Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Susan Rice Tough Love - M

Former Obama Administration National Security advisor and un ambassador susan rice discusses her life and career in american diplomacy and foreign policy. Shes interviewed by the new yorker columnist robin wright. After words is a Weekly Program with guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest works. Welcome, susan rice to after words. After thank you. Its great to be with you. It is a fascinating book. So it is a personal tale and a chronicle of your professional life and threw a wide array of crises and challenges, but lets begin with the Current Crisis that the United States faces. As you know, President Trump had a phone call with the president of ukraine in july, a whistleblower reported on it in august. It was released last week. What do you make of the whistleblowers complaint . What did i tell you, what struck you . What is 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 come hes actually only conducting his own personal business. In this case from his personal political business and in other instances it may be something else, financial or what have you. But if you read the transcript of the 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 a violated by russias invasion nothing about the sanctions in their effort to continue to old russias feet to the fire, nothing about the need to provide economic and security support to the ukrainians as a matter of u. S. Policy. It is a bizarre conversation. All the president asked for is that the president of ukraine and trump gave personal political favor by digging up dirt on his adversary in the case of joe biden he looked into bogus allegations that have been debunked alleging that he did something wrong as Vice President but there is no evidence to that effect yet he wants the information presumably to try to use it against joe biden politically. Then he asked for more debunked information that suggests ukraine rather than russia was somehow involved in meddling in the 2016 the election. Its incredible. And what is most disturbing about it is 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 will 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 and let me explain that just for a second to your audience. When we have president ial phone calls, there are no takers takers to that sit in the situation room, usually a two or three of them taking notes. Policy staffers coming 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 to react to. And if that seemed to happen in this case in terms of the experts being in the room. There were no takers and the notes would normally have been stored on a classified, secure server thats always the case. But then theres the separate server that is only for the most sensitive, highly compartmented information that the government has. Ive never even, myself, seem server. Ive received reports from occasionally beforehand carried me in an envelope and had to be hand carried back. That is how sensitive the material is on that server and it somehow, somebodyyet somehow, somebody in the white house decided that even though this conversation which we can now read wasnt classified they hated it allegedly on that server to prevent anybody but the most narrow circle from having access to that knowledge. That is deeply disturbing. So, why was there no tape recording or for those that were not alive in 1934. Guest i dont know the historical origins of how the decision was made. When they had nixon and the watergate tapes and all that stuff, after that, you decision somehow by some one someone was taken not to actually record the president ial phone calls but theyll carefully meticulously recorded in real time by multiple notetakers to then make sure the final transcript represents their best take on what was said. Who gets the transcripts of these conversations . Or do they go to the state Department Intelligence community, embassies abroad, how likely are they distributed . Normally come into giving speaking from my experience in prior administrations which i think on a bipartisan basis handled things the same way. I cant speak with certainty about what is happening in the trump administration, but normally what would happen is in small groups of policy staffers at the nsc and in addition to the National Security adviser they would receive these transcripts on a need to know basis. If you have a policy need to know for example in ukraine and if you worked in the European Office and keyword is possible but it wouldnt be disseminated within their department. So now lets talk about a number. You said a few and there is the same but there were enough people who were witness to a. Of two to five staffers listening on the call policy staffers and the two the to do for two to four notetakers and the situation plus or minus one either side had access to the call and then there might be a slightly larger circle as i describe people that have the need to know, so we are not talking about a lot of people. So my guess that ten to 15 on a normal call should he or she testified this is a case where the president of the United States is the leverage of appropriated funds for the National Security purpose to protect ukraine from the aggression 400 million in a matter related assistance the president of the United States held up to use as leverage to squeeze the ukrainian president to do him a favor that was purely political in nature. I am not aware so aware swing upgrade to a lawyer so im not quick to characterize the vitality we are interested in eliminating corruption in ukraine which is what happened to the. They were engaged in some kind of manipulation or reality at the white house at the time, what is your response . Guest let me take a few minutes to explain. That joe biden was misusing his office and interactions with the ukrainians to benefit his son. Lets back up. The fact of the matter is it was clearly defined in the u. S. Policy at the request of president obama. When Vice President ial biotin was pressing for the removal of the prosecutor general the prosecutor general himself was corrupt. He was failing to corrupt the appropriate investigations are that needed to be conducted. This wasnt just the Obama Administration view, it was congress the view shared by the International Monetary fund, which like us and the europeans were providing economic assistance to ukraine and it is a view widely shared by the European Union and the corruption because you are right it is a problem. When the Vice President was making his push to head back he was doing so transparently and openly in support of the policy. Wasnt doing it for personal gain in fact the prosecutor general was sent there at the time. The prosecutor general stepping in and they were not investigating. So this is all classic case that we see so often unfortunately out of this administration when they try to create a story that doesnt exist. There was nothing improper that im aware of where that has been demonstrated that they did anything improper. They carried out the policy openly and transparency, talked about it publicly and directed the conversations by phone i can assure you are not hiding that nobody can access. It is true that he did profit financially. He became a board member. Guest it is a very interesting and professional scale. What was interesting is the heritage you have on your mothers side, your grandfather was a janitor your grandmother a seamstress and made and they put in children that one became a president of the university and your mother went to radcliffe. It was quite extraordinary and then on your fathers side your father became a renowned economist to the world bank and the board of the federal reserve, so you came from unusual circumstances in your life in many ways as the american dream. Im interested in your title. Guest first of all bigger deeply indebted to my family and grandparents as described and made quite extraordinary for them and then installed the importance of education and excellence bringing back to the community. However, not sure that is the mantra with which i was raised whether to the immigrantwith her to the immigrant side of my family in 1912 was nothing and then to send their kids to college and see them succeed. My greatgrandfather was a slave fought in the union army during the civil war and after the civil war and manually in the Technical Skills to be able to be employed but also to go to college so again Education Service is a commitment on both sides. Its also how i tried to raise my kids and tried to serve the country. There was no blowing smoke to pump up my ego. They told me i could do whatever i set out to do and if i did my best, they would be with me no matter what and if i didnt do my best, if i were slacking or in some other way not taking my response ability seriously they would give me a hard time. I also, as i described in the book they have very painful challenges about the time i was seven to the time i was 15 or 16. I know my parents loved me and my brother is very much and they were committed devoted parents but they were not suited for each other and frankly in my view had no business being. And when they split up in a manner that they split up, that was another experience for me and my brother and we had no choice but to decide we were going to persevere and get back up despite having been knocked down by their experiences or stay down coming into that wasnt in our culture and upbringing. We had to get back up. So that was another aspect of tough love and i have a now 22yearold son and 16yearold daughter. They could be different from one another and they know that when mom is around, they are not going to get that committed was thatlovethat they will get it straight and there is no playing games are getting away with murder in our household. Host . You played point guard in basketball in high school. Guest somebody that is handed the ball and sets up the place and that was the playmaker and that is the position that i had in graduate school. Explain how point guard came both to be your name and also the philosophy of what you were doing guest i read about this in the book analogous to that of National Security. The National Security adviser isnt the personadvisorisnt the person that is seen taking the glory shot a. Of the person and the National Security card who helps behind the scenes are often. They are produced as a goal, passing the ball off to the star player whether the secretary or the president or Vice President to do the public signing or whatever it is come up to the National Security advisor does behind the scenes in that committee as to how to proceed to so later that analogy because it is an act and Important Role that it isnt the glory position and it was making the team trying to perform together. Host lets go through the various positions that you have had in the issue and the first one when you read the National Security counsel under president clinton you had the crisis in of somalia and the famous case of black hawk down and then the crisis nearby in rwanda where some 800,000 people were killed in a country the size of vermont. When you learned about dealing with crises, what you learned about the issues under what circumstances. I was 28yearsold and it was my first job in government. In the portfolio on the staff i got oversight and inside into issues in africa and asia and europe so with somalia and rwanda those are also dealing with bosnia and haiti and cambodia. A whole series of major challenges in which the United Nations and peacekeepers were involved. They were particularly formative crises in my professional development. In somalia, black hawk down was the culmination of the administrations decision to try to go after the warlord they were preventing us from completing the mission of providing humanitarian assistance to those that were starting. That is the original mission that we got into at the end of the administration that president clinton carried on. After the tragic shootdown of those helicopters and the loss of the 18 servicemen are servicemen being dragged through the streets of mogadishu. They acted very swiftly and with enormous pressure on the involvement in somalia. It was the decisionmaking process at the Principals Committee that many years later i ended up chairing and needs to be more hands handson in the case where you have American Service members deployed and cant believe that the the lowerlevel deputies or of deputies or the daytoday interagency process. And that is one thing that was a challenge. There are political dynamics that we may or may not fully understand and where it is very hard to separate from the humanitarian issues like the security situation in the nationbuilding challenge. So, somalia was the case of our underestimating the complexities of the intervention. After the Service Members were acquired the last thing on anybodys mind in washington or in congress or the editorial pages with the united united of the United States ought to send their forces back to centralize to replace the people had heard of even less at the time. And what i learned from rwanda is what i saw some months later with the National Security adviser at the time and saw that it was still filled in the decomposing. It was one of the most terrific experiences i ever have. But what i learned from that tragedy is what happens when you dont make the primary decisions about whether or not to intervene. I am sure that American Intervention in rwanda necessarily could have been dispositive becausethispositive because there were killings going door to door and we just learned that the best writing force in the world can sometimes be challenged by warlords on the vehicles with machine guns. But in the case of rwanda, there was never the question called. Called. The decision was never discussed as to whether or not the United States should intervene. Because it was a series of individual decisions taking the team in the moment. We had to get the american south. We had to deal with the question of whether it should be called a genocide and deal with the question of whether to shut down the hate radio. There were decisions taking should do u. S. Alone or with others intervened, and that was the failure of the decisionmaking process. So, in those experiences ive learned youve got to be handson and make a conscious decision. You cant just allow that to slip away from you and i think president clinton has expressed this in public many times that we didnt intervene. He has said at times if we had sent 10,000 troops, it might have made a difference. Im not sure i am as confident in that decision, but i do think that what we should have learned from that experience and that i kind of take with me into my subsequent child is that we have to have a handson active process. Host into this will come back to be a scene later on in other jobs. From the National Security Council Company went to the state department. There is a wonderful passage in your book. You were very candid about yourself, which is fascinating. This is what you wrote. My reputation from the nsc as i was about to discover had preceded me. Im why was eventually told, i was perceived as smart, dynamic, decisive, and bureaucratically skilled, and if. But also, rash, demanding inpatient, hardheaded and unafraid of confrontation. Also autocratic, micromanaging. So what does that tell us about your backs are they right and what parts were they right about . I think that they were right i had the privilege starting at the staff at 28 megabytes 32 i had been elevated to assistant secretary of state that meant i was responsible for all the seas all the ambassadors and 48 subsaharan african countries. I was probably 20 to 30 years younger than the most senior ambassadors reporting to me. They had come up in the career and they werecurvierand they were mostly male and mostly white and saw me as wrong for the job to put it mildly and insufficiently experienced given their competitive background. They knew i had the skills in terms of intellect and i had the relationships at the white house and at the top of the state department to get things done. But i think they were skeptical of me. And the other thing i just had my oldest child our son. When i started at the state department, he was three months old and i was a breastfeeding mother. Putting all those things together i think i wasnt typical assistant secretary that many of my colleagues expected. And there is the challenge of being breastfeeding on the road road. So the first crisis in the state department, or your biggest arguably, was 1998, the al qaeda attacks on the u. S. Emb