Transcript: Primetime Live a Place in History

November 18, 2004

ABC NEWS

PETER JENNINGS: (Voice Over) Bill Clinton has been planning his Presidential library ever since he was in the White House. At the beginning of September, for a few days before his heart surgery, well, he might have missed the opening.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Is it true that if the prospect of death is suddenly more apparent, that your attitude towards life changes?

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I think it's changed mine. But not in the way it does some people. Apparently most people have a period of depression. Perhaps because it's the first time they've ever confronted their own mortality. But since my father died before I was born, and I've been living with death all my life, I have never viewed it with the morbid fear some people do. On the other hand, if you dodge a bullet like I did -and, you know, I was about to leave on a 21-day, 6-nation tour of Asia, to help my foundation and promote my book, I think I'd probably had a heart attack. Might well have died. When that happens, you have to ask yourself, "well, you got a little extra time here. What are you going to do with it?" And so, today, when I take these hourly walks that are part of my recovery, you know, when I walk past 40 trees, I can probably tell you what color 30 of them were. You know, I find birds that I used to miss. I'm more alive to just the pace of daily life than I used to be. And I'm very grateful for things that are easy to take for granted.

JENNINGS: Has it -1st of all, has it turned out how you wanted it to turn out?

CLINTON: Yes. By and large, it has.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) You clearly love it.

CLINTON: I do. You know, I worked really hard on this. I literally, I approved every word.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) Down the center of the library are eight dramatic panels, each one a time line for a year of his presidency. And on the back, interactive computer screens that allow visitors to call up video of important moments. Documents on policy. Even the President's schedule, for everyday of his eight years in office. On the outer walls, 18 separate alcoves. Each one devoted to a different theme that defined his presidency.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) There is a huge amount of interactivity.

CLINTON: Huge. A lot of it. Thousands and thousands of things that people can pull up. But here, this is how we dealt with the major religious, racial, ethnic conflicts of our time. This is Northern Ireland.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Middle East.

CLINTON: This is the middle East and what happened there. There's some artifact there.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Former Yugoslavia.

CLINTON: These are the Balkans. Bosnia and Kosovo. And a letter to a person -I know how much you cared about this. That's a letter I got from - you remember her? The young girl that wrote the book.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) I do. These are all leaders with whom you worked.

CLINTON: That's right.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Who was the toughest to negotiate with?

CLINTON: Oh, I don't know. All these guys were my friends, you know.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Well, what does that mean, they were your friends?

CLINTON: Well, I mean, they were my friends. I liked them personally. And I felt that we were always working for the same ends, even then we disagreed.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) What was it like -for example, Boris Yeltsin didn't speak English.

CLINTON: No.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) And did you simply become accustomed after a while to having that third voice, the interpreter between you?

CLINTON: I had -we had a wonderful interpreter, who was there most of the time. An American. And I got to know his Russian interpreter. And they became like a member of our relationship. It's funny. You just learn to deal with it. Yeltsin, I thought was -had extraordinary strengths. Everybody knows he had some weaknesses. But he was completely committed to democracy. Completely against Communism. And completely committed to having positive relationships with the West.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Somebody told me the other day, sir -I was in Ramallah for Arafat's funeral. This is a slightly embarrassing question, perhaps. Somebody told me that when you and he and Barak were meeting in those final days, he'd asked you that if things didn't go well, that you not blame him publicly.

CLINTON: At Camp David in June, he asked me that. And I said I won't because we still have six months to go. Let me tell you what happened. The reason that I put in so much effort, and the reason I got so angry about this, because we were also at the same time, trying to end North Korea's missile program, is that I, personally, asked Arafat again, six weeks before I left office. I said, now, you just tell me, I'm going to put a deal out here. It's going to be really hard for Israel. And if you accept it, then we can say that's the basis of a peace that we'll either finish by the time I leave, or right after. I said, do you intend to get a deal before I leave office? I said, 'cause otherwise, you gotta let me go to North Korea and around in Asia. 'Cause I only have six weeks left and I can't do both. And he got -the only time he ever cried, in my presence. He said, you have to do it. He said, if we don't make peace now, after all the trouble that you've taken and all the things we've done together, it'll be another five years and countless deaths before we make peace. So, I took him at his word. I stayed. I got the deal. I think he intended to do it. But for whatever reason, he didn't.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Nelson Mandela.

CLINTON: He's wonderful. And very -you know, his image is as the world's saint. The truth is, he's a saintly man but he's also a very tough and shrewd politician. And a very, very loyal friend. He is a ferociously loyal friend. And he was fabulous to me. The whole time I was there. And he was a great President. But these are just people from around the world that I had good relationships with that I think are fascinating and that I admired. Of course, Rabin and Hussein I just love. I loved Rabin as much as I ever loved another man. I had an unusual relationship with him. And I never met anybody like him.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) President Clinton was generous with his time. We walked and sat talking about his library, and his presidency and the world, for more than two hours.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Can I ask you a couple questions about Iraq? You said at one point, I'm not precisely sure when, that Iraq will do pretty well when Saddam Hussein is gone. Want to revise that at all?

CLINTON: Well, I think that even I underestimated the level of opposition, at least given the troop strength we had there. You know, my position on the Iraq war was different from almost everybody else's that I've heard talking. And I supported giving the President the authority to take action against Saddam Hussein, if he did not cooperate with the UN inspectors or if he was found to have had weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't give up. I did believe that the Administration made a mistake going to war, when they did. And that's what alienated the world. And most Americans still haven't focused on this.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Iraq does not look good at the moment. Do you think the United States could lose there?

CLINTON: Oh, I suppose we could. But I don't think we will. I don't think we will. I think that -I think that the President's re-election gives him an opportunity, first of all, to ask for and get more help from other countries. Senator Kerry made a suggestion, in the campaign, that I think he should consider. I think we should consider -he should consider going to the Congress and asking for the authority and the budget to increase the size of the Army. Even if we have to pay a little more to recruit them. And between getting more help and sending more troops, to try to shore up more places. I think, ironically, we'll be able to get our troops out quicker if, in the short run, we have more there.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Is there some code among ex-Presidents, about what you say about the current President, as an ex or former President? Are you constrained about what you can say?

CLINTON: Well, I think there has been. But I think there are reasons for that. We've all made our own mistakes and then we've all been told that we were finished and full of mistakes when we weren't. so, I think we're just a little reluctant to do that. You know -my job is not the same thing as yours, for example. Your job is to question what Presidents do. And whether it will work. Former Presidents, our job, I think, is to try to make America and the world a better place.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) Walking through this 2-story hall, it is clear, as in all Presidential libraries, that this is the life and times of the President, presented as he most wants to be remembered. In his words and on his terms.

CLINTON: (Voice Over) This is about the new threats, 21st century threats. So, this is what we did on weapons of mass destruction. And the work we did around the world to try to secure the stocks of weapons of mass destruction. And this is what we did on nonproliferation, modernizing the military and getting new weapons there. And this is a section on terror.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Why did you put the ten most-wanted poster in here of Bin Laden? You've been taking flak on bin Laden.

CLINTON: Yeah, but not from anybody who knows the facts. I mean, to be fair, most of it was highly political. If you look at the 9/11 Commission's report about what we did and how we prepared for, we had 9/11-style threats for the millennium. And the extent of preparations and the work we did. The number of terrorists we brought to justice. The 20 al Qaeda cells we broke up. If you look at all that and the fact that we apparently came closer to getting Bin Laden than anybody has since, even though they have a lot more options, military options that we had, I feel -I wish that I had gotten him.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) There are stories around, as you know, that the Sudan offered him to you, not once, not twice, but three times. Any truth to that?

CLINTON: That's not true. It's not true. And I've done everything I could to run that down. It is simply not true. They were always playing a double-game, the Sudanese. The guy running Sudan was in business with Bin Laden. And we did try to get him out of there because, at the time, Sudan was worse than Afghanistan as a harbor for terrorists. But they never offered him to us. At least I can't find it in any document, talking to any person. The first time I heard that, I went to an extraordinary amount of trouble to find out if it was true. And I urged the 9/11 Commission to try to find out if it was true. I just don't believe it's true.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) This library has been a labor of love for President Clinton. He was involved in every detail. Hours before it opened, he was still telling the architect, James Polshek, and the designers, a little corrections he wanted made here and there.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Did you fuss a lot?

CLINTON: A lot.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) I mean, when it was over, did they think you'd been a pain in the neck?

CLINTON: I think so. They now say I was a perfect client. But Polshek said I was the only guy he ever had who would go away for three or four months, and come back and if he changed one line on the drawing, I would know. And I said, well, you know, I care about this. I want it to work.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Why did you want this here, in this particular place, on this bank of the river?

CLINTON: Well, first of all, I wanted it to come home to Arkansas because these people made me President. And I wanted it here. I wanted it to be in the heartland, in the middle of the country, where people don't have access to things like this, so they could learn about their government, how it works, what the decisions were. And I wanted it on this river because I love this river. It was a big part of my childhood. I first swam in this river, 40 years ago or more.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) You're saying that your soul still in Arkansas, even though you live in New York?

CLINTON: Well, a lot of me is still here and always will be. And I will come home a lot. I'll be here a lot.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) There is an apartment and an office for him on the top floor. This is the largest of all 12 Presidential libraries. And at $165 million, certainly the most expensive. Mr. Clinton has visited many of the other libraries. His architects have studied them all.

JAMES POLSHEK, CLINTON LIBRARY ARCHITECT: Each Presidential library takes on certain characteristics of the President. So that Johnson's is very imperial. Kennedy's is elegant. Reagan's is folksy. You know, and Bush gets the word hokey. Clinton's is very progress, very forward-looking.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) The President refers to the architecture here as like bridge to the 21st century. Which was, you'll remember, his theme in office. Like other libraries, it has millions of documents available to historians and thousands of presidential gifts and other mementoes for us all to see. Every library seems to have some sports equipment. And invariably there are Presidential vehicles. Mr. Clinton has a Presidential limo right inside the front door. John F. Kennedy's library has his sailboat. George Bush's library has a fighter bomber, similar to the one he flew in World War II. The Reagan library has the Boeing 707 Mr. Reagan used as Air Force One. Presidents love it, of course, when people visit. President Johnson had a novel way of suggesting to football fans at the nearby University of Texas, that they come on over.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Johnson had ordained that an announcement be made at half time saying, anybody who wants to use the bathroom or get some cool water can get it at the Johnson Library across the street. Thousands of people flowed through the front doors. And by the end of 1971, the Johnson Library was just about the best-attended presidential library in the United States.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) Presidents save a vast amount of material. Right down to the White House menus. Who knows what will turn out to be significant?

BESCHLOSS: Only last year in the Truman Library, someone came across what looks like sort of a junky desk diary. They found a number of pages in which Harry Truman had recorded in his own hand diary entries day by day in 1947. Had that thing been thrown out, we would have lost it.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) The Clinton Library ultimately houses 630 tons of Mr. Clinton's past. Mr. Clinton is so enthusiastic about his library, we suspect he will be giving tours. President Truman, who spent six days a week sometimes at his library, often gave tours.

POLSHEK: That would surprise me if he didn't. You know, he loves to give tours. And he would give tours in the White House frequently to anybody who would come along.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) As soon as the President arrived, we started off in his favorite room.

CLINTON: This is an exact replica of the Oval Office, with replicas of the paintings I had there, the sculpture I had there. And these are actually books I had in the Oval Office.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) I heard that yesterday you were in here fiddling with the desk.

CLINTON: Yeah. Well, I was trying to make sure -these are all my things. These are Robert Burke's sculptures that he gave me of Harry Truman and FDR.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) I got the feeling that at this pace our tour might have lasted for several weeks. Obvious question here is, how nostalgic are you?

CLINTON: Oh, it makes me happy being in here. That's a globe that Hillary and Chelsea gave me. That pot was given to me by King Hussein.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) That staff?

CLINTON: It's a Moroccan Berber stick, given to me by Hillary.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) It was time to move on.

CLINTON: Here are some of the interesting things ...

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) That people gave you?

CLINTON: Yeah. This is Lance Armstrong's bike. He gave me one of his speed bikes, as you see, and a jersey and a helmet after he won the Tour de France. This guy makes cowboy boots for all the Presidents.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Are some of the presents that a President gets really tacky?

CLINTON: Yeah. Some are. We got a few of them up here that are of some question. There's kind of a little cartoon-like thing. There's a great picture of Hillary and me as James and Dolly Madison.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Not very flattering, sir.

CLINTON: No. As I said, I didn't look very good in those tights. There's my dog, Buddy. These are some of my saxophones. I had saxophones that I was given from Germany, from France, from China, from Japan. You see here's some of the compelling art here we got.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) As we said, Presidents hold on to everything.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) This Presidential library is a -revealing testament, both to your style and your character. What are -what are some of the misconceptions you're trying to clarify?

CLINTON: Well, the biggest one I think is, kind of much bigger than me. And that is -I think politics, there's more and more of an attempt to turn every -political race into an identity race. You know, do you identify with this candidate or that? Does he share your values? Is he on your team or on the other team? What I wanted to show people here is that leaders make choices. And those choices, if implemented as policies, have consequences, positive or negative. That they're people and they also make mistakes. And I made my fair share of them. But I also believe that no one could fairly come into this library and read this stuff and look at these exhibits and hear these other people talk about the work they did and the feelings they had, people around the world and people here at home, without believing that this matters a lot. That these choices matter. People are affected in ways that are quite profound by the decisions that our leaders make.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Now this -in the entire library, this is -I'm not sure I'm using the right word. But this is the most militant alcove.

CLINTON: You think it is?

JENNINGS: I do. I do. I think from -this is about your struggle with the Republicans and others. Why don't you just tell us why you did this?

CLINTON: What I'm trying to show here is this whole, long litany of things, where the ideological fights, in my opinion, went too far. Spending $70 million on Whitewater, which was a land deal I lost money on, that no one disputed. One of the great political con jobs in the history of the American Republic that they could get that much money spent. And then, we go to the impeachment. We had 800 Constitutional scholars who said there was no basis for impeachment. Gingrich, privately, acknowledged they shouldn't impeach me. They did it because they wanted to put a black mark on me in history.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Do you think they did put a black mark on your presidency that is indelible?

CLINTON: No. I mean, it's there. But I think the more time goes on, the more people will see it for exactly what it was. Doesn't mean I didn't make a terrible personal mistake. But I certainly paid for that. But what they did was legally and Constitutionally wrong. And it was done for political reasons. The overwhelming majority of Republican and Democratic, legal and Constitutional scholars agree. And I think in history, it will all come out just fine. I've always believed that. I think things come out in the wash. But, you know, people are always being written and rewritten in history.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) You love history, sir. Rate yourself as a President.

CLINTON: I'm not going to do that. Anything I say is wrong. It's a lose/lose deal. I got, you know, my wife's in public service. I'm still trying to do things as a former President. And I have no business being the judge of my own presidency right now.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) But at the end of the President's term, historians did feel free to judge.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) 58 historians, as I think you may know, did this for C-SPAN. And they were all across the political spectrum. And they came out, in general terms, that you were 21st. And on public persuasion and economic management, they gave you a fifth. Pretty good.

CLINTON: Pretty good.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) They gave you a 41st on moral authority.

CLINTON: They're wrong about that.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) After Nixon.

CLINTON: They're wrong about that. You know why they're wrong about that? They're wrong about it.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Why, sir?

CLINTON: Because we had $100 million spent against us and all these inspections. One person in my Administration was convicted of doing something that violated his -job responsibilities, while we were in the White House. 29 in the Reagan/Bush years. I'll bet those historians didn't even know that. They have no idea what I was subject to and what a lot of people supported. No other President ever had to endure someone like Ken Starr indicting innocent people because they wouldn't lie, in a systematic way. No one ever had to try to save people from ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the people in Haiti from a military dictator who was murdering them. And all of the other problems I dealt with, while everyday, an entire apparatus was devoted to destroying him. And still, not any example of where I ever disgraced this country, publicly. I made a terrible public/personal mistake. But I paid for it. Many times over. And in spite of it all, you don't have any example where I ever lied to the American people about my job, where I ever let the American people down. And I had more support from the world, and world leaders and people around the world, when I quit than when I started. And I will go to my grave being at peace about it. And I don't really care what they think.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Oh, yes, you do, sir. Oh -excuse me, Mr. President, I can feel it across the room. You feel it very deeply.

CLINTON:
No, I care. 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's like. That's where I failed. You wanna know where I failed? I really let it -it hurt me. I thought I -lived in a country where people believed in the Constitution, the rule of law, freedom of speech. You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined, because they were Democrats and because they would not lie. So, I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that. To stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant body of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the American people. And I'm sorry for the embarrassment they performed. But they ought to think about the rest of the world reacted to it. When I -when I got a standing ovation at the United Nations, from the whole world, the American networks were showing my grand jury testimony. Those were decisions you made, not me. I personally believe that the standing ovation I got from the whole world at the United Nations, which was unprecedented for an American President, showed not only support for me, but opposition to the madness that had taken a hold of American politics.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) I think somewhere you say that it was Nelson Mandela who taught you about forgiveness?

CLINTON: Yeah. He was unbelievable. Mandela, when I was going through all this, he was really mad. You know, he came to the White House and defended me. And said the Congress should leave me alone. And he gave a blistering defense in the White House, the day before Gingrich gave him the Congressional gold medal.

NELSON MANDELA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA: We have often said that our morality does not allow us to desert our friends.

CLINTON: But he told me -I said, how did you ever let go of your hatred? I said, didn't you hate those people, even when they let you go? He said, "briefly, I did. But when I was walking out of my compound for the last time, I said to myself, they've had you 27 years. If you hate them when you get through that door, they will still have you." He said, "I wanted to be free. And so I let it go." And then he looked at me, and he grabbed my arm and he said, "so should you."

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) This Presidential library is a reminder of how much is behind you. Make you feel old a bit?

CLINTON: Oh, a little bit. But I -like I said, I'm very optimistic. I'm always thinking about the future. And I've got a, you know, this huge agenda with my foundation. So, I'm -I like the life I had but I don't dwell on it. You know, some days I think -I feel like being President is something that just finished yesterday, and it's all just real and alive to me. Some days it seems like 100 years ago. And I just wanted -I wanted to give this gift to America, of this library, and tell the story about how we moved into the 21st century, and how it changed the way we lived and related to the rest of the world. But now, I want to focus the rest of my life on what I'm going to do tomorrow and on the work of my foundation and whether we can save a couple million people from dying from AIDS. Whether we can bring economic opportunity to people who aren't part of this global economy. I believe in global trade. But half the people are left out of this system. And that's why there's so much anti- globalization. So, there's a lot -I believe in racial and religious reconciliation. There's still a lot of people who haven't done it. So, I got a lot of work to do here.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) You're 58 years old. And you had two terms. And like a world- class athlete, you're suddenly yanked off the mound. Somebody compared it to pulling Sandy Koufax out of a baseball game.

CLINTON: Yeah. I'm sorry he quit when he did too.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Doesn't it feel like that at times?

CLINTON: It did. But, you know, sometimes it's a blessing. Sometimes it's a blessing to go out on top. You know, I had a, I don't know, 62, 63 percent approval rating. The country was in great shape. There have been many times since then that I wish I had been able to help the American people and the world with problems that come across the President's desk.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) John Quincy Adams said there was nothing so pathetic in life as an ex-President. That's no longer true, I gather.

CLINTON: No. And it certainly wasn't true of him. What he meant was, you didn't want to sit around and pontificate about the way things used to be and pine away about not being President. And he didn't spend the rest of his life whining about the fact that he didn't get re- elected. He just went to work. Jimmy Carter did the same thing. He said, okay, what did I care about as President where I can still have an impact? What are the needs of the world? What can I do that won't be done if I don't do it? And he went out there and did it. And, you know, I admire that. I mean, that's what we're all supposed to do. I mean -and when you've been President, you have received the greatest gift, if you love public service, that anyone could ever get. So, I just feel like you owe it the rest of your life to try to give it back.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) What do you want to do, most of all?

CLINTON: Just what I'm doing. I want to be a servant. I like what -I'm going to obviously, over time, broaden the sphere of my foundation work. We are working with five African countries, virtually the whole Caribbean, India, China. Money shouldn't determine who lives and who dies from AIDS. That's what I'd like to do now because I think there are more lives on the line. And I believe we can do more to have people feel better about America and about the West, by helping keep people alive.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Why did you choose AIDS?

CLINTON: It's the most maddening of all problems. That's why. One in four people will die of AIDS, TB, malaria and infection. AIDS is 100 percent preventable. There's medicine that prevents mother to child transmission for pregnant women. There's medicine that turns -for most healthy people, can turn it from a death sentence into chronic illness. And yet, there's 6.2 million people -who desperately need the medicine. Over 40 million people infected. It's madness. So, this is something where I just figure the system's broken. And this is something a former President ought to do. Just go in there and try to put it together. And that's what I'm doing.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Bill Clinton is hugely popular in other parts of the world. Often regarded by countries as an honorary citizen and treated like a rock star. He has that particular touch with people, in all walks of life. We also talked for a minute or two, about potential new leadership at home.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) If Senator Clinton runs for the presidency, will you be her chief political adviser?

CLINTON: Oh, I don't know. First, I don't know if she's going to run. I think she wants to run for re-election. I have no idea if she's gonna run for president.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Really?

CLINTON: If she did, I would do whatever she asks me to do. You know, I think of all the people I've ever known in public life, she has the best combination of mind and heart. Of sort of management skills and compassion. I think she's very tough-minded. She has strengths I don't have. And I think she's learned a lot from me over the years about the things that I was good at that she needed to get better at. But, you know, she's got a mind of her own and she's going to make up her own mind in due course. I have no idea what she's going to do.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) At the Democratic convention last July, they were still playing his song. When we come back, the President's health. The first line of his mystery novel. And where he would live, if it were not here.

JENNINGS: (Voice Over) This has been a very tiring time for the President. After we saw him, everyone wanted to know how was his recovery going.

CLINTON: As far as I know I'm doing well. I'm walking an hour a day. Up hills, vigorously. I still get tired easily. I haven't recovered my stamina. But everybody who's done this says I will.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) No interview with President Clinton is complete without a little bit of trivia. You were, after all, the pop culture President. So, I'd be grateful if you'd give me maybe one-liners on the following subjects. The last movie you saw.

CLINTON: "Ray." It's unbelievable. I knew Ray Charles and I talked to him a couple weeks before he died. I like him very much. And I love music, as you know. It's a fabulous movie.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Your favorite singer now.

CLINTON: I like Tony Bennett. I like Bono. I like Barbara Streisand. I like Judy Collins. I like Sheryl Crow. I love Aretha Franklin.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) The Presidential perk you most miss.

CLINTON: Working in the Oval Office, it's the best work space on earth.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) Your favorite food now.

CLINTON: Turkey or vegetarian chili.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) And the one you most miss?

CLINTON: Steak.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) The country you'd like to live in, if it were not here.

CLINTON: Probably Ireland.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) You want to be a mystery writer at some point in you life, I gather?

CLINTON: I'd like to write one book, that was kind of frivolous. A Dylan mystery.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) So, write the first line of the mystery novel.

CLINTON: The President's aide was found dead on a -on a street in southeast Washington. From unnatural causes.

JENNINGS: (Off Camera) And the very last one. A living person, not already encountered, who you'd most like to meet?

CLINTON: Someone I have never met? I would like to meet the new President of Kenya. Because he abolished school fees for poor children and a million extra children showed up at school. I think that that's something that's likely to affect more lives positively than almost anything any other political leader will do this year.

JENNINGS:
(Off Camera) Thank you, sir.

CLINTON: Thanks.