hillary clinton have a hit list and will she use it in a possible two thousand and sixteen white house bid inside the revealing new book about the former secretary of state and first lady with the authors jonathan allen and amy pond's plus new a hillary clinton journos unveiled coming up next on politicking with larry king. live politicking on larry king it's a pleasure to welcome from washington the authors of the new book h r c state secrets and the rebirth of hillary clinton bloomberg white house reporter jonathan allen and amy parnes the white house correspondent for the hill newspaper john how

did this book come about well larry we thought voters were going to be interested heading into two thousand and sixteen and what hillary clinton had been doing for the last four or five years as secretary of state of course she got some attention but not in real depth and we thought going back and looking at that record starting at the end of the two thousand and eight campaign and following that rise back to political problems we give them an idea of how she makes decisions who she puts around her and of course how she might govern if she was president the united states so we went about reporting that we talked to more the two hundred people for this book and we believe we've got a revealing and intimate portrait of a woman who may well be the next president of the united states great friend come up pictured to amy what do you mean by rebirth. well you know this is her comeback story in a way and we think that we're trying to tell a narrative they were she of how to fall for a few fall there or the course of her career the first being when she was pushing health care under her husband's administration then following the monica lewinsky

scandal and then the two thousand and eight the brutal two thousand a primary campaign we thought she had a really interesting story to tell how she kind of rises she falls but then she rises higher than ever very phoenix like me well in a sense john along with i guess george h.w. bush the best qualified person if you run for the presidency for getting your problem is the most qualifications to run they've done through the job certainly in a long time as you point out george h.w. bush had a lot of jobs in government cia director been embassador to china but for the most part the country's been electing governors people who come from outside the political process senator obama had only been in washington for a few years not the kinds of qualifications of being an eight year senator secretary of state first lady this sort of harkens back to the early days of the republican terms of the types of experiences that leaders have of course none of them were first lady unimaginable at that point that you would have

a woman so close to running for the presidency and so close potentially to being a major party nominee or actually within the presidency amy how much jack says did she give you. we've got quite a bit of access we're not comfortable really discussing the people we talk to but we are very happy with the acts that we've got all across the board we've talked to people very low level on her campaign all the way at the top people who like her are people who don't like her and all of that is reflected in them how much time in me with her. we're not really discussing here refer to you larry for this in her own senate john the book is about her. you know i'm going to tell me what he had access to that don't make any sense to me. let me do it this way we had access from the very low wrong to the very top wrong and you can see in the book there are plenty of fresh quotes from hillary clinton about various stages over the last four

or five years including her thinking on whether or not to run for president so we might guess those quotes were given to you. you can guess as you would like larry and i certainly wouldn't deny ok amy the biggest revelation book that's getting a lot of attention as this book deserves maybe the hit list she and her staff made ranking supporters after not getting the nomination to designate the jihad did she she had a list of people she liked and people she didn't like true true what she did was a couple of people on her campaign stop in two thousand and eight put together a microsoft excel spreadsheet and they kind of rank the people who are friendliest to them on one and the people who are seen as traitors the seven and some of the names you might be familiar with larry like ted kennedy for instance john kerry there are claire mccaskill there are politicos on and on but there were some people who were there who were seen as enemy combatants and people and they're not likely

to forget these people any time soon john that is vaguely familiar richard nixon. vaguely familiar to richard nixon of course the nixon adam mayes list i think went beyond the idea of just knocking people out of public office you know what the clintons have done with this list is decide who they're going to campaign for who they're going to get the help to and who they're going to hurt on the campaign trail but that is in particular bill clinton in two thousand and ten and two thousand and twelve went after some democratic members of congress by supporting their primary opponents when those democratic members of congress had been seen as treacherous or disloyal to hillary clinton of course nixon enemies list what a little farther than that in terms of actually going after people's careers looking at firing people from their jobs so certainly a difference in degree but this is the this is the modern enemies list. when the names on the list it was everybody who supported obama right. there were yes

the people who were ranked seventh were the ones who supported obama but some from people who were savants actually fade on the sidelines and didn't choose sides and i think that anger the clinton folks the more actually they were they preferred people to come up to them and say yes i'm indorsing senator obama then i actually found the five lines especially at the end of a campaign when she really really needed the votes when she needed these superdelegates to come in contact her thighs and they really were anxious to get these people and they didn't so i think that actually hurt them a little more than the people who actually sided with his you cover so much of the career john was she forgave certainly obama who went to work for obama and understandably is supposedly very friendly with obama why not give the people who supported obama. it's one of the great ironies of what went on with the clintons over the last four years is that they as they became closer and closer to president obama himself they never forgave the people that they thought should have been with

hillary clinton in two thousand and eight you know they they could really hold it against barack obama that he chose to run against her choice of running for president particularly if you win seems to be a pretty reasonable thing to do and but as far as some of the people that weren't with her and some of these sevens isn't as if he was saying a lot of cases it was people who remain neutral despite the clues having done favors for them over time and so that really burned hillary clinton really burned her staff and they wanted to keep track of that make sure that they didn't continue to dole out favors to people who they saw as ungrateful later on but as you point out big big irony in continuing to go after some of these folks long after the hatchet had been buried with obama himself and we go into that in the book and we have known up pretty well over the is interviewed her quite a few times spent some many social moments with her she was always very kind to to my family and any time i spent with her i gather her number one. thing she liked didn't people and wanted was loyalty true very true i think she they

really both clintons i mean everyone like foyle t. but especially the clintons and i think that perhaps less sort of big for that you know they were very clinton with we quote him saying in the book if there was a loyalty is you know if you don't have loyalty what do you have and i think that speaks to the way they see these people how much john do you get into bend how much does he deal with it in the book. so we did no fewer than fifty three pages on benghazi it's the night itself of benghazi basically is one entire chapter of the maybe the biggest chapter of the book then there's a second chapter that deals with the hearings in order to introduction to the book we talk about a scene in the state department in one of their video a quick conference rooms in two thousand and ten were were hillary clinton showed a screening of an attack on the consulate in peshawar pakistan you know a sort of

a precursor another a another attack on another consulate to show that this is something that the state department was aware of was aware of the danger of some of these outposts in the wildest parts of the world and then so i mean i think we deal very very diligently and thoroughly with not just the big guys the attack itself but the philosophy of having diplomats out there in dangerous places trying to sell the american brand without the benefit of a military presence backing them up why folks in the state department thought that was important to not just do diplomacy by camouflage but also to have folks out there in suits and in you know local garb sometimes talking to folks in other countries and how that plays into to what happened in benghazi as well as the decision to go into libya in the first place and remove moammar gadhafi so it's it's not the majority of the book but if anybody's interested in what really happened to magazine i think this is the fastest and easiest way to digest what happened i mean does he have any guilt at all about benghazi i think you heard her

address for area a couple of weeks ago when she she actually talked to a convention and she said benghazi was her biggest regret and i think i think she means i mean the people that we spoke to for the book basically you know reinforce that and they that night very much weight on her and i think that was from this painful time during her tenure and we delve into in quite a bit and quite frankly telling a buck about the friendship john with general petraeus. i'm sorry sir the friendship with general petraeus right so the two of them had gotten along over the years not been particularly close and then hillary clinton really went after david petraeus in a two thousand and seven hearing on the arrest surge she basically suggested he had been lying and then when she gets picked as secretary of state you know she's going to have to work with him because he's going to be the head of the central command overseeing a good bit of the world she invites him to her house to have a glass of wine the next night he comes back to have glass of wine with the veteran diplomat richard holbrooke betrayed us understands that there's

a calculation to the politics of her trying to get closer to him and yet is impressed with the effort nonetheless the relationship gets better there was a time in two thousand and ten where she was stranded in saudi arabia her plane wasn't working he went his plane picks her up lets her sleep in his bed in the compartment on the plane while he sleeps outside the door on the floor sort of playing the part of an officer and a gentleman and by the end of. the obama administration as he's as he's exiting i'm sorry the end of the first term as he's exiting general petraeus gets a note from hillary clinton that says look you know as you know he had admitted to an affair she sent of notes have a little experience with this trying to suggest to him that there are comebacks that this was going to be the end of his end of the careers ability to be in public life and of course we quote him in an interview we did with him him saying that she would be a tremendous president that was one of the sort of headlines from this book visually

and that's when still a lot of people are going to be as i say this is the this book is going to be a major seller and since the relationship the betrayers problems the clinton problems and extensive collection of hillary generals were kept by her friend diane blair they have come into the spotlight after blair's death her husband donated the documents to the university of auckland so the purpose he said was to preserve her memories what can you tell us about these journals that they ever come into your book did you have no knowledge of them. we didn't really at the time we didn't have any knowledge at the time of press but you know i think the clinton campaign or the clinton folks say they don't want to really address this you haven't seen them talk about it hillary clinton kind of referred to it the other day when she said or alluded to it when she said that politicians should have skin like a loan officer but i think for the most part they're not going to address this

going forward this isn't going to be in her book i think in her book she's going to focus mostly on the state department and i think you're going to see them not address this as much and. based on all your research john do those journals surprise you. not terribly surprising but i don't think anybody would be terribly surprised by the content of them you know if somebody were following hillary around in the one nine hundred ninety s. wouldn't be shocking to think that she had a low opinion of monica lewinsky you know that you and anybody who's been through you know through a situation like that she was going through you know probably tries to find places to blame probably the other woman probably her husband of course and may even have some self-doubt that's not surprising it and in some ways it's humanizing if you feel for somebody that sees a fault in themselves when somebody else you know acts poorly the one thing that i think was was surprising was her reaction to the accusations against bob packwood

the former senator who was accused of sexual harassment where she sort of rode off the the women who are making accusations as whiny it's not clear whether those are her words or the interpretation of diane blair for sentiment but i think that's the kind of thing that i guess is surprising out of what came out of very good reporting on the on the tie and where trove senator packwood tragic case a interviewed him a couple of times said more revelations on hillary clinton's plans from this extraordinary book her plans and she's going to run what do they think after this don't go. join me. in our. financial. carry and much. only on the best and only.

force. at the finish line of the marathon. was out on the canal in a white house reporter for bloomberg and amy pond's white house correspondent for the hill both the co-authors of h r c h r c state secrets and the rebirth of hillary clinton just published by crown. recent racin the book and the documents and everything said the way around will she run so the obvious before we get into

other areas. amy will see run yes will run i'm ninety nine point nine percent sure she runs you know she has everything everything is built around her the research groups i'm ready for hillary and she will be the most prepared candidate i think to hop into our presidential campaign i think in history you share that view john. i do in fact the way that we really look at this isn't the question of whether she starts running but whether she stops running you know that one big theme in this book is the way that the clintons both hillary and bill clinton continued to build the political operation while hillary clinton was at the state department we could we basically see this is a seamless continual run for the presidency from two thousand a on certainly that doesn't mean that everything she did was geared toward that it just means that that option was being kept open and that the big the building the political machine continued all along i would be very very surprised if she didn't run. i'll be interested amy as

a woman in your reaction to kathleen wiley and to rand paul and all is making an issue of the lewinsky case and kathleen will at wiley in the form of volunteer aide who says she was sexually harassed by the president in the ninety's says there's danger in hillary clinton becoming president that hillary is that's a war on women and that was needs to be exposed to hillary chose to attack all the women who were supposed to be involved with bill rather than say divorcing him or doing something else do you think this will be a key issue well you know i think there's some disagreement in the republican party right now about whether to make it an issue you had karl rove a few days ago basically saying you know i think this is a bad mistake this was in the past there's so much to focus on right now why are we doing that benghazi for instance and then you have other people even ryan's priebus saying i know i think this is fair game everything is fair game so i think they actually need to come to agreement before on whether or not this is

a strategic move for them to do and focus on this but i think a lot of republicans are kind of scratching their heads and saying i don't think this is fair game john what do you think. well look everything is fair game to an extent but as any points out there is this big disagreement the republican party you know bill clinton's approval rating shot up during the during the impeachment hillary clinton's approval rating shot up the democrats picked up a seat in the house in the midterms and in one thousand nine hundred eight on heard of in the sixth year of a presidency this is been a problem for republicans of backlash in the past and i think some of the party elders like karl rove think that that's a reason to be concerned about that that sort of territory my guess is that voters in two thousand and sixteen will be voting on the future more than the past and certainly i think you know everything is fair game of politics but this this ground has been tried before without much success by the g.o.p. and anyone you run into any will say of bill clinton were running again when howard

a lot of people said republicans say it and people residing as their favorite president. how important will he be in a hillary campaign. i think really really important and you know if he can be the bill clinton he was to barack obama in two thousand and twelve i think that's all win hands down if he if that bill clinton from two thousand and eight i think she has a problem i think she really needs to sort of emulate what he did for the obama campaign talk to these larger crowds you know play the explainer in chief for all which is what he's done all along for president obama in two thousand and twelve and stay away from the one on one interviews that you know he can get into a little bit of hot water there and i don't think he prefers that anyway i think you'd prefer to talk to the people and talk to me as larger crowd so i think that's one tack that they're going to take and the twenty six thousand campaign. you think john is a danger here of americans as barbara bush has pointed out getting tired of the

clintons and the bushes yes i think there's a danger of that of course that there's less danger from the perspective of the other of the candidates of jeb bush runs against hillary clinton they sort of cancel each other out that way terms of the terms of the voter fatigue of the people be angry about it but somebody is going to win that race you know we talk a little bit before about the use of bill clinton is a as a surrogate on the trail it's only really go into depth in the book we talk about some of the possible republican candidates as well i think you know chris christie is recent troubles in new jersey may have opened up for jeb bush and i think jeb bush is a candidate that the clintons fear a little bit but is jeb bush's difficulty going to be amy the tea party if he wants to run the he's not going to get their support. i think that for a little part of it definitely i think they you know they need to come to an agreement about what kind of candidate they want i think a lot of these candidates would do fairly well rand paul might do well for instance

in iowa or new hampshire but have difficulty in a general election so i think the republicans need to decide who they want to coalesce around but i think jeb bush does have a very viable chance particularly with christie bridge scandal. in the john you talk about the importance of terry mcauliffe win as virginia governor is the possibility of a hillary win in two thousand and sixteen what's the correlation with terry mcauliffe as close to the clintons as you get he was their big national fundraiser and i think there was sort of a dry run of some of the election team a lot of the fundraisers to terry mcauliffe a lot of the donors to him were big clinton donors including tom styler major environmentalist on the west coast former investment guy who has poured money into climate change issues and is a huge hillary clinton donor as well so a lot of people on staff in the mcauliffe race are people that came from clinton world like go back to clinton world of course having the governorship in

a major swing state can be helpful on election day in terms of turnout and having the machine to get your organization going so you know the bigger thing would have been had terry mcauliffe lost it would have been seen as a stand on the clintons probably more than his victory is again but because they had so much at stake and that the victory is something that was important to them and obviously they were heavily involved and promoting in both of them campaigned for him amy what is joe biden going to do do you think. well i think he's definitely keeping his options open we talk a lot about the relationship the biden clinton relationship in the book and one in one scene we have the vice president or senator biden at the time you know hillary clinton had given this great speech at the denver convention she goes back to her holding room and runs joe biden and he drops to his knees and he praises her his hands are in the air and that kind of speaks to their relationship i think you know there are two people who feel very fondly toward one another they have breakfast

from time to time when they're both in town so i think if they did run against each other in a democratic primary it would be a pretty interesting race wouldn't it be logical john that if she wins he'd be her secretary of state. i think there's a reasonably good chance of that larry i think joe biden obviously wants to remain involved as a you know when you talk to biden people around washington he's keeping his options open they insist that he will make his decision about running for president independent of what hillary clinton does you can certainly see a case where she wants him to stick around and work in a cabinet with her if she were president of united states so i certainly wouldn't rule that out amy in the presidential race in two thousand and sixteen what role will obama play. i think he stays out of it larry for the time being you know he's talked a little bit about whether or not he would endorse hillary right now and he's saying oh come on you know i'm not going to take sides right now and i think he wants to

see what the vice president does he thinks he thinks very fine feels very fondly toward his vice president it would be very awkward if he took sides at this moment but i think if if if the vice president doesn't run i think you can totally see him throw his support his people are already kind of coalescing around hillary at this moment you know there are already joining certain outside groups so i think that it would be the inevitable would obviously be that he supports her should the vice president not run john well your book is been widely applauded and it has and deservedly so there's been some criticism that says both of you have fallen in love with your subject through. no not at all i'm a love of my wife. like a v a lot i even like your producer carrie stevenson a lot but i know we did not fall in love with with hillary clinton or anybody else in doing this book it's a story of a political comeback that in of itself you know we wanted to talk about how it was

that she did that we did talk to a lot of people on the inside it's been noted that we've had greater access to her than anybody that's done a book before on her and so you know i think there's. you know been that one negative review in the wall street journal we got great reviews in the new york times from michio kaku tani has been their lead reviewer the washington post the l a times the list goes on and so you know i. i don't share the opinion of that journal writer and certainly the answer to question is now when i first met hillary clinton on the campaign trail when i first interviewed her at the white house she sat below a picture of eleanor roosevelt and i told her that i had interviewed only roosevelt and she went because i mean she was we couldn't believe you know that i was twenty two at the time and elmo was in the late sixty's does she still hold that feeling about elma that ever come up in talking to her. we didn't talk to her about that but i do know that one of the things that she has been involved in is

a project eleanor roosevelt one of the major universities in d.c. to kill number of stores washing or georgetown off the top of my head but it's a project that was done by women in the lead of black who is now heavily involved in the ready for hillary movement that hillary clinton is very supportive of that she's been a big fan of eleanor roosevelt's got a lot of she's been in public life she channeled her she's. all right guys down do it given this is a prediction amy who will run against her in two thousand and sixteen who will be the republican candidate about the really tough question larry but i i don't know i mean my personal view as a reporter i'm hoping that the clinton christie race i think that would be a really interesting race for a reporter so that's my own personal view but i think any race against anyone who chooses to run against hillary clinton averaging would be everyone would be great i

think i think there'd be a fun race to cover i cover the two thousand and eight campaign i think twenty sixteen will be just as an interesting do you think john of than if it were clinton bush there would be a third party candidate could there be a rebellion in the republican party. sure there could be a third party candidate i think might set up well for a rand paul for instance or ted cruz somebody like that to come in and run as a third party candidate particularly rand paul perhaps able to get some liberal libertarian types folks who are a little worried about the establishment having too much power too much surveillance going on in our national security i think a third party candidacy could have a big you know in our elections very very difficult to win the electoral college with a third party run so you know we haven't haven't seen that really any any time recently where there was a successful we could say that successful third party ross perot elected clinton yes he threw the election to clint but didn't win himself it's possible that

a similar thing can happen in two thousand and sixteen helping either candidate or denying anyone an electoral majority but he means that it's hard to pick up electoral votes i mean from your gut how do you explain her incredible i mean even her biggest critic would say this her resourcefulness an interesting question you know i think that she does see she is pretty resourceful she does take the opinions of lots of different people and i think that's actually like one of the best the best i think one of the things that her her aides point out that she does you know try to get lots of opinions she doesn't know which levers of power to fall off you know she and she is very familiar with the way washington works which is one criticism that president obama faces right now i think that should clinton a second clinton presidency happened i think that she wouldn't face for fame sort of criticism. thank you both very much looking forward to reading the rest of already started it thank you john and amy for joining me today on politicking the

book is h r c state secrets and the rebirth of hillary clinton for my view is out there i want to hear from you join the conversation on my facebook page and share your thoughts on twitter by tweeting it cames things and using the politicking hashtag that's all for this week's politicking. on your comment like. ali. you know.

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