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 CBS News said it obtained a copy of her forthcoming memoir, "Hard
Choices," on Thursday, before its planned publication next Tuesday.
Clinton is widely considered the Democratic front-runner if she
enters the 2016 White House race.
With controversy swirling over Obama's move to swap five Taliban
militants held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for
captive U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the book discloses that a
much earlier discussion about him took place among top foreign
policy advisers, including Clinton.
"I acknowledged, as I had many times before, that opening the door
to negotiations with the Taliban would be hard to swallow for many
Americans after so many years of war," she wrote.
The excerpts published by CBS News also reveal Clinton's
disagreement with Obama over his decision not to arm Syrian rebels
fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"The President's inclination was to stay the present course and not
take the significant further step of arming rebels. No one likes to
lose a debate, including me," Clinton wrote.
In a speech last week, Obama said he would increase support for the
Syrian opposition, but he did not provide details.
Clinton's book, a memoir of her tenure at the State Department, is
being published by Simon and Schuster, a unit of CBS' parent
company, CBS Corp. She will then launch a high-profile book tour
across the country.
RUSSIA RESET?
As the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 to 2013, Clinton also
acknowledged making a linguistic misstep in declaring a "reset" in
American relations with Russia.
Russia's annexation of Crimea in March has raised questions about
the so-called reset.
In the book, Clinton calls Russian President Vladimir Putin
"thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism and eventually
cracking down on dissent and debate."
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In March, she drew parallels at a closed-door fundraiser between
Putin's actions and those of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before World
War Two. She later backtracked from those comments.
Asked in an interview on Wednesday about Clinton's comments
comparing him with Hitler, Putin said: "It's better not to argue
with women.
"When people push boundaries too far, it's not because they are
strong but because they are weak. But maybe weakness is not the
worst quality for a woman," he added.
Clinton also addressed her experiences surrounding the 2012 attacks
on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, saying: "There will
never be perfect clarity on everything that happened."
Republican critics have condemned her handling of the incident, in
which four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were
killed.
The book also details Clinton's meeting with Obama after she lost
the Democratic presidential nomination to him in 2008.
"We stared at each other like two teenagers on an awkward first
date, taking a few sips of Chardonnay," she writes.
(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; Editing by Peter Cooney and Steve
Orlofsky)
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