Don't mess with the Bushes

In another explosive part of your book, you tell the story of a Midland prostitute peddling embarrassing stories about George W. Bush who's suddenly run out of Austin by some threatening "intelligence types." You name one source for that story. Do you have others?

One on record, and two unnamed sources.

Why didn't you name them?

I don't remember why in that case.

With a charge like that, it seems like you'd want more than one named source. I'd also want to know if the source you named, this political consultant in Austin named Peck Young, had an ax to grind, if he was a Bush hater. What made you give that story credit?

Because he was impeccable, that source, I feel very comfortable with him.

And you believe the Bushes are capable of doing something like that -- of threatening a woman who is shooting her mouth off like that? You think the family really operates that way?

I know the family operates that way. I wish you could see the stuff that's on the cutting room floor, that got left out of the book. There are other people who will tell you stories like that, but they won't go on the record. And you can't blame them. And I don't know how to convince them, that it's history, that it's important. Because I can't in good conscience tell them that. But I do feel comfortable with that story. I'm surprised by the number of people who did go on the record.

Another inflammatory passage in the book is about the girlfriend whose abortion George W. Bush allegedly paid for as a young man. There again it seems like you go with one source, and it's somebody many people don't find credible -- Larry Flynt.

Not just him -- I relied on his two detectives.

So you went and interviewed them as well?

Yes.

Again, I'm trying to figure out your methodology and why your enemies come after you and say, "She relies on shaky sources or she'll lump a variety of sources together, no matter how they vary in credibility."

Yes, I've read that one too.

So how do you respond to that -- say on this one in particular, this abortion story?

Well, I took the public record a little further and went to the investigators and asked for their stuff, and got their stuff. I have the woman's name, address and phone number ...

Did you make an effort to reach her?

Of course.

And she wouldn't talk?

No.

But you found the two investigators credible after talking to them?

Yeah, I did.

So your method is to leave it to the reader to make up their minds?

Right. And to tell you how far I went.

That falls short of the standards of the New York Times, say, or the Washington Post. Why do you feel it's legitimate to fall short of that standard?

I don't think that falls short of the standards of the New York Times or the Washington Post in every single instance. I think that especially the Washington Post has pushed things in the past, far beyond where I would go.

What's an example of that?

Janet Cooke.

Well, that was exposed as a work of fiction!

Jayson Blair ...

But the Times and the Post were both humiliated by those scandals.

And I would be too if you find something in my books that didn't stand the test of time. I honestly would.

So you wouldn't have put a story like that in unless you'd done enough work on your own to satisfy yourself that there was something there, that it would hold up?

Right.

What do you think W. will do if he loses in November? Will he happily go back to baseball?

No. You know something that I have found out from this family after four years -- he doesn't plan to lose. They know how to win -- no matter what.

What does that mean?

That means these people can put "The Sopranos" to shame.

Does that mean vote stealing?

That's a bit overt. But nothing will stand in the way of these people winning. Nothing. You start out looking at the Bush family like it's "The Donna Reed Show" and then you see it's "The Sopranos."

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