Bill Clinton 'Nervous' About Book Detailing Secret Interviews

While he was in office, former president Bill Clinton gave 79 secret oral history interviews to Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and civil rights historian. Branch would visit the White House whenever Clinton said he had a few hours free, and the two would have a candid conversation on the political events of the moment. Branch would fill his legal pad with notes, and then repeat everything he remembered from the conversation into a tape recorder as he drove back to his home in Baltimore. Clinton, who recorded the conversations, would stow the tapes in a sock drawer.

Now, as Branch's book, "The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President," is about to hit shelves next week, some reports say the former president is on edge about the unvarnished portrait of his time in office. The 707-page book details the conversations and presents a more complex and forthright portrait of Clinton's presidency than appeared in Clinton's 2004 biography, My Life. Branch said that he has spent hours on the phone with Clinton since the former president received the page proofs of the book. "I think it's fair to say he's nervous," Branch said.

In the interviews, Clinton was hesitant to discuss his affair with Monica Lewinksy, but lamented that he "cracked" under the political pressure of the office. He did, however, describe an episode when Russian president Boris Yeltsin's drunkenness in the White House threatened to cause an international scene, and another in which he had a knock-down, drag-out fight with Al Gore after Gore lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

Secret Interviews Add Insight to Clinton Presidency [USA Today]