You mentioned Sept. 11, 2001. You were in your office here in the Capitol that morning. You describe in the book your feeling of being a captain asked to abandon his ship. Can you tell me more about how you felt, knowing that this beautiful building where you've spent your professional life, which has such symbolic resonance for the world, was possibly going to be destroyed in minutes?

I couldn't believe that this majestic edifice was about to be bombed. And the policeman was saying 15 minutes, 10 minutes, eight minutes, whatever. Get out of here! I wanted to stay with the ship. I couldn't believe that I had to get out of this building. But members of my staff insisted that I go. This was a terrible feeling. And so I found my way outside the building, but the staff and policemen were saying, "Go farther." Well, the people who voted on that plane [United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania] to take things into their own hands, knowing that they were doomed, saved our lives. They saved my life; they saved the lives of many of my staff that day. This building was the target. I didn't get far enough away from it to avoid a direct hit by that kind of missile, a plane loaded with aviation fuel. We're living in eerie times.

Do you believe the Capitol was the intended target that day?

I do. In my mind's eye, I thank those people who died to save this Capitol, my life and my staff. It is a feeling that still haunts me whenever I think about it.

But instead of attacking al-Qaida, the administration turned its energies, after Afghanistan, to Iraq. You said this is the "most arrogant" administration you've ever seen, one that treats the public contemptuously by being secretive, or untruthful, about its motives. Are you saying it is worse than the Nixon administration?

Of course it is. And it has some carryovers from the Nixon administration who are right smack in the middle of the arrogance. Who are they? Well, the vice president was part of the Nixon administration. Mr. [Paul] O'Neill, the former treasury secretary, was part of the Nixon administration. Mr. [Paul] Wolfowitz [deputy secretary of defense] was part of the Nixon administration.

I'm sure you've read "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward. Here is a quote by Bush in the book that I want to read to you. [Byrd picks up a notecard with the quote written on it and speaks as if he were Bush.] "I'm the commander. See? I don't need to explain. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." There's your arrogance supreme.

Why did you write the book?

The first three words of the preamble to the Constitution answer that question. "We the people." It's the people's Constitution. It's the people's government. This administration came to power without the president's having received a majority of the popular vote. He had no mandate. His administration claims a mandate. The people are being misled by this administration. They're being ... well, "cheated" is a pretty strong word, but in some respects, they are being cheated.

When Bush came into office, he had a $3.5 trillion surplus. But what happened to that surplus? He recommended in his first year, right off, that more than $2 trillion go out of this government in tax [cuts] in the first 10 years. And the administration, working with Republicans in Congress, devised the approach of back-loading most of the revenue losses that would come from these tax cuts. That was being dishonest. It's another instance of saying, "Watch my left hand, don't watch my right." We'll put this back over here so it won't be noticed immediately. That was wrong. In other words, a train wreck will happen when Mr. Bush is out of office, not while he's in. That's why I wrote this book. The people are being misled by this administration.

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