0 support them. that's a much more glaring problem, if that has evidence to support it. that does speak to character. that does speak to style. and christie needs to distance himself from that kind of accusation quickly and to try to get this behind him if he can do that. the investigation that's going on will certainly shed more light in the days to come, but to have it reach etven in just matter of a few words to the governor's office does bring this to another level. it also raises the question that in the times we live in, e-mail is always the thing that seems to be a window into people's thoughts and sometimes their conduct that they may not want the public to see, and yet e-mails somehow always come out. so for chris christie, this will be a challenge. >> and chris, it matters because chris christie is a national figure. >> and look, andrea, i recall vividly you asking myself and amy walter about this a few weeks ago and me saying look, i don't think it's an issue in 2016. steve made this point. now that it is the deputy chief of staff in the governor's office, it's a different thing now. you can no longer dismiss it as these are some port authority guys. yeah, they're connected to me, but this really didn't have anything to do -- this is not in his office. and it's the kind of politics that i think you don't want to see played. you know, traffic's going to get worse in fort lee. that line in the e-mail is going to be -- is going to sort of linger throughout i think the next couple weeks and maybe even months. i know they're not saying anything right now, but i think the christie people now understand this can no longer be sort of laughed off or dismissed as he did in this clip you played. this is something he now has to address. >> and the inaugural is coming up in the next couple weeks, the celebration of chris christie's second term. so they have a short window to respond. they maybe don't have to do it today, but they've got to get a plan of action going quickly. >> steve, one of the larger narratives of chris christie is can he play in republican politics in the midwest, in iowa, in new hampshire? and that new jersey sort of rough and tumble politics that you covered so ably in new jersey. it's part of the downside in republican primaries, right? >> it's funny, because the jersey image and the jersey style cuts both ways. i know it well, somebody that has a bit of a background there. christie, there's sort of two conflicting images that come to people's mind when you say the jersey way, jersey style. christie used a positive one, blunt, unvarnished, plain spoken, i'm going to tell you the truth, tell it like it is. that's how christie played up his jersey roots. i think that sort of jersey image does have resonance nationally. the problem is there's this other side of new jersey as this sort of seedy den of political corruption and malfeasance and that sort of thing. that reinforces the worst negative stereotype of the jersey way. i see chris christie before this, he'd go out to iowa and those places and play it up. like hey, i'm going to give it to you jersey style right now. they would like it, they eat it up. i don't know if he's going to be able to do that after this. >> thanks to you, steve, kelly, and chris. meanwhile, the white house today on the defensive after excerpts were released and leaked from former defense secretary bob gates' new book "in duty," his new memoir. gates both criticizes and praises president obama for his relationship with the military, but reserves his sharpest criticism for vice president joe biden and former national security adviser tom donovan. gates calls the national security team the most centralized and controlling in national security since the nixon years. he recalls his thoughts after one meeting with the president about the war in afghanistan, saying "the president doesn't trust his commander, can't stand karzai, doesn't believe in his own strategy, and doesn't consider the war to be his. for him, it's all about getting out." joining me now is p.j. crowley, and colonel jack jacobs. welcome to both of you. p.j., you were there. you've seen a lot of this. you know bob gate, as do i. i've covered him at cia. this, first of all, booked by an academically minded, historically minded man who wants to talk for history about the problems that the military and the white house have about the problems he had with congress. he was deeply committed and emotionally engaged in pursuing both wars. taking responsibility for all the dead and wounded. at the same time, you can't walk away from his criticisms of the current sitting president and his team. >> it's unprecedented, but that's the nature of the environment that we're in now. books come out a lot more rapidly, and in this particular case, it involves an administration that is still in office. getting into some of the particulars there, he's suggest tl ing that the president didn't trust his commander, and yet ultimately he hired him. i went and saw the engagement or lack of it when he saw petraeus in baghdad. i was there. they never were. there were two increases, major increases in troop levels in afghanistan. but the other thing is, in 2009, a year-long process that culminated in the president's speech, describing his afghanistan policy in december of 2009, and in fact, the president following precisely the policy that he outlined in 2009, which had a surge in troops for a limited period of time. the military didn't like that. >> it was the time limit that they didn't like. >> the reason for that was very simple. in the assessment of the administration coming into office in 2009, we understood that ultimately, in what became the war against al qaeda, that afghanistan was important, but pakistan was strategic. and so, we're waging a war in 2009 that wasn't necessarily focused on the major threat, and the discovery of bin laden in 2010 and pakistan reinforces that. >> and you mentioned bin laden, because colonel jack, gates' book does say that the decision that the president took to go after bin laden and use the seal team 6 based on the intelligence was one of the most courageous that he'd ever seen. at the same time, there's specific instances here as a military man, he talks about saying to joe biden and donovan and the others that they were not in the chain of command. he deeply resented the fact that lower level nsc would reach out to commanders in the field. and he told his commanders don't take orders from them, let me handle that. because it was incorrect for them, he felt, to be reaching out to them. who's right about that. >> well, tactically, strategically, secretary gates is right about that. of the nine principles of war, one of the most important ones is the principle of unity of command. you can't have people who are operating without any authority or operating without any responsibility and the people in the national security council are precisely those kinds of people. the chain of command should go from the president, secretary of defense, and down through the chain of command. the national security adviser should not be in that loop. and so secretary gates is right about that. >> what is your takeaway about having the defense secretary, he's a republican, he comes in, clearly the obama team wanted him in the cabinet for credibility. as a republican, as a holdover, as someone respected in both democratic and republican white houses. what about writing a book at this point and criticizing his former boss, the president. >> well, it's all about the money in any case. >> jack, knowing bob gates, i don't think this is about making money off of a book. i think this is more deeply felt. you can question the timing and the motivation, but -- >> that kind of decision typically -- and i realize that the author has got to agree or disagree, but usually decision of the publisher trying to get the best possible time to release the book. so from the publisher's standpoint, it certainly is all about the money. i think the timing is interesting, however. right now you've got a big problem in the middle east. things are going down the tubes in syria. that spilled over into iraq, a place where we spent a lot of treasure and a lot of lives. i think the timing of the book talking about that particular war at this particular time is interesting. >> jack, your point is well-taken. and right now, we're seeing a very unusual photo op. every week, the president has lunch with his vice president. and we never have been permitted in for a photo opportunity. but as you see these cameramen coming out now, they have actually been able photograph this weekly luncheon. so it's clear that the white house is trying to make a big point about how close joe biden is with the president in response to the gates book. p.j., you've been in the communications office at the white house as well as at the state department. you know exactly what they were trying to do today. >> as jack said, bob gates has a point, and that when it comes to military decisions, those decisions are communicated from the president to the secretary of defense. some of the same issues and tensions that grew in the bush administration as well. but we have vice presidents that since al gore, dick cheney, joe biden, are playing an elevated role. they're playing a significant policy role. i think biden's role within the obama white house has been to challenge accepted wisdom and to make sure that in some cases, to play the devil's advocate, to make sure that there is a vigorous debate with the national security team -- >> and in fact, that was his assignment. because president obama was elected as a critic of the iraq war. and came in to it with skepticism about the military's role. >> but at the end of the day, these kind of tensions playing out in a principal's meeting is actually healthy. the president values that. he's getting the advice of his team and can ostensibly make better decisions. >> i've got to ask you both about what he writes without quotations about hillary clinton and barack obama, saying that in a conversation both -- first hillary said that she opposed the iraq surge in '07 in iowa because she -- for political reasons basically, because she was running against barack obama, who was an opponent of the iraq war and it was iowa where democrats were mostly anti-war, and he, the president, then conceding yeah, that he opposed the iraq surge pretty much for political reasons as well. you work with hillary clinton at the state department. did you ever get a sense that her motivations on iraq were political? >> as a senator, she was in a political -- the irony here is we're talking buabout a book th none of us have actually read yet. it's hard to know the context. but hillary clinton -- what made her an effective secretary of state was she not only understood the substance, but did understand the political context in which that substance would be executed without pertaining to american politics or pertaining to afghan politics. >> p.j. crowley, thank you very much. colonel jack jacobs, thanks very much for being with us today. and meanwhile, search and rescue efforts are under way for a missing crew member aboard a navy helicopter after it made an emergency water landing this morning off the coast of virginia beach. 5% nefive personnel were onboar. four people were rescued and transported to a local hospital. their condition is not known. yesterday, four american airmen were killed when a u.s. military helicopter carrying live ammunition crashed during a training exercise in england. the aircraft was practicing flying at low altitudes, we're told, when it went down, spreading debris, including hazardous bullets across an area the size of a soccer field. safety crews are currently working to secure the scene. investigators then will be able to determine the cause of that crash. a can of del monte green beans? 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