Author Had Rare Access to Bush for 'Dead Certain'

Published September 4, 2007 at 2:00 PM MDT

There are some perhaps unintended bursts of candor from President Bush in the new book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. Mr. Bush told author Robert Draper, for instance, that the administration "didn't spend a lot of time planning" for widespread sectarian violence in Iraq.

The president said he believed post-war violence would be minimized by removing Saddam Hussein and by "the idea of people being in a position to be kind of free — the universality of freedom concept."

Draper was granted rare access to the president — six interviews, each about an hour long, between December 2006 and May 2007.

Draper, also a national correspondent for GQ magazine and formerly a reporter for Texas Monthly, talks with Melissa Block.