The Clinton Project was launched in 2001 as a collaborative effort between the Miller Center and the University of Arkansas Center for Oral and Visual History, with the cooperation and support of the Clinton Foundation. The Arkansas Center, subsequently renamed the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, is compiling the spoken history of Clinton's pre- and post-presidential years. Drawing on the special strengths of each of these two centers, the Clinton Project has produced an oral history rivaling in depth any undertaken on an American president to date.

Following its authoritative interview work on Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, the Miller Center has for over a decade conducted in-depth interviews with key individuals inside and outside the White House during the Clinton years. The product is an archive of 134 interviews comprising the Clinton Presidential History Project. Among these were sessions with senior members of the White House staff; cabinet officers (and some key subcabinet officials); campaign and political advisors; members of Congress (and some well-positioned staffers on Capitol Hill); and several foreign leaders with whom President Clinton had a close working relationship. Invitations to contribute interviews went to both Democrats and Republicans with historically important knowledge about the Clinton presidency.

Typically these interview sessions ran for a day-and-a-half, resulting in nine to twelve hours of recordings, although some were shorter, a few lasting less than an hour. Several respondents contributed multiple interviews. Forty percent of the interviews were conducted in Charlottesville; thirty percent in Washington, DC; and the rest in a variety of locations, including London, Paris, Prague, Seoul, and New York—plus Jackson, Mississippi and Morehead City, North Carolina.