sent them to the gore campaign in 2000. we later found out there was a disgruntled employee who got her hands on it and send it to tom downing to prepare for debate. he said this sounds like rove a number of people who say it sounds like rove. that was in there, there is no evidence for this but i mean simply repeating the charge a lot-- out put it in the book and he took umbrage with it. i didn't really say that rove did it. then he goes onto say i was looking for a peg paid to write this about being rove's style. that is my point.

people write about this and if there is no evidence of rove did it that is proof enough for me. we can't get his fingerprints on it. >> host: brian in michigan, you are on with karl rove whose book is "courage and consequence." >> caller: hi karl. we do have differences. i spent time in the middle east. i don't claim to know everything the department of homeland security, i was totally against that because in effect what we have done is obviously we have got another layer of her opera see. we are still not connecting the dots. we still don't hold people accountable. the biggest change in our society now coral is, let's go back to the polls. that commander there failed and i say he has failed as he didn't

protect his ship. i have been in that port karl numerous times. we knew were never on such heightened alert. we knew what we were getting into. no one could have ever gotten close to our ship without dying first. they just couldn't have done that. >> guest: i think he was right, that there are instances where we failed to either connect the dots or we failed to put, as in the case of the kohl, tickets to keep both the way and that in essence suicide amen, the road with the bomb built into it got too close to the colin people died. and i understand this issue about not wanting to have another layer of her opera see but what the homeland security department did was take a wide number of agencies spread throughout the government who had a similar mission, protecting the homeland and brought them together in a place where their activities could be consolidated. it didn't make any sense to have

-- even if it is spread to the commerce department and the agriculture department and the transportation department and elsewhere, if they all have the same mission. we had border agencies stand alone or within the treasury department. they are better off being able to coordinate their activities. that is not to say it is perfect because anytime you try to jam that much government together and then rationalize that it is a complicated puzzle. also, even if you get that management issue right at the counterterrorism center for example which is responsible for taking a flood data, like its it's hard for the ordinary people to get their hands around, even the concept of that data and in essence analyze it in a way that they could get disturbing patterns to pop out and become obvious is a fairly complicated task. even when you have the best people in the world motivated by the best instincts and were given extraordinary training,

you are still going to have mistakes. we saw it with a christmas day bomber. for example wiseman the state department didn't pass on the warnings? why is it that the-- there weren't warning bells going off when you have a guy that buys a ticket in one country to war to playing in another country and is paying cash with a one-way ticket coming into the united states. it is a sobering reminder that all they have to do is get it right once. >> host: you write that being on the debate team in high school taught me that saying on the offense was important and once you run defense it was hard to regain control of the dialogue. >> guest: also taught me need to think or how an argument is going to play out so you can analyze how things might flow so that you can continue to bend it in your direction. >> host: frank, maryland, you are on with karl rove. please go ahead. >> caller: good morning. god bless america.

i am not supposed to be surprised that mr. rove is-- i have so much respect for you. i don't think you take the call on the air without being-- [inaudible] i want to ask a question and i hope i get an answer. much before september 11, louis farrakhan reported a letter was sent to president clinton signed by the paul wolfowitz, dick cheney and the so-called neocons for the overthrow of saddam. are you aware of that or are you going to say that you never heard of it? it is true-- how do you say with all those people in those

strategic points? >> host: is he referring to the gary schmitt letter? >> guest: i think that is it that there was also a bipartisan consensus under president clinton that regime change should be the policy of the united united states and the united states congress passed resolutions calling l backed by the administration and in fact i believe it required a signature by president clinton and the iraq liberation act i think the title of the bill is. there was an broad consensus bipartisan in nature. you can see this emerge with democrats and republicans believing that saddam represented a threat. after all remember he had invaded kuwait. he had been expelled by kuwait after the united nations authorized the coalition action led to the united states and then over the course of the '90s, he stiff armed, i think the total was 14 and by one count resolutions of the united nations saying live up to the terms of the surrender agreement he made in the aftermath of the

first gulf war. in fact in the late 1990s is one blitz finds biological and chemical stocks material and an active weapons program. it is in the mid-90s, mid to late '90s that we uncover a robust nuclear program after this guy has surrendered and the first gulf war and agreed to give up this material. so there is a bipartisan effort underway in the '90s that has the backing of of the clinton-gore administration that regime change in iraq must be the policy and should be the policy. it is a lot different than saying we are going to invade. authorizing the use of force if he failed to comply with the one last set of demands was so important. >> host: what do you think of the term neocon? >> guest: i'm not certain what it means. neoconservative was originally a

domestic term. i think it was coined by irving kristol and a liberal that was mugged by reality. i think it has been used by 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 that is more democratic and free is also going to be a world that is more stable and peaceful. >> host: do you still talk to president bush regularly? >> guest: i do. we e-mailed back and forth about every day. >> host: what are you reading? >> guest: i am reading too much right now. i'm reading a wonderful book about letters. i am reading, in fact i think you had a program. i am suffering a senior moment. i am reading empire for liberty, and i'm nearly finished with the persian expedition. >> host: the next golfer karl rove-- eskalith a mention one thing. i made the mistake of saying on

fox and friends saturday morning that my goal was to read a book a week is here. so many people have e-mailed me that this next week i'm going to start putting my reading list that rove.com so people can see what i'm reading. >> host: angela, cambridge minnesota. you are on with karl rove. >> caller: hello mr. rove. i am calling, first mike question is, i would like to know if you would give me the chance to rename karl rove's look. >> host: we will have to ask steve if he will do that. >> guest: it is actually up to simon & shuster. >> host: first of all i am not steve. >> guest: this is peter and his feelings have been hurt. >> host: go ahead with your question to karl rove, what you would like to rename the book. >> caller: i would like to rename it the untruths about the iraq war and mr. rove, mostly the biggest thing i have a question for you about is i totally disagree with you on the

statement that you say the only people were tortured where the high-value detainees or whatever because-- it was done by contractors in iraq and afghanistan. >> guest: i disagree. first of all i don't agree with the word torture. our laws do not allow torture in these tech needs of enhanced interrogation were designed to elicit cooperation but within the limits of our laws and international commitments. again i appreciate that she doesn't agree with me on iraq but again i find it hard to believe that she has even read the book. read the book. all i ask is for a fair reading than we can have a reasonable disagreement. i want to retitle the book without having read it strikes me as a little short minded. >> host: could she have that

dialogue with you on your web site? >> guest: on my face but page and i do have karl rove.com where i accept e-mails. if people are rude and obscene it goes to to the trash so don't even bother sending it to me. >> host: allen alun in gary, indiana. >> caller: ido oftentimes there is a statement or statements made about how safe the country was after september 11, but i would like karl to explore the idea of how safe we were september 10 and before. given richard clarke's admonitions about the dangers of terrorist. taking over aircraft and doing damage in this country, and also, i am kind of curious about what karl's take would be on the psychodrama that appears to happen when you elect a person like president bush with

virtually kind of an empty suit in a sense, and the things-- >> host: gary, or allen what you say he is an empty suit? >> caller: it is pretty obvious when you rely on looking into other foreign leaders eyes for direction as he did with boot and i believe, it is kind of trouble some when you rely on things like that because you can't rely on an education in history or something of a more serious nature. you are likely to repeat the psychodrama where you try to outdo your father. >> host: let's get a response from karl rove. >> guest: before 9/11, we are not as safe as we were before 9/11 and i think he put his finger on one of them which is we had a divide between the f. ei in the cia not eating able to share information so we weren't

able to act upon information that the cia might have for the f. e. i might have that the other one might be able to shed a light on how dangerous that information was. after 9/11 we took down the so-called wall that had an erected by the assistant attorney general jamie choleric that said you cannot, cia and if the i cannot shame-- share information. lots of other things were done. for example before 9/11 and before the patriot act you could have opus called a roving wiretap to follow a drug dealers use of cell phones where he would ride these prepared cell phones in use them and discard them. we could use a peak in sneak, and peek warrants unsaved a mafia figure, and organize crime figure but not on a terrorist. we could use records research to get up the records of a doctor suspected of medicare fraud that

not on a terrorist that we did things after 9/11 and it passed with a very large bipartisan vote. the patriot act gave us these tools to make the country more safe. this idea of psychodrama, al did not sound to me like a licensed therapist and even if he was a licensed therapist i don't think al particularly has sat in a berman interviewed the father who was typical of people on the left that make this thing. let's go back to the only specific thing he said. i'm just going to ignore the psychodrama bit. the common i president bush when he is asked at a meeting at a press conference i believe in slovenia, where he is meeting with putin for the first time and "associated press" reporter says to president bush, do you trust him? you were standing there with the leader of russia. you are trying to establish a good work in relationship with this major power.

you have got choices. you can say yes or no. bush chose yes. imagine what would happen if he had equivocated. and said i don't know if i can trust him. what if he had 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 them. i look in his eyes and i believe we can trust him. that is the way you establish a diplomatic relationship with a major power. did we think he was our friend and ally each and every moment? no. were we wary of his intentions? you bet we were but in diplomacy it is important to establish that relationship on strong a footing as possible. >> host: you write about president bush's management style. is brett way attitude was his way of concluding a bad reading on a good note.

it left the impression that he was bored when the truth was that the meeting needed to end. >> guest: it was interesting, al mentioned history. bush was a harvard mba. a couple of years ago the famous cold war historian was speaking at a gail alumni meeting and having been bush's teacher at yale, he was impressed with the ability of recall and his thought process, how smart enabled he was and we share these reflections with the yale alumni group which sounded a lot like al. dismissive of it. it is, in part a feeling that bush brings on himself at i play in the good old way from england that he is a well read, thoughtful history major from yale who then went on and got his mba from harvard. >> host: did you read-- read david plouffe's audacity to read? and finally who