Doug Wead, author of "The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders," apologized to the president for tape recording their conversations in the late 1990s, in an exclusive interview with MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews on Wednesday's "Hardball."
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let's imagine President Bush is watching right now, maybe he is...talk to him.
DOUG WEAD, FORMER AIDE TO PRESIDENT BUSH: I'm sorry. I've apologized privately even before the story ran, and publicly. I can't make right what I did wrong, but it was wrong to tape record the president without his permission. I can make right decisions from now on, I've canceled a speaking, I think I have a Smithsonian Institute speech but there is no remuneration, if there is I will go to charity...
****
MATTHEWS: You and the president share a lot of cultural values right?
WEAD: Yes we do.
MATTHEWS: Do you think you'll get back together with him? Does he forgive you?
WEAD: I am sure he forgives me, he knows my intentions were not evil. If I had kept these tapes and given them back to him after he left the White House and said guess what, you can burn them or, you have a record of what you were thinking of.
MATTHEWS: But they have all the originals now.
WEAD: I have turned them all over to the president.
MATTHEWS: You don't have a copy?
WEAD: I don't have a copy.
MATTHEWS: So there are no more tapes at all of him, they're all gone? Did you turn them over to the White House?
WEAD: I turned them over to the president's attorney Jim Sharp.