The Tell-All Tradition

The publication of "Against all Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror"--the new tell-all memoir by Richard A. Clarke--has the White House on the defensive this week. In the book, Clarke, a top counterterrorism official held over from the Clinton years, charges that the Bush administration ignored clear warnings about the Al Qaeda threat prior to the September 11 attacks. In the eyes of some, the book calls the president's leadership in the war on terror into question. Indeed, the criticism was strong enough for the Bush White House--which prides itself on "not doing book reviews"--to come after Clarke, hard. At best, White House officials are saying, Clarke's book paints an inaccurate portrait of the Bush presidency. At worst, some are implying, it puts America's national security in danger.

All of this makes for pretty good publicity for Clarke, a career civil servant whose public profile has previously not reached Rumsfeldian heights. But while "Against all Enemies" may be the flavor of the week, Clarke isn't the first White House official to spill the dirt on a sitting president. Presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton have felt the heat of scandal coming from one of their own flock. Even warm and fuzzy Ronald Reagan got trashed in print by not one, or even two, but three of his top advisers. Why do presidential staffers so often get the itch to dish? And can their revelations really spoil a presidency? To answer these questions and others, NEWSWEEK'S Jonathan Darman talked to presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How common is it in recent history for a high-profile official to leave a White House and level charges against a sitting president?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's less common than you would think. I think one reason why people think it's very common is, politics is tough these days and everyone criticizes everyone. But if you think about it, for someone to leave an administration and then blast it in public while the president is still serving, that's a pretty unusual event.

What are some examples?

In Roosevelt's case, Roosevelt had an adviser called Raymond Moley. Moley was part of Roosevelt's Brain Trust. He left the White House and wrote a memoir called "After Seven Years" [that] blasted Roosevelt and said that Roosevelt had campaigned as a moderate and as an economic conservative, promised to balance the budget and had reneged on all these promises and essentially that people should vote against Roosevelt in 1940 if he ran. And that was used as a big campaign document by the Republicans.