Bob Woodward's New Book on Obama's Wars
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Obama's wars, Bob Woodward's new book on the internal White House struggle with the strategy in Afghanistan.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE WHITE HOUSE: I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The decision to put more troops in, the obsession with getting them all out on the Most News in the Morning.</s>KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning to you. We have a lot going on this Wednesday. It's September 22nd. I'm Kiran Chetry.</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning to you. I'm John Roberts. Thanks so much for joining us. We got a lot more on Bob Woodward's new book and President Obama coming up in just a moment. But first, this morning's top stories for you. A story that you saw first on CNN, Georgia pastor Eddie long, leader of a 33,000 member mega-church, accused of coercing young men into sexual relationships. CNN's Ed Lavandera broke that story. His live report is just ahead.</s>CHETRY: The Christine O'Donnell camp firing back. The candidate for Senate in Delaware with the hopes of the Tea Party on her shoulders says she did not violate any election ethics and that her opponent and the national media are just out to get her. O'Donnell also said that she won't be giving any more national TV interviews with six weeks to go till Election Day.</s>ROBERTS: And former Bill Clinton not the man he used to be. In fact some might say he's half the man he used to be. He's slimmed down considerably, dropping some 25 pounds. He tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer how he did it and why.</s>CHETRY: And our big story this morning, claims of an internal struggle inside of the White House over what to do in Afghanistan. It's all laid out in a new book by Bob Woodward called "Obama's Wars," and excerpts have just been released. They paint a portrait of a president desperate for an exit strategy and clashing with military advisers who were unable to give him one.</s>ROBERTS: Yes, the book is called "Obama's Wars." It describes intense divisions within the administration, with advisers telling the president his strategy for ending the war will fail. The book also claims President Obama set a withdrawal timetable for the conflict because he didn't want to lose the Democratic Party. And it says the CIA has a 3,000-man covert army operating in Afghanistan. It also talks of a testy exchange with advisers over troop levels with the president erupting at one point saying "I'm done doing this!"</s>CHETRY: Ed Henry is at the White House this morning. And Ed, you have just gotten a response back from the administration as to some of these claims in Bob Woodward's book. What are they saying about it?</s>ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kiran, you're right. This is the very first reaction we're getting from the White House, getting it on CNN, a senior administration official telling me, quote, "The president comes across in the review of the Afghan policy and throughout the decision making process as a commander in chief who is analytical, strategic, and decisive, with a broad view of history, national security, and his role." That from a senior administration official. Also notes to me that many of these divisions have been out there before. We knew that the war policymaking wasn't pretty. And this official also pointing out if you look at the full context of the book that the president was really focused on the review about sentinel questions about Al Qaeda being defeated, was really detailed and pressing for more information from the intelligence reports, painstaking in the detail, and pushing, in the words of this official, to get the right strategy. That's all well and good, but it doesn't get at the central questions you've just laid out, which is, are there senior people within the policymaking such as Richard Holbrook who allegedly says in the book that he doesn't think the strategy is going to work. What about all of the infighting, which is much more detailed than we've seen before? We knew about division, we didn't know about this detail. And then finally, what about what you and John were just laying out about the president allegedly saying that he had to craft this withdrawal strategy to begin to withdrawal troops in the summer of 2011 because of politics on the Democratic Party, pressure basically from liberals in his party? That's not answered by the senior administration official because that's not really what they want to talk about. Right now they want to be talking about economy and jobs heading into the election. And today is the sixth anniversary of the president signing the health care reform into law, and he's going to be doing an event today to sort of promote the fact that some of the provisions are now taking effect. Meanwhile, that's being blown out completely by this new book.</s>ROBERTS: Sixth anniversary or six-month anniversary?</s>HENRY: Six-month anniversary, not six years. It feels like six years.</s>CHETRY: I just want to ask you quickly, when we talk about these so-called divisions that Bob Woodward is claiming in the book, why does Richard Holbrook's opinion matter? Give a little bit of context for people wondering what was going on?</s>HENRY: Well, sure. We remembered him as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the Clinton administration. Right now he's essentially secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the White House's sort of senior adviser on Afghan policy dealing with the entire region. And so he's a central player in all of this. And if he has second thoughts about whether the president's policy is going to work or not after the fact, that's a problem.</s>ROBERTS: At the same time, we're getting new poll numbers coming in on the president's approval rating. Let's put them up and have a look here. From back in February of 2009 until now his numbers have plummeted. He was in the mid-60s, now he's in the mid-40s, currently at 46 percent, 49 percent, just shy of a majority, disapprove. You put together a special report for us at CNN.com, Ed, asking the big question, has the president lost his mojo? What did you find out? Has he lost his mojo?</s>HENRY: Well, a question a lot of Democrats are asking is they need the president now more than ever in this final push in the last six weeks of the campaign. So we went to Virginia, rural Virginia, because as the state the president carried the first time a Democrat did that since 1964. We looked in part at this race where a freshman Democratic congressman Glenn Nye is running for his first reelection battle. He is in deep trouble. This is one of the races that is going to decide whether or not the Democrats control the House. And Glenn Nye is someone who voted against health care reform, voted against a lot of the president's policies, and basically is running against him. Take a listen to what he says.</s>REP. GLENN NYE, (D) VIRGINIA: I've agreed with the president on a number of key issues, especially issues that have to do with taking care of our veterans and military families. We disagree on the details sometimes. I didn't vote for the health care bill. I thought it was too expensive. I didn't think that bill was the right formula. And I'll tell you, I'm frustrated too. I understand where a lot of folks are coming from when they say, you know, we see all these challenges, we see weakness in the economy and people struggling with unemployment. And at the same time, we see people in Washington taking the partisan tact and attacking each other. That doesn't solve any problems. I understand why people are tired of that.</s>HENRY: You see, he's trying to tap into that frustration and say, look, I'm not with the president. I'm essentially my own man. And I understand the frustration people have, and he wants to make this a race about himself, not the president. It's interesting because I reminded the congressman that back in 2008 he campaigned with the president in that very district in Virginia four times. He doesn't really want to campaign with him now. That's one sign of whether the president's lost his mojo when you've got Democrats in his own party saying maybe they don't want to campaign with the president. They want to take his money out on the fundraising circuit, but they don't want to campaign with him because of those approval ratings you pointed out, John.</s>CHETRY: They're trying to get reelected to their districts, you can understand they're going to do whatever they can do to show they're independent. Ed Henry, glad you got that comment from the senior officials at the White House. And we'll, of course, continue to follow that with you throughout the morning.</s>HENRY: Good to talk to you.</s>CHETRY: You can also read Ed Henry's piece, it is about the president and his mojo. Go to CNN.com/politics.</s>ROBERTS: Now to a story you saw first here on CNN, the spiritual leader of a prominent church in Atlanta known for his public crusades against homosexuality is now facing sexual abuse charges. Two separate lawsuits allege that Bishop Eddie Long used his position to coerce two men into sexual relationships with him when they were teenagers. Ed Lavandera broke this story. He's live in Atlanta. And this is a very, very troubling lawsuit against the bishop, Ed.</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, there's no question that the allegations in this lawsuit are sending shockwaves through the New Birth Baptist Missionary church. It is a huge mega church, and Bishop Eddie Long is a very influential man.</s>BISHOP EDDIE LONG, NEW BIRTH BAPTIST CHURCH: Angels were flying around my bed, all night, all day!</s>LAVANDERA: Bishop Eddie Long's fiery sermons have made him a revered evangelical pastor. He's the bishop of the New Birth Missionary Baptist mega church near Atlanta, Georgia.</s>JONATHAN WALTON, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL: Eddie Long offers himself up as this kind of man's man. He's the quintessential man, he's a successful businessman. He's a successful preacher. He has a beautiful family. He's a successful family man, he drives a fancy car. He wears custom tailored clothes. So in some ways some would argue that he is the man that all women want and that all men are supposed to aspire to be.</s>LAVANDERA: But in separate lawsuits, two young men, former church members, say Bishop Long used his spiritual authority to coerce and manipulate them into destructive sexual relationships. Twenty- year-old Maurice Robinson and 21-year-old Anthony Flagg say they met Eddie Long through the Bishop's Longfellow's youth academy, a ministry aimed at nurturing boys into strong young men.</s>BJ BERNSTEIN, ATTORNEY FOR PLAINTIFFS: He would use biblical stories to talk about how important it was to follow your leader and your master, and let him know that the acts that he was engaged in were not necessarily meaning that he was a homosexual.</s>LAVANDERA: Bishop Long's spokesman tells CNN he adamantly denies the allegations. The young men allege Long made them his spiritual sons in a private ceremony called a covenant.</s>BERNSTEIN: Within that covenant, it was essentially a marriage ceremony where there was candles, exchange of jewelry, and biblical quotes given in order for Anthony to know, and for the bishop to tell him, I will always have your back and you will always have mine.</s>LONG: In the name of Jesus.</s>LAVANDERA: Bishop Eddie Long built a spiritual empire by sheer force of personality. New Birth Church had 300 members some 20 years ago. Today it has more than 25,000 members. When Coretta Scott King, the wife of the Reverend Martin Luther King died, her funeral was held in his church. As Bishop Long's prestige has grown, so has his conservative voice in social politics. He once led an anti-gay marriage march in Atlanta.</s>LONG: We're not marching against folks, we are marching for folks. And if they don't understand it now, they'll understand it better, as the old preacher says, by and by.</s>LAVANDERA: Bishop Eddie Long often refers to himself as "god's scarred leader." Those who followed his career say Bishop Long has never shied away from talking about his own personal struggles and faults. That's made him even bigger than life to his spiritual flock.</s>LAVANDERA: John, as soon as this lawsuit was filed, Bishop Eddie Long's spokesman offered a swift response yesterday afternoon, saying "We categorically deny these allegations. It is very unfortunate that someone has taken this course of action. Our law firm will be able to respond once attorneys have had an opportunity to review the lawsuit." So we anticipate perhaps some more from them from Eddie Long's folks later on today. So we'll see how that plays out. John?</s>ROBERTS: And, in fact, we should point out that about an hour from now, 8:10 eastern, we're going to talk with Art Franklin, the spokesman whom quoted there. And later on this morning, Kyra Phillips will be talking to BJ Bernstein about this whole case. So a lot more to come on this. Ed Lavandera for the moment, thanks so much.</s>LAVANDERA: You got it.</s>CHETRY: It's 11 minutes past the hour right now.</s>CHETRY: And which leads us into our next story, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? If you've made your plans yet, you're in for -- if you haven't made your plans yet, you're in for an unpleasant surprise. Unfortunately it'll cost you a lot more this year if you're planning on flying.</s>ROBERTS: They do it to us every year. Also, Christine O'Donnell firing back after ducking our questions. The Tea Party sensation responds to accusations that she stole from her own campaign. You can imagine what she's saying about it this morning. We'll bring it to you. It's 15 minutes after the hour.