Through a wide array of crisis and challenges but lets begin with the Current Crisis that the United States faces. As you know, President Trump had a telephone call with the president of ukraine in july. The whistleblower reported on it in august. It was released in the last week. What do you make of the whistleblowers complaint . What did it tell you what struck you . What so extraordinary about this is that we have now in blackandwhite in the president s own words evidence of the fact that when hes conducting business, supposedly on behalf of the United States, with foreign leaders hes actually only conducting his own personal business, in this case is personal political business. In other instances maybe something else, financial or what have you. If you read the transcript of that phone call not once did the president of the United States raise anything that is of National Significance to the United States. Nothing about the sovereignty of ukraine and how its been violated by russian invasion. Nothing about sanctions and our effort to hold russias feet to the fire. Nothing about the need to provide economic and security support to the ukrainians. Theres a matter of. [singing] policy. Its a bizarre conversation. All the president asked for is that no one skied the president of ukraine do trump a personal political favor by digging up dirt on his adversary in the case of biden he asked he looked into bogus allegations that have been also asks for ev debunked information that suggests that ukraine instead of russia was involved in meddling in the 2016 election. Its incredible. Whats most disturbing about it in addition to its a clear case of the president putting his own personal interest above the National Interest is that if you read the whistleblower report you learn that not only did the president do this but that his team tried to hide the fact that he did it by storing the transcript of this conversation on a very supersecret server. Let me explain that for a second for your audience. When we have president ial phone calls, there are notetakers who sit in the situation room, usually two or three of them taking verbatim notes. The policy staffers usually including the National Security advisor or another senior representative and the expert staff are also in the room taking notes and advising the president if theres anything he needs to react to. None of that seemed to happen in this case in terms of the experts being in the room. There were notetakers doing their normal job. There was in other words would normally have been stored on a classified secure server. Thats always the case. Then theres the separate server thats only from the most sensitive highly compartmented information that the u. S. Government fan. Ive never in my cell seen that server. absomehow somebody in the white house decided even though this conversation, which we can now read, was not classified in the least they hated it, allegedly, on that server to prevent anybody but the most narrow circle from having access to that knowledge. As deeply disturbing. Why is there no tape recordings for those who were not alive in 1934 . I dont know the historical origins of how the decision was made. When they had nixon and watergate tips and all that stuff. After that a decision somehow by someone was taken not to actually record president ial phone calls but they are carefully meticulously recorded in real time by multiple notetakers who then makes sure the final transcript represents their best take on what was said. Who actually gets the transcripts of these conversations . Do they go to the state department, Intelligence Community im speaking from my experience and Prior Administration which i think on a bipartisan basis handle things the same way. I cant speak with certainty about whats happening in the Trump Administration but normally what would happen is that a small group of policy staffers at the ain addition to the National Security advisor and deputy National Security advisor and the Vice President s office would receive these transcripts. On a need to know basis meaning not everybody gets it not anybody has access to it but if you have a policy need to know for example with ukraine if you worked a new praying office and responsible for ukraine or russia if you worked in the military Defense Office of the nsc and you need to know about something related to Security Assistance then in all likelihood received a copy of the transcript. Thats a small circle in the first instance anyway and then cabinet level principles the secretary of state, secretary of defense, cia director, director of National Intelligence etc. They too in all likelihood when you receive a personal copy of the transcript but would not be widely disseminated within their department. Lets talk members can use it if you and theres a sense that there were enough people who were witness or participated or saw the transcript of that conversation to inform the whistleblower who got the information secondhand, according to his account. Traditionally there would be 2 to 5 staffers listening on the call. Policy staffers. Plus 2 to 3 or four notetakers in the call. Then there might be a slightly larger circle that would receive a rough transcript of the call once it was produced. And as i described, people who have a need to know. We are not talking about a lot of people. My guests, 10 to 15 on a normal call max. Did the whistleblower do the right thing . Should he or she testify . I dont know his or her personal circumstances but i think its such a gravity. Just to recall where we are this is a case where the president of the United States is the leverage of appropriated congressional funds, these are money that congress had approved for a National Security purpose to protect ukraine from russian aggression. 400 million and badly needed assistance that the president of the United States held up to use as leverage to squeeze. Im not a lawyer so im not going to characterize the legality of it but it deeply concerning. The administration will come back and say, we are interested in eliminating corruption in ukraine, which is rampant, is a longstanding bad policy. Something that is concerned a lot of administrations. You were actually at the white house at the time whats your response. Let me take a few minutes to explain. This is completely false. There is no basis to the president s claim that joe biden was misusing his office and his interactions with ukraines to benefit his son. The fact of the matter is, every time Vice President biden engaged with ukrainians including on issues of corruption he was doing so in support and very transparent, very clearly defined u. S. Policy. And at the request of president obama. When Vice President biden was present for the removal of that prosecutor general that prosecutor general himself was corrupt. He was failing to conduct the appropriate investigation that needed to be conducted. This wasnt just the United States. This wasnt just the Obama Administration. This was the views shared in congress, views shared in the International Monetary fund which like us and the europeans were providing economic assistance to ukraine. And it was a view widely shared by the european union. We were all working together to try to help lift ukraine of the success of manifestation nation of corruption. Its an aproblem there. abthe prosecutor general was not even at the time investigating the company that hunter biden became a board member of. There was no ask of the prosecutor general to step up of investigating hunter biden he was not investigating hunter biden. This is all classic case that we see so often, unfortunately out of this administration were they tried to confuse the American People deflect and deceive in order to record of h conversations by phone i can assure you are not hiding on a secret server that nobody can access. But it is true that hunter biden did profit financially being a member of a Ukrainian Company . My understanding and i understand within the Public Domain which was in the Public Domain at the time he began to serve on the board as well as now. He became a board member and a board member he received compensation. To your book. It is a very interesting personal and professional tail. What was really interesting to me at the beginning is your heritage. You have on your mothers side they were jamaican immigrants, your grandfather was a janitor, your grandmother a seamstress and they made and yet they produced five children who all went to college. One son became a doctor one president of the aand your mother radically. Your fathers side they were descendents of aand your father became a renowned economist. He came from unusual circumstances. Your life in many ways is the american dream. Im interested in your title tough love which reflects the part on for all the good things in your life and your extraordinary upbringing there are moments of tough love as well. First of all, im deeply indebted to my family and my parents on both sides in my grandparents on both sides. Literally came from nothing and made something quite extraordinary for themselves and their children. And instill the importance of education with excellence, service, giving back to your community. However, much or however little you have you have to do back. Whether its the immigrant side of my family as you mentioned jamaicans who came to Portland Maine in abor on my fathers side interestingly not just the descendents of slaves but my greatgrandfather who was a slave fought in the union army and during the civil war and after the civil war was able to go on and actually achieve a College Education and to start a school in new jersey that lasted for several years and educated generations of african americans. Both that have manual and Technical Skills to be able to be employed but also go to college. The college prep select is really about how i was raised. Its also i tried to raise my kids and how he tried to serve our country. It means in the first instance that even though i knew every step of the way that my parents love me fiercely they were going to give it to me straight and when i was growing up they would tell me kimonos falling short they would tell me, there was no sugarcoating and blowing smoke to pump up my ego. He taught me that i could do whatever i set out to do. If i did my best they would be with me no matter what. If i didnt do my best, if i were slacking off or in some other way not taking my responsibility seriously, they would give me a hard time. Also, as i described the book, i endured with my younger brother very difficult and bitter divorce. Which included violence in a public custody battle and very painful challenges for me and my brother from about the time i was seven until the time i was 15 or 16. I knew my parents love me and my brother very much they were committed devoted parents but they were not suited for each other and in my view had no business being married. When they split up in the manner they split up that was another tough experience for me and my brother and we had no choice but to decide that we were going to persevere and get smacked down by their experience or stay down. And that wasnt in our culture and upbringing we had to get back up. That was another aspect of tough love. And with my own kids i have an hour 22yearold son and a 16yearold daughter, both great kids could not be more different from one another and they know that when mom is around, they are not going to get that fierce committed law but theyre also going to get it straight. We will get back to your son later one of the things that struck me is you are tall as i am. He played point guard in basketball in high school. Really . Yes. Point guard is often the shortest person on the team. The center abthere are exceptions now but typically its somebody who handles the ball sets up the plays, passes, occasionally drives to the bucket but most of the time a playmaker. That was the position i played in high school and later in graduate school. What was striking is later on the book you bring point guard back. Explain how point guard came to be your name. My secret service call sign. My hood name. In some ways your philosophy of what you are doing. It was something that resonated. I see point guard as a role in our this event to National Security advisor. National security advisor is not the person who is taking the glory person and the National Security advisor is the person who is behind the scenes more often helping to lead a team to produce as a whole. Often passing the ball off to the star players when its the secretary of state or Vice President secretary of defense who make the public impression to negotiate the deal to be the public signing or wood arrearages. The National Security advisor is behind the scenes leaving that Principals Committee that the cabinet Level Committee that makes recommendations to the president as how to proceed on the toughest issues. I do that analogy because i think its an apt one. Its an Important Role but not the glory position and it involves making the team try to perform together optimally. Lets go through, theres positions you had in government and the crisis you faced in the first one as National Security council under president clinton you had the twin crisis of somalia in the famous case of black hawk down, which became a movie couple with 18 servicemen were killed from 1993 and then the twin crisis nearby in rwanda where some 800,000 people were killed in a country the size of vermont. Just staggering. Im interested in what you learned about dealing with crisis, what you learned about issues of when do you engage under what circumstances when there is a slaughter of humankind and why president clinton in the end he said this was his greatest threat. The context as i was 28 years old it was my first job in government, i was my title was directed for International Organizations and peacekeepers. Basically i had the un portfolio on the nsc staff so i got oversight and insight into issues in africa, issues in asia, issues in europe. In addition to the aand rwanda going on in that period thats what i focus on the book but we were also dealing with haiti and cambodia, the whole series of major challenges in which the United Nations and peacekeepers were involved. Somalian and rwanda were particularly formative crisis in my professional development. In somalia black hawk down really was the culmination of the administrations decision to try to go after the warlord by deed who had killed many somali civilians and was preventing us from completing the mission of providing humanitarian assistance to people who were starving. That was the original Mission President bush got us into at the end of his administration and president clinton carried on. After the tragic shootdown of those helicopters and the loss of those 18 servicemen, including images of people may recall of our servicemen being dragged through the streets congress reacted very swiftly and put enormous pressure on the president to end the involvement in somalia. Prematurely before it was arguably responsible to do so. What i learned from that experience was, first of all, being decisionmaking process that the Principals Committee which i ended up chairing needs to that to lower level deputies or daytoday interagency process. That was one thing that was a challenge. The other thing i learned is that when you engage in humanitarian intervention and president bush made the decision to go into somalia for all the right reasons, you have to be very mindful youre going into a complex society where you may or may not be welcome. Where there are political dynamics we may not fully understand. Works very hard to separate a purely humanitarian mission from the security situation in the nation building. Somalia was the case of us underestimating the complexity and the risk of an intervention. Rwanda, which came the actual start of the genocide of rwanda happened seven days after the last American Service members were required by congress to leave somalia. The last thing on anybodys mind in washington or in congress or on the editorial pages works with the United States forces right back into Central Africa to a country that people had heard even less about the time bed somalia. What i learned from rwanda which absome months later i saw firsthand and went to rwanda with the National Security advisor at the time, tony lake. I saw church yards chocked with dead bodies, decomposing. One of the most serious experiences ive ever had. What i learned from that tragedy is what happens when you dont make timely decisions about whether or not to intervene. Im not sure that American Intervention and rwanda necessarily could have been dispositive because these are killings going people going doortodoor using machetes and we just learned somalia that the best fighting force in the world can sometimes be challenged by warlords riding on top of toyota vehicles with machine guns counted on them. But in the case of rwanda there was never actually the question called the decision was never discussed as to whether or not the United States should intervene or support others to intervene or the like. That was because a series of individual decisions taken right in the moment. We had to get the americans out. We had to deal with the question of whether it should be called a genocide maybe deal with the question of whether to shut down the radio. There was a series of decisions taken but the mega decisions, should the u. S. And or alone or with others intervene was another take. That was a player of the decisionmaking process. From those two experiences i learned you have to be engaged, you gotta be handson you have to make a conscious decision. He cant allow that to slip away from you and i think president clinton regret as he is expressed in the public many times is that we did not intervene. He said at times he thinks that if we had sent 10,000 troops it might have made a difference. Im not sure im as confident in that conclusion as he is but i do think that what we should have learned from that experience and try to take in for my subsequent job is weve got to have a handson active process. Genocide will come back to be a scene later on in other jobs. From the National Security council you went to the state department to be assistant secretary for africa and is a wonderful passage of your book. Be very candid about yourself which is fascinating. This is what he wrote my reputation from the nfc as i was about to discover had preceded me. What i was eventually told my close colleagues is perceived as smart, dynamic, decisive, bureaucratically skilled, and tough but also brash, demanding, impatient, hardheaded, and unafraid of confrontation. Some had dubbed me imperious, autocratic, micromanaging and intolerant of dissent. What does that tell us about you . Were they right . I think they were right in part about me as a 32yearold assistant secretary. Had extraordinary privilege of starting at the nsc staff at 28. By 32 i have been elevated to be in assistant secretary of state that meant i was responsible for all our embassies all of our ambassadors in 48 subsaharan african countries. I was probably 30 years younger then the people who the most senior people, the ambassadors who reported to me. They had mostly come up in the Career Foreign Service they were mostly male, mostly white and saw me, i think, as young for the job to put it mildly and arguably not sufficiently experience given their comparative backgrounds. They knew that i had the skills in terms of intellect and capacity and energy and i had the relationships at the white house and at the top of the state department to get things done but i think they were skeptical of me. The other thing, i had just had my baby. My oldest child our son, when i started at the state department he was three months old and i was a breastfeeding mom. Putting all those things together i think i was not the typical assistant secretary that many of my colleagues expected. As much of the book about the challenge of breastfeeding while on the road. Pumping on the road. Your first big crisis that the state department can be your biggest crisis arguably was in 1998 with the al the u. S in large loss of American Life and local life and people who work for the United States. This in some ways was your First Experience at personal attacks. alater. Explained the osama files and why you came under criticism. Im not sure i can explain it. I talk about in the book but these actually are two different things. To put it into context. I was never attacked for the Embassy Bombings. In fact, the accountability in the Estate Department appointed set up anytime there is an attack on u. S. Personnel overseas in the embassy or in diplomatic service. They found nothing wrong with my conduct or anything of the sort. It was the aftermath. This will not about so much the Embassy Bombing as it was about 9 11. Fast forward almost 4 years later when 9 11 occurred i as w secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former National Security advisor sandy berger were in effect responsible for 9 11 because allegedly we were offered intelligence files by the government of sudan that we refused to accept because of our antipathy for the government of sudan. Socalled pharmaceutical plant that was according to Us Intelligence associated with chemical production and had connection to osama bin laden. What links them together, quite frankly, robin is those people who were behind and i would argue defamatory vanity fair story were frustrated by our policy in the Clinton Administration towards a sudan. Of these were people who thought sudan didnt belong on the statesponsored terrorist list in that we had made a mistake towards sudan by being so tough on the government. That was the original nexus because that was my First Experience in the public spotlight in a negative way . Host and how long after leaving administration something would come back and you so you came back into government under the Obama Administration first as a un ambassador and he oversaw several crises there, but im curious, a lot of people dont know what the un ambassador does besides vote on resolutions that he painted picture of developing relationship with adversaries whether the ambassador of russia or mohammed the investor to iran , so what does ambassador do and explain some of those relationships you developed, who wouldve thought one may end up being a close associate or friend. The un ambassador was a fascinating fun job. I will say that quite candidly. In the first instance you represent United States in the world and be hat speak on behalf of the United States whether the General Assembly were before the press corps on important policy issues that the whole world is focused on, so in my tenure that included things like sanctions on iran and libya, included syria, palestinian it palestinian quest for statehood. I could go on and on but a whole range of issues. Then, behindthescenes un ambassador is engaged in very difficult sometimes highstakes negotiations with the other major member states, the five members of the Security Council, those that have veto power, russia, china, the United Kingdom and france in addition to the us and then there are 10 other members of the us un Security Council and thats the lawmaking body of the un and of the world so many of our most contentious negotiations happened in the Security Council, but particular with the permanent side ambassadors and so i negotiated strong sanctions for example on north korea and the sanctions were imposed on iran in 2010 were so powerful they let ultimately iran to come to the negotiating table and thats how we ended up with the ram nuclear deal. Its a very challenging and intense environment, but in order to succeed you have to relate to these ambassadors as human beings. You can just treat them as you know boils, so i used to joke but its actually not inaccurate that when i was un ambassador i spent more time with those ambassadors than i did with my husband who remained in washington during my tenure, so that intense relationship for better or worse and it wasnt always easy, by the way when our friends as well as our adversaries, but that coral those core relationships made all the difference so interestingly i became involved in an intensive what i call lovehate relationship with the Russian Ambassador at the time. He was very experienced and had been there for years before i got there and knew everyone. He was incredibly charming, incredibly of noxious. We fought like cats and dogs in public and private and we could also laugh and go out for a drink and speak some pretty plain truth to each other. You are involved in a roasting you invited him to give one at your fare well on the other hand with iranians that was different. You went to visit their residence, the fbi became suspicious of what you are doing and yet you never acknowledged each other in public. This was again 2010, nine, 10, 11 before we had a formal channel to the iranians that we were able to establish in the context of a nuclear negotiation. There were things we needed to talk to them about. They had americans hostage and we wanted those americans out they were bumping heads with us in the persian gulf with our Naval Operations peer we wanted to make sure we had a way to d conflict and prevent the crisis. They were backing militia shooting mock rockets and missiles into our facilities in iraq and we were not going to stand for that, so because of the proximity of the un ambassador from the us and the un ambassador from iran i became there was a private channel at the request of the white house with iranians and so you know on a number of occasions with the full knowledge and backing of the white house and i would report on my conversations i would meet with the Iranian Ambassador in private and we would discuss these contentious issues and i would push for our interest to be respected in a way we couldnt do through thirdparty but it was not known to the public and as you mentioned when we cross paths in the halls of the United Nations we acted like we had never seen each other before and at one point early in my engagement that iranians i do think the fbi which is doing its job by making sure that they know whats going on with our adversaries in the United States became suspicious that wise the American Ambassador talking to the iranians. They came and went through the proper channels to ask what was going on and they were assured it was on the up and up. One of the most contentious developments when you were at the un was the boat on wf and the decision whether to intervene after the air of the spring as qaddafi was moving his forces closer and closer to benghazi. You got a resolution and what was a standing as the russians didnt use their veto power. They abstained. And the chinese. And the chinese at the russian the more Important Party because the russians often follow the russian decision. That then began a sequence of events involving libya that still plays out to this day. Its set a precedence that the russians became worried about because it gave the United States or set a precedence for the us going into or the west nato allies going in using force against a country where the on their mandate and outside of europe. Guest this really is a well trotted russian mass. They knew exactly what authority we were getting when we negotiated that resolution and i made a very plain statement that i reconstruct in the book before the Security Council when i explained that the us with our partners were seeking un authority to protect civilians who were threatened by qaddafi in benghazi that meant we were going to use air power might take out not Just Aircraft but Libyan Forces if they were marching on civilian targets. I made clear exactly what we were asking for. At the russians herded in the Security Council and also in moscow and the four reasons that we can only speculate on and i do talk about in the book, the russians didnt block that resolution and my speculation is that they actually thought we were going to get so embroiled in a bad situation that it would be to our detriment and therefore to their benefit so i think they were tried to give us enough rope to hang ourselves but nonetheless they gave it to us and we did manage to protect civilians and to protect benghazi and not state the worstcase scenario and it did lead to qaddafis rule and the russians now in retrospect like to claim somehow we exceeded the mandate. Thats not true. It did lead them to be more cautious subsequently, for sure. It also led to probably one of the most controversial part of your life and that was a year later Chris Stevens who is there for very long time and had been noble spending a year in benghazi during the uprising had gone back as ambassador to turkey flew into benghazi and as we know he was murdered. You were played out on the face of five sunday tv shows as a person to explain and that got you in a lot of trouble. There were people, a lot of republicans who felt you had been engaged in a coverup of what really happened because you had said at the time that this was in the aftermath of a protest at the us embassy in cairo and that this at the time looked like it might have been spontaneous. What is your side of the story . Guest first of all, the most important part of all of this is where you began. We lost more americans in a horrific terrorist attack and Chris Stevens was not only a colleague but also a friend i valued and we all feel the enormous weight of that lost to this day one of the tragedies, one of the many tragedies about the socalled talking points, and the subsequent controversy i another staff got into was that it obscured the important fact that we had lost americans and we need to hear how ny and what to do about it in the future edit also soured washington as you know on anything to do with libya so at a time when american policy mightve still had a positive impact in terms of helping Libyan Society recover incoherent after qaddafi we all walked away, so coming back to my sunday show that i described in the book, first of all my brilliantly to mother who you know this extraordinaire force in my life had warned me not to go on the sunday shows in a conversation i describe in detail in the book. She intuitively thought it was not going to turn out well. I wasnt looking to go on the sunday shows. In fact, as i say i was planning to take my children on that saturday before this sunday to ohio state to the Football Game so they could see their first big ten Football Game and i kept that promise to my kids. I took them and came back and then the next day when on the sunday shows. The problem was that i was asked to provide the best current information that our Intelligence Community had in unclassified and i use talking points that had been prepared and screened by the Intelligence Community. It was the best current information we had and i knew it to be the best current information because i was reading the classified version as well in the oval office. I went on the shows unexplained that this information was preliminary and could change, but heres what we understood to be the case at the time and i laid it out and presumably predictably according to my mother elements of that information ended up changing down the road and so within 10 days or so after i went on the sunday shows the Intelligence Community issued a statement saying that what they had given me and others in terms of information at that point was the best internet at the time but it had changed in certain respects. Long story short, robin, after all the investigation had been done, after all the information ultimately came to light the talking points i was given were wrong in action one critical respect and that is that there was no demonstration outside of our facility outside our facility in benghazi but the point was it was an election year, i was the administration spokesperson. Of the republicans decided to attack me as a liar and as someone who is either incompetent or in trust with a the permission i provided and it spiraled into a pretty sustained personal attack on my intelligence and integrity. Host and ultimately cost you the job of secretary of state c to hold on, i cant know that for sure and i dont say that in the book. I say what it did do ultimately was caused me too sadie president obama and say publicly that i dont want to be considered anymore. Host i have always wondered, you feel like you are the sacrificial lamb that you are not the obvious choice to put on a sunday show whether it was the secretary of state Hillary Clinton nor someone from the counter and terrorism on the community brennan, someone else from the National Security channel. You are not the logical choice. Do you feel like you are thrown out there . Guest i dont. Host really . Guest i really dont. I think my mother did. I dont. Let me explain. In the first instance, you know the administration did ask and i write about this secretary clinton issued on the show. They came to me after she declined and i assumed and was led to believe she declined because she had had an incredibly emotional exhausting weekend and didnt want to go out. You know, they could have asked the National Security advisor or other people but this is the sort of thing they had asked me too do before and i had done before. It was also 10 days before the start of the un General Assembly and the issues that sunday were not just about benghazi, but the tax on our facilities around the world, the upcoming un General Assembly meeting, iran and Prime Minister and at yahoo israel visit to the un so there were a bunch of issues beyond benghazi which were in my socalled wheelhouse, but what i think was my mistake and im quite candid about it in the book was my disposition, my instinct is when im on a team and the leader of the team, in this case the white house, asks me too do something i typically want to say yes. And the cows was incapable of doing the job any differently than anyone else and i said yes. When i realized subsequently is that maybe other of my colleagues were keeping their heads down because they understood that often in a crisis situation that is inevitably going to become politicized that the messenger, not just the message gets attacked and i learned that the hard way. Host we have limited time now. You went on to the nsc instead of the secretary of state and you have a graphic description of the job. Most days the job of National Security advisor seems infamous, weight feels like a huge slab of concrete constantly resting on ones torso. Your little torso. Fortunately i can still breathe and function under that pressure even as more and more bricks were piled on top of the original slab and there were a lot. Lets try to go through them quickly because i want to get to the subject of race in america and some of those issues. Edward snowden, wikileaks reveal the United States had been tapping the leaders up 38 friendly countries which led to real anger among whether its the chancellor of germany or the president of brazil, and you write about how for six much you spent mopping up that mess. What to damage it did it do . Some people look at him as a hero. Guest i view him as a traitor. Host and what do you think first of all what did you have to do during the six month and would is the Lasting Legacy . Guest well, without getting into classified information, i see in the book that the snowdon week didnt or missed damage our National Security and waste the American People in ways the American People will never fully comprehend, but it cost us the ability to use tools we needed to use and i think to this day the cost and consequences endure now, what i spent my six months doing after those leaks was never one trying to help with other Senior Administration repair the relationships with our closest partners. Number two, to go to a complicated and intensive interagency process where we tried to look at how we were approaching our use and collection of such intelligence and to make sure that we had the proper safeguards in place and so that was a very involved process that led by january 2014, the president issued a whole new set of guidelines as to how we approach the collection and dissemination of this information. The, cant overstate how much damage as noted did edwards noted did in particular by rushing to russias arms where he remains. I gather he has his own book out now in which he tells his side of the story. From my vantage point, if you are a loyal american you dont steal secrets and give them to an adversary and put them out in public. Host you mentioned Vladimir Putin and the calls president obama had with him and one of the funniest lines in the book is that no call with the Vladimir Putin was a short usually lasting 90 minutes and that sometimes he would keep the president waiting just to take the call during which time president obama might play scrabble on his ipad. But of insight into the ministration, so what was the engagement with Vladimir Putin like cracks did you ever feel like we could do business with him or that he i mean, you left right after discovery that the russians had intervened in the 2016 president ial election 32 theres no question that Vladimir Putin personally and his objective are antithetical to our interests there is nothing one can say about his objectives that align in any meaningful way now with hours and the interference in her election is just the most glaring example appeared there were examples over the years where we worked with the russians like, Iran Nuclear Deal and getting a Large College of chemical weapons removed from syria, but you engage with Vladimir Putin without trusting him is my judgment and thats what is celebrating about how i think President Trump has engaged with a white american. He has privileged his word over that of our own experts in the Intelligence Community, but the flip side of that ironically is that phone calls with Vladimir Putin were not screaming matches. They were actually quite civil and involved in respectful even if they were adversarial in their substance and then i of course had a number of experiences engaging with Vladimir Putin personally and directly when he was at meetings with or at summits where president obama was attending and i also can attest personally that he is a creep alleged as it relates to women and i had mentioned this in the book as well where he had an opportunity at a reception in normandy, france, dday anniversary and president obama and i were at this reception in a large room. Obama was across the room and i was unfortunately by myself as the only american with Vladimir Putin and his National Security advisor and he made some unwelcome comments about my cockiness. Host one thing thats striking about Vladimir Putin is how strong he is. I was with him in the same hotel lobby in chile during a conference and i was pushed aside by one of his bodyguards and i turned around and i could looking in the high and i realized this is a man who i think has issues. Guest well, he has issues whether its a function of his physique or not i cant say. Host what are you worried about terms of russian intervention in terms of of the russian the election. Guest its important for the American People to understand it has not stopped. This has been constant. They were actively involved in 2016 as we saw through hack events dealing emails from the dnc from john podesta and others. They tried to infiltrate our electrical system the twhirl system putting out false information then they were active on social media trying to pit americans against each other over domestic issues of contention whether its razor immigration organs or what have you in the whole thing is to discredit our democracy to cause people in this country to hate one another entered against one another and to try to weaken us from within and they continue to do that every day since 2016. Not just in the context of every two years of a National Election and so we have every reason to be concerned that they will continue their efforts in 2020 and intensify them with learning from the holes we plug to trade around the and im very worried that congress under majority leader mcconnells leadership has not been enough to help us defend against that threat. Host we have less than five minutes i want to get back to your personal story. First of all, your son, jake, is that your alma mater at stanford and despite the politics of your family he see, republican, a trump supporter prolife and taken positions that are in many ways very different from yours. Whats it like and also you write about the interesting debates you have within the family. Guest well, my husband and i tried to raise our kids to be independent thinkers and to have the courage of their convictions and unfortunately we succeeded. Our daughter on the one hand who substantially to the left of us and our son on the other hand who is substantially to the right of us and they are both wonderful kids whom we love deeply, but it makes for interesting dinnertable conversation and at their bright but engaged in issues of the day, but with my son in particular there is some pretty stark differences between us. You know, that is not easy, but the good news is that personally we are very close and we talk about these things sometimes that higher decibel levels than others, but i respect him and i think he respects me very much and i have learned a lot from him because he gives me an insight into the values in the thinking of a huge and important segment of our country. Host my last question in this is getting back to race. You were born three years before the Supreme Court decision on mildred [inaudible] its very interesting that you have grown up in a period where we have seen a real consciousness about Race Relations, but also some real challenges on Race Relations. You have an interracial marriage as well and im wondering given what we have gone through whether its charlottesville, parkland, ferguson, that the shootings by white policeman of africanamerican, your reflections unfortunately briefly on the state of Race Relations in the United States the 21st century. Guest i think if you look at the long arc of history, theres the next regnery progress. My father was born in segregated South Carolina and grew up under jim crow and had to fight in the segregated army in world war ii at tuskegee with the airman and he was deeply wounded by the fact that german pows were able to eat in restaurants that he couldnt enter. So, you have to look at the long arc of history and yes, three years after i was both only been in 15 or 16 states this country could i have married my husband. So, i think we are growing and evolving in a positive direction, but we are also having enormous internal divide and setbacks and there are many people i think who have great difficulty still in this country with people who look like me. I dont think its the majority. I think its a shrinking minority, but perhaps increasingly vocal and i take no joy insane i think they had been emboldened and incurred by much of what they hear out of President Trump who has given license to those who hate, both sides on Charlotte Bill charlottesville, his attacks on women of color who are members of covers having i could go on, but there is a segment still of our society i hope increasingly small that still has substantial racial prejudice in the barrier structural barriers, social barriers to mobility are still very real for many people who look like me and not just africanamericans, but latinos and others so we have real challenges ahead of us and we can to declare victory and assume this challenge of our original sends us so to speak of race and slavery has been wiped away. It has been, but what worries me most about this moment is rather than working together to heal those divisions and understand we are all human beings and in this both us together in leadership that use it as advantageous to pit us against each other and that worries me and i concluded the book with the call for us to come together across our political divisions as i must do in my own home but we need to do on a National Level in order to strengthen and save our democracy and preserve our Global Leadership in National Security. Host susan rice, tough love, good luck with the book tour. Guest thanks, robin. Host takes for joining us. This program is available as a podcast, all afterwards programs can be viewed on our website at book tv. Org civic cspan the city tour is exploring the american story as we take book tv in American History tv on the road with support from our buckeye brought down