Don't mess with the Bushes

You've gone through this before, of course, when Frank Sinatra tried to block publication of your unauthorized biography of him. How would you compare the heat you felt from Sinatra and his crowd and what you're going through now?

It's worse now, because there's more at stake. With Sinatra, you just worried about getting the bejabbers beat out of you. But with the Bushes, they work on all sorts of levels to destroy the messenger so the message can't come through. But the message is the message. The stuff I've done is solid. Did I get everything? No. And you know something, we better hurry and try to get all the information we can get -- because this president is trying to lock it all up through executive order, which means you won't be able to get presidential history, because the files and everything will be locked up.

You write that the Bushes are particularly good at cleansing anything in government files that will besmirch the family reputation. How does that work?

Well, you see it on all sorts of levels, from the trivial on up. For instance, I got a copy of the Bush family tree from the Bush presidential library. And at first we just thought a couple things were left off, but it was a number of things. Mentally retarded children from one branch of the family erased. Too many divorces in one family -- that doesn't fit with the family-values image, so some ex-wives simply disappear. You could say that's just an oversight or mistake here and there. But when you see a pattern as I've seen over the past years of files redacted, too many mysterious fires that destroy records, State Department files simply missing, gone, National Guard files.

You also allege that the Bushes have tried to block people from talking with you and put pressure on your publisher.

Yes, imagine the former president of the United States calling your publisher. I wrote George Herbert Walker Bush requesting an interview. He always responds to letters; he's famous for it. He even responded to Bob Woodward for a book. But he didn't respond to mine -- he had an assistant phone the publisher of Doubleday, Steve Rubin. Imagine that pressure. All of a sudden, your publisher is told that not only does the former president of the United States not want this book to be written, he's not going to talk, he's not going to verify anything. Most publishers would have caved at that point. And I think Bush thought it would work.

Let's talk about Sharon Bush -- she is your only on-the-record source for the Camp David cocaine story. But she's now gone public denying she ever told it to you. Why would she do that?

I don't know; my guess is she's scared. Over that lunch we had in New York she did tell me that her husband, Neil Bush, had left her a message on the phone machine saying if you continue with [your allegations against the Bush family] you might find yourself in a dark alley. And she said that in front of [her publicist] Lou Colasuonno. She talked about everything with me that day, mostly about the breakup of her marriage, and how the Bushes don't have family values. And she said to me that the affair that Neil had that broke up her marriage was aided and abetted by his parents, Barbara and George. She was crying and crying and she said, "They let him have an affair. And I called up Barbara and threw myself on her mercy and said please, please tell him to come back home." And I said, "How can his mother tell him to come back to his wife?" And she said, "You don't understand -- they'll do anything she tells them." But she said her mother-in-law wouldn't do that, she was cold as ice. And she cried, "You'd think Barbara would have been more sympathetic to me, considering all the infidelities she's had to put up with."

Now over that lunch Sharon and Lou told me that she was in the midst of an alimony battle, she was angry that she was only being paid $1,000 a month alimony. And they told me they thought that if they leaked the fact she was having lunch with Kitty Kelley to the press, the Bushes hate you so much, that will scare them. And it might be leverage for her in her divorce. And Lou said, "Well, this lunch might find its way into the New York Observer." And in fact it came out in the Observer the next week.

So Sharon Bush was using you to put some heat on the family to get a better divorce deal?

Yes. And I understand that. And she did get a better deal. Her alimony went up to $2,500. So that told me something else about the Bushes and how they operate.

So she got a better alimony deal out of it. But then she goes on "The Today Show" Monday morning to say you're wrong. That takes nerve, to go on network TV to challenge a bestselling author. Why would she have done that?

Her kids. Her kids are in touch with her grandparents and they go, "Mom, how could you, how could you?" I think it was pressure from her kids, coming down hard from her grandparents. Absolutely. She has three kids -- one who's still a minor, Ashley, one, Pierce, who just started Georgetown University and wants to be a politician, and then she's got the model, Lauren. And I think kids are the first casualty, and they didn't ask for this and just want it all to go away. They probably love their family and are just appalled at what their mother did. And Sharon was probably at a very vulnerable time, and is not quite as vulnerable now. But she got on nationwide television and denied what she said, and I have a witness.

Why didn't you tape it?

It was in a restaurant, I never tape in them. It's loud and clattery. Also I knew it would probably be a sensitive interview. I don't tape every interview, but I have a lot on tape.

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