“When I was president, I had nightmares”

Paris Match. Your book tells about the kidnapping of the daughter of a former president of the United States. We inevitably think of Chelsea, your only daughter. Were you afraid that this would happen to him?
Bill Clinton.Fortunately, there has never been a concrete threat. The only time Hillary and I were afraid for Chelsea was September 11, 2001, although she was obviously not targeted. But she lived near the towers of the World Trade Center, and since leaving the White House she had no bodyguards. It is the rule with us, in America: a former president has the right for life to a reduced safety device, but not his adult children. And yet the threat still exists, for there is always, somewhere in the world, someone resenting him for a decision he made when he was in office …

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We also discover that the life of a former president cannot be completely serene …
When I was president, I had nightmares, and that marks a lifetime… What worried me most, it was Al-Qaeda. I remember telling my successor, George W. Bush, whose campaign I had followed closely in 2000. He presented himself as a “compassionate conservative”, a compassionate conservative, which was basically to say, that he was going to do the same thing as me, with less taxes and less government. It was a brilliant strategy to win over the centrist electorate, and I felt early on that it was effective. Just before leaving the Oval Office, I had a conversation with him to tell him that Saddam Hussein was not America’s number one threat, as he thought. I had conscientiously read all of our intelligence briefings for eight years, and they were categorical: the main threat was Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, not Saddam who was more concerned with his powerful neighbor, the Iran. The other concern was the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, biological or chemical – from countries such as North Korea, India and Pakistan. Even after I left, I still thought about these disaster scenarios. I was in Australia when 9/11 happened, and I still remember my phone conversation with two former White House lawyers who I told it could only be Al Qaeda.