Transcripts For CSPAN2 Paul Richter The Ambassadors 20240713

Here with us this evening. We crossed paths a lot when i was a journalist with the Washington Post covering the pentagon and he was reporting for the Los Angeles Times based in washington over several decades he wrote about National Security and foreignpolicy on both the pentagon and state department and he held other important assignments for the times before leaving the paper about four years ago. Paul was seen as one of the journalistic prose in this cityy on the National Security affairs and in his new book he applies his Extensive Knowledge of americas National Security establishment to highlight the valuable role played by some veteran diplomats. He singles out for in particular, ryan crocker, and patterson and Chris Stevens. How significant officers these days folks work with our military and intelligence communities in such countries of afghanistan, iraq, serious, pakistan and libya to combat terrorism and manage the challenging situations. At a time when the u. S. Diplomatic corps is being downsized and disparaged, pauls book is a reminder of the vital contributions made by some of the state departments finest, the risks they sometimes had to take and the courage theyve often shown. The professionalism and highmindedness of our diplomats were of course on display during the days of the impeachment hearings in th the house and the Senior State Department officials stepped forward to tell what they saw, thought and heard while the political bosses have declined so far to testify. Paul will be in conversation here with someone else who knows his way around both the pentagon and state department but as an insider john kirby spent 29 years in the navy specializing in Public Affairs and to become the top spokesman then the chief spokesman for the department of defense. During the final year and a half or so of the Obama Administration he now appears on cnn as an analyst of military and diplomatic issues. Ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming paul richter and john kirby. [applause] thanks for coming out on a cold night here in dc. I dont think there could be a better time for a book like paul because the Career Foreign Service has been brought to the floor of americas imagination in light of the impeachment inquiry and it doesnt matter where you are on the political side or you are for or against what they are doing. You can see just by watching any little bit of the testimony the last couple of weeks how professional and skilled peace men and women are in the ride from that some of the attributes they bring to the effort and they bring this going to professionalism to what they do, so id like to start because i know this was a bit long in the making but what gave you the idea for the topic, and by those Foreign Service officers . I started thinking about this when i started working the state department i was covering right after 9 11 and i noticed pretty soon but every time there was a new crisis in some part of the world, usually the middle east or south asia the Senior Management turned to one of the small groups of the same trusted veterans to be ambassadors. They rotated from crisis to crisis for years to all these places where there was always extra pay for danger or always risks to them, but somehow they were trusted and i thought if i could get to these people, i bet they would have a terrific story and it would help me understand more about what to think about the middle east and all these adventures that we have had many of which seems to go so wrong. I settled on four. These are not the only people in the category, but i thought they were especially good examples and we kind of told the story in the same 15 year period so the first one i chose was ryan crocker is a six time ambassador and in the period that im writing about come he went to afghanistan twice and led embassy in iraq once the kind of height of the civil war. I also chose and patterson whos had just about every bad job in the state department. During the period that im writing about, she was the ambassador to pakistan and then the ambassador to egypt and went on later to become the state Top Department official for the middle east as well. I also chose robert ford who was in this period political counselor for nn number two in the embassy in iraq. He took five tours in iraq, think about that. He had doubts about the war all along and yet he volunteered five times to go. I think he had more times in iraq in this period than any other Foreign Service officer. After it was over he sent him to syria which sounded like it was going to be a home or maybe boring gauge and then immediately the war broke out and then the last person that i decided to focus on those Chris Stevens. You all probably know of him, he was the number two in the Libya Embassy before the civil war and then when the civil war broke out in 2011, washington needed somebody to go into libya to sneak into the kind of washingtons eyes and ears on the ground, somebody that would figure out who the rebels were and try to find out who was important and what they needed to know about him. There is a lot o a lot of foreiy in the book but its mostly about these four people and their struggles against the bad guys and their struggles against different local leaders and countries and some struggled with washington as you could imagine especially those of you that have been in government service, you know all about that. So these were ambassadors kind of in a different mold from most ambassadors and in calm places they functioned largely to pass on messages between washington and foreign leaders but these were all situations where there was chaos, violence, everything was uncertain and in a number of the situations the bosses in washington had to send them in and ask them to kind of improvised to figure out what needed to be done and with whom and make it up as they went along. To give you one example of that, ryan crocker in early 2002 after the taliban government had fallen, crocker went into afghanistan to try to help the formation of a new government and the interim leader was hamid karzai who had been a schoolteacher and publicist but had no experience running a country and so he and crocker got together every morning at the palace and the first question always would be what the hell do we do now. So, together they picked a cabinet and tried to settle on an agenda for this new states that have almost no money. They had to try to make peace before the warlords who were feuding and tried to kill each other. It was a long struggle. I spoke to a cia officer who was there at the time and the cia was in first in afghanistan and he said that sometimes karzai needed to be given a little kick. He didnt know what he was doing, he was a little passive but if he needed a little kick, crocker was according to the cia official. All these people faced a love of danger. Robert ford when he went to iraq at first, they sent him down to be the one man occupation government for the province and there was nobody there. There was a battalion of marines that there was no government. There was nobody in charge. The utilities were broken down, the employers in the province had stopped operating so it was just a vacuum and the shia militia were getting organized to take over and assert their authority so for granted them immediately and it became attached because the authorities in baghdad could allow alternate governments to take hold so one day forward was on a trip to a village to speak to a religious leader. He sat down with the leader, had a few cups of tea and suddenly the shia militia broke him, broke the door down, grabbed his translator who was a young iraqi dental student, took him outside and began beating him and had announced to crocker and his military aid they were holding them indefinitely if i said crocker i. Meant for. It looked like they might be stuck there for who knows how long until ford realized he had a meeting later that day with an official of the same militia so he talked these militiamen into releasing them but it was a close call. Afterwards, he said to the military aid i want to go on and have that meeting with their boss later on tonight and the military aide said o are you cry if my car we are going back to the base. Later on during the tour he got crossed up with the militia of another leader who became a big danger to the u. S. And ford was getting death threats. He realized that he was on the list for assassination by the time he left in december of that year. So, later on when ford got to syria, as i said, he expected it to be called and then the civil war broke out immediately. For decided that he was going to protest the fact that the regime was shooting of unarmed demonstrators in the street so that madstreets sothat made himr with the regime. If they attack to the embassy finally and tried to break in through the roof and he had to order the marine guards to shoot at them. There was never really a time that they were safe in these posts. There is a great adage that i love of a diplomat that says yes means maybe. A diplomat says maybe means no in a diplomat that says no is no diplomat. [laughter] but actually, when you look out the story of them, they were not afraid to offer dissenting views in spite of their government, and of course to the leaders that they were working with and i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that strain in the Foreign Service and the dissent channel and what that means a. How each of them were able to use that authority and power and the credibility of the dissent to move the policy forward. The diplomats carryout the Administration Policies without a peep no matter what they think of it. That is what they are supposed to do. They are part of a professional nonpartisan body and that is the way that its supposed to be. They are supposed to be independent that help implement the policy. But they all have their red wines, the personal red wines which sometimes they never meet during the course of a whole for fear but at other times they come out and over the last couple of decades, there has been more because of policy differences and then now with the Trump Administration as you see in the impeachmen impeachmey is the diplomats feel that theres been also abusive powers, so occasionally they do run up against them. If they feel seriously enough about it, they can believe this or they can finally descend through this channel called the dissent channel of the state department that theyve had for a very long time. But, all of the four in my book kind of struggled with this issue at times because they felt strongly about our policy in the middle east in various ways. There wasnt any issue as there is now, but for example, try and crocker strongly disagreed with the decision to go into iraq and they wrote a famous memo that laid out everything that could go wrong and he hoped to pass up the chain and hoped that it would change some minds. It got partway up the chains but it didnt really change their mind because the people wanted to go ahead with the invasion anyway. Ask a point with his staff he said this is going to happen and its going to be the biggest mistake you see outdoor life but you have to make a decision about whether you want to go forward and support this president and for myself, im going to go forward and support him. So, crocker did. He went to baghdad and helped out right after the invasion. He went back again in 2007 to help out as ambassador but he had enough of doubts and misgivings and he said after he retired that they followed all of the Administration Policies and was a lot harder than it sounds as. They sometimes their arguments continued and had an effect over a long period when crocker was in afghanistan in 2011 and the Obama Administration wanted to pull out the troops and basically everybody in the administration were arguing for going slow and the argument was kind of never fully resolved. It just kept going on. That i that is a great segue to my next question. The story of the diplomats is also the story of American Intervention in the middle east and South Central asia to be sure. Were their views of these over the role of america in this part of the world or did they have great differences among them . There were differences but also a lot of commonalities. Most of these Foreign Service people are traditionalists. They believe in the foreignpolicy views they believe they should have a leading role in the world and that our influence is underwritten by force. They are slow to get into conflicts and also slow to get out of them because crocker always says americans are convinced with our influence and military and economic tools we can get in and reshape parts of the world so we try to exert our will but then pretty soon we discover things are not changing as fast as we like and we get discouraged and want to leave so theres a lot of political pressure to move quickly. They understand having the facts in the foreignpolicy take a long time. There was a german sociologist says its like driving a nail slowly through a hard piece of wood, and i think that is the kind of consensus view. People take time and they need more effort than the americans realize. Its often something the military doesnt have some of the themes of the book is the relationship that all if they had relationship that all if they had with their military counterparts. Can you talk about the importance of the relationship in the conflicts and how they were able to manage that maybe some better than others. Through the military and diplomatic corps together in a way they hadnt been thrown together since vietnam and so they had to get along and they often have different agendas and orders from washington and they couldnt always see eye to eye. I remember robert ford telling me that he understood the iraqis better than the american military. So, you know, there are cultural differences that run deep. In the beginning of the iraq period especially, the also in afghanistan there were a lot of conflicts that have been written a lot about between the diplomats and the generals. There were times they went their own way and they were not even communicating with each other. I talked with the junior Foreign Service officers that have seen the generals and ambassadors yelling at each other in front of the iraqis and it was not good. But the problem with all of that granger is that things just dont get it done. So after a while, it became apparent things were not in concert as the Bush Administration became increasingly visible and a disruptive problem. So, by that time David Petraeus and ryan crocker went to iraq during that period where bush was sending more troops to try to calm the civil war, crocker and petraeus realized they needed to get along and work in harmony to get things done otherwise they could kind of divide and conquer. Crocker and petraeus went for long runs and david q. Over issues. Petraeus put a Satellite Office next to crockers office and they would talk about almost everything. He would go and meet with Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and they would know their lines should be. They do without promptin knew wt he would talk about. It wasnt a state and when crocker left afghanistan and iraq in 2009, immediately they began having disagreements with general ray odierno who was in charge of the military. It just wasnt a natural state. One more and then we will start taking questions from you all. All. Theres a microphone over here to the right. Just please queue up and then we will let you have that. Actually, two questions. In the writing of the book, did you learn or stumble across more junior or midlevel officers that you think somebody might be writing a book about in the years to come in terms of their performance and then what would you say to people that are considering the career and who might be a little intimidated and put off . I did come across some who rose quickly through the ranks and had incredible talent. When Chris Stevens was in israel in about 2000 to 2002, he worked for some really talented guys that worked for him. Stevens was then number two in the part of the embassy that dealt with the palestinians. He had working for him a young man and another named Jeffrey Beall for both went on to be outstanding u. S. Officials. He had been a cia officer and had come over as a specialist that worked for the state department and was an outstanding performer in iraq and ran for Congress Last year in Hudson Valley of new york and did not make it. It was a hotly contested seat. He ended up being president obamas top adviser on i think much of the middle east at one point in the second term. In terms of the future for the young Service Officers, its been difficult because they watched how the Trump Administration reduced the size of the Foreign Service and number of applicants for the Foreign Service fell for the peak of 20,000 a year to 8,000 so a lot of people have been discouraged but i know a lot of people, Foreign Service officers to teach young people and i have a friend at Johns Hopkins and they say there is still a huge demand for these jobs. I think that the testimony that we have seen in the impeachment inquiry is going to increase the demand because they see that they are consequential to interesting and they can really be fun, so i think that we are going to find there is still going to be a demand. You wrote about an interesting moment related to this because the book is about going to the worst places and doing the hardest jobs where they are trying to get the state department and congress to build up the embassy and staff it up with a lot more Foreign Service officers. Have you had trouble getting people to sign up to go and they had a big town hall with the state department where they are encouraging people to go and there was a debate of stop. Maybe you can ask described that and the mission in iraq. There was a period during that time when i spoke about the then secretary of state and the people in the white house really wanted to do more Foreign Service officers into iraq. They were saying we need volunteers for these jobs and your career is going to depend on it so they begin pressuring people. A lot of the Foreign Service officers had not gone into the career expecting that they would be exposed to a lot o the dangeo there was a meeting in the state department where some disgruntled employees claimed maybe it was to be director general and one guy that spent his career in europe. If i get killed are you going to take care of my children so they got quite angry, and the director general had to kind of closclosed meetings of roughly d this didnt help the image of the Foreign Service. A lot of people thought that the Foreign Service was shirking while they were out there risking their lives. The number three in the department went to thanksgiving dinner with his sister in virginia that monday and said why arent they stepping up when the troops are at risk. So it was painful to hear that, but that was kind of the impression that was left. However, after all of this, it turned out that eventually they got all of the volunteers be needed and all the jobs were filled and nobody had to be penalized for not knowing. Please feel free to step up to the microphone if you have any questions. I also wanted to pull on this other string in the book which is attention diplomats have with their own set of values and integrity and character. Many of them are honest men and women, but they struggled sometimes with having to deal with people. They were able to reconcile working with the leaders that they didnt like and were not convinced serving our national interest. They had authoritarian leaders that didnt necessarily share our values. It is a tough dilemma because a lot of the Foreign Service officers in afghanistan for example thought so much of the Afghan Government was corrupt people who didnt have the interest. Part of the job especially for the ambassador is, you know, focused on these individual leaders and the ambassadors have to go every day to the palace and knock on the front door and no matter how they feel about people like all these characters, theyve got to get along with them and build trust with them because that is part of the relationship. The u. S. Asks a lot of the leaders to do things they dont necessarily want to do. They are politically risky for them and if they do not have confidence in the ambassador they dont have trust in the ambassadoambassador then it isng to work. It is a personal relations business so theyve got to learn to swallow their misgivings. A a lot o lot of nurturing ae relationships you have a question. Thank you for the talk and for taking your time. We are committed to revitalizing the state department and because of both yours unique perspectives on Health Department operated during the bush and Obama Administrations, but this actually take to create the situation on the ground to attract that kind of talent. In 2009 we had a barack obama that was a star among these people that wanted to come in and revitalizing the secretary Hillary Clinton pointed. It doesnt require that level of talent and crises to bring back those talented young people into the fray to begin the arduous process of the Foreign Service packs debate could i think theres a certain amount of motivation among these people to make a contribution. And i think that if they see that there is a need to think that is one thing that will draw them. One of these issues is going to be a motive for a lot of young people. I also think if i could it is also about feeling like that service is valued and one of the things i hear when i talked to the Foreign Service Junior Officers many of them are not quite sure that the idea of diplomacy and that Foreign Policy of the less selfinterested Foreign Policy is off value right now and that is putting some of them off a little bit. In a way it isnt like being in the military. I like being in the navy because i think it is a value of the service that they are struggling with right now. Im Tracy Wilkinson with the Los Angeles Times and i have the task of succeeding paul in the state department. What they saw as the importance of the media to get the message out or to not get the message out, was it a hostile adversarial relationship, was at one of more collaborative or where they saw each others oths roles contrasted with what we have today . , befor among the four there were different attitudes. You might notice, for got alongg well with the press and he was hoping this would constantly even though i wasnt there he helped me out a lot and ryan crocker was the same way friends going back to lebanon during the civil war there. People like robin wright and tom friedman. So, crocker has always gotten along well and he knows they all knew maybe with the exception of chris, they knew what the rules were for the press and what to expect of them. I think Anne Patterson was a little leery because she could sometimes be so candid that she would say too much and so we reporters loved her but sometimes she could get in trouble. She always kind of got anxious when she was with the press. But they would always be forthcoming if they had an opportunity. Thanks for the buck and for the interesting discussion. Was in damascus with ambassador for her during that time. Looking at the role of diplomats, a lot of what was reported as when things go right. In the quiet places when actually we are not engaged in reacting to violence or in a crisis but through our work presented in the crisis but that often doesnt get reported as much because things are normal. How do you see the role of the press in creating the environment where the work of preventing the crisis is more valued and its routine diplomacy might be more valued than the sort of sensational aspect of reacting to the crisis . Well, i think there are ways to write about things going right but its just the nature of the beast that the press is going to report about when there is news and action that is not regular, so i dont know if there is any way around that. Part of it is expectations, news coverage. Airplanes are not supposed to crash and so when they do it makes the news. But, wouldnt you say and he kind of touched on this that access to and Relationship Building with the media is important because thats if you do have a situation where it is a rather completed issue on a policy that you are trying to drive home. It doesnt necessarily make spectacular headlines but if you have a relationship with the press you can at least get some discussion of it and maybe even some coverage and i think that all of that to some degree, i didnt know mr. Stevens but the others i think we try to attend those media relationships just as strongly as they tended relationships in those countries. Right, i think thats right. And if you were spending time with the press and the planning to them the many dimensions of a situation and one of these countries, they are going to find Something Interesting in there because theres always Something Interesting. It is about conversations. Barbara harvey, retired Foreign Service officer. Im sorry, i am very short. My experience was particularly in talking about things like human rights it was possible to bring in the congress and say we understand what youre going through, but dont understand the beat could forget we have a congress at that time it was the congress very concerned about human rights and so if you want more airplanes or Something Like that, you have to be sure that you are not beating up on people, shooting people, so the congress has a role also. I guess that isnt a question. Space you could especially on the human rights issue which is really what youre talking about. They definitely do. They are the ones who are kind of setting the rules often. When patterson was in columbia from 2000 to 2003 commissioners in a situation where the u. S. Was aiding the government is a lot of military hardware because the government was threatened by this insurgency which basically taking control of a lot of columbias land. But the u. S. Was concerned that the military and some of the militias that worked with it were guilty of human rights abuses and the congress had enacted laws that said that if they were going to continue to get aid from the u. S. , they have to follow certain guidelines. So, patterson went and met with the these military leaders and said you know, you are not going to get money because congress has so comes the congress in that situation definitely had a strong role. My name is riley. My question is how do you think that our foreign counterparts perceive the Foreign Service differently or whether it does in light of the president s attempt to denigrate the Foreign Service and how do you think that the Foreign Service officers are able to make commitments on a lower level when the Foreign Policy o at the executive level is operating inconsistently at best and maybe capriciously at first . Your first question was how to come how to analyze, Foreign Services look at the Foreign Service is currently. Well, i mean i think we have a different system than so many of our allies because we allow non career people to become ambassadors. And i think a lot of our allies even in countries like china and russia were crazy to allow these former Business People t businee running an embassy. I think now they probably are perplexed by whats going on with the Foreign Service. What was the second part of your question again . How are the foreign sovereignty because of his officers speak to the Foreign Policy. Right. I think that its a problem for them in general because now the Foreign Service has been kind of reduced in stature and so many of the decisions for example in ukraine they are being made by others outside of the process of the state department and so the foreign leaders and even the diplomats are learning you need to go to the president s Political Network and pay less attention to the career diplomats were articulating the policy the way that it is to be. My question follows up on the questions about the press. My question follows on the ones about the press and im wondering after studying the phenomenon that you did after the fact how well you thought the press at the time covered the story including i guess yourself. I can take that one. [laughter] well, you know there was a lot written and said about how they fell down on the job before the iraq invasion there was too much support for this policy that turned out so badly and there was only a few journalists in town who were deeply skeptical about the invasion of iraq at the time and the ones who were dubious and become like she rose now in movies and things like that, so that was a big mistake and there wasnt enough there definitely wasnt enough skepticism about it. I think later on the press have certainly been skeptical ever since. Hello and thank you very much for taking the time. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about who you think the audience for the buck is and related to that, what you thindoyou think the foreign sere could do to tell the story better to the american public. Thats an interesting question. I was talking to the head of the Foreign Service union the other day and he was of course worried about whats going to happen next with the Foreign Service, but he said they were going to try to take advantage of this crisis by trying to get out the word about wha the foreign serve does and how it helping americans even though they dont know if its helping promote business and prevent the spread of disease and all sorts of things that the public isnt aware of basically. It has a real image problem. A lot of ordinary americans who just dont know anything about the Foreign Service think thats the diplomats are these people who drink cocktails in evening dress and wear bow ties like george kent. So it would really be useful if the Foreign Service if they were able to get the word out. In terms of the audience for the buck, i mean i hope for a general readership as i say it is more a book about the struggles with these people than it is about the details of the Foreign Policy. But i thought i would have a particular audience with people who were thinking about going into the Foreign Service because if you want to know you know, what its like for the people that have some of the best jobs or at least the most challenging jobs, i think that the book is a pretty good account of it. As it ends with a great line from the College Students that want to be where the action is, this is the job for you. Crocker always made a lot of jokes about brussels and paris and how boring they were. People say i dont think western europe is important but of course western europe is important. You need to go there to make a connection, claim a connection to someplace interesting. [laughter] in researching and writing the book, were there surprises for you . Because you covered these people for a long time and these events for a long time. Did you uncover something new and surprising that you hadnt thought about or have seen before . One thing that was interesting that i hadnt read about anywhere was Chris Stevens when he died, people just correctly praised him but people didnt know he had such misgivings about the iraq war. He really agonized over it. He was under a lot of pressure like all Foreign Service officers to go to iraq. He was young and arabist who spoke the language well into the region really well and he was kind of under special pressure. Robert ford called him a couple times from iraq and said will you come here and join us. But he just really didnt want to work in a militarized environment. He felt that he would be kind of a fifth wheel. He was indeed really giving the orders making the important relationships and he would have to go around and have these protective gear all the time. So, he did what he could to stay away from the war even though that kind of risk his career prospects. Now of course it turned out that this wasnt because he was afraid of taking a risk because he went into libya and was risking and ultimately lost his wife. I wondered if the book touches of all on the changes that have come to the Foreign Service with the advent of social media and technology and how the diplomats are dealing with new challenges and complexities in some kind of direct visible Public Diplomacy that seems to have been before everyones eyes. I do have one section about how robert ford experimented with it back in the early days, 2011 when social media was, you know, not what it is today. He was in a situation where he was shut out of most of the tv and official media in syria said he wanted to work around them to use social media to get out the word and explain to the syrians with the u. S. Position on all of this was. And so, he used social media to engage in kind of a back and forth with syrian about the policy and there were a lot of people who were on the side of the regime and argued bitterly with him and he argued back and also used social media to carry images, satellite images. I think it was a Government Military placement the government said no, we havent had any troops or any heavy increment in such and such town and so ford would put up pictures of these artillery right there so he found his way. He wasnt getting much instruction from smart knowledgeable young people about how to use social media. It was just kind of you know, he clumsily experimented as he could. My question i worked on the hill for ten years and a lot of my job involved keeping track of how much of the Foreign Policy activities were migrating into uniform into the services. There was all this peace and stability operation and dozens of acronyms that we call this peacekeeping in the regular warfare where i can go on and on. It seems to me that theres a chance right now for the state department to tell a different story about itself and about the u. S. Presence in the world but is especially possible because the restrictions of the postcold war impact that didnt allow for americans serving in the civilian foreignpolicy to talk about what they did domestically and this was finally revised and gotten rid of a few years ago. And it was kind of making it less relevant anyway and more obsolete. But it seems to me that theres got to be a better way and more consistent way for the Foreign Service officers and others in the state department to show up in public in the United States and telling a story about the change in the world and especially to sort of get some of that institutional memory back from the pentagon because it really was obvious to me when i worked on the hill that so much of our experience in the International Relations were happening on the other side of the river. And its a lot because congress will not fund the civilian side of the Foreign Policy like it will mix in uniform its obvious in the hearings. You can see on the nato hearing the dod shows up with six people and a beautiful multimedia show and the state Department Person sometimes talks and answers questions really well, but what do you think the whole civilian side of our International Presence could be doing now that it isnt always just these scandalous or crisis moments but they show up and people love them for it like the last couple of weeks. An Education Program and a domestic usa what could we do . It is tough. Talking to the head of the Foreign Service union he was talking about doing kind of basic Public Affairs work, getting the word out that they have been trying to do this for years and it is just difficult because the Foreign Service doesnt have the pizzazz. Just think of the movies, books, tv shows about military and special forces. As richard haas on the council of Foreign Relations said there is no parade for diplomats. There is the tv show madame secretary. But i would say two things, and i noticed having been the spokesman at the pentagon and then moving over to the state, i give great credit to his team they were able to get the merger done at the Public Bureau and Public Affairs and at th that te bureau called International Information programs which now is the goal and we are allowed to be more communication with the American People about what we are doing overseas and youre right, in a way it was we could never get the two groups merged. We wanted to, but theyv but tht now and i think that they call the bureau of the global Public Affairs co. It is a bigger mandate and they are just Getting Started so i think we have to sort of see how this ironed out, but the other thing is what struck me when i took the podium at the state department decided to sit in these morning meetings and to see all these wonderful things the Career Foreign Service officers were out there doing and put it on as i want to open up my briefing with the fact that its a great anecdote and i would get shut down because either the head of the bureau or the ambassador in the country would say no, no come you cant say that. You can talk about what youre doing because we want the host government to own this program or policy i policy if it gets ee want them to take credit for it so it was very frustrating for a military spokesman to come into the state department and not be able to talk these wonderful stories. We talk about what we do and we have a lot of money to throw at it. It was more difficult at the state department but they also respected why. I respected that this work was about advancing other peoples interests and our own at the same time and that meant being willing to take a little bit of a back seat. I dont know that there is an answer to that because i dont know if culturally it is even going to be acceptable to people in the Foreign Service or in keeping with what they believe their mission to be. It is a tough problem to solve. But i do think that the impeachment inquiry has brought to the floor saw this professionalism and the buck does, too. Anybody who is young and considering a career in the Foreign Service definitely, pick this book up. We have been going through what i think is a look back on as kind of an unusual period of foreign military. Things will probably get back to less of that and the diplomatic corps will have more problem. Military leaders will tell you the same thing. Theyve been at the floor of the conflicts and they are looking for a chance to reset and a disorder focus on more of the nationstate threats like russia, china and iran but that has been hard to do when you were involved in interventions that are of a lengthy duration in the middle east it is difficult. This might be the last one. You touched on this briefly. What is the relationship between the career Service Officers and these ambassadors and the political investors . They work for them when they are the ambassador. And usually, theres often this relationship where you know, some political appointee who is from a different line of work maybe he was in business or in politics sometimes a. A. [inaudible] hotel magnet, exactly. They go and they are the ambassador but the real brains of the embassy is the number two tells the ambassador what to do so it is often the relationship. But for the most part, they have to get along. Its kind of an unusual relationship thats the way that its supposed to work. I would add taking your point there have been some terrific ambassadors who have political appointees as well. I think of Caroline Kennedy in japan and her appointment with so much to the japanese people because of course her father had been willing to be the first president of japan after world war ii and there were many others that i saw at the state department and most of them when they do this job, they are giving up a lot of their time and most of it is out of the service of dedication to the country. Im not saying that everybody has the purest of motives, but the one that i saw in my time. I think that goes to the point in the book that those jobs com, those hard jobs and very difficult places are best placed for Career Foreign Service officers who have at the time in the training to do it and youre right, most of the political appointees go to more state countries in particular in western europe, but they are in my experience doing this out of a sense of loyalty, dedication. Some countries like the southeast like to have not as a career person or someone close to the president is kind of thed of the way they see the world. That is another aspect of it is how much can be ambassadors speak for the president and can they pick up the phone and get them to make decisions right away. Thank you very much for coming. This is terrific. [applause] thank you. Copies of the book the ambassadors are available at the checkout desk and paul will be up here signing. Please form a line to the right of the table. Normally we asked you to pull up your chairs that dont do that tonight, because we need them in place. Thank you again for coming. Boo watch them online, booktv. Org. Nice to have everyone here this evening. Look forward to our conversation. To my far right, i will hopefully get permission to call you sam. S. C gwynne is a graduate of princeton, Johns Hopkins where he and a masters degree in writing, he is the author of rebel yell the violence, passion, and redemption of