Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20150412

Moment. Welcome. I am mark rosella the International Affairs here at George Mason University and we are delighted to have mark bone here to do a presentation based on his latest book which i had the pleasure to read in draft form and we talked about it at length. It is excellent work. I am thrilled that he is here to make a presentation based on the research he has done in his six years as does well in the situation room at the white house. I am first going to introduce my colleague, the director of our center for politics and Foreign Relations than he is going to make the formal introduction or speaker. I teach a class on the presidency from jfk to obama, so im going to use this for my next few classes. What i like about this book presidency in crisis from truman to obama is that at the end of each crisis or decisionmaking problem in the white house from truman through obama, he does an assessment which gives it an interesting background. You see what jfk did their in decisionmaking during the cuban missile crisis and he looks at how cautious he was and what happened. Its excellent, interesting and intriguing book. The author has been a career Naval Intelligence officer for 20 years. Hes also worked in the Nixon White House was social military aid, how to let nixons daughter. And then he ran the situation room in the white house under reagans second term. Since then hes been in the atlantic council, so he raised a very interesting background. He not only writes about what happens in the white house, he writes about what happens on the golf course. And he writes about sports in the 1920th. Ill introduce the author, michael bohn. [applause] thank you. Thank you for coming. It is an interesting beginning of this book. Part of it is because i was at the white house and i got to see how president reagan handled crises and then i started writing about other crises that have been. It occurred to me that people on the sideline and there are plenty of them, dont have a clue how hard it is to manage an International Craze says that comes after the 3 00 a. M. Phone calls and unanticipated crisis. Everyone on the sideline, mostly opposing politicians and pundits who oppose the president s policy dont have a clue. They get to say anything they want to without any consequence of their ideas. And its both sides of the aisle. They dont have any skin in the game so they dont have the worry if their idea doesnt go well because nothing happens to them. My initial message is that its harder than it looks. This is the cover. I want to open with a little bit of an anecdote. During the iran hostage crisis as jimmy carter in the teams 79 it ended the minute that Ronald Reagan finished the oath of office on his inauguration and the iranians let the hostages go. But it was a difficult situation for president carter because if he was too aggressive to solve the hostage problem, they would kill the hostages. He tried to be cautious and he was generally except for one exception. But governor reagan was running in the republican primary in march, april 1980 leading up to the 1980 election. He had a lot to say about what jimmy carter ought to be doing and he said things like this is a national disgrace. He is just dillydallying. If our president , i would give them an ultimatum and i would do this and do that. Five years later hezbollah terrorists hijacked a twa airliner over europe and took all the passengers and crews hostage. They flew back and worth between beirut and algeria several times, kill an american dumped them on the tarmac in beirut. Ultimately reagan made a deal with the israelis to meet the terrorist demands and promised assad he would retaliate. It is a no deal deal. And when asked about it we did make a deal, but he negotiated cautious way. All of a sudden he was in jimmys shoes. He did the same thing jimmy carter did. A couple weeks later the wall street journal called him jimmy reagan because he betrayed the promise he made that he would take swift and effective action. I was there for a lot of the times where we didnt really take their effect in action during crises. Even as people looked back at president reagans in some cases the good old days when i am here to tell you its much harder to do what governor reagan said he was going to do when he became president. This is my going away. I was at duty navy running the white house situation room. I had nothing to do with the parties involved. I had been recruited to come over and take over the situation room, which is not just a conference room. If the intelligence center. Staff for its 20 for seven over there, twice daily summary. They call people the middle of the night when things happen. The center, the name of my first book so i have a did that only a few people have. I had a front row seat during the reagan administration. That experience allowed me to gain interviews with heavyweight from previous and succeeding administrations. I spoke to former president. People at. Mac and a mayor from the Kennedy Administration and on and on. Henry kissinger, tony lake, you name it all the way through cabinet secretaries and they all told me what happened in this crisis meetings. A lot of times they left minute and god bless john kennedy he taped his conversations so we know exactly what he said which is very helpful. So i was able to develop an analytic model and gain interviews in order to pull in the information they need to recreate a crisis. I did it in a way that reflected narrative. It is as if you are in the room. People are talking. I used a lot of dialogue which i did make out. It all came from the meeting at valve. It is fun to read and takes you through the event of a crisis. I got started on this when i wrote an article for Mcclatchy Newspapers in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the 9 11 attacks. I had the good fortune of meeting and interviewing the people on duty in the sit room that day and who was traveling with president bush that day. So she explained to me what bush did that day, all the places he went, all of his conversations all of his thoughts. That gave me an insight into a profound president ial crisis. And then, the following year i did the same thing for the 50th anniversary of the cuban missile crisis for mcclatchy. As a group of newspapers from miami herald to fort worth to encourage to modesto to sacramento and their wire service. I had the good fortune of having a journal or one of the kennedy advisers see cap that had never been published before. Yesterday wouldve had if he meant. Then it was emergency preparedness. He kept this journal in his children gave copies to me and i woven into the story. In the chapter in the book. In 2013 i read an article for the Washington Post magazine on the 50th anniversary of the hotline. Which you hear about as being a red telephone. Well, it aint and it never was a telephone. It was always record communications. In the beginning a teletype. They didnt want a telephone because it would be scared to say the wrong thing in the middle of a crisis. He and johnson used it 19 times during the 1967 war. So i just went back and recreated the instances in which each president used it. My research led me to believe i was the last person to use it for rail. Ever since 1985 all theyve done is Exchange Text messages. This was a handwritten letter from gorbachev to reagan. They came over the hotline fax and ended in the sit room one night. They called me in the middle of the night. They said what do we do . In response to a handwritten letter from reagan. 13 pages and this is the first page. So i called John Poindexter was National Security advisor and i said you wanted to send it to stay and get it translated . No, we dont know what it says. And its really kind of fun. I had english translation. I got this from the reagan library. But its umc is in the basement of the white house in the east wing who ran the white house and of the hotline. They had rudimentary russian which they needed to court made with the moscow end. They got their dictionary out and work on eight translating the handwritten letter. Ever since then it has been mostly Text Messages. Here is a picture that i took at the pentagon terminal. The pentagon of the hotline in the white house is just a consumer. I forget about florida sun, but but they gave me two or i may have to read telephone that wasnt connected to anything. Anybody that comes and says where is the red zone . They hold it out. Mustve been as a joke. They use a chat protocol to coordinate with moscow and the Text Messages or emails back and forth. It is still there and actually we have some opportunities to use it here recently. Putin and obama have a separate line that is secure, that piggybacks on the hotlines trunk. It goes over by satellite and fiber optic and on and on. And so, those three stories led me to the book. What i did was i picked unanticipated crises starting in 1950s for tall president s. Some had one some had to. I picked the crises that were most meaningful, that could be a teaching or a learning experience that were illustrative of the demands of the international crisis. You can see it was the north korean invasion of the south. Eisenhower would kennedy on the cuban missile crisis johnson had two of the sixday war and the pueblo. Richard nixon, the october war. General ford, of the maghrib seizure. Carter has been mentioned, read again. I did three. And then plotted them based upon not just might analysis but assessments from experts throughout Foreign Policy world and sort of made aggregated grades. Rather than giving them abc i tried to put them in their appropriate quadrant. Because none of us would agree exactly where this one should go but we could probably agree would go in this quadrant, which meaning it was cautious and it was a failure and end up here are the successes and over here are the bold successes both of which have an asterisk on them. And then these are the bold failures. The bottom line is that caution succeeds more often than aggressive response. And so people defined obama to be timid are going against history and Crisis Management at the white house. The best one was kennedy. I will get to that in the second second. What it wanted it is very briefly go through each crisis, and stop me give the question at any point, and just give you a little highlight and the key finding. The first one is started the korean war and everybody gives truman a lot of credit these days but he made some really serious mistakes. And it is turned into a classic case study for the term groupthink, which is when people get together and there are no doubles advocates and to look for consensus among themselves and pretty soon theyre doing things that they might never done before but theres no doubles advocates in the room. That came about because everyone in washington became intoxicated with mcarthurs success in pushing back the North Koreans. They let him change his mission until it was really not just pushing the North Koreans back to the 38th parallel but punishing them invading north korea and going all the way to the chinese border. And the chinese with the soviets approval lured him into a trap, so his forces were divided and the counterattack and thats where we ended up with a threeyear stalemate. So its a classic case of a galloping consensus in the over office in the oval office, if you will. Intuitively you would think thats a good thing but its one edge of a two edged sword, and i will get to the other edge later on. And then at the end after the chinese counterattack, lost his cool, got mad at some reporters and bespoke about getting mcarthur the authority to use the atomic bomb if he chose to which is entirely wrong. The Wire Service People went running out of the room president is going to use the abomb on the koreas. Thats not the case. It was the case of a president losing control of his emotions and, and that some of his advisers said his mouth got head of his brain a lot of times. In this case he did. Eisenhower, they were to the suez war, and what was the british and french did like the because is important to their Oil Shipments from the far east. And they created a secret agreement with the israelis and the israelis would attack egypt britain and france would come to the rescue of the canal, innovate take control of the canal back. And when they did it really made ike matt. He lost his temper. He relied on principle, fronted his sense of personal. And so we very energetically and aggressively pushed back on the french and the british, and the israeli. And he was worked by using losing the 1956 election if he had to push too hard on israel. Domestic politics is never much further than this in an international crisis. Its always in the background always a consideration. And he stopped he forced them britain and france, to back out but he later called it his greatest Foreign Policy mistake of his presidency. Britain government fell and never regain their status as a superpower. France ultimately withdrew from the develop their own Nuclear Weapons because they didnt think the u. S. Would come to their assistance. Both britain and france never helped out the u. S. We got stuck in our quagmire in vietnam because we didnt help the french in indochina in the mid 50s. So it was kind of a mess and ike you did that what and so did nixon who was Vice President at the time but the other one was in 1960 you to shoot down. Weve been flying u2 High Altitude Reconnaissance Aircraft for years and help dispel the missile gap that everyone thought we were suffering from that the soviets were added for some Ballistic Missile and bombers. The u2 photography dispelled all that and with some good information on where we were relative to the soviet weapons systems. And they were successful the one that was shot down in 1960 was the 24th mission over the soviet union. Because antiaircraft and surfacetoair missiles couldnt get that high up to get the plane. And some of the imagery was just one, they would take off from southern neighbors of the soviet union to fly all the way and land in norway a one way trip up and over. They got lucky on that day when the soviets shot it down. That any government that the pilot had perished and the plane had disintegrated. Well he survived, francis gary power, they had him in custody, they have the wreckage of the plane and ike didnt know that. So he lied and covered up the whole thing and then khrushchev just pulled the string when he had them deep enough into that trap and then the bottom fell out and they paraded power out to the kremlin, this is the plane and ike was stuck because hed been lying about it. And he said it was a terrible mistake. So thats one way not to handle a crisis. And it gives rise to one of the fundamental rules of Crisis Management which applies to your ordinary scandal in washington, d. C. Is to tell the truth and tell it early. And so thats the lesson that everybody can take from ikes handling of the u2 shoot down. That is his son john in the oval office. They were showing what imagery from the u2 looked like. Then the cuban missile crisis, everyone is kind of the my with that but remember the mythology that came out of that crisis had kennedy forcing the soviets to back away, and it just was overblown. He really made a deal to his brother, and the soviet ambassador that we would remove our jupiter missiles from turkey if they removed their missiles from cuba, and we promise not to invade cuba. And so both men had back to each other in a corner with their belligerent sort of initial actions and then they both realized they didnt want war and they figured out how to get themselves out of that problem. I think was the best handled serious crisis of the 65 years that i looked at. This is from the day after the crisis, because they wouldnt let photographers in those meetings during the crisis. And then johnson there were two, another mideast war the 67 war the sixday war, and the seizure of the uss pueblo. This is a photograph in 1967 in early version but it looked like a room in a holiday inn sort of basement paneling smoking was obviously okay as you see man sealed blowing smoke out of his nose and the ash trees. That they were down to virtually the whole 60s but as i mentioned earlier trying to keep it from expanding getting the superpowers involved. They exchanged hotline messages during those six days. Theres a little bit of humor there. The first one from us they did not to address a letter from johnson and so they had the technical people ask the folks in kremlin how to address in there and they said comrade. So they put that on the cable and the russians thought we were being flippant, but it was an honest mistake and figured it out later. But again it was a mideast war. The israelis won it handily but it put lbj in a tight spot with the domestic political side of supporters of israel. And wanted to publicly was stay back out of the fray but privately he told the israelis through very covert channels, go ahead and get over with and make it quick. And they did. On the pueblo, North Koreans seized. It was an intelligence gathering ship that was in international waters. They just overwhelmed the crew cc. The skipper had no time to scuttle it to try to throw some of the classified information oversight. Once secular one sailor was killed. During deliberations in the white house it was we dont want to start another war in asia. Over the skies. We just have to be patient, and thats indeed what they did. It with salt and interesting way. The desk officer for korea at the state department, he and his wife one day at dinner said why dont we just say that when we sign an apology that we dont mean it . And that became a solution. They work through to the top floor of the state department and it was the u. S. Signing this apology to north korea and we were inside the waters but we dont mean it. Its all a lie, we are making this a. The North Koreans to do because all they wanted to do was show internally. We could do whatever we wanted to do internationally which was to disavow the agreement but thats how it was solved. Johnson had little more flexibility under no circumstances because a couple months after the seizure he declined to run against we didnt have to worry about his standing in the polls and what people would say about his actions. Is actions came back around when carter found himself in the same situation. Another mideast war, six years after 67, the yom kippur war and this particular case set out wanted to start the war anwar sadat wanted to use hostility to make peace. Thats what he said in his memoir anyway. I never talk to him. But it happened at a terrible time for the president. Watergate investigation october 1973 saturday mass. October 20 the crisis was in its second or third week. The president was desperately trying to stem the press and the public about how he was handling the crisis, it is always after kissinger and haig, tell the press about what he was doing. But he was completely withdrawn. He never attended any of the crisis meetings, which was his modus operandi. And when it really came to push come to shove on the 24th of october, kissinger had told the israelis to ignore the ceasefire, u. N. Ceasefire finish the military objectives and he wouldnt accept. Thats backfired because the soviets saw the israelis keep fighting, it is surrounded the third egyptian army. So the soviets sent a cable to kissinger threatening to intervene if we didnt stop the israelis. So meeting that night, the meeting happened in the sick room, what do we do about the soviet threat to intervene . Nixon was upstairs a drunk and was not participating, even though next day he said he was. They decided to do several things, one of which was to raise our military readiness conditions to send the soviet signal to stay out. And then that got a lot of attention in the media. Wow, nixon official handling the. Turns out that kissinger told the soviet ambassador to just not Pay Attention to the military readiness upgrade. It was for domestic purposes only. It was to help the president in his hour of need during the watergate investigation. Again, the president trying to divert attention to his domestic problem. So that really wasnt that dangerous of the moment. Maybe that was the best thing to do. At any rate, but kissinger later admitted that he overreacted for domestic purposes, which is discouraging to say the least. Ford, remember, became president when nixon resigned. Cambodians had seized the u. S. Merchant ship in the gulf of thailand. Here we go pueblo again. So ford had to take the aggressive action, which turned out to be an overreaction to everything we did militarily to try to free those people from the cambodians happened most of it happened after they were released. And so we were bombing targets in the cambodian mainland were as the crew had already been released and taken back to the ship. And it was apparent that ford was trying to prevent president ial timber for the upcoming 1976 election. It was an aggressive action but the crew was already, they lost 41 military people after 40 crewmen had already been released. So overreaction trying to prove that he could be the president. In my view, a lot of other people share that. Then back to jimmy, the iran hostage, very cautious but he made him to be a National Disaster with his rhetoric. President ial rhetoric drives crisis but you dont have a crises and less the president says so but in this case it was a challenge to our national honor, but he didnt want to do too much because he wanted to get them out of life. You remember the large numbers of them, the students all around the embassy and they really were students. But then after that something the government took over. But january, february march march 1980, primary season elections coming up in 1980. He loses a couple of elections and primaries to ted kennedy. Wow, we better do something. This is not going the way we want it to go. So he had split his advisers into two groups, one that was pursuing sanctions and negotiations, one which was pursuing a military solution. And that led to some groupthink in the latter segment. In april they decided quite out of character and any manner that was unusual for him, he decided to attempt rescue operations. Is secretary of state resigned and resigned in protest because he kept urging caution in patients. But i have a little passage in the book in which the secretary of state points out the problem negotiations where johnsons caution and negotiation paid off, and jordan was the chief of staff to carter said but that wasnt an election year. Again, back to domestic politics. Its always in the room. No matter what. Patience paid off but there are two parts to the ending. A friend of mine was on the stafford a book called the october surprise, and he made the case that the Reagan Campaign people made a deal with the iranians to keep the hostages until after the election. And then part of the deal was to keep them until reagan was inaugurated. The other side of the story was that iranians wanted to release them before reagan got into office but it is got too complicated. And so they had the hostages, american hostage in an algerian plane in tehran sitting on the runway waiting for word to come from washington that reagan had been inaugurated. I talked to the guy who was on the phone listening to that conversation between the cockpit and the tower, and as soon as reagan said, so help me god they let them go. Poor jimmy had to go down to george and announced the release to a couple of people at the airport where as reagan stood up in the capital luncheon that they have after the inauguration and raised his glass and toasted the release of hostages, as if he had done it. And so it just depends on who you want to believe on some of these things. Which gets us into the tricky part of reagan. I looked at three crises, and i was there for two of them. Back on the military operation or the hostage release, there is circumstances, could you project that to say if it did succeed, would it have made things even worse . Well, you know everyone has a view of that. It was terribly risky, and everyone knew it was risky, and everything had to go bang bang bang. As you recall they went in on helicopters from the nimitz special forces plane came in with fuel and the rest of the force. In the middle of that they lost three helicopters due to mechanical problems. And the worst of all was one of the helicopters ran into the fuel ship and set everything on fire and eight people died. It was a terrible, terrible outcome. But it appeared as if the president put the risk the side in the longterm potential until circumstances that might arise because he felt he had to show backbone as the president. [inaudible] not holy because what allowed them to release the hostages ultimately is ayatollah gained control of the parliament to once he got that they need to meet the hostages anymore. And he kept them until that happened until no matter what. Then when that happened they made an overture lets negotiate, you unfreeze might assess and the united states, i will let the hostages go. Wasnt because of what we did. Its what happened internally within iran that allowed the hostages to be released. But im not going to speculate beyond that. Reagans first crisis was in the marines barracks bombing in beirut in 1983. It was a debacle and he handled it badly. The marines didnt have a clear mission, weinberger was opposed to it. I cant say much more than that. He handled that one poorly. The next one was the twa hijacking that i talk to you about, then no deal deal, found himself in carters shoes. Made a deal as i mentioned earlier. That was successfully done. We lost one American Navy petty officer. It the worst thing that 1988 198180, back and forth with libya. And we tried to poke about the guy. We responded to a responder. We went back and forth. In 1986 the libyans bombed a disco in berlin to a lot of americans were killed a lot of people were killed, two americans. We bomb targets in libya and ready want to show that is going to take bold and effective action. But immediately libya had the agents hijack the pan am plane in karachi. He purchased three hostages in beirut and killed within. And ultimately a bomb bombed pan am over lockerbie. It was titfortat but it was bold but ineffective, and on and on and on. So that was reagans three. And then the persian gulf war which you know was successful in pushing the iraqis out of kuwait, but much more complicated than that. I just want to read you because bush 41 stop before a lot of people thought he shouldve stopped. Just 100 hours into the ground were. I want to read you the titles of some books to tell you that a renewed actions to this crisis. Won by james baker come he called it a triumph for american diplomacy and military might. U. S. News and world report called it a triumph without victory. Michael gordon and Bernard Trainor in their book called it an incomplete success. Brzezinski called it strategically inconclusive and then you get a little farther out, theodore draper, an American History who said politically it was a botched war. And then Brown University professor stephen bovard said it was a nothing more, it resolve nothing and settled that the. So everyone can look at the same situation and make a different conclusion about how successful it was. And bush 41 didnt want to have a quagmire that would drag on for years, but then his son did that later on. Its harder than it looks. Everybody sitting on the sidelines cant appreciate the complexities of Crisis Management at the white house. And this is one of my favorites. Again, back to domestic politics from 1998, august, alqaeda bombed two of our embassies in east africa. Clinton was deeply mired in the lewinsky scandal at the time. He was due to testify before the grand jury about his activities with that woman, and suddenly he decided completely out of character, he made a quick, decisive decision to retaliate against alqaeda fighters. Usually he just did there to over these difficult policy decisions, but not on this case. Tee shot over 100 cruise missiles into Training Camp alqaeda Training Camps in afghanistan, and what appeared to be a nerve gas factory in sudan. It was really a pharmaceutical factory. It did not make nerve gas or any components of deadly gas. The strike on the Training Camps killed six people and they were back in business in two weeks. What it did was they put alqaeda and bin laden on the map. It made him into a huge figure in the arab world. A mighty it was a clear case of the tail wagging the dog because it was a movie at the time with Dustin Hoffman and the president made up a phony crisis, take attention away from his sex scandal but i believe thats exactly what clinton did in 1998. And then closer to home 9 11 that really was a terrible jolt. But as i mentioned i interviewed the people who were involved at the time. This woman right here is a navy captain who was head of the sit room at the time and traveling with bush and so she told everything they did. The people in the sit room elected not to follow the order to evacuate when the fourth aircraft was still up in the air. So they stayed behind and they faxed their names to the cia and they called it the deadliest. That was the origin of the newspaper article i wrote about, and it became this chapter. People are curious about why bush stayed away from washington. He lapsed into the continuity government program, which is to get the president out of town in the event of a threat to washington. So we took off on air force one and they went to louisiana where they landed. He taped a message to the nation that air force one didnt have broadcast capability for tv. They wanted to go one step further and they flew to omaha and wanted to Strategic Command bunker in the mountain up there and had a video teleconference and then thats when they decided to come back to washington that night. Near the pentagon and the gal that was in helicopter with the president i told you about said one of the most disturbing sights hed ever seen. And so the think about this crisis is they responded against the taliban in afghanistan to drive alqaeda out of the safe haven, but immediately shifted to iraq turning their attention to iraq. Because two hours after the plane hit the pentagon, rumsfeld was meeting with his visors and he told them you need to sweep iraq into this problem. Because a lot of people believe iraq was behind the 9 11 attacks, which they work. And so it was not a longterm crisis measure of success because the government the president turned away from afghanistan and alqaeda. Bin laden escaped, over to iraq. And so had longterm consequences, a lot of people have called it the biggest Foreign Policy blunder of modern American History. And then finally obama. Libbey into fidget as you recall gadhafi wanted to very savagely put an end to the demonstrations and rebellions in libya in march 2011, beginning the arab spring. And obama decided to intervene with nato and others and it worked over a period of months, but he wasnt aware of the lesson that john kennedy learned in the cuban missile crisis, dont take the first step and less you know what the last step is going to be. So the first step of intervening in libya to save lives. The last step he couldnt take because libya ultimately descended into chaos. And so he didnt view it as a success. He admitted that he wasnt thinking about that last step when he ordered the intervention. And the second part of it was his drawn a red line on syrian chemical weapons. If he used chemical weapons we will do something bad. And he made that statement in august 2012 before his upcoming reelection. It wasnt have lived, not in the script, should have said it, and he regretted saying it. And also kennedy did the same thing. In the cuban missile crisis he drew a red line over offensive missiles being introduced in cuba, and when they work he had to do something. Antidote bobby if he hadnt done something he would have been impeached. So thats one of my rules about Crisis Management is dont draw a red line. You may want to but it will botch it in, and other president s have chosen not to just for that reason. And so a lot of people have criticized obama for his committee, and the fact it doesnt have that doctrine. You cant have a one size fits all solution in the world today like he did during the cold war but its us against them, the west versus the east. Now you have to think about pragmatically looking at each crisis as it comes up and decide whats more important here humanitarian idealism, national interest, and to make decisions on a casebycase basis. Which appears to be what he has done, but all we know is what his people tell us. And so it will be a generation before we really understand his decisionmaking process that hes used in the last four or five years. And just to summarize the wagging the dog syndrome, nixon in the 73 war trying to divert attention from watergate, carter during the primaries, clinton lewinsky, and fords overreaction. These are the entrances to bold action, which happened in every circumstance most of the time fog of war. You dont understand whats going on. These are the things that cause you to be cautious in a crisis. Take incremental steps. The threat of escalation especially during the cold war the groupthink that it talked about. Bickering amongst advisors which is terrible during the reagan administration. Shultz and weinberger couldnt agree on anything. A lot of times the u. S. Didnt have any leverage theres no way we can affect the outcome of the crisis. Bad intelligence, bad intelligence interpretation. And then as i mentioned the first step last step. And here are the takeaways in my view, on Crisis Management. President s send a message by where they meet during a crisis. If they take it serious and the public needs to know that they are taking cities, they hold their meetings in the situation room. If they want the public to think this is not a crisis, its business as usual they will meet in the oval office. Really, its all perception management. Talk to you about the red line the balance of idealism democracy for the egyptians versus national interest. Mubarak is quite an ally, what do we do . In every instance humanitarian demands you means military intervention. Thats the only way you can save peoples lives, like libya or wherever. And white house civilians and pentagon generals dont understand each others problems. They just dont. Theyve got different environments different principles and on and on and on. And you need an advisor that can bring those two groups together during a crisis because they can create problems for you. The military doesnt Like White House civilians turning a 10,000mile screwdriver on some military operation on the other side of the world. Pentagon generals dont understand politics. Especially Geopolitics International politics. And so he cant just turn it over to the military because president s dont want some general on the other side of the world threatening his political future, and on and on and on their domestic politics are always in the background. Theres an expectation gap excuse me between what the public thinks the president should do and we can do. And i talked to you about this skin in the game and telling the truth. One last story. Kissinger, i was in his office in new york several years ago and were talking about the 73 war, and he told me of a conversation he had with the israeli ambassador. Sharon was in the sinai desert surrounded Egyptian Third Army at the end of the war and i told you that the soviets threatened to intervene. So finally kissinger gets on the phone and is urging ambassador janis to call golda meir the three pressure, and never order a stop to hostilities. And hendry gets all excited. Is on the phone and to start steel and finally says jesus christ dont you understand how important this is . And there was a lull and they then he proceeded to tell me with this huge grin on his face what was said in return which was my country might be more persuaded by the argument if you invoke the name of a different profit. [laughter] that was one of the elect moments of 65 years of Crisis Management. In the questions . [applause] thank you. We have time for a few questions. I will ask the first one. What percentage of domestic politics play in crisis, 50 . Well, its in the background of every single crisis i looked it. And others play a greater role. Theres no decision ever made in the white house on anything without a domestic political context. Ive seen it firsthand, and people have told me about it. I dont think i could put a number on it but its probably down in that area, 10 50 or Something Like that but a lot of times president s say go on principle, like ike. He said to hell with the 56 election. But i had a conversation he had with his son he had he thought about and what it [inaudible] people on the outside have no idea whats going on and criticizing all the time. Everyone, politicians by nature, i mean im just wondering if you can suggest its probably a naive question but suggest any way to get people to calm down and stop trying to points . I mean thats a tricky subject because it can sound condescending. You dont know what i know but it really is the case and it is grandstanding. I look at all 12 president and no matter what their party the opposite, the opposing party criticized the hell out of them, no matter what. Soviets wouldve built into the fabric in the capital, but what the critics have to say is just generalities. And thats what disturbs me because if you can specify something would probably lose some votes summer along the line. Politicians have a tendency to be vague so they dont betray their real feelings. I dont think theres any way to solve that one. Yes, sir. Im intrigued by the crises you left off. Thinking back to truman, what about the berlin airlift . Or in the case of clinton, the kosovo Bombing Campaign . And this kind of direct association between the crisis at a political event seems to be more question of the calendar and sort of the crisis being timed for the president ial election. The ones i picked up that were a luster to common feature of caution illustrative. The berlin airlift wouldve been a good one the north korean invasion of the south was a complete surprise, what do we do . That unanticipated crises, how do we respond . Which is what i was going to get to, it was kabul get a a big long story and gives the question of taking illustrative ics. I couldve done 30 of them but nobody would have read through 30 of them. So my criteria was what does this crisis tells about decisionmaking, that was the basis of it. There are always two sides at least to any crises. You have any sense of how the other side operated in any of the examples that you picked . Is there anything that would be instructive . Yes. I relied on them heavily, coins. Theres a couple of scholars have written books about what really happened during the u. S. Soviet confrontation in the cold war. And they are cited in the book but low bow is one of them and they recruit all these things and they were able to interview the russian, soviet participants, with the minutes of the whole of your meeting in 1973 when nixon overreacted and you can hear them debate on what he was just trying to shed himself of the watergate problem or he really meant what he was doing. And debates within the polit bureau about should we intervene, what do we do, and its quite illuminating. I put it in their whenever i could find them to show how often we really didnt know what theyre going to do and they really didnt know what we are going to a lot of time. And that just brought a little more meaning to the deliberation. So yes if you have a chance to look at the book and look at those things all that is cited in the back, though sources. I dont have them off the top of my head but they are available and i used them. I kind of teach a couple of these things, and in looking at sort of the material now and particularly case studies that other people have done, everything seems quite clear. And having gone through any of them, the lack of information that information, the first reports always wrong, even in the sit room you get a huge pile of stuff and a lot of it is crap and you dont necessarily know. Can you talk a little bit about that, and what is the moment when the president says well you know, were going to have to roll the dice . The way i tried to write each crisis was to be even with the participants on knowledge, not introducing heres what really happened but introduced as it comes along. And so not to create tension buddy show how ignorant they were. And that was easy with ford because we could reconstruct what happened. But you have made my point, is that a lot of that stuff you dont know as its happening. Therefore, dont take a giant reaction because if you just take a little step you might know more tomorrow than you do today. Its keeping your powder dry is waiting for a better option to come along. Because in every circumstance, especially with obama, all his options during the arab spring were bad and he used a state award for how bad they were. And that argues sailor work. That argues for caution and a criminal state. I call it through muddling through. My editor didnt like that, but really its a preferred message of Crisis Management in the uk. Its the principle called the science of muddling through, and there is a science taking a criminal steps. Because that way you dont go so far that you cant pull back and you cant start over again. So thats how i saw them cope with the fog of war and the lack of Situational Awareness and clarity. Anymore . Just a comment on the. Part of it depends on what tools you have in your toolkit. The bricks are probably more attuned to muddling through because they cant do much. We unfortunately have to ways that we deploy it goes back to leverage. Can you use those . Aircraft carriers and drones cancel everything even though there are a lot of people who want to use them all the time. If there is a phrase in this town that is overused, its boots on the ground. Im so tired of hearing that. Do you have a son in the military . Anybody . I mean thats the question. Theres been a sea change mark, youll know better than i i have decisionmaking has changed since the abolition of the draft. I mean we used to think twice about committing u. S. Forces in certain places, and everybody, points back to the google days when reagan was in charge. Let me walk them through some of these things because he was cautious as well. Forced to be. Anything else . Out of all of these president s which one do you think was the best Decision Maker . Im not a Foreign Policy expert but ive analyzed the crises and the kennedy did the best in the most serious situation. He was cautious. The naval quarantine allowed khrushchev to back way. The eyeball to eyeball thing never happened. That was just part of the movie part of the myth. Khrushchev told the ship to turn around a day before before the blockade started. And the one which was full of Nuclear Weapons full of Nuclear Weapons, he said going to get into port so they wont steal my Nuclear Weapons secrets. So whatever. I want to go one layer below. Are there any advisors to really stand out over all these years, like from you know dollars to kissinger . Was as somebody who seem to have a good worldview, did it better than anybody else . I am a fan of brent scowcroft. I know when. I like them. Hes been very helpful to me on my projects. This and your had an extraordinary grasp that he was very many but it had a lot of agenda. I enjoyed talking to him. Very knowledgeable guy but you know you ask me a question i have only thought of before. Im inclined to go with scowcroft because he was practical and wasnt driven by ideology. Thats the best answer i can give you right now the next time we get together i will have to think of another one. I think weve come to the end, so i want to express my gratitude to michael bohn for this little presentation. By his book the ive read it. Italy where the. And thank you for coming, and a round of applause for our speaker. [applause] thank you. Thank you, everybody. See you next time. [inaudible conversations] booktv is on facebook. Like is to get publishing news scheduling updates come behind the scenes pictures and videos author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programming. Facebook. Com booktv