In a Sprawling Memoir, Clinton Cites Storms and Settles Scores

The New York Times > Washington: "The book is sprawling, undisciplined and idiosyncratic in its choice of emphasis. It devotes nearly 100 pages to his childhood but treats large spans of his presidency as a travelogue of campaign cities and foreign capitals. Mr. Clinton wrote his book after the Sept. 11 attacks, and he devotes a good deal of space to his administration's efforts to deal with terrorism, and its growing concern about Osama bin Laden.

The book's length gives the former president plenty of room to settle scores, and he does so with his customary élan. He takes the whip to Republicans in Congress; Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director; the National Rifle Association; and even the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in 1997 that Paula Jones's sexual harassment case against him could go forward while he was in office. He called that one of the most politically naïve and damaging court decisions in years.

He reserved special venom for Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who chased him for years in one of the most expensive government investigations in the nation's history. He writes that Mr. Starr was the tribune of an organized right-wing cabal that was determined to destroy his presidency because he was a personal anathema to them and repeatedly defeated them on policy grounds.

Several times he saw his alcoholic stepfather, Roger Clinton, beating his mother and once firing a gun at her head. But he wrote that he would go to school the next day as if nothing had happened. This pattern was especially evident again in 1998, he said, when the Lewinsky affair was revealed and Mr. Clinton spent months lying to his family, his aides and the nation about it.

Mr. Clinton forgives most of his opponents their own foibles, even former Speaker Newt Gingrich who led Republicans into control of Congress in the 1994 elections and into pitched battle with Mr. Clinton. But his judgment of Mr. Freeh, the F.B.I. director he appointed in 1993, is harsh. He said Mr. Freeh, a former federal district judge, turned on the White House to deflect criticism from serious lapses at the F.B.I., including scandals in its forensic laboratory and its handling of the shootout in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

He expressed remorse and gratitude to Susan McDougal, who went to jail rather than testify against the Clintons on Whitewater. He said that she suffered because she refused to lie and tell prosecutors what they wanted to hear."