Bush Meets Blacks Behind Closed Doors

"'You can't have a private meeting about a public agenda in the White House,' he said in an interview yesterday."

In a little-noticed C-Span interview with Brian Lamb last month, Gordon spoke a bit about his first secret meeting with Bush, which came on September 26. It was about an hour long, and most of it was just between Gordon and Bush -- with no aides.

"LAMB: You didn't talk about that meeting, why not?

"GORDON: I didn't need to. It was not a publicity stunt. It was not something that, in my opinion, we needed to publicize. I think early on the president and I just needed to see whether we could find some common ground.

"He obviously had a bad feeling about the NAACP. And candidly, the NAACP has had a bad feeling about him. And my sense is this. When you have a 96-year-old civil rights organization, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the country, and you've got the president of the United States, just because of those two organizations, the administration and the NAACP, there ought to be dialogue. There ought to be access. There ought to be two-way communications. . . .

"And I think that we, particularly with the backdrop of Katrina, because that's what we had -- you know, that's -- frankly, most of our conversation was Katrina-centric. So with that as a basis for conversation, I think that we did uncover the opportunities to find common ground that we should pursue. . . .

"He was very direct, as was I. He was very willing to put his emotions on the table. It was an emotional discussion, both sides. . . .

"LAMB: Was he angry?

"GORDON: He was angry about some things, yes. That's OK. You know, if you're angry and you put it out on the table, better to do that than the other way around. You know, I'm angry about things, once again, I'm coming -- that meeting, which was actually on the 23rd, came three weeks approximately after Katrina.

"And any American, in my opinion, but certainly any black American in this country who wasn't feeling angry about what happened in the Gulf, you know, needs to see whether they have blood flowing in their veins."

An NAACP press release after Wednesday's meeting was intentionally vague, simply saying that the discussion "went beyond Hurricane Katrina to include reauthorization and restoration of the Voting Rights Act and judicial nominations" and that Bush was accompanied by senior adviser Karl Rove, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and domestic policy adviser Claude Allen.

Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked about the meeting at his Wednesday briefing :