- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President
Clinton said in an interview released on Tuesday he was prepared to ``stand
and fight'' if he was indicted after leaving office.
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- In a wide-ranging, one-hour interview with CBS News taped
on Monday, Clinton said he wanted to rest for a while after leaving the
White House, mused about some of his political adversaries, and said he
didn't have a clue if his wife, Sen.-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, might
run for president.
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- Dan Rather, who conducted the interview, asked Clinton
if he expected to be indicted by the office of the independent counsel,
which investigated the Whitewater real-estate deal, his affair with Monica
Lewinsky and a host of other issues.
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- ``Look, I don't have any idea. I don't have any control
over that and I don't spend much time thinking about it,'' he said in a
transcript of the interview released by the White House.
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- Asked if he thought President-elect George W. Bush, the
Republican Texas governor who takes his place on Jan. 20, might pardon
him, Clinton said: ``I haven't given any thought to that. But I doubt it.
I mean, no, I haven't thought about that.''
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- ``Since I don't believe I should be charged, I don't
want that,'' he added. ``If that's what they want, I'll be happy to stand
and fight.''
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- ``A Fraud From The Get-Go''
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- Clinton, asked to say the first thing that came into
his mind on a host of topics, offered some trenchant observations on his
eight years in office and on his many adversaries.
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- Asked about the investigation of Whitewater, an Arkansas
real estate venture that he and his wife invested in in 1978 and ultimately
lost money on, he replied:
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- ``Biggest bogus issue in modern American politics. Classic
-- it was a fraud from the get-go and a lot of the people that were propagating
it knew it was a fraud,'' he said.
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- Newt Gingrich, the former House of Representatives Speaker
who led the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and resigned during
the impeachment crisis, came off relatively well: ``A brilliant adversary,
and a complicated man.''
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- Not so for Tom DeLay, the Republican House whip who is
known for his bare-knuckled tactics in enforcing discipline within his
party.
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- ``My problem with him is his whole view about how you
should treat your opponents is very different from mine,'' Clinton said.
``He's got a total scorch-and-burn policy -- take them out, whatever the
cost, whatever you have to do.''
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- ``I Need To Rest''
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- Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who presided over
the investigation into Clinton's affair with Lewinsky and his dissembling
to conceal it, also came in for some harsh words.
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- ``They put him in there because (former independent counsel
Robert) Fiske was a fair, balanced man and the whole thing was going to
be over before the '96 election and they didn't want that,'' Clinton said.
``So they put him in there; said drag it out and get a bigger body count
... he did just what he was supposed to.''
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- Clinton said he thought talk that his wife, who has won
a seat in the U.S. Senate representing New York, might run for president
in 2004 or 2008 was ``worse than idle speculation.''
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- He said he had advised her to ``solidify her roots in
New York'' and simply did not know if she, or anybody else, would definitely
run for president.
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- Asked about his own plans, Clinton said he wanted to
kick back and rest for a while, then make some money for his family, and
eventually find a way to be useful without getting in the way of future
presidents.
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- But first, he said: ``I need to take a couple of months
and just go down. I need to rest. I've been working like crazy for 27 years.''
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