Others, insisting they had nothing to hide, were not so reluctant.
Rodney Slater, Mr. Clinton's transportation secretary, said an impetus for
the meeting was to make sure that the former president's policies were
still in the public discourse.
"As much as anything, it was to recognize that we were part of something
special," Mr. Slater said, "that there were still opportunities out there
for us to express opinions about things and professional judgments."
Douglas Sosnik, who was Mr. Clinton's political director and later one of
his most senior aides, put it this way: "Under President Clinton's
leadership, we accomplished a remarkable amount in the last eight years,
and his friends feel we should be doing a better job of getting that out
proactively. Since he left office, we've spent too much time on the
defensive, reacting to stories."
Gene Sperling, who was Mr. Clinton's top economic aide, said, "Most of the
conversation was really about what kind of things he should be doing with
his time, what his long- term service contributions should be."
Julia Payne, Mr. Clinton's spokeswoman, said she would have no comment
about "a private meeting."
While Mr. Clinton had held meetings with advisers before, participants
described this one as having a special urgency.
Mr. Clinton dominated the session, which lasted nearly two hours,
participants said. They said he was careful not to criticize President
Bush. And they said that while he expressed concern that he was being
blamed for not catching Osama bin Laden, most of the discussion was about
how to raise his profile and press his case on domestic matters.
Even during his presidency, Mr. Clinton was deeply interested in how he
would be perceived by history. Now, the efforts to deploy surrogates to
speak out for him are reminiscent of his vaunted war rooms in the White
House, which were established for him to seize the political offensive on
matters that included Whitewater and health care.
"He basically said our legacy is being pummeled and we have to find ways
to revive it," said one participant, who described it as if it were a
meeting of the top lieutenants of a political campaign. "We concluded that
the Clinton hard core were not on message, and we had to develop a center
of gravity. We have to remind people of what we did on the economy, what
we did with the crime bill, what we did with terrorism." He added,
"They're trying to pin the bin Laden thing on us."
Participants said that while some nice things were said about the
Democratic leaders in Congress, Senator Tom Daschle and Representative
Richard A. Gephardt, there was a view that they would only do so much to
press the Clinton agenda. "The view was that House and Senate Democrats
were too preoccupied with their own re-elections and their own deals," one
participant said.