Through a wide array of crisis and challenges but lets begin with the Current Crisis that the United States faces. As you know, President Trump had a telephone call with the president of ukraine in july. The whistleblower reported on it in august. It was released in the last week. What do you make of the whistleblowers complaint . What did it tell you what struck you . What so extraordinary about this is that we have now in blackandwhite in the president s own words evidence of the fact that when hes conducting business, supposedly on behalf of the United States, with foreign leaders hes actually only conducting his own personal business, in this case is personal political business. In other instances maybe something else, financial or what have you. If you read the transcript of that phone call not once did the president of the United States raise anything that is of National Significance to the United States. Nothing about the sovereignty of ukraine and how its been violated by russian invasion. Nothing about sanctions and our effort to hold russias feet to the fire. Nothing about the need to provide economic and security support to the ukrainians. Theres a matter of. [singing] policy. Its a bizarre conversation. All the president asked for is that no one skied the president of ukraine do trump a personal political favor by digging up dirt on his adversary in the case of biden he asked he looked into bogus allegations that have been also asks for ev debunked information that suggests that ukraine instead of russia was involved in meddling in the 2016 election. Its incredible. Whats most disturbing about it in addition to its a clear case of the president putting his own personal interest above the National Interest is that if you read the whistleblower report you learn that not only did the president do this but that his team tried to hide the fact that he did it by storing the transcript of this conversation on a very supersecret server. Let me explain that for a second for your audience. When we have president ial phone calls, there are notetakers who sit in the situation room, usually two or three of them taking verbatim notes. The policy staffers usually including the National Security advisor or another senior representative and the expert staff are also in the room taking notes and advising the president if theres anything he needs to react to. None of that seemed to happen in this case in terms of the experts being in the room. There were notetakers doing their normal job. There was in other words would normally have been stored on a classified secure server. Thats always the case. Then theres the separate server thats only from the most sensitive highly compartmented information that the u. S. Government fan. Ive never in my cell seen that server. absomehow somebody in the white house decided even though this conversation, which we can now read, was not classified in the least they hated it, allegedly, on that server to prevent anybody but the most narrow circle from having access to that knowledge. As deeply disturbing. Why is there no tape recordings for those who were not alive in 1934 . I dont know the historical origins of how the decision was made. When they had nixon and watergate tips and all that stuff. After that a decision somehow by someone was taken not to actually record president ial phone calls but they are carefully meticulously recorded in real time by multiple notetakers who then makes sure the final transcript represents their best take on what was said. Who actually gets the transcripts of these conversations . Do they go to the state department, Intelligence Community im speaking from my experience and Prior Administration which i think on a bipartisan basis handle things the same way. I cant speak with certainty about whats happening in the Trump Administration but normally what would happen is that a small group of policy staffers at the ain addition to the National Security advisor and deputy National Security advisor and the Vice President s office would receive these transcripts. On a need to know basis meaning not everybody gets it not anybody has access to it but if you have a policy need to know for example with ukraine if you worked a new praying office and responsible for ukraine or russia if you worked in the military Defense Office of the nsc and you need to know about something related to Security Assistance then in all likelihood received a copy of the transcript. Thats a small circle in the first instance anyway and then cabinet level principles the secretary of state, secretary of defense, cia director, director of National Intelligence etc. They too in all likelihood when you receive a personal copy of the transcript but would not be widely disseminated within their department. Lets talk members can use it if you and theres a sense that there were enough people who were witness or participated or saw the transcript of that conversation to inform the whistleblower who got the information secondhand, according to his account. Traditionally there would be 2 to 5 staffers listening on the call. Policy staffers. Plus 2 to 3 or four notetakers in the call. Then there might be a slightly larger circle that would receive a rough transcript of the call once it was produced. And as i described, people who have a need to know. We are not talking about a lot of people. My guests, 10 to 15 on a normal call max. Did the whistleblower do the right thing . Should he or she testify . I dont know his or her personal circumstances but i think its such a gravity. Just to recall where we are this is a case where the president of the United States is the leverage of appropriated congressional funds, these are money that congress had approved for a National Security purpose to protect ukraine from russian aggression. 400 million and badly needed assistance that the president of the United States held up to use as leverage to squeeze. Im not a lawyer so im not going to characterize the legality of it but it deeply concerning. The administration will come back and say, we are interested in eliminating corruption in ukraine, which is rampant, is a longstanding bad policy. Something that is concerned a lot of administrations. You were actually at the white house at the time whats your response. Let me take a few minutes to explain. This is completely false. There is no basis to the president s claim that joe biden was misusing his office and his interactions with ukraines to benefit his son. The fact of the matter is, every time Vice President biden engaged with ukrainians including on issues of corruption he was doing so in support and very transparent, very clearly defined u. S. Policy. And at the request of president obama. When Vice President biden was present for the removal of that prosecutor general that prosecutor general himself was corrupt. He was failing to conduct the appropriate investigation that needed to be conducted. This wasnt just the United States. This wasnt just the Obama Administration. This was the views shared in congress, views shared in the International Monetary fund which like us and the europeans were providing economic assistance to ukraine. And it was a view widely shared by the european union. We were all working together to try to help lift ukraine of the success of manifestation nation of corruption. Its an aproblem there. abthe prosecutor general was not even at the time investigating the company that hunter biden became a board member of. There was no ask of the prosecutor general to step up of investigating hunter biden he was not investigating hunter biden. This is all classic case that we see so often, unfortunately out of this administration were they tried to confuse the American People deflect and deceive in order to record of h conversations by phone i can assure you are not hiding on a secret server that nobody can access. But it is true that hunter biden did profit financially being a member of a Ukrainian Company . My understanding and i understand within the Public Domain which was in the Public Domain at the time he began to serve on the board as well as now. He became a board member and a board member he received compensation. To your book. It is a very interesting personal and professional tail. What was really interesting to me at the beginning is your heritage. You have on your mothers side they were jamaican immigrants, your grandfather was a janitor, your grandmother a seamstress and they made and yet they produced five children who all went to college. One son became a doctor one president of the aand your mother radically. Your fathers side they were descendents of aand your father became a renowned economist. He came from unusual circumstances. Your life in many ways is the american dream. Im interested in your title tough love which reflects the part on for all the good things in your life and your extraordinary upbringing there are moments of tough love as well. First of all, im deeply indebted to my family and my parents on both sides in my grandparents on both sides. Literally came from nothing and made something quite extraordinary for themselves and their children. And instill the importance of education with excellence, service, giving back to your community. However, much or however little you have you have to do back. Whether its the immigrant side of my family as you mentioned jamaicans who came to Portland Maine in abor on my fathers side interestingly not just the descendents of slaves but my greatgrandfather who was a slave fought in the union army and during the civil war and after the civil war was able to go on and actually achieve a College Education and to start a school in new jersey that lasted for several years and educated generations of african americans. Both that have manual and Technical Skills to be able to be employed but also go to college. The college prep select is really about how i was raised. Its also i tried to raise my kids and how he tried to serve our country. It means in the first instance that even though i knew every step of the way that my parents love me fiercely they were going to give it to me straight and when i was growing up they would tell me kimonos falling short they would tell me, there was no sugarcoating and blowing smoke to pump up my ego. He taught me that i could do whatever i set out to do. If i did my best they would be with me no matter what. If i didnt do my best, if i were slacking off or in some other way not taking my responsibility seriously, they would give me a hard time. Also, as i described the book, i endured with my younger brother very difficult and bitter divorce. Which included violence in a public custody battle and very painful challenges for me and my brother from about the time i was seven until the time i was 15 or 16. I knew my parents love me and my brother very much they were committed devoted parents but they were not suited for each other and in my view had no business being married. When they split up in the manner they split up that was another tough experience for me and my brother and we had no choice but to decide that we were going to persevere and get smacked down by their experience or stay down. And that wasnt in our culture and upbringing we had to get back up. That was another aspect of tough love. And with my own kids i have an hour 22yearold son and a 16yearold daughter, both great kids could not be more different from one another and they know that when mom is around, they are not going to get that fierce committed law but theyre also going to get it straight. We will get back to your son later one of the things that struck me is you are tall as i am. He played point guard in basketball in high school. Really . Yes. Point guard is often the shortest person on the team. The center abthere are exceptions now but typically its somebody who handles the ball sets up the plays, passes, occasionally drives to the bucket but most of the time a playmaker. That was the position i played in high school and later in graduate school. What was striking is later on the book you bring point guard back. Explain how point guard came to be your name. My secret service call sign. My hood name. In some ways your philosophy of what you are doing. It was something that resonated. I see point guard as a role in our this event to National Security advisor. National security advisor is not the person who is taking the glory person and the National Security advisor is the person who is behind the scenes more often helping to lead a team to produce as a whole. Often passing the ball off to the star players when its the secretary of state or Vice President secretary of defense who make the public impression to negotiate the deal to be the public signing or wood arrearages. The National Security advisor is behind the scenes leaving that Principals Committee that the cabinet Level Committee that makes recommendations to the president as how to proceed on the toughest issues. I do that analogy because i think its an apt one. Its an Important Role but not the glory position and it involves making the team try to perform together optimally. Lets go through, theres positions you had in government and the crisis you faced in the first one as National Security council under president clinton you had the twin crisis of somalia in the famous case of black hawk down, which became a movie couple with 18 servicemen were killed from 1993 and then the twin crisis nearby in rwanda where some 800,000 people were killed in a country the size of vermont. Just staggering. Im interested in what you learned about dealing with crisis, what you learned about issues of when do you engage under what circumstances when there is a slaughter of humankind and why president clinton in the end he said this was his greatest threat. The context as i was 28 years old it was my first job in government, i was my title was directed for International Organizations and peacekeepers. Basically i had the un portfolio on the nsc staff so i got oversight and insight into issues in africa, issues in asia, issues in europe. In addition to the aand rwanda going on in that period thats what i focus on the book but we were also dealing with haiti and cambodia, the whole series of major challenges in which the United Nations and peacekeepers were involved. Somalian and rwanda were particularly formative crisis in my professional development. In somalia black hawk down really was the culmination of the administrations decision to try to go after the warlord by deed who had killed many somali civilians and was preventing us from completing the mission of providing humanitarian assistance to people who were starving. That was the original Mission President bush got us into at the end of his administration and president clinton carried on. After the tragic shootdown of those helicopters and the loss of those 18 servicemen, including images of people may recall of our servicemen being dragged through the streets congress reacted very swiftly and put enormous pressure on the president to end the involvement in somalia. Prematurely before it was arguably responsible to do so. What i learned from that experience was, first of all, being decisionmaking process that the Principals Committee which i ended up chairing needs to that to lower level deputies or daytoday interagency process. That was one thing that was a challenge. The other thing i learned is that when you engage in humanitarian intervention and president bush made the decision to go into somalia for all the right reasons, you have to be very mindful youre going into a complex society where you may or may not be welcome. Where there are political dynamics we may not fully understand. Works very hard to separate a purely humanitarian mission from the security situation in the nation building. Somalia was the case of us underestimating the complexity and the risk of an intervention. Rwanda, which came the actual start of the genocide of rwanda happened seven days after the last American Service members were required by congress to leave somalia. The last thing on anybodys mind in washington or in congress or on the editorial pages works with the United States forces right back into Central Africa to a country that people had heard even less about the time bed somalia. What i learned from rwanda which absome months later i saw firsthand and went to rwanda with the National Security advisor at the time, tony lake. I saw church yards chocked with dead bodies, decomposing. One of the most serious experiences ive ever had. What i learned from that tragedy is what happens when you dont make timely decisions about whether or not to intervene. Im not sure that American Intervention and rwanda necessarily could have been dispositive because these are killings going people going doortodoor using machetes and we ju