‘Top Line’ Book Corner: Matt Latimer’s ‘Speech-less’

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: Former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer's new book has made a big splash in political circles — with juicy tidbits portraying a president dishing on fellow GOP pols like Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Sarah Palin, and generally muddling through his final months in the presidency. "Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor" has drawn a fierce reaction from some former high-ranking Bush aides. They say they believe that Latimer concocted some sequences, and that he generally overstates his importance in the Bush White House, where he served as a special assistant to the president for speechwriting starting in 2007.
On ABCNews.com's "Top Line" today, Latimer lashed back at some of his critics. "The Bush administration has had maybe dozens of books by former presidential aides — at higher levels than me and lower levels than me — writing about their experiences. So this is not a new phenomenon. What they really don't like is how they — these aides are actually portrayed as opposed to the president," Latimer told us. We asked about one specific passage that aides including former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino have called implausible: That President Bush appeared not to know who Palin was in the immediate aftermath of her selection as McCain's running mate.
"I'm trying to remember if I've met her before. I'm sure I must have," Latimer quotes Bush as saying. "What is she, the governor of Guam?" Perino wrote in a blog posting last month: "That's rubbish — Bush had just met Palin the previous month in Alaska, and he mentioned that to me literally two seconds after McCain made his announcement." But Latimer said he made clear in the context of the book that the president was joking. "If you actually read that quote, and if the Bush people had actually read my book, they would know that I actually said the president said it with a twinkle in his eye, making it quite clear that this was a joke," Latimer said. "The president was a very funny person, and he came in one day and he said ‘you know, I know I've seen her before somewhere, what is she? Governor of Guam?' And he started laughing. And of course he knew who she was, and I never claimed otherwise." "But he did make what I think was a wise political assessment after that, which is when he said, you know, she and her family have no idea what's about to hit them — meaning the media firestorm, the attention she's going to get as a national candidate. And let's just wait and see a few days from now to see if the bloom's still on the rose." Latimer said his publisher had editors check some of the facts in the book, but not "quote by quote." He also cleared up a point of contention that's gotten wide notice among political bloggers: He is being paid (though he didn't say how much) by Donald Rumsfeld's publisher, to help the former Defense secretary work on his forthcoming memoirs.
 
Said Latimer: "I have been helping him, along with other people, on putting his memoirs together, and it makes perfect sense. I mean, I talk about him in my book. I worked with him from the Abu Ghraib scandal, which was my first writing assignment for him, all the way through his resignation." "I got paid — I got hired by his publisher to do this and help him. It's a typical transaction for a book like that," Latimer said. Former White House counselor Ed Gillespie has been harshly critical of Latimer for not revealing his financial ties to the Rumsfeld memoir, given his positive characterizations of Rumsfeld in the book. "I am surprised that no reporter has yet asked either Donald Rumsfeld or Crown Publishing whether Rumsfeld hired Latimer or not, and whether Latimer has a financial stake in the sales of Rumsfeld's memoirs — something not disclosed in his own book," Gillespie wrote in a National Review blog posting last week. "It would be a revealing omission for someone purporting to be an unvarnished truth-teller, given that the author lacerates virtually everyone he ever worked with or for — except Rumsfeld."