Lanny Davis and Bill Clinton - Thrown to the Wolf..

CNN's Wolf Blitzer had a wonderful interview on Friday discussing this outburst with Lanny Davis. Unfortunately for Davis, the talking points on whitewater melted under the nuclear heat that Wolf put him under...

Pay attention to Clinton's PARSING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE - old dogs can't learn new tricks...


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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Years after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton is still angry, still furious, I might say, about the news media's coverage. In an interview with ABC's Peter Jennings marking the opening of the Clinton Library, the former president acknowledged his affair with Lewinsky was a mistake, but he blasted the independent counsel Ken Starr, and he criticized the news media for the way it reported that investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will go to my grave being at peace about it. And I don't really care what they think.

PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS: Oh, yes, you do, sir.

CLINTON: They have no idea.

JENNINGS: Oh, excuse me, Mr. President. You care. I can feel it across the room. You feel it very deeply.

CLINTON: No, I care.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here, not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr, the way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that is like. That's where I failed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The former president says he never lied to the American people about his job as president.

Joining us here in Washington is Lanny Davis. He was the White House special counsel during the Clinton administration and during the impeachment process, the Monica Lewinsky investigation, as we all remember.

Were you surprised at how angry he got when Peter Jennings was grilling him on that?

LANNY DAVIS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Actually, I had left the White House and was a volunteer when I appeared on programs like yours.

But I was not surprised. You have to understand the depth of feeling for those of us who saw this all begin with Whitewater, which never went anywhere. Ken Starr himself, after $70 million, never found any wrongdoing about a 20-year-old land deal. The chain of events from Whitewater to travel office to Filegate, to all of the gates generated by Republican investigations never went anywhere.

BLITZER: Lanny, let me interrupt you for a second. Take a look. But he is still parsing words so specifically. You have to listen so carefully to that exchange with Peter Jennings. He said he never lied to the American people about his job as president.

Now, he lied to the American people about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

DAVIS: Yes.

And he has always distinguished. And I would say, Wolf, it's not really parsing with words. It's a distinction the American people fundamentally made at the time...

BLITZER: But lying about...

(CROSSTALK)

DAVIS: ... saved his presidency was the distinction between his job and his private conduct. What he didn't tell the truth about was an embarrassing episode involving private conduct, which the American people understood the reason for that lie. But they also gave him credit for his job.

BLITZER: But Bill Clinton is such a smart guy. And you are so smart. If there's an independent counsel who is investigating the president of the United States, those of us in the news media, what, are we supposed to ignore that investigation, not report about it?

DAVIS: No, but it's the predecessor investigations.

How much time was spent by the national media on Whitewater? And how much time was spent when Ken Starr found no wrongdoing by the Clintons? We had the D'Amato hearings. We had constant calling for an independent counsel. Ken Starr was appointed because of a zero issue involving Whitewater. (CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Who appointed Ken Starr? Do you remember who appointed Ken Starr?

DAVIS: It was under a great deal of pressure that President Clinton...

BLITZER: Was it Janet Reno, the Democratic attorney general of the United States?

DAVIS: Well, actually, it was President Clinton, defying some advice among some of his advisers, including his White House counsel, who chose to ask for Ken Starr or at least an independent counsel.

BLITZER: But Janet Reno was the one who said, go for it. Have an independent counsel named by this three-judge panel.

DAVIS: But, look, you're asking me the president to this day, President Clinton, and lots of us still feel angry. It's because the original independent counsel, Robert Fiske, was replaced by a more partisan process that led to Ken Starr. And after all was said and done, the only thing they had left was about private conduct, not about Whitewater, not about all of the -- what he calls innuendo and leaks that led to all of those so-called scandals that were ending up in zero of wrongdoing, other than what happened with Monica Lewinsky.

BLITZER: I can understand he is angry, angry, at Ken Starr for the investigation. But if he is angry at the news media for covering that investigation, he does not understand how the news media in this country works.

DAVIS: Well, look, I think that anger with the news media in coverage cuts both ways. Reporters have to do their jobs.

BLITZER: Well, and that's what they were doing.

DAVIS: In some cases, they were doing. In other cases, not good reporters were reporting innuendo without fact. And if you go back to the reporting about Whitewater and you...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: And yet the serious news organizations, the mainstream press, the elite press, they were reporting all the information. And you know what? When the independent counsel's report and all the information came out, almost all of those sleazy details were confirmed in that report, weren't they?

DAVIS: In the Whitewater investigation?

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: No, I'm talking about his personal relationship with Monica Lewinsky, including the red dress and all that, the blue dress.

DAVIS: The blue dress.

BLITZER: With the stain.

DAVIS: There is no question that the private conduct episode ended up with President Clinton having been put into a room where he chose to testify falsely in a civil case that was thrown out on the merits.

But if you look at the reasons for the appointment of an independent counsel, the firing of Robert Fiske and the replacement by Ken Starr, and what he is referring to in that interview, Susan McDougal consistently trying to tell the truth, put into irons and handcuffs because she refused to lie. As she said, she was asked to lie by Ken Starr's prosecutors. It still holds a lot of anger for those of us who were in the middle of it.

BLITZER: I'm sure, although you're still not as angry as the president, for good reason.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVIS: Well, I'm glad I wasn't in his spot.

BLITZER: Well, he was in a tough spot, no doubt about it. And he still` feels it, clearly, on this day. Thanks very much, Lanny.

DAVIS: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: Down and out. They lost the election, so where do the Democrats go from here? Our Carlos Watson has "The Inside Edge" on that and more. He's standing by to join us live next.

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