call President Mitterrand personally, because a few of the twenty-six victims were French soldiers. Most (fifteen) were Americans, but others included British soldiers with some Turkish soldiers and Kurdish civilians. The president had been meeting with Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciller when incoming cables confirmed the grim tragedy. He said he had promised the foreign leaders representatives on an international commission of inquiry. Now his purpose was to make sure that the commission, along with parallel U.S. investigations, uncovered every pertinent error in order to prevent a recurrence. He said many questions were murky. Why were the planes so anxious to shoot down helicopters that made no hostile moves? Were the helicopters fitted with extra tanks to resemble the Russian Hind-24s flown by Iraq? Why didn't they answerthe Woodward book. ("Dick Morris continued trying to reshape Clinton's image. . . . Morris was in charge of the big picture, the thematic speeches and bully pulpit and the presidential schedule.") Here I jousted more aggressively. The president seldom mentioned Morris at all. I thought Morris's influence was vastly overblown, and the notion of a rudderless Clinton simply ignored his personal conduct through unpopular storms over the deficit, Haiti, assault weapons, Northern Ireland, and Mexico, among others. To me this Svengali consensus smacked of a bargain between hungry reporters and Morris, who fed them in ardent self-promotion. I credited him with ample brains to scatter tidbits they could not resist.

Fateful misgivings about the interview trailed me into Chicago two days later, on the 28th. Would my harshness