Former White House insiders to spill the beans

Over the next month, two of President Barack Obama’s closest first-term advisers will spill insider details on the administration’s handling of the early days of the Great Recession, the White House’s cautious response to the Syrian civil war and the genesis of clandestine talks with Iran.

The back-to-back memoirs from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and ex-Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner will be the latest installments in what has become an often awkward Washington ritual: one-time confidants signing big book contracts to examine a presidency that is still ongoing and policy decisions that are still being implemented.

Clinton and Geithner’s books will be released just four months after former defence secretary Robert Gates’ memoir landed like a sucker punch in the West Wing. Gates gave political advisers in the White House virtually no warning — and no advance copy — of his headline-generating memoir, which included sharp criticisms of Obama’s decision-making.

However, Obama aides don’t appear to be girding for a repeat of their experience with Gates’ book as they await the release of Geithner and Clinton’s memoirs.

While Geithner has not provided the White House with advance copies of his book, Stress Test, the text has been reviewed by lawyers at Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

And drafts of Clinton’s book, Hard Choices, have been circulating for months among a small number of officials in Obama’s National Security Council.

Clinton’s book will be combed for any sign of discord with Obama, the man who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign and whom she could run to replace in 2016. Clinton has said little about the book, due out June 10, though it is expected to centre on the main foreign policy challenges she was involved in during her four-year tenure at the helm of the State Department, including Syria and the start of secret discussions with Iran that led to the current nuclear negotiations.

Discussing the book in March, Clinton said reliving her tumultuous years as secretary of state “has been eye-opening because when you are in the middle of it, you get up every day, you put one foot in front of the other and try to do the best you can.”

Geithner’s book comes out on Monday and is expected to focus on the decisions the government made in response to the recession that gripped the United States at the start of Obama’s presidency. Geithner was at the centre of the negotiations over the administration’s massive economic stimulus package and controversial Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill.

Clinton, Geithner and Gates occupied the three most powerful positions in Obama’s Cabinet through much of his first term, giving their accounts heightened importance in a literary landscape littered with books about the White House.

Gates was sharply critical of Obama’s decision-making in his book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.

He was also unsparing in his critique of Joe Biden, accusing the vice president of having “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”