Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Outpost 20150119

The teacher wars what are they . Guest im always asked to boil it down and i think weve had the conception in american politics that our educational problems are teachers problems, so we need to start with a new group and turn the page. As i explain in as i explained in the book, the our 3. 4 million american teachers. We hire 100,000 teachers in the school you. There are so many of them. We are so make it to the school. We cannot fire our way to success because theres no method to make sure the people we hire would be any better. We must improve the skill set of the teachers would already have working in our schools. Theres a lot of collaborative practice of weekend used to be that. Host Dana Goldstein is the author. Yes sir Nonfiction Author or book you like to see . Send us an email to booktv at cspan to work. Tweet us at booktv or post on our wall facebook. Com booktv. Now on booktv, christopher hill, he appeared on colorado public radios colorado Matters Program that was recorded in front of an audience at Tattered Cover book store in denver. This is about an hour and a half half. This is colorado matters. Im ryan warner at her chest this time at the Tattered Cover book store is a man who has just had a front seat to history. He has helped shape it. Christopher hill spent 33 years as a diplomat, most recently as u. S. Ambassador to iraq. Hes had wild successes helping broker peace in the balkans, and disappointments. He was this country sleet negotiate and sixparty talks to denuclearize every codec six more party talks to the nook press north korea which did not achieve their goal. He has met things like Mother Teresa and sinners like serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic who died during his trial on genocide charges. Ambassador hill is being of the Joseph Corbett school of International Studies at the university of denver. His new book is called outpost life on the frontlines of american diplomacy and its a fascinating look at both the big picture atreides come section for peace conferences and also the micro, the dilemma of whether to sheikh leaders hand, negotiating a room is decorated of what door to enter through. And lets welcome him. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you. Your father was a diplomat and certainly an inspiration to you. You spent your childhood in places like belgrade yugoslavia where you home was attacked, and portauprince, haiti, where you had to be evacuated. But i think its fair to say that an event occurred on march march 1, 1961. You were eight, that would come to shape your life dramatically. Lets listen to this. Well, i think you are talking we have some audio of this. Here we go. [laughter] i have signed an executive order provided the establishment of the peace corps on a temporary pilot base. This will be a pool of trained men and women sent overseas by the Chinese Government also private institutions and organizations to help Foreign Countries meet the urgent needs of skilled manpower. It will not be easy. Not other men and women will be paid a salary. They will live at the same level as the citizens of the country which they are sent to, doing the same work, eating the same food, speaking the same language. So thats president kennedy on the day that he signed the executive order creating the peace corps which at that time was just a pilot program. And you served in the peace corps traveling to tiny villages on a motorcycle with a hand crank adding machine. Helping local Credit Unions keep the books make reputable loans. That experiences was formative to you. Absolutely. First of all it was my first motorcycle. [laughter] but coming out of college, the opportunity to work kind of on your own and to work with all these people whose life savings, i mean, they were relying on you to make sure their savings were intact. So i had about 28 of these Credit Unions, and so are in these tiny villages and others went in these plantations, and basically i went around checking their books. Where were you . This was a country called cameroon which is just east of nigeria, and i was in the southeast province and i live in a town. So i had a little house there, and every morning i would schlep off to a credit union and see how the books were doing. How different was that experience from what you experienced before in your young life . It was totally different because youre totally on your own. Hasnt a little clip from president to be suggested you werent paid a salary. You were paid a living allowance. When the alert in the peace corps, notwithstanding my wife julie was a nutritionist, you could live on the same meal every single day for two years. [laughter] and manage it quite nicely. Silent on rice and beans for two years. Occasionally Something Else like foofoo or something but rice and beans. It was a kind of good lesson that you dont always have to have Something Different every night. Foofoo is kind of a yam paste. You have to need it and then dip it in a sauce. How i havent had too much since. [laughter] i have been on a foofoo free diet for quite a while now. [laughter] i love the detail in the book that kids in cameroon would rub your skin to see of the white pigment would come up. You know youre in a village in my case i was on a mountain called mount cameroon, what you have to say and colorado was only 13000 feet high. West africa, and i was up there. Occasionally to go to these villages where there would be a little coffee cooperative and people wouldve saved their money off of their coffee receipts but otherwise youd never wouldve left the village or have any sense of who you are or where you were from. They just thought that i was suffering from some kind of skin disease. How often in your career with the Foreign Service e. G. Think back to cameron . Well, quite a lot because first of all i was in college until june. And by july i was in the peace corps. I had entered the peace corps and by the end of august i was off living on my own. I had to get around and i learned responsibility and a way that i never quite understood it before. When people come up to you and say, is everything okay . Is my money there . And to realize that you are it. You are taking care of their money and making sure that their lifes ambitions whether it was to send their kid to school, they needed Credit Union Money on needed savings for that, or buying one of those foot pompously machines or putting corrugated roofing on their house but its huge for them. So the sense of responsibility. And then for me for people who knew about americans, i kind of realized that no one has been different to us but everyone has an opinion about her country and that was a lesson i took to heart. But then the biggest lesson was i had a credit union. A number of Credit Unions, the board of directors basically kind of made off with most of, they had most of the loan money. You had 5 of the members with 50 of the loans. So i raised this with the general membership. It was a big meeting. It was a Tea Plantations of the members were probably twothirds women are so. And so spread out over this meadow and people kept standing up to thank me for bringing to light the fact that this board of directors had kind of misbehavior. And they would in turn to the board of directors shaking her finger you can do this et cetera. So i was a replay is that i pulled this off. No one was panicked. Effect the money wasnt missing but its just that these people had too many loans. And so finally i said, and now i want to present a reform bored and want to proceed with elections. So everyone was very polite and i got my reform board out there. The way they did was not by did was not by actual fans or a valid but they just kind of fold and behind the old board or the reform board and to count heads. Within a couple of seconds i realized the old board one like 90 of the vote after a couple of hapless relatives standing next to their hapless relatives who were my reform board. No one voted for them. Even though theyre very nice people by the way. Some actually spoke english and we put together a great reform board. Absolutely no one you know they didnt get any support for everyone was nice to me about it. I felt totally humiliated. Dont worry, its fun. It was very good what you did. So i took that to mean i didnt have a clue as to who, why people get elected to board of Credit Unions in rural cameroon and who was i to presume that they understood it . Who was i to presume that they understood and, therefore, i could come up with another government and because they all like income and they did like me. I mean they were very grateful for my sort of bring this up. But has learned that just because theyre grateful for bringing this up and telling, saying these people have misbehave didnt mean they wanted to elect other people. It was a different dynamic. We have this view of u. S. , you throw the rascals out. They didnt necessarily have that. And you bet i took that to heart as i went through my for service career. I got very grouchy with americans who think well we dont like the government, we should get rid of it get another government. Not that easy. Lets fastforward a bit. Among the many diplomatic assignments with albanian in 1991 this is not long after the fallthefall of the berlin wall, and he berlin wall, and he is with opening embassies throughout central and eastern europe. This embassy was in a hotel room 215 and the ambassadorial residence was room 216. Thats right. And a week into your service there was only one telephone actually in the room. Sogeti going to be other and to answer the phone. I recover that. A week into your service you meet an ethnic albanian, Mother Teresa. Tell us about the encounter. Well, i was in room 215 and we have a couple i hired a couple of albanian assistance. And one of them was on the phone and said, its a Mother Teresa. And i said Mother Teresa . And i learned not to be surprised. And you have to know about albanian is this a sort of north korea of europe. They been under basically isolate the country from the rest of europe and had been hermetically sealed basically. They had banned religion, banned automobiles, banned everything. Everything that wasnt compulsory was forbidden. So it was kind of a strange place to be, but we were opening our embassy for the First Time Since 1946 when we closed it. So this assistant said to me, its Mother Teresa. So i thought well what a coincidence. Its funny that the same name and the same honor, same name and same title so i got on the phone and introduced myself. Then i recognized the voice. I heard her voice on tv. And she asked if i would come over and discuss whether the embassy could help her store some of the medicines over health clinic, and she had an orphanage as well. So i go over to our little clinic, and there she is its the Mother Teresa. In that sort of circle the veil and everything is kind of wound and she is tiny. And then she asked me if i would do that, and im not going to be the first person in the world to say no to Mother Teresa. But this is one where i will just have to trust in the old aphorism that it is better to beg forgiveness from washington than to ask permission. If i ask permission you could imagine they would have some beating, can we give this to a private Nongovernmental Organization . What about other screw that so i just thought [laughter] so i said yes. Been her assistant said oh could you kind of widened the gate in the back so that we can get our truck in . I said we will talk about that later. You meet her at a plane, a u. S. Military so we are talking and then attachmate this up on the spot because they knew the next a we have an american plane coming in with some mres meals ready to be. In fact, ive been using eating them myself. You could go to the Hotel Restaurant at your peril. So i preferred meals ready to eat. And so i told her we had some food and actually what are they called k. Rations larger cans of peaches and stuff. I said we have some stuff and want to present it to you orphanage or give it your orphanage and if you would not coming out to the airport i would appreciate it if you could receive the first partial. So i go out to the c141 which was of military airlift command, and they had run donovan from usbased in italy, which was a three hour run. This is basically extra food on the gulf war. And so it was a little shorter than the military platform. So this crew from the c141 were based out of mcguire airbase in new jersey, and they all had hispanic names like martinez rodriguez. So i told them to expect a vip because i wasnt 100 sure that Mother Teresa would show up. And so i told them to expect a vip, if they thought i was bringing a Health Minister or something to check out the food. And so a little jeep comes out and its her assistant behind the wheel and Mother Teresa riding shotgun. And she gets out in these guys you know, from acquiring airbase, a drop to their knees cant just drop to their knees at the sight of her. So she walked around giving them these little mud on a figurines, tensions hundred and indents. Chanda does not mention that the pilot who was a woman and she said to the pilot, she said, this is too big to fly. And the c141 pilot said no its not Mother Teresa. We managed to fly in your. We are fine. So Mother Teresa said all the same, i think i better do a prayer for you. [laughter] she gets up in the plane and in that characteristic prayerful mood, she did a prayer on the playing and was able to take off. Theres a picture of you on our website with Mother Teresa at cbr news. Org. That was one of those deals where, you know, i didnt feel like i should turn her into a tourist things i did want to take any pictures of her self. For example there are no pictures of the guys all dropping to their knees and are going around giving the virgin mary medallion. I kind of regret that today, but a point in which you really ought to show a little class sometimes and not, you we didnt have iphones at the time, but i just thought that was the right thing to do. But when she was up in the hatchway of the playing or actually the picture thats in the book is, im standing next to where the pilot and she was looking through the cavernous back, but theres also another picture which was not a good enough quality which has are still away with militarily command insignia next to her as she prays. There are a couple of pictures of the experience. As we said you spent time as a kid in now former yugoslavia. Your first assignment with the state department was belgrade. You served in albania and macedonia. Device to do so you become a real asset in the balkans and that region was torn apart by war, and im taken interested in your meetings with Slobodan Milosevic. He as we said would later be tried for torture and genocide for his role in bosnia and kosovo though he died before the trial ended. Is it hard to negotiate with someone you find israel pulls of the right word . Yet repulsive works. Theres some other words there as well. I mean you know, you look at him and he is someone come he didnt believe in anything by the way. He didnt believe that he wasnt a serb nationalist. He was a communist. He was in anything. He just believed in power for himself. And he used things like serb nationalism to when you go back in history the serbs havent always had an easy time to there are reasons why serbs feel like theyve been oppressed. There are serbs they felt they were the ones who bore the brunt of the ottoman turkish empire. There are serbs who felt that they were, you know when the germans made sure that they have directed land routes to the conquest of greece in world war ii the germans were extremely rough on the serbs as the used land lines down through belgrade. So the serbs have this tremendous sense of victimhood. And like all victims there some truth to the narrative. But the problem was we were in a situation where essentially it was a the Ottoman Empire 100 years delay. The wars in yugoslavia in the 1990s, is basically 1890s balkan wars interrupted by a century of international conflict, International Struggle the two world wars the cold war. So there was this going on and the other peoples in yugoslavia croats slovenes, macedonians, they all felt that yugoslavia was a giant conspiracy that somehow enshrined serb domination but after all the serbs have the capital, they have basically the army, the serbs had the sector please. The serbs kind of ran the place. So theyll have some justification to their own narrative that the serbs were kind of behind everything and they wanted to get out. Meanwhile, the serbs had a few that yugoslavia was a giant contraption to keep down their aspirations. After all, the french had a friend to the germans in germany, and we serbs have oneeighth of this little thing . So the net of office, special in bosnia, where these mr. Zubrow hideous wars where the serbs a centrally controlled the army. Milosevic cynically succumbed people from the main Yugoslav Army to something called the Bosnian Serb Army. Were talking a velcro insignia on their shoulders where something people would emerge as generals in the Bosnian Serb Army went two weeks before they were generals in the Yugoslav Army. So the dynamic of that war and this is one, below so that you fully will which is going on which is if you want to kick samosas out of an area you remember the terrible expression, ethnic cleansing . It was a bosnian thing. Subway to work i dont mean to ramble on about this ride but i think its important for people to understand, the Bosnian Serb Army and Yugoslav Army to keep the kind of circle around the village, lets say and then these various paramilitaries, gangsters really would go in there and murder people, and the people had no escape. Milosevic knew this stuff, but by the time we were engaged in dealing with him, he basically understood the gig was up. It wasnt you know serbia was a pariah state. He had made his point in trying to hold on to bosnia, keep it with the serbs. Just wasnt working for them. So think of an old mafia guy whos trying to go straight at that point and that was the context of dealing with milosevic at that time. He wanted the war ended. So ironically the most hideous person in this whole drama became a kind of de facto ally as we tried to come up with governing structures to make bosnia okay a country. It would be a good with international borders. It would be divided into two entities but those entities would be united by an overall parliament. So we worked on these governing structures. By the way, can i just add no one has done a thing to do this in this area. And if you wonder why that war goes on and on and on they have never taken the lesson of bosnia, which was to come up with some kind of a government structure. But to make it work we had to get the president of croatia and fall, judgment involved. Hes not a guy you want to have on your christmas list either. And so he and milosevic and then these, the people from bosnia themselves and we tried to cook a deal and we succeeded. I think the take away from that is you cant say there is good and bad and we wont negotiate with bad. Its just not speak it is good or bad but often there is bad and worse. And you have to negotiate because, you know, what are you going to do . Whats the alternative . You cant kill them all. And thats not a particularly appealing approach. And then the notion of unconditional surrender. You know, these wars are not about unconditional surrender. They all end up in a negotiating, at a negotiating table so you have to kind of do that. I think as a diplomat in order to do that youve got to sort of be willing to not look behind as much as personal you may want to do that but rather look forward to see how you can devise structures that allow people to live together. If you spend all your time looking back, you will never get to the point where youre looking forward to look at new structures, or how they might live together again. While serving in the balkans several of your colleagues died when their jeep went over the edge of the road. One of them was bob fraser special envoy to bosnia, and you two were close. You wind up visiting his widow and she asked you about serving in war zones. How can you do this to your family . And elsewhere in the book you write that your daughter said once, dad, im very proud of you but you have ruined my life. [laughter] that was one of the nicer things she said. [laughter] you know i want to answer this without sounding too maudlin about it but also want to answer truthfully, which is when you start into these situations, you know yeah we are doing it for our country. I mean really, anything anyone in the military feels this way and i can speak for my Foreign Service collects, you feel very proud of the country and you want to get it done. You know that no one is indifferent about your country but when you get involved in it you want people to know playtime is over, kids. We are going to nail this thing. This is over. We are sick of this. And if you think were being patronizing tough, because you just killed 200000 of your own countrymen and weve had and were going to step in ever going to try to stick this governing structure on you whether you like it or not. If you dont we will call you a rejectionists and come after you the rest of your life. This is the kind of thing you have to do. So i felt you know it was absolutely the right thing to do. But you are making sacrifices. When you call home and you been on the road for weeks. These trips would go on and on. You would arrive in belgrade coop, shoot on down and that holbrooke would say weve got to go to moscow. Wide web to go to moscow . Richard holbrooke spent my boss and my mentor and my tormentor on this. So before you know it you been on the road for three and half weeks as i would call home and my daughter went out to the phone. I would say this is daddy, and shes got a sense of humor and she said, daddy you . [laughter] so it was a tough but when i saw bob frasers widow katerina and she asked that question does a tough one. That was really a tough one. They came to mind later on in my career when i was in baghdad. But at the same time bob was really one of the best Foreign Service officer i ever met. You know he was maybe 51 years old and killed senselessly on the mount over sarajevo. So bob you know, i picked bob wouldve gone on to huge things, and he died. So im not going to just drop it. Im going to finish the job. He was an amazing guy. Id like to have you read from one of the thrilling parts of your book. While youre ambassador to macedonia, the kosovo conflict sort of spills over and an angry mob attacks the embassy with you and your staff inside. So just read from that portion of the book. Yeah, we had one of these small embassies. And people always, i remember on the phone something where are your marines . Someone from washington. Tom pickering the underside cases where are your marines . I said sir we have no respect because we one of these new embassies and we werent kind of faded well enough. We didnt have the necessary you know marine contingent our fences were not embedded enough. There are certain standards you go down succeed and for a lot of cement. We didnt have that but we had nice looking chances but we just didnt have the proper level of security. We had macedonia and around their guards perimeter guard. Why were we there . Its managed risk. At a certain point the afternoon a large mob that the police had blocked from attacking the main hotel where the journalists were, etc. And they turned to the next target quite surprised and came up to the american embassy. So what i have to do this kind of started throwing eggs at us which is fine but then started turning the stones and before you know it we were being hit hard and these cocktails started coming out and we saw outbuildings we could see to the window getting burned. I ordered all hands to the basement and check all offices and rooms to make sure everyone was accountable for. The scene outside was horrific demonstrators were everywhere in the process of torching vehicles we had some 20 embassy cars. So they would take a rocket smashed the back window and throw a cocktail which is a rad gasoline and a cocacola bottle or maybe a pepsi bottle, i dont know. [laughter] scene outside was perfect. Not appearing to have set out to that day to attack the embassy. He lit a cocktail and threw it in the backseat. I was seething. At about 5 45 all staff were accounted for and locked up with me in the safe room. They had a deal sealed off from the rest. So we had to seal it off with these huge metal walks. So there were some 42 members of the Embassy Staff together with me down in this vault. You can tell a lot of people a lot about people in a vault. Some remain calm while making sure others are fine. Others seem lost in their thoughts. Nobody was panicking but i told a couple of my staffers need to keep an eye on those not doing well and above all keep them busy. One of our staffers give people things to do. Its like dealing with anyone upset give them a very specific task and have them keep doing lists of the 42 people. I got a lot of lists of those people. So all of them are embassy employees were embassy employees and one exception was my eveningyearold daughter who had come to the embassy earlier in the day. Clara was the ultimate Foreign Service trooper and she was fine and a chatting with chatting with people to keep their mind of the situation. It wasnt a teacher daughter to work day but she managed it and did College Essay writing some ten years later. Did you become addicted to adrenaline . Yes. Its tough when you dont have those kind of challenges and i had a riot at the camp and stuff like that and other refugee camp. Its about managing the relationship with your host country. It is the relationship with washington. Remember the communication is pretty strong. You could be in a village in kosovo and it would be the state Department Operations operations and her calling patching through some senior official at asked me about what i was doing that today and what i was going to say to a group of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters. So its an amazing capacity to pass information. But what doesnt get past is a feel for the situation. I mean, no matter how much you can give the verbatim reports or colorful explanations on the phone, people back in washington dont necessarily understand what is really going on out there. They just you have to be there. You cant watch a hockey on tv. You have to go to one. So for dealing with washington the only worse thing about not having guidance from washington is to have guidance for washington because often they send you this kind of stuff and youre really supposed to read it to a local warlord that youre dealing with. He looked at a set of talking points and the genius and the National Security council and bob bob bob sent a welfare of all of this stuff isnt going to change his mind. So often you to be given the things in your supposed to read them and people in washington figured out you may not necessarily be the reading them so that they would say please record the reactions so he would always start off and massacre and to vigorously carry off the reference points emphasizing all points but especially point number four etc. What youre trying to do is keep the door open. That is rule number one diplomacy. The society we need the ambassadors to be out like they are some senator from arizona. [laughter] you dont need your ambassador in noting because plenty of people back in washington are willing to. But what you need to be an the massacre to do is keep the door open no matter how bad the local government is. What you want to ideally be able to do as ambassador is make an appointment, go in and say i told you this was going to happen in washington if you continue to imprison those human rights advocates. I told you this is whats going to happen. If you keep doing this there is nothing more i can do to help so youre trying to sort of pretend that youre helping them get through there for me. And often it will work because you get some credibility with them but you have no credibility if you tweet something about this is the most desirable government of my life love and behold people dont like to talk with you when you say things about them and they especially dont like to talk when you say things like this government must go and im going to support the opposition. Think before you tweet. The whole point is not to think. You are supposed to be emote. I have a question on how they transformed diplomacy. I think i nailed it. He later became beginquotes her to poland and you were there on 9 11. Poland committed troops to the invasion of iraq. Let me read from that section of the book. I worried about what an invading iraq would lead to two and i believe that the reports about iraqs weapons of mass destruction but i couldnt see the link between 9 11 and Saddam Hussein nor could anyone that understood the region. And you go on to write to the runup in 2002 to the iraq war had me and every other u. S. Ambassador around the globe making the case for the undertaking. Some might criticize you for carrying a banner. You not only didnt believe it was factually incorrect the connection between 9 11. What but i felt first of all is the notion and al qaeda wasnt widely be leaved. They understand the origins and to understand the origins of militarized Sunni Baathist regimes in iraq and people understood that was different. I never made that case to anybody and most people didnt. The case that i made it down to the kindergarten classes and was the idea that they had weapons of mass distraction and were seeking to build stockpiles. They pronounce the high and low and it turns out not to be true. When the secretary of state says you ought to take it to the bank you have to go back to the fact that we were attacked. At the time the feeling wasnt so much that we thought Saddam Hussein was beyond that at the time there was certainly a feeling that theyve got some enemies out there and weve got to be careful. So, i dont think there was quite a feeling well have today but this really got out of hand. Many at the time were voicing that. Its hindsight that people were seeing fairly clearly at that time. I think the attack on iraq fortney have to do with the fact we had a dictator who had invaded his neighbors before and had brutalized the people. They had 200 Political Prisoners rounded up on a saturday afternoon for execution and they bring a little pillow with a gun and saddam would shoot the rest. Its a pretty hideous regime. Certainly the idea that and there is so much closedoublequote, evidence for weapons of mass distraction. So, it wasnt something that i worried about was what comes next because you pick the war whether its the civil war or any and we are not very good at that kind of post conflict stuff so i certainly worried about that. The president in poland told me he said i have no doubt you can topple Saddam Hussein. I said please tell our president that. He did come he spoke up in the oval office and was very clear to the president about his concerns. But its not for an ambassador in the field. Certainly the ambassador reappointed underbrush. Its not to start parsing and second guessing what the administration is doing unless you are so opposed to it at which point you ought to resign and i was never in that kind of move. Lets talk more about your iraq experience. In late 2008 you thought that your Foreign Service career was coming to an end. You wind up a lecturing job at yale and then comes a call from secretary of state Hillary Clinton asking you to serve as ambassador to iraq and you said yes. Let me slow that down a little because i had just spent four years dealing with the always lovable North Koreans. [laughter] were you going to circle back to that . Based on the time we have. What happened there was of course the president and his secretary of state coming in for the second term understood that they had a war in iraq and afghanistan neither of which were going that well and they wanted us to calm the situation down in asia and work with the partners in the region to enter any negotiations during the first term of the Bush Administration, so we end each comment. The secretary was very much supportive and president bush was. I cant say that as Vice President really was behind those 100 intact he was opposed to it 100 but if he had a problem with it he should have been talking to the president and botany. Anyway, we got things done and left some things im done that to this day remains a threat but when secretary clinton came and i think she was very much of the view that the North Koreans essentially stopped negotiating in the fall of 2008 because they thought that they wanted to deal with the Incoming Administration rather than the Bush Administration said it was a theory. Our theory is that kim jongil had become very ill because he had become incapacitated the summer of 2008 if we could see a difference in how they were handling things especially on our need for verification of things that they had to do. So there are a number of theories. Secretary clinton was asking me on a number of occasions for demos on how we could start the north korean talks when she asked me to her office after the inaugural i was convinced it was in the context of asking what we could do. But instead, i sat down, she had a nice big chair with a fireplace and she asked me she said all these nice things about my service and i sort of felt like frodo at the end of lord of the rings were subbing. [laughter] she said theres one more thing i would like you to do and i thought that it was a memo, the state department was built on the nose. She said i would like you to go to iraq. I said im very flattered. I know how important it is that i have to think about it. I thought about it overnight and i thought what the heck, i will do it. In the chapter called the longest day you write about getting to iraq and arrived at the embassy in baghdad. Would you read this passage . Sure. I come out of iraq at the airport, hoped to arrive on the civilian side to show there was a new era of the security people were not interested in arriving at the civilian side so we arrived in the dark of the night with one of those corkscrew landings so it was the same thing that had gone on for seven years. We couldnt take a could take a helicopter because there had been a sandstorm so we had to take a motorcade of Armored Vehicles into town. So again, not a lot of progress in terms of the security. I got into my flat jacket and then we headed into town looking through the sandstorm of the situation and finally we arrived at the embassy. It was the biggest embassy the world had ever seen. The joke being like the great wall of china it was visible from outer space but to the military was no larger than the Forward Operating bases in the green zone compared to the giant military bases that have the major army foundations. Even though it was a diplomatic establishment there were regions of the military working on a new Embassy Compound as it was known to many it was indeed another fob at camp liberty and camp union. This points to the key tension that you encounter in iraq between the u. S. Military which has had such a presence and diplomats. Who really ran the show . When i arrived there, there were some 145,000 u. S. Troops with the fourstar general and i think if you are an American Ambassador in that circumstance you probably ought to do some rethinking. So, thats what i found was even in the effort to begin a civilian process within the embassy did havent even begun. I went into my first briefing for lunch of governors there were about four governors to check on the National Guard contingent so i went into the embassy Conference Room and everyone in the room except one political officer, everyone was wearing the uniform from the military and general odierno lift a brief ray odierno for making light of the brief and they had the slides all set up so they had a power point and then on the slide 17 they mentioned the fall on agreement between the u. S. And iraq whose concept we would have a normal relationship governed by some Bilateral Agreement and then he turned to me and said ambassador maybe you would like to brief on that. Sure, otherwise im sitting here like a potted plant or a bobble head. So i explain slide 17 and then i went up to my staff and i said what was that all about. Is this how this embassy does briefings . So i said look for starters if we are going to have coffee cups that all have the military insignia big claims that were all from general odierno i said cant we put some embassy tchotchke there dont we have a baseball hat or something . We have to figure out who would pay for that. So and i kind of realized this was like an embassy that id never seen before in my life, so it was tough. There was a sense that the war had been won and you have to remember there were some very good things about the search but there were a lot of things that had nothing to do with it. Some of them turned against the al qaeda elements and they were not necessarily all about us but nonetheless, the sort of narratives were that the war had been won. So they became in this kind of notion of the whole of government the embassy became a sort of followon force to what the military was doing. And i dont think the perception that somehow the embassy was leaked to the action and never really into the war the way the military had been never really went away so there were always these kind of tensions. Do you think today we are seeing the repercussions of the mission that was approached so heavily militarily as opposed to diplomatically . I dont think that is the situation. I think we are seeing the repercussions of not understanding that we were dealing with a very complex political issue for which no number of combat troops could necessarily solve. When you create a democratic situation and see people have elections and win peoples political identity is sectarian either sunni or shia the two major sectors if you were one of the islamic faiths, sunni never voted for shia and shia ever voted for sunni. These were political identities, they were not issuebased politics were issues where the Political Parties were the coolest round the idea of low taxes were something. This was very sectarian. And for us essentially to whistle past the graveyard and not understand thats what was going on and it had gone on for a thousand years and it wasnt going to be changed by seven years of american efforts i think that was a failure to analyze properly the situation and that has had consequences looking ahead. Our troops its amazing what they did. They had no training packages designed to help them deal with these and they were improvising day after day and i remember because i read it at the time citizen soldiers which is basically about these kids figuring out stuff that Commanding Officers didnt know about and they figured out how to work their way from normandy to berlin. When i solve some of our kids have done in places like mr it makes you proud to be an american. They were improvising stuff. Its just heroic but at the same time these are fundamental political problems that the iraqis are going to have to sort out. I dont want to dumb it down to say that its all about tribalism, but its all about politics that just like it at plantation that i didnt understand as a peace corps volunteer i dont think we ever quite figured out the politics of iraq and to this day you have a situation where the sunnis that will place for centuries dont want to be under the shia government. Maliki, the shia Prime Minister is a tough and unpleasant kind of guy, no question about it. But i submit to you the problem isnt just about maliki or Nelson Mandela as we would like them to be. He understood that this minority in south africa will of the who the place for centuries and in order to make them comfortable they needed to do a lot of outreach. But i dont think that its important to understand in the middle east every state is arab led. Is that so they are surrounded by these states saying how could you stand living under the shia. That is the basic problem can an american soldier solved that . Not so sure. You are very honest in this book and you have been in this conversation about some of the highprofile people youve worked with. And you have complimentary things to say and not so complement three. You say president clintons capacity to absorb briefing materials and hold discussions with the starstruck interlocutors was remarkable. If Condoleezza Rice the right she was riveting and i marveled at her capacity to integrate every aspect of the six party talks. But as former defense rumsfeld the right he seemed to be an Old Fashioned conservative with the difference he had an ego the size of mount rushmore. [laughter] with me stop you there because i want to read one more. [laughter] perhaps the most stinging piece of criticism to failure of the conservatives and their travelers to explain what they were trying to accomplish in iraq remains one of the most disgraceful performances by the Foreign Policy class and america. And i want to know if it feels good not to have to be so darn diplomatic. [laughter] theres definitely an element of that. I call the book outpost because i think there are enough stories about washington infighting and i wanted to talk about people that are out there on the field often having to make decisions on the fly. You dont have time to get some guidance from washington so i really want it to be about being out of washington and i really didnt want it to be about score settling. But for that Vice President of hours i had to make an exception you can think what you will about the Bush Administration or the problems of president bush but i just didnt feel that cheney showed up requisite loyalty but a deputy should show and i just hope the president was trying to calm some things down in the second term. He knew he had a tough situation in iraq and afghanistan because people in the know knew that afghanistan wasnt peaches and cream either. So hes trying to work stuff with the chinese and north korea to close the gap that we have with south korea and had a Vice President but seemed to have his own Foreign Policy. And i think if youve ever had a deputy in any line of work, that deputy has to have your back and i didnt feel that was the case. I still feel its president bushs fault i still think that he chose unwisely for his deputy you have to let me have a few of those thoughts. Do you hope the former Vice President read the book lacks [laughter] i was thinking of sending him one. [laughter] in his book, which im sure is in the bookstore but please dont buy it. [laughter] he takes on after workers after other, Condoleezza Rice and be by name for being naive about dealing with north korea and as if we are naive about dealing with the North Koreans there were a lot of things going on in the context of the negotiations, said he goes after us by name criticizing us in a memoir thats written four years after the fact and im thinking you know here was someone who could walk a few steps to the oval office, said with sit with the president and say i dont like but Condoleezza Rice and whatever that guys name is arguing in north korea. He had access to the president to make his point but instead he makes his point in a memoir four years later. So i have trouble not responding to that. Besides it was fun pointing out that he fell asleep in the oval office during a briefing on Nuclear Weapons command by the way i am not that im not that boring. It wasnt that bad. I really did my best to keep peoples interest. My editor helped me though at first his chin fell a short distance. [laughter] and by editor cleaned that up so i appreciate that. In all seriousness he was suffering heart problems at that time. I felt bad about that for a second. [laughter] but we digress. [laughter] im in a rare state of speechlessness. [laughter] v. Obama administration is coming under fire for nominating ambassadors who are not Career Foreign Service and they say this is the administration thinking donors with diplomatic jobs. What do you think . I think it is justified criticism and its not to say that there are not good at political appointees. There are good ones but i think its been too much of the notion that somehow these positions should be rewarded for raising money and i think we live in an increasingly complex world out there. The military figured this out early on in the civil war. If you remember the second day they get way out ahead of the centerleft of the union line and create a gap the union army almost lost. So the military figured that out and i just feel that to just assume anyone can do any job because the person visited the place, one of the criticisms i would argue just visiting a country doesnt make you qualified, so i really worry about it. I think we live in very complex times. And then to see the administration put forward some people i can charitably say were not quite up to it but then when you see the Senate Holding up people for ambassador shiv as if it doesnt matter that you have a country without ambassador for months on end we need ambassadors in these countries and i think that whole process has just turned into a kind of Campaign Fundraising mess. But i dont feel that strongly about it. [laughter] do you belief in evil . Yes. Saddam hussein qualified Slobodan Milosevic qualified and the North Koreans. That regime is about as evil of a regime as i have seen. But then you have to start looking at what are you trying to accomplish and when you go into any negotiation with anybody you have to keep in mind what is the purpose of the negotiation, what am i trying to accomplish and if you think accomplishing something by calling the other guy evil is going to help, fine, call the other guy evil but it usually doesnt help. So i think what you have to do is put aside these views. Certainly melissa was as evil as they come but you couldnt get any kind of a stability on the ground anywhere without his without talking to the guy. So these morality questions are there but they shouldnt be used as a reason not to talk to people. Youre not talking to people because of their interest, youre talking to people because of their interest. Occasionally if they do something hideous aura creatures and then we get the word we are not going to talk to follow such anymore great great excerpt he talked to a bunch of minions that he had and so low and behold when he did get around to talking to them because he had no choice he said a whole month of listening to the staff and then he would spend half the time just talking them down from these ridiculous positions. So i find that getting in someones face and making it clear where we are on these issues and what we need to get done i think is the way to do it. There are times to be angry but its a matter of performance art. If you want to be angry and pound your fist on the table, do it for effect but not because you about your emotions to get the better of you. If youre interested i dont know, become a Football Player or something but if youre interested in trying to get people to do things they dont want to do but you are going to come up with a means to encourage them to do those things that is another matter. Is that something that now as the dean of the choicest Corporal School of International Relations, there is no amount of evil that isnt at least with talking to. No amount of evil. I dont support any type of diplomatic process with isis. They need to be defeated on the battlefield and there is a huge role for diplomacy but that has to do with building up an alliance against them and getting some of their de facto supporters to stop supporting them. So there are moments you cannot deal with people. Again i hate to quote a a Slobodan Milosevic for inspiration here [laughter] that i once said to him look i know you think we have a double standard and he said double standard . Dont you have multiple standards and hes absolutely right. Some situations are different from others and you have to kind of disaggregate that and understand what youre dealing with. So people say wait a minute how could we have done this in country y. And now youre asking us to do why he and country y in country x. Thank you so much for being with us. Its my pleasure. We are going to take some questions and if you can please state your name and where you are from im going to let you navigate okay . My name is bill. Ambassador picking up on one of the last points made given your vast experience and talent are you focusing that at of the school of International Relations . We have a Great Program and a phd program and a lot of undergrads. What i strive for is a program that really fulfills our mission as a professional school and i want people to learn the theory to be sure and also to learn practicality so that when they enter the job market they are not going to be shocked by the fact that you end up talking to someone like Melissa Melissa milosevic. But they need to be guided by a certain value and i think that you can square the circle of these things. In terms of careers i think its important yes i have four ambassadorships and i was pleased to have those that i enjoyed a lot of these things i wasnt ambassador when i was doing was Mother Teresa or the albanians in the country that had been sealed from 1946 until 1991. I wasnt ambassador then. It was a fabulous opportunity to really create a relationship between albania and america so i dont think that the entry level position and the service is being ambassador. We need to understand theres a lot of things people do at different stages of ones career and again there is a reason i say that that was such an opportunity to represent the country and here we were all these friends of mine out there dealing with these circumstances and i think to this day they feel very appreciative of what we did and that means a lot to me and i want people to i get it. This is a country where you want to get to the top of everything. Its wonderful. But i think there are a lot of other ways to contribute. You mentioned serbia briefly. I wonder if you have any ideas for our wonderful diplomats out there or politicians about the socalled economic state and isis . As i said earlier i dont think there is any scope of diplomacy dealing with these people. There may be at some point as you see the Movement Starts to fracture and as you see isis begin to have setbacks on the battlefield and other maybe the capacity to peel off certain reporters. But right now is more sorrow and anger that we just have to come from this and deal with it. I do believe it has a role building the coalition especially in the arab world and that is one that is so worrisome habit of support within the world. How do they get support, because its more worried about the shia in iraq more than they are isis caliphate. So i think that we need to work on that. And what really pains me in this area to the point of being angry is that this isnt about finding weapons to give to the socalled moderates. I just dont see that as a strategy. What would be a strategy would be to answer the question what would we like to see serious a few years from now . I would think we were looking for a serious that has its current borders and by the way for people to say lets change the border, shall be a border change and i will show you the war, it isnt that easy. So a serious but is in its existing borders and that may be a loose confederation where theres a lot of local autonomy built from the outside into damascus and not from damascus to the outside, so create the constitutional process and have some sort of an Upper Chamber parliament consisting of the various identities and a combination of which could be to the chamber which could be primarily sunni because they have 60 . For so some sort of a political arrangement. I would like to hear the secretary of state alpine those. They would have to defeat isis and then the forces and organize the victory parade into damascus for me it is just kind of in a long shot. My question is less dramatic. If someone is interested in going to the Foreign Service, what advice would you give them or do you feel like and rational relations degree is the best way to go about it . I think that going to school is the best way to [laughter] we have a good track record of people passing the exam but scholarships for everyone. I wish. [laughter] thats huge that issue of scholarships. But let me say i think with the Foreign Service is looking for isnt necessarily equals deep only on diplomatic history but also people know a lot about the world around them and my suggestion is when you pick up the newspaper, read it cover to cover and read the style section and the parts about culture. At the Foreign Service doesnt just want to have some idiots on diplomatic history. They want someone that has a broad gauge and then take the exam. I will say two things about it. One, its free. There are some free things in life. Second, you can take it again. So do a lot of reading. Youre up against English Literature majors who dont know what they are going to do in their lives so they take the Foreign Service exam. So do a lot of reading. Be good at English Literature. Read constantly. And i dont mean to better accounts. Im talking about deep reading. Read a lot, read the newspaper cover to cover. Take the exam and then look at where you are. If you find in the english section you still are not up to competing with those majors he better go back at it and read some more to get to a certain level. You may have done better in a general knowledge section or Something Else, but people always say what is the most important language to learn and thats an important its called language. Dont worry at this point that french or spanish learning brush because 99. 9 of what you write in the Foreign Service happens to be english. That was the challenge of writing this book. Ive only written to page memos and then [laughter] and by the way in the government and the government they dont even read page two. So i got onto page three and there i was incognito i didnt know what to do on page three. Its like the forest gump movie i just kept on going and then i got to page 400 i stopped. [laughter] would you comment on the Israeli Palestinian issue . I will try to comment on it but i dont think that either the palestinians or the israelis feel they have an interlocutor that is interested in peace right now so it is pleading on without an end in sight. I think our secretary of state took a run at it and i commended him for doing that but i dont think there is a kind of momentum for peace and with these deals sometimes we have a momentum behind you and sometimes you dont so sometimes its tough but let me also say to you what i said it to a to a palestinian journalist who essentially answered were asked the same question. I told this journalist she was going on and on about how she didnt like israel. I told her i know you dont like israel and i know you can get a lot of sympathy for that but that isnt going to help you. What you need to do is take the platform that you have and make the best of that platform and worry about how you can attract businesses to the platform and make sure you have a police force that can keep public order in that place and begin to if you want a state start acting like a state. That doesnt mean getting someone killed or getting into a spat with the israelis and the than calling someone to record the tragedy thats just taken place. They need to focus more if they cannot get any kind of momentum to the Peace Process they should focus on trying to develop the state and when there is a momentum for the Peace Process they will be in a better position if they can show some success in running themselves and i think that is a problem. And i have had so many people in the world want our sympathy. Sympathy is a nice thing to have but it isnt going to solve problems. My name is jason from denver. You went to that hospital visit treated with those kids and then this is in the prologue of the book. A i wasnt on the visit but in my experience i am sure that you have the tension between protecting the diplomatic personnel and then allowing them to take the risks they have to take what to be effective in their job and i wonder if you can comment on what you think about how the state department has that kind. A you used the term taking risks. I prefer the term managing risk. And i think he you really meant that. My own view is youre not doing your job if youre not getting out there. Youve got to get out there but its got to be in the sort of managed risk. I worked very closely with my security officer. I knew them very well. If you read here tonight he would have said i am would have pictured the ambassador stayed day and night and never went anywhere but he understood i had a job to do so would often happened was i would come up with some idea and i would say i want to go down and spend three days in basra. And he was a smart guy and went to west point, played lacrosse. He looked at me and said that was a related idea. Then he would explain to me how he could get us down and we could do a full day and then go back to baghdad and if we needed more time we would go the next day. He always wanted to avoid overnights in these constituent posts. So that was his concept of managing risk. You go to basra during the day but dont overnight. And i always accepted his advice and i mention that a few places in the book i always accepted his advice and if i didnt want to i would get a new security officer. I think its very important that if you are going to have someone do a job you need to respect how they do the job and if you dont like them, fine, fire them but dont ignore their advice because they are trying to do their job. And i did get into some situations as you even get to and we had this idea attack on a motorcade. Theres a couple of things i remember calling julie, my wife, and julie gave the advice to me which i think shed given occasionally to a schoolchild which is stay indoors. But youve got to be willing to take some of those risks. But as you pointed out, when mrs. Fraser said how can you do this to your family she really got me with that. I never forgot that. The my name is added headed from denver and i have two quick questions. Number one, what is your feeling of the snowden revelations and its effect on the accord and could you describe your relationships with the former secretary defends robert gates . With regards to the snowden revelations to me there was entirely too much listening in on people. I dont think we needed to the monitoring some of the things we were monitoring. Just because you can do something doesnt mean you should do something. And i think in every intelligence operation there is a blowback possibility that is if you are found out what is the level of blowback and how bad is it as it could be if you are found out and soak you have to do a kind of analysis of what are we getting out of this versus what are the risks of being revealed and i think some of these things the risk of being revealed was far greater than what we are gaining out of it. But i dont think people should take that into their own hands and i take very seriously the oath that i took in the papers i signed up to reveal classified information. And so for that reason i know that hes perceived by some as a whistleblower but my feeling is when you go into a job like that you are fully briefed at the outset. Youre going to be seeing a lot of things you dont like necessarily end of my feeling is if you cant take it if this is of such a level that you just will not accept it you should resign but i dont think that taking it into your own hands and revealing things you want to reveal are quite acceptable. The same goes for private manning in the middle of iraq who leaked all of these telegrams. Theres another element which is the state department. I keep saying we. The state department has a classification system and a Distribution System so something thats very secret gets very little distribution. I was at disappointed when our ambassador would read a telegram guy in the middle of the room in iraq was able to read the telegram i think theres something wrong with how they were distributing sensitive telegrams of the state department. So i think there needed to be much more toward the Covert Mission between states and defends in terms of how they distributed each others telegrams. I like to think its a matter of respect that you dont distribute the other agencies telegrams to just anybody. You keep it restricted and i was kind of disappointed to hear that private manning had been reading traffic from beijing because i dont have a definition of Situational Awareness for someone in iraq would require the recording from beijing or seoul. And as for gates, i didnt know him well. I spent time with him in the back seat of the armored personnel, armored chevy suburban. He i think was he managed things pretty well at the defense department. I think that he really instilled a greater sense of responsibility especially in his moves after the revelations came out of water reed hospital. I havent read his whole book so i dont want to comment. It would be like someone seeing my book and seeing the one comment about cheney or something. I wouldnt want them to summarize my book thats right and im sure that bob gates doesnt want his stunned by one or two comments. One more question. Im sorry there are so many folks eager to ask. I am a senior at Lakewood High School and i was just curious i know you havent talked about it yet your opinion yet your opinion on the United Nations and if it is still a relevant and effective tool of diplomacy. The it is absolutely relevant and how effective it is kind of depends on us and the Member States. When i hear the un bashing are they benching the countries in the un and making the decisions . I feel like sometimes people blame the un when what they should really be doing is blaming whoever the Security Council voted. So i think they take a lot of grief that it doesnt really deserve and they are dedicated people many of them have been killed whom have been killed in the line of duty. And ive known some of them. So, the un is only as good as the Member States make it to be and there are many occasions when you want an International Presence because to have the u. S. There in and of itself wouldnt be helpful to the situation so you need other options and i think having Something Like the un is a very good option if option and i happen to know the secretary general, he was a foreign minister when i was the ambassador and i have the most respect for him and his team. The we will do the drawing and then the signing will begin. You dont have to buy your book before he signs it but please die before you leave the store. [laughter] so the cspan folks, my introduction was awful and probably asked for a blooper reel. Okay. Thanks for being with us. [applause] someone just asked me about putin but i would take a couple of hours to answer that. Of the next Laura Auricchio recounts the life of marquis