‘Meet the Press’ transcript for June 10, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  What’s the most important thing in this book?  Important information that viewers, voters should know?

MR. GERTH:  Well, I think, you know, we, we spent a lot of time looking at her record as a senator, as a political leader.  She’s now running for president, and we felt that people needed to understand how, how she acts in the political arena and, and use that as a basis for deciding whether she’s qualified to be president or not.  And, you know, in essence, we sort of found that there’re two Hillarys.  In, in one case, there’s the well-informed, the battle-tested, the diligent senator who does her homework.  And then we found another Hillary.  When it comes to a bump in the road—whether it’s on Iraq or on energy policy or on the environment—where she has a problem, that she plays fast and loose with the facts, she won’t admit a mistake, and she sort of, you know, retreats into a shell.  And, you know, voters will have to decide which, which Hillary is the Hillary that might become president and is that what they want as—for their next commander in chief.

MR. RUSSERT:  What’s your sense?

MR. VAN NATTA JR.:  The same thing.  I—more than half—about half of our book deals with Senator Clinton’s record in the Senate.  That’s the record where she is standing on her own.  That’s the record that she wants the American people to judge her as she attempts to become the first woman president of the United States.  We not only look at Iraq in detail, we look at her energy policy, her position on global warming.  We also show that she has a sort of secret side to her Senate office.  We call it the mysteries of Hillaryland in the book where she actually had people on her—employees of hers, people on her payroll, who she did not divulge as she was supposed to, according to Senate rules, and we have ethics experts raising questions about that.

MR. RUSSERT:  They did file those documents later on.

MR. VAN NATTA JR.:  They did after we raised questions about it and looked into it.  She—six years went by, she only filed one document for dozens of these fellows who worked for her.

MR. RUSSERT:  You also talk about when the—Bill Clinton first ran for president, she headed up a defense team.

MR. VAN NATTA JR.:  Yes.  The defense team in 1992, she was in charge of it. They chased away the accusations about women as well as the draft.  We have documents that have never been made public before from that period that show how active Senator Clinton was in that period of time.

MR. RUSSERT:  Professor Robert Dallek, who reviewed this book for The New York Times, says it is very negative, it focuses on the negative aspects of Hillary Clinton and doesn’t give—it gives us “insufficient clues as to what sort of president she might be.”

MR. GERTH:  Well, I think in terms of Professor Dallek, he misunderstood, I think, what we were trying to do.  We weren’t writing about dead presidents, we were writing about someone who’s actively trying to become the next president.  And it’s an investigative biography.  We looked at her professional political career.  And the headline to that review by Professor Dallek said “Shedding—Showing a Halogen Spotlight on a Senator’s Dark Corners.” And that’s what we did.  We—we’re, we’re investigative reporters. We did what you do, you put up on the screen information, we put into the book information that sheds light on her career.  And it’s up to voters to decide whether it’s too negative, it’s too positive, or, or whatever her record is. But that was, you know, how we saw our job, and we—we’re proud of what we did.

MR. RUSSERT:  Don Van Natta, you say the mainstream press has not been covering Hillary Clinton in, in a good way.

MR. VAN NATTA JR.:  Well, I, I, I think the mainstream press has done an adequate job.  But they, they, they don’t have the time that Jeff and I had to devote to really digging deep and looking, for instance, on her Iraq vote. She says it was the most important vote of her career, it was the hardest decision she ever had to do, and, and we really were able to look very deeply at that.  And, and, and I think we found out quite a bit of interesting information about that, for, for, for readers.

MR. RUSSERT:  The book, “Her Way:  The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton.” We thank you very much for sharing your views.

MR. GERTH:  Thanks for having us.

MR. VAN NATTA JR.:  Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT:  And we’ll be right back.

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