9781804953082

CITIZEN

MY LIFE AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE MY LIFE THE WHITE

BILL CLINTON

CITIZEN

MY LIFE AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE

Praise for Citizen

‘The authentic Clinton comes through: smart, charming . . . Mostly the former president focuses on the positive. In his first interview after leaving office in 2001, he told me that he planned to use his ‘convening power’ to make a better world. And he has. Even when he fails, he’s determined to ‘get caught trying,’ his apt description of his postpresidential approach.’

Washington Post

About the Author

William Jefferson Clinton, the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice, led the US to the longest economic expansion in American history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs. After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the Clinton Foundation; its flagship programmes include the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Clinton School of Public Service and the Clinton Presidential Center and Library. President Clinton and Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton live in Chappaqua, New York.

BILL C LINTON

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MY LIFE AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE

C LINTON CITIZEN

BILL

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CITIZEN

MY LIFE AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE

BILL

C LINTON

OOn January 21, 2001, after twenty-five years in politics and elected office, eight as president, I was a private citizen again. I often joked that for a few weeks, I was lost whenever I walked into a room because no one played a song to mark my arrival. “Hail to the Chief” was now my successor’s anthem. I had loved being president, but I supported the two-term limit and was determined not to spend a day wishing I still had the job. I wanted to live in the present and for the future. Except on rare occasions, I have kept that promise to myself, though it got a lot harder after the 2016 election, harder still after the coronavirus struck, George Floyd’s killing, the January 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol, and the inventive efforts of the right-wing culture warriors to find new ways to stoke grievances without sensible plans to make things better for themselves and for all the rest of us.

n January 21, 2001, after twenty-five years in politics and elected office, eight as president, I was a private citizen again. I often joked that for a few weeks, I was lost whenever I walked into a room because no one played a song to mark my arrival. “Hail to the Chief” was now my successor’s anthem. I had loved being president, but I supported the two-term limit and was determined not to spend a day wishing I still had the job. I wanted to live in the present and for the future. Except on rare occasions, I have kept that promise to myself, though it got a lot harder after the 2016 election, harder still after the coronavirus struck, George Floyd’s killing, the January 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol, and the inventive efforts of the right-wing culture warriors to find new ways to stoke grievances without sensible plans to make things better for themselves and for all the rest of us.

The years after the White House are different for every former president. In 2001, I was only fifty-four, with a lot of energy, useful experience, and contacts from my years in politics that could and should be used to serve the public as a private citizen. So how should a former president do that? Several of my predecessors had made a real difference in their time, disprov-

ing John Quincy Adams’s famous maxim that “there is nothing more pathetic in life than a former President.” Adams himself served sixteen years in Congress, two of them with Abraham Lincoln, where he led the fight against slavery on the floor of the House. He also represented the captive African Mende people aboard the Amistad in the Supreme Court, winning their release before they could be sold into slavery. Theodore Roosevelt started a new party and ran for president, finishing second in 1912, the only third-party candidate to do so. William Howard Taft became chief justice of the Supreme Court. Herbert Hoover led an effort to modernize and reorganize the federal civil service under President Harry Truman. And Jimmy Carter built a remarkable record with his foundation, eliminating the scourge of guinea worm in Africa, overseeing elections in tough places, and becoming, along with Rosalynn, the face of Habitat for Humanity.

Although Hillary was now serving in the Senate, I had always been impressed by the impact she had by working with nongovernmental organizations, beginning with the Children’s Defense Fund. And I had learned a lot in our White House years watching her work with civil society groups in Africa, Northern Ireland, India, and elsewhere.

So I decided to set up a foundation with a flexible but clear mission: to maximize the benefits and minimize the burdens of our new century in the United States and across the world. I was excited about the possibilities and hoped I could do it. Meanwhile, I had a more immediate agenda. I wanted to support Hillary, just starting her service as a senator from New York, and Chelsea, only a few months from graduating from Stanford, so they could stay in public life if they wanted to do so and be financially secure if I didn’t live long, which, given my family history, seemed likely. To do that and pay my substantial legal bills run up during the Whitewater investigations and the impeachment process, I had to start making money, something that had never interested me before. As governor of Arkansas, I had made $35,000 until the voters raised it to $60,000 a couple of months before I left office. As president I made $200,000,

So I decided to set up a foundation with a flexible but clear mission: to maximize the benefits and minimize the burdens of our new century in the United States and across the world. I was excited about the possibilities and hoped I could do it.

Meanwhile, I had a more immediate agenda. I wanted to support Hillary, just starting her service as a senator from New York, and Chelsea, only a few months from graduating from Stanford, so they could stay in public life if they wanted to do so and be financially secure if I didn’t live long, which, given my family history, seemed likely. To do that and pay my substantial legal bills run up during the Whitewater investigations and the impeachment process, I had to start making money, something that had never interested me before. As governor of Arkansas, I had made $35,000 until the voters raised it to $60,000 a couple of months before I left office. As president I made $200,000,

and paid for most of our family’s expenses out of it, in large part because the job provided excellent public housing! By the time I left office, I had given a lot of thought to how to increase the opportunities and decrease the problems of our interdependence. We had to create more fairly shared prosperity, shoulder more shared responsibilities, and build more communities in which our differences are respected, but our common humanity matters more.

and paid for most of our family’s expenses out of it, in large part because the job provided excellent public housing!

By the time I left office, I had given a lot of thought to how to increase the opportunities and decrease the problems of our interdependence. We had to create more fairly shared prosperity, shoulder more shared responsibilities, and build more communities in which our differences are respected, but our common humanity matters more.

But the America that I found myself working in had changed in many ways since I had started in politics in the 1970s, and even in the short time since I’d left the White House. Two Americas were emerging with very different stories. One believes that our diversity makes us stronger, and better able to achieve shared prosperity through shared opportunities and responsibilities and equal treatment in our local, state, and national communities. The other believes they are in a battle for all that has been lost by our increasing diversity and economic stagnation, mostly in more rural areas. They feel they’ve lost control over our economy, our social order, and our culture. They’re determined not to lose control over our politics, and to use politics to regain control over the other three.

I still believe we all do better when we work together. In such a polarized environment, that means you have to be willing to work with people who don’t think like you along with those who do. Almost always, cooperation beats conflict, and when you do have to stand your ground, it’s wise to leave the door open for reconciliation. The ability to do that distinguishes great leaders. Think of Nelson Mandela putting the leaders of parties who had imprisoned him for twenty-seven years in his cabinet, or Yitzhak Rabin keeping the peace process alive while acts of terror claimed the lives of innocent citizens and eventually claimed his.

Following this path is challenging even in less violent times. My family has had a lot of experience with highly personal attacks which were not just hurtful to us, but hurt the country by distracting attention from the real debate: how best to meet our common challenges. When the going got rough, I tried to

imagine that I was one of those big inflatable toys of the cartoon figures Baby Huey or Casper the Friendly Ghost—they were big favorites of kids when I was in elementary school. You could knock them down and they always bounced right back up. To survive in politics, that’s what you have to do, over and over. Maybe we should start producing those bouncing figures again, as representative of happy warriors reaching across our great divide. People could keep them at home and at work, starting and finishing every workday by knocking them down and smiling when they bounce back. It might clear our heads and help us to get back in the building and cooperating business.

A life in public service can be deeply rewarding if you accept that in the constant ebb and flow of history there are no permanent victories or defeats, and never forget that every life is a story that, regardless of time and circumstance, deserves to be seen and heard.

As I entered this new chapter of my life, I knew that I’d keep score the way I always have: Are people better off when you quit than when you started? Do our children have a brighter future? Are we coming together instead of falling apart?

This book is the story of my twenty-three-plus years since leaving the White House, told largely through the stories of other people who changed my life as I tried to help change theirs, of those who supported me, including those I loved and lost, and of the mistakes I made along the way.

I’m very grateful that, with the help of my family, friends new and old, a great staff, and the endurance of my curiosity, energy, and ability to work, I have been able to have a life full of new experiences and new ways to help and empower people as a private citizen while finding real joy in our small but growing family. I’ve loved cheering Hillary on as a senator, secretary of state, presidential candidate both in 2008 and in 2016, and watching with wonder the life Chelsea has built with her work in the private sector, in academia, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, with the books she’s authored, and her family life with Marc, whom I love and admire. Chelsea says she and Marc are teaching their kids to “be brave and be kind.”

It shows. I love being their grandfather, and am so glad Chelsea and Marc welcome Hillary and me to be involved in their lives. When this book comes out, I’ll be seventy-eight—the oldest person in my family since my maternal great-grandparents, straight out of American Gothic, made it into their late seventies. But I still think and dream about how people can live better lives together, and still want to help them do it. I can’t sit still and can’t go back. So, as many people do every day, I aim to get caught trying. It’s the real American way.

PART I

What Does a Former President Do?

What Does a Former President Do? PART I

The Man with No Face

SSomeone in Silicon Valley once described software development as “building the plane while you fly it.” Those early postpresidential years were like that for me—starting over without really stopping.

omeone in Silicon Valley once described software development as “building the plane while you fly it.” Those early postpresidential years were like that for me—starting over without really stopping.

My first year out of office was full: the first Clinton Foundation projects and my first missions as an ex-president; paid and unpaid speeches; commemorations and celebrations which often took me to other countries; fundraising and planning for my presidential library; moving from the transition office in Washington to a new permanent one in Harlem; and spending weekends with Hillary when her Senate schedule and work with her constituents allowed.

Just six days after I left office, my first opportunity for postpresidential service came when a massive earthquake struck the Indian state of Gujarat, killing 20,000 people and destroying thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, health clinics, and other buildings in cities, towns, and small villages. Because I had dealt with many natural disasters as governor and president, I called Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and volunteered to help. I had a high regard for Vajpayee, formed when we worked together to restore strong ties badly frayed by

decades of Cold War strain. He was a selfless, ascetic, lifelong bachelor who had kept in check the most destructive impulses of his Hindu nationalist party and supported the booming growth of India’s high-tech centers. Vajpayee had a clear grasp of the challenges ahead. He said he had the capability to repair the largest cities but lacked the money and organization to restore the towns and villages, many of which were wiped out. He asked me to help organize the Indian American community to do that.

At the time, Indian Americans had the highest education levels and per capita incomes of all of America’s many immigrant groups. They had done well in all the professions, especially medicine, high-tech, and finance. There were also a large number of self-made business owners large and small: for example, Indian Americans owned one third of all the hotel rooms in the United States.

Many were already involved in worthy activities in their home communities, but there was no national group able to do what the prime minister had asked. To create one, we reached out to people across the country. Soon the American India Foundation (AIF) was born, with a board composed of prominent members of the Indian diaspora. Lata Krishnan, an IT entrepreneur from Northern California, agreed to become the first president. The group quickly raised $4 million, with fundraisers in New York, California, and Chicago, and gifts from individuals and organizations from coast to coast; established partnerships with effective Indian nongovernmental organizations; and set to work. In April, I visited India with other AIF board members to see some of the hardest-hit areas, where we had worked with the NGOs to provide immediate food, water, shelter, and wheelchairs for the disabled, and to determine what to do next.

In Bhuj, then a city of more than a hundred thousand people, virtually all the stone buildings had crumbled; the rubble was everywhere. Schoolchildren had been marching in a parade in a narrow street with buildings tightly packed together on both sides when the quake hit. The falling stone had killed two hundred of them. People were still living in the debris, without clean

water, much less the ability to resume their livelihoods. To help them, we clearly had to raise a lot of money.

With the support of some pharmaceutical companies, AIF had already assisted a group of doctors and nurses from the Stanford Medical Group who had come to India to perform emergency surgeries. We went to visit with them and the people they were helping in a large still-standing open building the Red Cross had turned into a hospital. After getting a report from the medical staff on their work, we thanked them and visited with the patients and families who wanted to say hello and tell us what had happened to them.

As I made my way through the group, I noticed a man at the far end of the room, in a section not well lighted. He was sitting on his bed talking to a woman I assumed was his wife. I glanced at him a few times, wondering why he hadn’t come forward. When the man turned to see the goings-on, I understood why. He had no face. A falling stone had sheared it away. His brows, nose, and lips were gone. I tried to imagine what he must feel, losing parts of himself essential to his health, to his ability to relate to others, to his very identity. Still his gaze was steady and riveting. Whether he stayed in his bed because of embarrassment, pain, or both, I couldn’t know. But I knew there was still a person inside. I bowed to him slightly and returned to the people nearby. When I got to the door to leave, I looked at him again. This time he slowly raised his hand in greeting. I waved back, moved by the dignity and courage of a man still hanging on. His image stayed with me as I traveled to Ahmedabad to visit Mohandas Gandhi’s ashram and talk with young Indian leaders about whether Gandhi’s vision for India as a peaceful haven for all its people, regardless of their ethnic or religious heritage, could still become a reality. Today, India is enjoying brisk growth and has become the world’s most populous country, but the persistence of internal divisions, especially between Hindus and Muslims, leaves open the question of whether Gandhi’s vision will ever be fully realized.

After a stop in Mumbai to see political and business leaders, I went to Calcutta, or Kolkata as it’s now known, to keep a

promise I had made to Mother Teresa before her death in 1997 to visit her Shishu Bhavan, or Homes for the Children. As her successor toured me around, I saw many children with disabilities and others who appeared mixed-race, all either without parents or whose parents were too poor to take care of them. They had found a loving home.

My last stop was in a village ninety minutes north of New Delhi where my friend Vin Gupta grew up and his father was still the village doctor. Vin had built a successful targeted mass mailing business in America and was determined to bring more economic and educational opportunity to people in and near his home village. We dedicated a new nursing school he named for Hillary and Vin announced he would replace the local high school’s ill-equipped fifty-seven-year-old chemistry lab with a modern science and technology facility. He did that, too. The high school’s performance in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—courses went way up and the nursing school graduates all find jobs that pay well.

There were so many Indian Americans and other friends of the nation already working on their own similar projects in India that I flew home confident that we could do what Prime Minister Vajpayee requested. The AIF quickly raised another $30 million and over the next couple of years built more than 1,350 houses, dozens of schools, three hospitals, a primary health center, and held workshops for thousands of artisans skilled in metal sculpting, woodworking, and making clothes. The group also increased the availability of microcredit loans, training for women entrepreneurs, and support for workers on farms, in salt mines, and in poor urban areas. Then, working with sixty Indian NGOs, AIF made information technology available to more than 200,000 students, increased the artisans’ ability to produce and market their products, and began to send young Americans, mostly of Indian heritage, to serve as fellows to work with their NGO partners.

AIF is still going strong. Lata Krishnan is still there and has been board cochair for several years. It has been highly rated by Charity Navigator, and continues to attract strong support. Lata’s own children were eight and eleven when she started with

AIF. They grew up watching their mother, and supportive father, AJ, prove you can do well and make a difference to others. I had no idea what would happen when I started. But I’m grateful I had the chance to help them get organized, to support their critical decision to work with dedicated local NGOs, and to encounter the man with no face and feel the grace of his greeting. In many ways AIF was a precursor to the work I would do in the future, not only in other natural disasters, but in other Clinton Foundation programs and through the Clinton Global Initiative.

When you leave the White House, even though no one plays a song when you walk in the room anymore, the government does provide support for your transition—six months for a temporary office in Washington, rent, staff salaries, and health insurance for your permanent office staff. My transition office was located in a small building on Jackson Place just across from the White House, and staffed with former White House aides, led by Karen Tramontano, the last of my deputy chiefs of staff in the White House. The first couple of weeks were marred by negative stories that set off a feeding frenzy in the press. The first to hit were stories that, as we moved out of the White House, I had taken two large bedside tables from the master bedroom in the White House; that the “W” key had been removed from the computers and typewriters in the West Wing; and that on my flight to New York on the former Air Force One after President George W. Bush’s inauguration, our passengers destroyed government plates and other utensils. The White House staff asked me to take the tables, saying they didn’t want to keep or store them, and no one on Air Force One destroyed government merchandise. I didn’t know about the alleged removal of the “W” keys, but the whole thing bothered me because I had made it clear that I wanted a smooth, cooperative transition and we had done exactly that. Within a few days some people finally went on the record to say that either no damage had occurred or that the allegations of “W” mischief were greatly exaggerated. The most serious attack on me was for my pardons of Marc Rich and his partner Pincus Green. Rich was a wealthy Repub-

lican oil broker who had strong ties to Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East. He was accused of misstating the income from his business to lessen the taxes he owed to the U.S. by nearly $50 million. Here’s why I decided to do it. First, Rich was charged under a racketeering statute, which had been barred by the Justice Department from being used in such cases not long after he was charged. Second, he and the government had agreed that his wholly owned business would pay $200 million in taxes and penalties (four times what the government had said he owed) in a full settlement of the case that allowed him to continue doing business. Third, Israeli leaders from both major parties, Labor and Likud, asked me to do it because of his help with the Palestinians.

So why was the pardon controversial? For starters, because the wealthy Rich stayed in his house in Switzerland or confined his travel to nations that wouldn’t extradite him to the United States. And because his ex-wife, Denise, a friend and supporter of mine who, more than a year earlier, had contributed $450,000 to my presidential library fund, wrote to me recommending the pardon. I wish Denise hadn’t written to me, for her sake and mine. I knew she had made plenty of money on her own, did not get along with her ex-husband, and didn’t know he would apply for a pardon when she gave money to the library fund. I suspected and later confirmed that she sympathized with him because when their much loved daughter died of cancer, the U.S. attorney wouldn’t let Rich come home to her funeral without the threat of arrest to prevent his leaving the country. He wanted to visit her grave before he died.

Then Israel got into the act, with leaders of both their dominant parties, including the prime minister, urging Rich’s pardon because of his work to support Israel in defusing security threats and solving problems with the Palestinians. Eric Holder, the deputy attorney general and later attorney general in President Obama’s administration, said that the foreign policy considerations made him “neutral, leaning yes” toward approving the pardon, in spite of the U.S. attorney’s continuing opposition based largely on Rich’s refusal to come home.

I decided to grant the pardon because I thought it was the right thing to do: he’d paid four times what the government said he owed, the Justice Department had barred the law he was charged under from ever being used in such cases again, and Israeli officials from left to right said he helped them save lives and preserve the peace process. The press reaction was predictably negative. There was a congressional hearing and I was interviewed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I welcomed the chance to answer all their questions and I did. The investigation died a quiet death, and the press began to cover the new president. As a condition of the pardon, I required Rich to agree to be charged civilly as others had been. Despite the lower burden of proof in a civil case, he was never charged. I never met him, and he died of a stroke in 2013, without ever seeing his daughter’s grave.

The third controversy involved my office space. After reviewing a number of options, my team had recommended the Tower at Carnegie Hall. I was concerned about the cost and the ritzysounding address, but the owner had offered us a good price by Manhattan standards. Still, Representative Ernest Istook (R-OK) criticized the rent and Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) was urging a full-scale investigation if the lease wasn’t abandoned. After the dustup began, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel suggested I come to Harlem.

I thought about it for a couple of days and I decided I’d rather be in Harlem than anywhere else, anyway. More than thirty years earlier, when I was a student at Oxford and flew to New York on my way home to Arkansas, I’d stopped in Harlem and walked through the streets, imagining what it was like in the golden age of the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem was included in one of the first Empowerment Zones created as part of my economic plan in 1993, and during my presidency the unemployment rate there fell from more than 20 to 8 percent. I called Charlie and asked, “Can you find me an office in Harlem?” He replied, “Not before tomorrow morning.”

We got out of the Carnegie Hall lease. I’m sure the owner was glad to be out of the story, especially since he’d given us a good deal and could make more from someone else. Soon we

had a lease on bare space at the top of 55 West 125th Street, also called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, near the intersection with Malcolm X Boulevard. Karen found a local architect, Navid Maqami, and a gifted young designer, Sheila Bridges, who crafted my personal office as it is today. The Studio Museum, just down the street, agreed to rotate the work of their artists, which would make the office more attractive and expose their art to people from all over the world.

On July 30, 2001, we finally opened the office, with a big Welcome to Harlem ceremony organized by Congressman Rangel and emceed by the wonderful Cicely Tyson. I had long been a fan—entranced by her performance in Sounder and impressed that she spent nearly a decade married to the brilliant but difficult Miles Davis. There were a few thousand people in the streets, lots of music and welcoming speeches, even a nice proclamation of William J. Clinton Day in Harlem from the Republican governor, George Pataki. I made brief remarks about walking down 125th Street as a young man, how I always wanted to play the Apollo Theater, just down the street, and how I’d try to be a good neighbor. The joyous event ended with all of us joining a jazz group in singing “Stand by Me.” I felt like I was home. And I stayed.

I loved the buildout of my office—lots of wood, shelves that I filled with books about other presidents and pivotal moments in U.S. history, with a section on civil rights history, heroes, and the persistence of racism amidst our growing diversity, and in the conference room, books about Harlem, biographies of leaders I’d served with and admired, and books about Ireland and Northern Ireland, where I’d worked hard for peace. I’ve loved working there, having guests and feeding them good meals from local restaurants.

In 2005, the Clinton Foundation took over the thirteenth floor, added more space on the eleventh floor in 2008, and stayed until 2011. The Clinton Global Initiative was growing so fast it needed its own space, which was donated by the French property management company Calyon, from 2005 to 2013. The foundation and CGI both moved several times over the next few years as needs grew and space became available. In late 2023,

both moved to their current home in the NoMad neighborhood, right on Madison Square Park.

Through it all, I’ve kept my former president’s office in Harlem, hosting visitors from all over, from Make-A-Wish kids and student groups to political, business, and NGO leaders, foreign and domestic. I enjoy sharing my view of Harlem’s main drag, including Marcus Garvey Park just across the street, where great youth league baseball is played; the still unfinished Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the world’s largest Gothic church; the north end of Central Park, and all Manhattan beyond. I still love Harlem more than fifty years after I first walked down 125th Street.

Back in November of 1999, at the beginning of Hillary’s Senate campaign, we’d bought our home in Chappaqua, New York, an old farmhouse built in the late 1890s, and expanded in the 1980s. I really liked the place, but it needed some work. The rooms in the old part of the house were small and there wasn’t enough closet space, so we took out the decorative doors and windows between the living room and the glassed-in porch to make a bigger, lighter space and expanded the upstairs closet. We also glassed in a screened-in porch just off the kitchen to make it a usable breakfast room year-round. The third floor had a sauna, which we took out to make a nice office for Hillary, a good-sized den for TV and book space, and two little side rooms, one of which became a music room. It’s packed with my saxophones, including two made by Adolphe Sax in the 1860s, with enough space for me to play music, lots of pictures of my favorite musicians, and other memorabilia, including an autographed scarf Elvis Presley wore at a California concert, a drumhead signed by Mick Fleetwood, and an autographed John Coltrane album. The expansion space is mostly two large rooms—a big den on the ground floor with crowded bookshelves, including many old editions I’ve collected over the decades, and a big bedroom on the second floor with large windows dominating three sides of the room and French doors opening to the back porch. There was also an old red barn close to the house, which had been converted into an apartment for the previous owner’s par-

ent, with outside steps leading up to a converted loft. The Secret Service liked the loft as a site for their office, and I turned the downstairs into an office for me and a gym.

I knew the age of the house, the septic tank system, and other issues would present problems, but I wanted to buy the house from the minute I saw the bedroom. It was bathed in light. I told Hillary that this house would help her win the Senate election, because she’d wake up in a good mood even on cloudy days with all the light streaming in the bedroom windows. Also, I thought we’d have a good time working to make it ours. For more than twenty years now, we have done just that, restoring, remodeling, and reinforcing the house, improving the grounds, planting trees, shrubs, flowers, and a vegetable garden, putting up outdoor sculptures, fixing the plumbing, you name it. We’ve now lived there longer than any other place. Our home is obviously not a designer creation. It’s filled with photographs, art and crafts from our travels, and our old books, all evoking memories of our public and private lives, our families and friends.

Hillary and I both love living in Chappaqua and feel blessed to live in a county where every town of any size has its own public library with free WiFi, the schools are really good, and the parks and wilderness preserves offer nature’s bounty to people who can’t afford to go far or spend much to find it. All these public spaces, plus our local bookshop, good new and well-established retail stores and restaurants, the Chappaqua Village Market, and Lange’s Delicatessen, have given me countless opportunities to meet my neighbors, their kids, and lots of other people, listen to them and answer their questions. Now these neighbors often show me photos they took of me with their kids fifteen or twenty years ago, then tell me what they’re doing these days.

I enjoy doing events that matter to people in Chappaqua, from marching with Hillary in our annual Memorial Day parade, to supporting Edward and Maya Manley’s Making Headway Foundation, which supports families dealing with brain and spinal cord tumors and other brain-related traumas, to meeting with New York City kids who come up during the summer to visit our county, which has the largest amount of greenspace of any suburban county in the United States.

In the first half of 2001, while the office was being prepared and the office work was still being handled out of our transition headquarters in D.C., I kept busy making our home more livable, giving my first paid speeches, negotiating a book contract with the late Sonny Mehta of Knopf to write my autobiography with the late, legendary Bob Gottlieb as my editor, and signing on with the Harry Walker Agency in New York to handle my paid speeches.

Because Knopf had offered me a big advance on my memoir and the speech offers were coming in, I was feeling better about being able to pay my bills. I wanted to pay off millions of dollars in legal fees as soon as possible. It had embarrassed me to have a legal defense fund in the White House, and to ask my friend Terry McAuliffe to cosign my first mortgage on the Chappaqua house. Thankfully, now we could even afford a second home in D.C.

Hillary had found a wonderful place to live in Washington when the Senate was in session. It’s at the end of Whitehaven, a street just off Massachusetts Avenue that runs uphill for just over a block and dead-ends at Dumbarton Oaks Park. You can walk right out the door and into the park, which we’ve happily done for more than twenty years.

The three-story red-brick structure, built around 1950, sits right on the street but has a beautiful backyard, with a nice swimming pool on the right and on the left a yard with a fish pond and trees in the back. The backyard borders the grounds of the British and New Zealand embassies. The across-the-street neighbors are the Danish embassy, the Hellenic Institute, and the Italian embassy, and down the street on our side are Polish, Brazilian, and Sri Lankan properties. The house was a godsend for Hillary in her Senate and secretary of state years, and for her mother, Dorothy, in the last years of her life.

Normally, when the Senate was in session, Hillary would spend Monday through Thursday in Washington, take the shuttle or Amtrak home Thursday night, and stay in Chappaqua or travel the state through the weekend, then go back to D.C. Monday morning. Of course, there were times when one

or both of us traveled outside New York or the U.S., so we had to rely on phone calls as we grew into our new roles. For years I had watched her making positive changes as a citizen activist while I tried to do the same in politics. It struck me one morning when I was shaving that, in essence, we had switched places. I looked into the mirror and blurted out, “My God, I’ve become an NGO! Now what?”

When I was sure I was going to be able to pay my debts and the costs of maintaining our homes in Chappaqua and in Washington, I began to devote about 10 percent of my speechmaking income to the Clinton Foundation every year, as well as 10 percent of our total earnings to our family foundation to support the foundation and our other charitable interests.

Thanks to Don Walker and the Harry Walker Agency and other requests, I began making speeches in the United States and all over the world. Among the most welcome early ones came from Jewish groups across the country, and eventually from Latin America and Europe. They appreciated my support for Israel and for peace in the Middle East. Over the ensuing years, the largest number of non-U.S. speech offers by far have come from Canada, where I have a lot of friends and supporters, and there is a culture of inviting speakers in communities spanning the country. I’ve also given speeches across Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and in Nigeria and South Africa.

I’ve really enjoyed the speeches and have learned a lot from the people I’ve met, who often have unusually perceptive comments and questions. I almost never tell war stories about the White House years unless asked about them in the question period that follows, or in interviews when sponsors prefer that format. Instead, whether the audience was a hundred or fewer or thousands at big conventions, I always started with an overview of how I view the world.

I’d tell them we had entered a new era of global interdependence being shaped by positive and negative forces. Among the positive ones were advances in science, led by the sequencing of

the human genome, which would extend the length and improve the quality of life; the explosion of information technology, which would lower the cost and increase access to information and create unlimited new opportunities to use it; the increase of travel, trade, and immigration, which could build diversity, fuel economic expansion, and reduce racial, religious, and ethnic turmoil; new educational and economic opportunities for women and girls; and a sharp reduction in extreme poverty.

The problem with this new world in which borders look more like nets than walls is that we’re all also exposed to the negative forces of interdependence: the world is too unequal in income and in access to education, health, housing, and the capital necessary to create wealth; it’s too unstable because of vast differences in nations’ governmental capacity, levels of corruption, and willingness to help those hurt by the changing economy, and internal racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts; and it’s unsustainable because of our shared vulnerability to climate change, terror, weapons of mass destruction, disease, the opioid epidemic and other health problems, destabilizing cyberattacks, divisive, often dishonest social media sites, and the downsides of artificial intelligence.

The United States is in an excellent position to lead the world to a new era of shared peace and prosperity because of our relative youth, diversity, universities, community colleges and other training opportunities; achievements in science and technology; a powerful network of businesses large and small; a highly productive, trainable workforce; and our massive potential to produce clean energy and increase efficiency. But to make the most of our advantages, it’s imperative to address our own problems with inequality, instability, unsustainability, internal conflicts, a sharp decline in our birth rate and in life expectancy for people under sixty-five, and a resistance to increasing our capacity to properly evaluate, accept, or reject the new immigrants, especially those who show up at the southern border. We have to deal with these challenges, help others to do the same, and keep building networks of cooperation.

That in a nutshell has been my speech. I’ve also told audi-

ences that I filter the questions I’m asked, or ask myself, through a simple screen: Will this or that action increase the positive and decrease the negative forces of our interdependence, or do the reverse? Once I could answer that, I could determine what I was for and what I was against. I ask the people in my audiences to develop their own framework, so that the blizzard of often evolving and conflicting headlines doesn’t become for them the political equivalent of chaos theory in physics, and so that they can compare the headlines with longer-term trendlines, which are often better.

After 9/11, I also told my audiences at home and abroad that since we are living in an interdependent world where we can’t kill, jail, occupy, or wall ourselves off from all our adversaries, we need to keep building a world with more friends and fewer enemies. We have to fight terror, but do it in a way that doesn’t compromise the character of our nation or the future of our children.

Easier said than done, as we have seen with U.S. treatment of captives in places like Abu Ghraib, Putin’s war on Ukraine, the Hamas slaughter on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli attacks on Gaza that followed. And that’s just a highly abbreviated list of the violence embroiling our world over the last twenty-five years.

Many of these abuses have driven people from their homelands, creating by far the largest migration across national borders since World War II. Wars, economic collapse, racial, ethnic, and religious repression, climate-change-driven drought, floods, wildfires, and storms, and deep cultural conflicts reduce our chances of building a world of shared peace and prosperity. All this was evident even before the global rise of divisive, populist nationalism. The United States, despite repeated threats from the far right after Reconstruction ended in the 1870s and in every decade since, was in the best position of all large countries to resist the poison, but for reasons embedded in our divided political culture, our uneven economic geography, our twisted information ecosystem, and the Electoral College’s built-in advantage for divisive tribalism in the less populous states, we fell victim to it in 2016.

I’ve always tried in my appearances to incorporate the latest developments in science, or persuasive arguments made in new books, and to explain why cooperation works better than conflict for economic, social, and security reasons, hoping I could help people embrace a more inclusive way of looking at things. For example, after the sequencing of the human genome proved that all humans are genetically about 99.5 percent the same, I began asking audiences, especially the more diverse ones, to look at each other and let it sink in that every non-age-related difference they could see was rooted in one half of one percent of our biological makeup. Then I’d ask them why we spend 99.5 percent of our time focused on that half a percent? Shouldn’t we all think more about the 99.5 percent that we share with our fellow humans? It always seems to have some effect.

I began to recommend books I found interesting and valuable, beginning with Robert Wright’s Nonzero and Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue, then The Social Conquest of Earth, by the late, great naturalist and insect biologist E. O. Wilson, and more recently, Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. Wilson argues that since the fall of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, our planet’s most durable species are ants, termites, bees, and people, because they have proved to be the best at adapting to changed circumstances that threatened their existence. They have done so, Wilson maintains, by developing life-saving and -enhancing habits of cooperation. Humans have done best because we have both consciousness and a conscience. Our problem is that we tend to take our intelligence and progress for granted, become arrogant, and push things to the edge of destruction. So far our conscience has kicked in to save the day. But we can’t take it for granted, Wilson cautions, so we have to keep widening the circle of “us” and shrinking the circle of those we brand “them.” Wilson offered these observations before America began to go off the rails in 2014, although there was lots of evidence, going back to the 1990s, and certainly since the midterm elections in 2010, that we were heading toward the cliff again.

I began to recommend books I found interesting and valuable, beginning with Robert Wright’s Nonzero and Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue, then The Social Conquest of Earth, by the late, great naturalist and insect biologist E. O. Wilson, and more recently, Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. Wilson argues that since the fall of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, our planet’s most durable species are ants, termites, bees, and people, because they have proved to be the best at adapting to changed circumstances that threatened their existence. They have done so, Wilson maintains, by developing life-saving and -enhancing habits of cooperation. Humans have done best because we have both consciousness and a conscience.

Our problem is that we tend to take our intelligence and progress for granted, become arrogant, and push things to the edge of destruction. So far our conscience has kicked in to save the day. But we can’t take it for granted, Wilson cautions, so we have to keep widening the circle of “us” and shrinking the circle of those we brand “them.” Wilson offered these observations before America began to go off the rails in 2014, although there was lots of evidence, going back to the 1990s, and certainly since the midterm elections in 2010, that we were heading toward the cliff again.

I got interested in particle physics and the discovery of the

Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, which holds atoms together that otherwise would fly apart. I also worked to understand astrophysics and the latest theories of how the universe began, why it continues to expand, how life on our planet began, and the evidence that our planet, solar system, Milky Way galaxy, and eventually our entire universe would come to an end, though no one knows when. I was fascinated by the first photos of a massive black hole 55 million light-years away, identifiable because it was bordered by a fiery rim. The accompanying article said it was so large and its gravitational pull so powerful that if our entire solar system passed by close enough, it would be sucked in and instantly crushed into a tiny pile of dust that would fit in a thimble.

When I describe this to my audiences, I also tell them a story I mentioned in My Life about a rock Neil Armstrong picked up during his first moonwalk in 1969. It had been carbon-dated as 3.6 billion years old and had been sealed in a clear, vacuumpacked case. When Armstrong brought it to a White House event in 1994 marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the moon landing, I asked to borrow the rock for the rest of my term. I put it right in the middle of the table that sits between the facing couches in the Oval Office. Whenever people sitting there arguing got so angry they were shedding more heat than light, I would interrupt the flow of words with something like, “Wait a minute. See that moon rock? It’s 3.6 billion years old. We’re all just passing through. Let’s settle down and try to get something done.” It often worked, even during the bitter partisan fights with the Gingrich Congress.

I told those stories and others like them to try to pierce the barriers we all put up when confronting the “other,” hoping my audiences would listen to each other, actually hear what was being said, and become more open and inclusive. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t, but I kept working at it, trying to reach people with “I never thought about it that way” moments that made them see themselves in a bigger picture, one that opens them to move outside their “caste” as the journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson calls it, to discover and embrace what they have in common with people beyond it. I had spent a life-

time trying to bridge the divide between “us” and “them.” Now, with no political office and red alerts still flashing all around, my speeches seemed a good way to keep doing it.

It’s hard to say which speeches I enjoy the most, but the college and other school appearances, large and small, in states red and blue, always leave me optimistic about the future. I could write a whole book about the students and teachers I’ve met, their unique cultures, achievements, and challenges. Most of them don’t fit the stereotypes which have drawn them into the culture wars. In their own ways, almost all of them hope to help build and succeed in a nation and a world we can all share, widening the circle of opportunity, expanding the meaning of freedom, and strengthening the bonds of community.

And I’ve also had many great chance encounters. On my first postpresidential shuttle out of LaGuardia, the flight attendant, a young Black woman, told me her husband was a music teacher and jazz musician in D.C. who always supported me. But she said what really mattered to her was the Family and Medical Leave Act. She said her parents had both gotten sick and there was no one to take care of them but her and her sister. If it hadn’t been for family leave, she wouldn’t have been able to do it and keep her job. The bill had been vetoed twice during the previous administration and in 1992 I had promised to sign it if elected. In February 1993, I did. It was my very first bill and perhaps the most popular because of its impact on so many people. I’ll never forget the last thing the flight attendant said to me that day: “You know, a lot of politicians talk about family values, but I think how your parents die is an important family value.”

In 2023, I was invited back to the White House by President Biden for the thirtieth anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act. It’s now been used more than 460 million times and enjoys near universal support. It’s a good starting point in freeing America from the crazy—but sadly often effective—culture wars and returning to our founding mission, to form a more perfect union.

The Egyptian American at the Wall

OOn September 6, 2001, I flew to Australia for three speeches. I really like Australia, which Hillary and I had visited right after my reelection in 1996. After speeches in Sydney and Melbourne, I flew to Port Douglas, a great little town on the beach near both the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest.

n September 6, 2001, I flew to Australia for three speeches. I really like Australia, which Hillary and I had visited right after my reelection in 1996. After speeches in Sydney and Melbourne, I flew to Port Douglas, a great little town on the beach near both the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest.

On the evening of the eleventh, as we were finishing a late dinner fourteen hours ahead of the East Coast of the U.S., we learned about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. I rushed back to my hotel room and turned on the TV. Hillary was in Washington, frantically trying to call Chelsea, who had been visiting a friend in lower Manhattan and had joined the thousands of other people in walking north, away from the carnage. Eventually they got in touch and Hillary, and I, could breathe. When we saw the second plane hit the second tower, I was on the phone with Bruce Lindsey, my longtime friend and counselor who was president of our foundation, and Cheryl Mills, a former White House lawyer who represented me brilliantly during the impeachment proceedings. They were in Cheryl’s office in lower Manhattan and saw the whole thing up close. When the second plane struck, I said, “Bin Laden did this.” They asked

The

how I knew and I replied that the attack was clearly the result of months of careful planning that required mastery of complex logistics and training, and that only the Iranians and al-Qaeda had the capacity to pull it off. I thought the Iranians wouldn’t do it, because our retaliation would wipe them out, but bin Laden was living in a cave in Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan; he and his network were more elusive targets.

It was an awful day for America and the world, but especially for New Yorkers, who were proud of their rich racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and their open welcome to the world. They knew when the smoke cleared from the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, people they knew and loved would be gone. I wanted to go home. Thankfully, President Bush wanted all the former presidents and vice presidents in the United States, both for security reasons and to show national unity. So the next morning our small group flew on a C-130 transport plane from Australia to Guam, then took another plane to New York’s Stewart Air National Guard Base, about an hour’s drive from our house. On the way to the airport in Australia, the road was filled with signs supporting the U.S., part of a global outpouring of sympathy for and solidarity with the United States that lasted until the start of the Iraq War. The feeling was embodied by a simple declaration at the top of the French newspaper Le Monde: “We are all Americans.”

It was an awful day for America and the world, but especially for New Yorkers, who were proud of their rich racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and their open welcome to the world. They knew when the smoke cleared from the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, people they knew and loved would be gone.

I wanted to go home. Thankfully, President Bush wanted all the former presidents and vice presidents in the United States, both for security reasons and to show national unity. So the next morning our small group flew on a C-130 transport plane from Australia to Guam, then took another plane to New York’s Stewart Air National Guard Base, about an hour’s drive from our house. On the way to the airport in Australia, the road was filled with signs supporting the U.S., part of a global outpouring of sympathy for and solidarity with the United States that lasted until the start of the Iraq War. The feeling was embodied by a simple declaration at the top of the French newspaper Le Monde: “We are all Americans.”

Back in Chappaqua, I got word that Al Gore had tried to fly back to the U.S. from overseas but was stopped in Canada, as all private aircraft were. So he was driving back to Washington from there, and I invited him to spend the night with me. He got to my house after 2 a.m. When Al came up the driveway, I was waiting on the front porch of our old wooden farmhouse, standing next to my refrigerator. We’d had to move it there while renovating the kitchen. As we shook hands, Al looked at the fridge, and cracked, “I know you wanted to bring your Ozarks culture to New York, but this is going too far.” After the last forty-eight hours, it was good to have a brief laugh. I missed Al’s wry sense of humor as our lives diverged after the White House years. He’s built a large clean energy investment fund and continues to speak out for the changes we need to make to avert

climate catastrophe. I’m grateful that he has attended a few of our Clinton Global Initiative meetings, where he’s always been very effective and well received.

Meanwhile, Hillary was still in Washington, working with the White House and other members of the New York congressional delegation to develop a package of support for the city’s work to clean up and rebuild, and for the victims’ families. Four hundred twelve members of the police, fire, and emergency departments of New York and New Jersey had been killed, and many others were bound to have long-term physical and mental health problems.

Chelsea and I wanted to show our support, so we went down to the missing persons center at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan, where people had posted hundreds of pictures of missing loved ones in the hope that they might still be alive and that someone had seen them. They were praying for miracles. We all were.

The impact of the photo wall, with the still smoking ruins just blocks away, was gut-wrenching. I found myself staring at the faces next to a very tall man with an olive complexion and hair going gray. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. When I asked him if he’d lost somebody, he answered in a breaking voice: “No, but I am an Egyptian Muslim American. I hate what these people did. And I’m so afraid my fellow Americans will never trust me again.”

The man’s anger, tears, and fears reflected the new reality we were facing: we had to take care of the families of the killed or disabled, rebuild New York, and do more to prevent and punish terror. And we had to do it in a way that didn’t compromise the inclusive character of our country or the future of our children by making a world of more enemies and fewer friends.

President Bush got us off to a good start with a stirring speech to those still sifting through the rubble to find anything that might identify the people who had perished there. He also went to the Islamic Center of Washington six days after the attacks, and in his remarks there reminded us that our enemy was terror, not Islam. Yes, the terrorists were Muslim, but so were several dozen of the victims. Senator Schumer and Hillary met with the

The Egyptian

president and she asked him directly for $20 billion to help New York recover. President Bush pledged his support. And he kept his word.

The Egyptian American at the Wall 31 president and she asked him directly for $20 billion to help New York recover. President Bush pledged his support. And he kept his word.

Since 9/11, I’ve tried to take every opportunity to thank the police and firefighters I’ve encountered and to never forget what they did on that fateful day. Not long after the attacks, I was given the opportunity to do something more. The late tech entrepreneur Andy McKelvey asked me to support his efforts to help pay for the college costs of children and spouses of all those killed or disabled. There were a lot of them—the families of the Trade Center workers and visitors and those in the Pentagon; the crew and passengers of the planes that crashed in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania; and those who would die prematurely or become disabled because of their exposure to toxic substances during the recovery operations.

McKelvey wanted the effort to be bipartisan and someone, I don’t recall who, suggested that I cochair the fund with my 1996 opponent, Bob Dole. I thought that was a good idea. I had my differences with Dole, but I respected him and marveled at the guts he showed in a political career that, because of the severe injury to his arm in World War II, required him to spend fifty minutes every morning just getting dressed. I thought Dole would be a highly credible, strong partner in a worthy endeavor. On September 29, he and I announced the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund and asked Americans to contribute.

The fund quickly raised $100 million from more than 20,000 individuals, corporations, universities, and philanthropic organizations. Over the next seventeen years, that money, plus investment income and additional donations, has enabled the fund to distribute $152 million to 3,500 students. The fund began by covering 65 percent of college costs, but was forced to reduce the percentage, mostly because the premature death or disability of a large number of the recovery workers increased the number of people eligible for help by about 3,000. The Families of Freedom Fund would like to raise a few million dollars more to cover all the eligible people and cover a higher percentage of the costs. Hopefully they’ll be able to do it. I’ll always be grateful to the dedicated people who’ve served on the board of the fund, many

of them in honor of lost loved ones, and to Scholarship America, which has administered the fund all these years without charging any fees and will do so until the fund sunsets in 2030.

While I was doing what I could, Hillary was going back and forth between New York and Washington, meeting with survivors, families who’d lost loved ones and businesses, and leaders of police and fire departments that had suffered a heavy toll. We both attended memorial services and fundraising events, and visited with first responders to thank them. Hillary was physically exhausted and emotionally drained for weeks as she encountered more and more people who were hurting and needed help. She was by turns heartbroken and angry, and determined to do all she could to help them recover and begin again. She saw immediately that those involved in the cleanup would have health problems arising from their efforts and introduced legislation to help them. After all our years together, I was still in awe of watching what she called her “extra responsibility gene” in overdrive. Still, I was worried about her, and tried to get her to rest on the weekends so that the energy powering that responsibility gene didn’t burn out.

There were a lot of people in tough shape. Two financial firms, Cantor Fitzgerald and Sandler O’Neill incurred staggering losses. Cantor Fitzgerald, a large global investment firm, lost 658 of its 960 New York employees. Its chairman, Howard Lutnick, made sure the families got the assistance they needed, and in 2002 he started an annual Charity Day that raises millions of dollars a year by donating the firm’s entire trading revenues from that day’s transactions. I try to go every year. In 2011, President George W. Bush and I both went up and down the aisle talking to the traders and thanking them. They raised over $11 million. Howard Lutnick is still doing the Charity Day, having expanded it in recent years to include charitable causes around the world.

Sandler O’Neill was a smaller investment firm, with eightythree employees in the office atop World Trade Center’s South Tower. Sixty-six of them were killed, including two of the firm’s three leaders, one the mentor and the other the best friend of the third principal, Jimmy Dunne, who survived because he was out

The Egyptian American at the Wall 33 of the office that day. Dunne, who also lost his personal assistant, absorbed his grief and did his duty. He spoke at twenty of his colleagues’ funerals, made sure all the affected families got their loved ones’ pay, bonuses, and healthcare coverage, and set up a college fund for the children. Then he went to work rebuilding the company.

of the office that day. Dunne, who also lost his personal assistant, absorbed his grief and did his duty. He spoke at twenty of his colleagues’ funerals, made sure all the affected families got their loved ones’ pay, bonuses, and healthcare coverage, and set up a college fund for the children. Then he went to work rebuilding the company.

In 2019, Sandler O’Neill was acquired by Piper Jaffray and renamed Piper Sandler Companies. And Jimmy Dunne, now living in Florida, is still working. Before his passionate efforts to care for his people and rebuild his company, Jimmy was perhaps best known as one of America’s finest amateur golfers. I had the honor of playing a couple of rounds with him and he’s terrific (I should have been his caddie instead of slowing him down). I also paid a visit to Sandler O’Neill a few years later and saw it reborn.

Of course, those two firms were far from the only ones who lost people that day. I was just fortunate enough to get to know them.

In 2009, George W. Bush and I were asked to help raise the funds to finish a memorial to the people killed when Flight 93 crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania, near Shanksville. It was the fourth plane in the terrorists’ plan. The first three hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon; the fourth aimed to hit the Capitol. It failed, thanks to the courage and sacrifice of the passengers who attacked the hijackers, fought for control of the plane, and brought it to the ground, upside down, in that Pennsylvania field. I’m glad we were able to help finish the memorial.

The park was dedicated on September 10, 2011, one day shy of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, with Vice President Biden, President Bush, Speaker John Boehner, and me participating. In my remarks, I compared the heroism of the citizens of Flight 93 to that of the soldiers at the Alamo and the three hundred Spartans who fought a massive Persian army at Thermopylae almost 2,500 years before. At the Alamo, the defenders knew they were going to die, but the time they bought paved the way for Sam Houston’s victory. The Greek soldiers also knew they were going to die, but the time they bought saved the people and the city-state they served. The people on Flight 93 were civilians,

taking what they assumed was a normal trip. They had to make a snap decision, one that prevented the plane from attacking the Capitol, saving many lives and denying the terrorists the symbolic victory of smashing into the center of American government. They, and those who put their lives on the line to save people in the burning towers, also gave us a chance to save the idea of America: to be able to fight terror and maintain liberty, while still welcoming people from all over the world, regardless of race, religion, and culture, as long as they shared our commitment to freedom and the rule of law.

On April 8, 2004, I met with the 9/11 Commission, a bipartisan group established in 2002 to answer important questions: How did it happen? Did my administration do all it could to strengthen our defenses against terrorist attacks? Did the Bush administration take the threat of an attack on the homeland seriously enough leading up to 9/11? Why did the administration believe Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, even though all the intelligence agencies said there was no evidence of it?

By the time I testified, the commission had heard from both of my national security advisors, Tony Lake and Sandy Berger, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, CIA director George Tenet, Attorney General Janet Reno, Richard Clarke, the coordinator for counterterrorism in the National Security Council, and several other members of my administration.

The commission itself was an impressive group, with five Democrats and five Republicans, chaired by former GOP governor Tom Kean of New Jersey. The vice chair was former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, who had retired in 1999 after thirty-four years in the House. I knew and admired them both. The staff was impressive, too, and they’d worked hard to answer the big questions. But I was concerned that with bin Laden still at large and the future of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq in doubt, the report might be too dense and too full of carefully qualifying language.

When I walked into the hearing room with no notes, accompanied only by Sandy Berger, I asked to give a brief opening statement. I told them we had done our best to prevent terrorist attacks and bring terrorists to justice, but in the security arena you don’t get credit for saves. “I’m not interested in covering my backside, so if you can find anything I did or didn’t do that contributed to 9/11, please say so.”

They seemed surprised, but it cleared the air and led to several hours of real conversation. At least they were listening carefully when I said I thought my biggest error of omission was in not ensuring the implementation of my 1995 order to have the CIA and FBI place one of their counterterrorism experts in each other’s offices so they could share intelligence and work together to prevent terrorist actions, both in the United States and in other countries. They did the staff transfers, but didn’t do much sharing, underestimating the value of doing so, especially when they knew there were threats to attack the homeland.

Since Watergate, when the Nixon administration sought to use the Justice Department, the IRS, and other federal agencies for political purposes, presidents and senior White House advisors of both parties had adopted a largely hands-off approach to the FBI and the Justice Department, even giving the FBI director a ten-year term, which could be shortened only for good cause. I followed past policy because I believed the White House shouldn’t interfere with the Justice Department on legal matters, though Kenneth Starr’s office had used FBI agents to keep pursuing the Whitewater matter, even after Hillary and I were cleared of any wrongdoing by the Resolution Trust Corporation investigation in 1995.

I made the same mistake with the CIA for the opposite reason. We were in constant contact with the CIA director, George Tenet, and he knew I wanted to know everything about our counterterrorism efforts. But before 9/11, I didn’t know there was still too little sharing and too much hoarding of information, or about all the management shortcomings in the main FBI headquarters. I didn’t know that the CIA didn’t tell the FBI or the attorney general about the presence of suspected terrorists

in the United States before 9/11, or that the FBI had no system in place to investigate the terrorism warnings of its own agents. That came back to bite us in 2001, when the CIA included in the Presidential Daily Brief in August that it had picked up chatter that there would be terrorist attacks in the United States using airplanes, a warning made real when FBI agents from Arizona and Minnesota reported to FBI headquarters in Washington that there were men from the Middle East who took flight training at local airports, but didn’t practice takeoffs and landings. Those reports not only weren’t shared with the CIA, they never even made it up the FBI chain of command, apparently because they were just written down and put in a file.

in the United States before 9/11, or that the FBI had no system in place to investigate the terrorism warnings of its own agents.

That came back to bite us in 2001, when the CIA included in the Presidential Daily Brief in August that it had picked up chatter that there would be terrorist attacks in the United States using airplanes, a warning made real when FBI agents from Arizona and Minnesota reported to FBI headquarters in Washington that there were men from the Middle East who took flight training at local airports, but didn’t practice takeoffs and landings. Those reports not only weren’t shared with the CIA, they never even made it up the FBI chain of command, apparently because they were just written down and put in a file.

There were about 2,200 flight schools in the United States. Quick calls or emails to them could have revealed men in other flight training programs doing the same thing. Although that happened after I left office, there were enough red flags about FBI management issues when I was there, including the loss of lab tests and of substantial cash recovered in criminal operations. If we had pushed the attorney general to exert greater oversight and order more intelligence cooperation, it’s possible that would have at least brought the local FBI agents’ warnings to light and led the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration to order defensive measures on flights into New York and Washington and a nationwide search for those who had used the flight schools.

Another mistake I flagged at the hearing was our decision not to retaliate against al-Qaeda after the attack on the USS Cole on October 12, 2000. I thought it was an al-Qaeda operation from the beginning, but couldn’t get agreement from the FBI and other intelligence agencies before I left office. It wasn’t until April of 2001 that they all agreed that it was an al-Qaeda attack. For whatever reason, no retaliation occurred.

Then I said I’d welcome the commission’s questions. All the members asked good ones, but the first exchange was the most memorable. John Lehman, President Reagan’s navy secretary and a strong pro-defense conservative, thanked me for being candid and open to criticism. Then he said something hard to imagine in today’s polarized political climate: “Since you’ve been so open,

I want to start by saying I owe you an apology. I’m a Republican and I believed everything my party’s critics said about you. I have now reviewed about a thousand pages of terrorism-related security documents you received. Your handwritten comments and questions are all over them. You cared a lot about this, learned a lot, and wanted to make the right decisions. You also wanted to do more against al-Qaeda. But you were poorly served by an unintended consequence of the Goldwater-Nichols Act.”

He said the act, a bipartisan effort passed in 1986, was designed to improve efficient decision-making in the military and reduce interservice rivalries, and had succeeded in doing both by developing a more organized, inclusive decision-making process in the Pentagon, which enabled the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to brief the president on military leaders’ consensus recommendations. He said I had followed those recommendations in launching cruise missiles against al-Qaeda targets after the 1998 African embassy bombings, which had killed several Americans and more than two hundred Kenyan and Tanzanian citizens. “But you didn’t send ground troops into Afghanistan because you were told the probability of getting bin Laden and destroying al-Qaeda’s core leadership was low and the likelihood of significant civilian casualties, and the loss of a lot of our forces, was high.” I agreed.

I want to start by saying I owe you an apology. I’m a Republican and I believed everything my party’s critics said about you. I have now reviewed about a thousand pages of terrorism-related security documents you received. Your handwritten comments and questions are all over them. You cared a lot about this, learned a lot, and wanted to make the right decisions. You also wanted to do more against al-Qaeda. But you were poorly served by an unintended consequence of the Goldwater-Nichols Act.”

He said the act, a bipartisan effort passed in 1986, was designed to improve efficient decision-making in the military and reduce interservice rivalries, and had succeeded in doing both by developing a more organized, inclusive decision-making process in the Pentagon, which enabled the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to brief the president on military leaders’ consensus recommendations. He said I had followed those recommendations in launching cruise missiles against al-Qaeda targets after the 1998 African embassy bombings, which had killed several Americans and more than two hundred Kenyan and Tanzanian citizens. “But you didn’t send ground troops into Afghanistan because you were told the probability of getting bin Laden and destroying al-Qaeda’s core leadership was low and the likelihood of significant civilian casualties, and the loss of a lot of our forces, was high.” I agreed.

He then explained the Goldwater-Nichols angle: he had learned that the Special Forces commander strongly disagreed with the consensus and felt his troops had a reasonable chance to achieve the mission of severely weakening al-Qaeda and capturing or killing bin Laden and other leaders without large civilian casualties, but I wasn’t told that. He asked if I had specifically asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs whether the Special Forces commander agreed with the recommendations. I said I hadn’t. Lehman said I shouldn’t have had to, but over time, the Pentagon had grown so comfortable with the new system, they’d stopped considering its potential downside: depriving the president of informed dissenting opinions that deserved to be heard. Lehman said if I’d been told, I might have made the same decision, but at least it would have been a better-informed one.

I’m telling you this to make a larger point. No matter how

I’m telling you this to make a larger point. No matter how The

He then explained the Goldwater-Nichols angle: he had learned that the Special Forces commander strongly disagreed with the consensus and felt his troops had a reasonable chance to achieve the mission of severely weakening al-Qaeda and capturing or killing bin Laden and other leaders without large civilian casualties, but I wasn’t told that. He asked if I had specifically asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs whether the Special Forces commander agreed with the recommendations. I said I hadn’t. Lehman said I shouldn’t have had to, but over time, the Pentagon had grown so comfortable with the new system, they’d stopped considering its potential downside: depriving the president of informed dissenting opinions that deserved to be heard. Lehman said if I’d been told, I might have made the same decision, but at least it would have been a better-informed one.

smart and on the level you are, if you make enough decisions, some of them will look wrong in light of subsequent events, and these errors will happen more often when you base decisions on unwarranted assumptions or fail to follow up troubling leads. That’s a big reason why, if they share a common goal, diverse groups with different backgrounds and knowledge make better decisions than homogenous ones or lone geniuses. On that day, John Lehman was a patriot in recognizing we shared a common goal—no more 9/11s—and making his contribution to it.

smart and on the level you are, if you make enough decisions, some of them will look wrong in light of subsequent events, and these errors will happen more often when you base decisions on unwarranted assumptions or fail to follow up on troubling leads. That’s a big reason why, if they share a common goal, diverse groups with different backgrounds and knowledge make better decisions than homogenous ones or lone geniuses. On that day, John Lehman was a patriot in recognizing we shared a common goal—no more 9/11s—and making his contribution to it.

Both the 9/11 report and a supplemental book containing excerpts from the House-Senate joint inquiry and testimony from fourteen witnesses make interesting reading twenty years later, especially the testimony of Richard Clarke, who worked for our government on national security issues from 1973 until 2003. During my terms, he was our point man on terrorism, and in 1998 I made him the National Security Council’s coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism, with “cabinet-level” access. He was smart, tough, and appropriately impatient when he thought our government was too slow in dealing with agile, creative terrorist groups. Dick stayed on for three years under President Bush, assuming leadership of U.S. cybersecurity affairs. He’s still doing work in cybersecurity today, identifying vulnerabilities, developing defenses, and sounding alerts. He’s a walking alarm bell, always on guard. I wouldn’t want to be in a fight without him. There are more people like Dick out there trying to keep us safe than you know—a “deep state” committed to preserving our freedom, not taking it away.

Before meeting with the 9/11 Commission in 2004, I had spoken at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, home of Al Jazeera, Education City, an impressive group of colleges run by American universities, and an important U.S. military base. There were representatives from across the Islamic world, eager to grasp the benefits of modernity and peace without losing their faith or their cultures, and wondering how to proceed in the aftermath of 9/11.

In my remarks I told them that what they wanted was possible only if we were willing to listen to and learn from one another without preconceptions; to improve our capacity for self-criticism; to identify common interests; and to accept that no one can possess the whole truth, even if they believe their faith embodies it. That’s what Saint Paul was saying when he compared our short lives on earth with the promise of eternal life in Paradise: “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face-to-face; now we know in part, but then we shall know even as we are known.” Paul’s insight led him to the conclusion that of the abiding virtues—faith, hope, and love—“the greatest of these is love.” Not romantic love, but agape, love of your fellow human beings. The problem with my argument was that in times full of fear and insecurity, rage and resentment, we crave the clarity and certainty of blaming the other and belonging to a group in possession of the whole truth. That creates a lot of opportunities for “true believers” to exploit.

The speech was well received, perhaps because I admitted that no absolutist, faith-based ideology is free of error. After all, the first thing the Christian soldiers did in laying siege to Jerusalem in the First Crusade in 1096 was not to kill the Muslim defenders, but to burn a synagogue full of Jewish families. The important point was that no one has the whole truth. To my surprise, an Islamist member of the Pakistani parliament joined in the standing ovation.

I had no idea whether my remarks would have any impact, but since 9/11, I’d made an effort to get the message out in the United States and across the world, especially to Muslim groups. I kept trying, delivering the message the next week at the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia, the next month at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now the American Jewish University), and in April at Tel Aviv University, at a dinner sponsored by my longtime friend and passionate peace activist Danny Abraham.

On every September 11, as many New Yorkers do, I relive that terrible day. I think of those who still grieve the lost, those who ran toward danger to care for others, and those who have labored to keep our city and our nation safe since then. I think of

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