Thank you very much for coming. We are very pleased to have paul with us here this evening and was reported from the Los Angeles Times and writing about Foreign Policy with the pentagon and the state department and other important assignment along assignments it with that paper four years ago. As one of those journalistic pros on National Security affairs. To have that knowledge of National Security. And then ryan crocker. Of how senior skills state Department Officers and those intelligence communities like iraq and syria and pakistan olivia one libya to combat terrorism. Have declineo testify. We will be in conversation here with someone else who knows the way around atheir way around thn and state department but as an insider. He spent 29 years in the navy specializing in Public Affairs and rose to become the navys top spokesman and chief spokesman for the department of defense. After retiring from the military in 2015 with the rank of rear admiral, he shifted to the state department where he served as the spokesman and assistant secretary for Public Affairs during the final year and a half or so of the Obama Administration. He now appears on cnn as an analyst of military and diplomatic issues. Ladies and gentlemen, pleaseat help me in welcoming john richter paul richter and john kirby. [applause] good evening everybody. Thanks for coming out on a cold wet tonight in dc. I dont think there could be a better time for a book like this because theyve are they been brought to theethenbrought to tf americas imagination in light of the impeachment inquiry and it doesnt matter where you are on the political side or if you are for or against what they are doingu you can see by watching any little bit of the testimony of the last couple of weeks how professional and how skilled these men and women are and sort of derived from that of the core attributes favoring the effort which present unlike the way the military brings the skilled professionalism to what they do. I would like to start because i know that this was a look long in the making, bu, but what gavu a good idea for the topic, what gave you the idea and why goes for . When i was covering it right after 9 11, i noticed pretty soon there was a new crisis in the middle east or m south asia they would turn to one of the small groups of the trusted veterans to be ambassadors out there and they have rotated from crisis to crisis for years to all these places where there was extra pay and risks to them. It seems to go so wrong so i settled on the only people in this category but i thought it was especially good examples of it and told the same 15 year period in the period that im writing about he went to afghanistan twice and led at the embassy in iraq wants that kind of height of the civil war and they chose Anne Patterson who sat about every bad job in the stateha department. Then i also chose robert ford who was in this period the political counselor and number two in the embassy and in iraq he took five tours in iraq and he volunteered five times and had more time in iraq during this period and any other Foreign Service officer and then after iraq was over, they sent him to syria which sounded like it was going to be a calm or boring theyd. You probably know of stevens she was the number two in the embassy before the civil war and then when the civil war broke out in 2011, washington needed somebody to go into libya to sneak into libya to be the sorto of washingtons eyes and ears on the ground to figure out who the rebels were and then try to find out who was important and what they needed to knowha about the. Theres a lot of Foreign Policy in the book but its mostly about these four people and the struggles again the bad guys and difficult local theaters in the countries and sometimes there are struggles with washington, edtoo you can imagine especially those of you that have been in the Government Service you know all about that. So they were ambassadors kind of in a different mold from post. The function between washington and foreign leaders but these were all situations where there was chaos and violence and everything was uncertain if the bosses in washington hav had tod them in and ask them to improvise to figure out what needed to be done and with whom and to make it up as they went along. To give you an example of that, ryan crocker in early 2002 after the taliban government had fallen, crocker went into afghanistan to try to help the formation of the new government andd the interim leader was hamd karzai who had been a schoolteacher and a publicist but had no experience running a country. The question is what do wee do now is that together they pickd a cabinet and tried to settle on an agenda to further new state that had almost no money. They tried to make peace between the warlords and try to kill each other but it was a long struggle. I spoke to a cia officer who was there at the time and you know the cia was first in afghanistan and he said sometimes he needed to be given a little kick. All of these people faced a lot of danger. Robert ford when he went to iraq at first they send him down to be the oneman occupation government and there was nobody there. There was the marines but there was no government. The militia is getting organized to try to take over and assert their authority is and became in a testament to the will and the authorities in baghdad could allow alternate governments to take hold so oneday ford was on a o trip to a village to speak o a religious leader. There was the young iraqi dental student taken outside and began beating him and announced to crocker into the military aid they were holding them indefinitely, so it looks like device a crocker, i meant for it looked like they might be stuck there for who knows how long until he realized he had a meeting later that day with an official from the same militia so he talked them into releasing him that it was a close call. They went ahead and had a meeting with their boss that night and the military aid if my car we are going back to the base so there was no meeting that night. Later on that night during the tour, he got crossed up with the militia who became a big danger to the u. S. And for was getting Death Threats and he realized he was on the list for assassination. When the civil war broke out immediately, ford decided he was going to protest the regime was otooting the demonstrators in the streets of may 10 unpopular with other regime in the regimn he was being chased through the streets a plain clothed security men that were sticking out of his house and there was a big attack on the embassy finally tried to break in through the roof and forward almost had to order a green guards to shoot at them so there was ever never ae that they were safe. Hispanic there is a great adage that i love this as a diplomat says maybe means no and a diplomat says no isma no diplom. But when you look at the story of these four, they were not afraid to offer dissenting views in spite t of their government d to the leaders that they were working with. And what that means and how they would move the policy forward. Most of the time, these diplomats carry out Administration Policies without a peep no matter what they think of it, but they are supposed to do and they are part of a professional nonpartisan body and thats the way that its supposed to be. They sometimes never meet or they are in the whole course ofa a career but at other times there is then different policy differences into the impeachment testimony into the abuse of power. So occasionally they do run up against them. If they feel seriously enough about it the if they could leave Foreign Service. In the dissent channel that they have had for a veryy long time that all of the four in my book struggled with this issue in various ways. There wasnt any issue as there is now a bit for example ryan crocker struggled on the decision to go to iraq they wrote a famous memo called the perfect storm memo that wrote everything that could go wrong in iraq and he hoped to pass it up the chain. It got part way up the chain they didnt really change minds because they wanted to go ahead with the invasion anyway. They said its going to be the biggest mistake that you ever see in your life, but you have to make a decision about whether you want to go forward and support this president and for myself im going to go forward and support him so crocker went to baghdad and helped out after the invasion and he went back again in 2007 to help out as ambassador to the tea had a lot of doubts and misgivings and said after he retired he was following all Administration Policies with harder than it sounds. Sometimes the argument that an effective for long periods. When crocker was in afghanistan in 2011, the Obama Administration wanted to pull out troops fairly abruptly and everybody in the administration and a lot of other people in the state department and the military were arguing for going slow and the argument was never goingresolve to just kept on. That i that is a great segue to my next question. The story of these diplomats is also the story of American Intervention in thema middle eat particularly the last 20 years or so. Were. There commonalities of thesehe over the role of america in this part of the world where did they have great differences among them . There were some differences but there were a lot of commonalities, too. Most were foreignpolicy traditionalists that believe in a common Foreign Policy views that have been worked out over the last 75 years since world war ii. They are internationalists and believe the u. S. Should have a leading role in the world and that our influence is underwritten by force, but they shouldnt use it too much. One thing they also believe is that the u. S. Should be slow to get into conflicts and then also slow to get out of them because crocker always said americans convinced that with our influence, military andnd econoc tools we can get in and reshape parts of the world and so we go off and we try to exert our will but then pretty soon we discover things are not changing as fast as we lik wed like and we get discouraged so there is a lot of political pressure to pull out quickly into the Foreign Service people always despair at this because they understand that having effects on foreignpolicy take a long time. There was a german sociologist who said the foreignpolicy is like driving a nail slowly through a hard piece of wood. Things take time. They need a lot of effort, more than the americans usually relies. And its something that they dont realize. One of the themes in the book but i found fascinating is the relationship that all four of these diplomats have with their military counterparts and the waxing and training of the relationships. Can you talk about the importance off the military stae relationships in the conflicts in how these diplomats were sort of able to manage that maybe some better than others. It really threw the military and diplomatic corps together in a way that they havent been thrown together since vietnam. And they often have different agendas and different orders asfrom washington they couldnt always see eye to eye. I remember robert ford he understood the iraqis better than they understood that the american military. So you know, there are cultural differences that run deep. In the beginning of the iraq period especially, but in afghanistan, there was a lot of conflict that had been written about 1 in the diplomatsot and generals and there were just periods when theyth went their n way and they were not even communicating with each other. They have seen generals and ambassadors yelling at each other in front of the iraqis which wasnt good. But the problem is that things just dont get done and so after a while it became apparent things were not in concert and it became increasingly visible and a disruptive problem. So at the time, David Petraeus and ryan crocker went to iraq during the period sold the surge which was sending more troops to try to calm the civil war, crocker and petraeus realized they needed to get along otherwise the iraqis could divide and conquer so there was a lot of reason for them to harmonize, and debated. They went for long runs and they put a satellite fix to his would talk about almost everything. They would go in and meet with the Prime Minister Nouri Almaliki i and he knew without prompting that he would talk it out. Later, crocker went to afghanistan and it was the same way with john allen, a harmonized closely and agreed on everything. But it wasnt a natural state and when crocker left afghanistan, with iraq in 2009, his successor immediately began havingin disagreements with generall odierno who was in charge of th the military is tht it requires constant attention. Its just not a natural state. We have one more and then we will start taking questions. Please come up when you are ready and we will let you have it. In the writing of the book did you learn or stumble across more oborder that you think somebody might be writing aht book aboutn the years to come in terms of their performance atf the level they were and what would you say to people that are considering a careerns in the Foreign Service and who might be a little intimidated in off by what they are seeing at this right now . There were some that rose quickly to the ranks and had incredible talent. When Chris Stevens was in isra israel. Stevens was number two and a part of the embassy that have dealt with the palestinians and he had working for him a young man andnd another named jeffrey who went on to become very outstanding u. S. Officials. He had come over as an arab specialist to work for the state department and was an outstanding performer in iraq and ran for Congress Last year in the Hudson Valley of new york and did notey make it it was a hotly contested seat. Kunar ended up being president obamas to top advisor on much f the middle east at one point in the second term. Is in terms of the future of a young Foreign Service officers, its been difficult because theyve watched the way that the Trump Administration has reduced the size of the Foreign Service and a number of for the Foreign Service exam has fallen to the peak of 20,000 a year to 8,000 so a lot of people have been discouraged that i happen to know some who teach young people and i have a friend at Johns Hopkins and they say theres still a hugeay demand fr these jobs and i think the testimony we have seen in the impeachment inquiry is going to increase that they banned because people see these charts are consequential and they are interesting in that they can be fun so i think we will see there is still a demand. You wrote about an interesting moment going to the worst places and doing the hardest jobs where they are trying to get the state department to build up the embassy and staff it up with a lot more Foreign Service officers and hes having trouble getting people to sign up to goo sohe they have a town hall in te state department where they are encouraging people to go into was and wasa bit of a dustup. Can you maybe describe that and the aftereffects of the mission in iraq there was a period during that time i spoke about when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state and people in the white house wanted to put a lot more officers into iraq and they were saying we need volunteers for these jobs and your career is going to depend on it so they began pressuring people. A lot of the Foreign Service officers hadnt gone into the career expecting that they would be exposed to a lot of danger so there was a meeting in the state department for some disgruntled bployees complained to who was then the director general and one guy that spent his career in europe got out and said if i get killed there, are you going to take care of my children, so they got quite angry and had to close the meeting down abruptly and this didnt help the image of the Foreign Service. A lot of people thought that they were shirking while they were out there risking their lives. Nick burns was the number three in the department went to thanksgiving with his sister in virginia this month and she said why isnt the Foreign Service stepping up when a the troops ae at risk, so it was painful for him to do that but it was painted the impression that was left. However, after all of this, it turned out that eventually theyy got all the volunteers they need to get all the jobs were filled and nobody had to be penalized for not going. Feel free to step up to the microphone if you have questions we are happy to take them. I wanted to pull in another string in the book which is the tensions that diplomats out with their own sense of values in. They were honest men and women but they struggled sometimes with having to deal with people that had character issues. Karzai in afghanistan, a they found themselves able to reconcile working with leaders they didnt like and they were not convinced were necessarily serving Thee National interest. How did they work their way through those sort of moral dilemmas and is there a way today that we are seeing going on in the world and the way that the administration is executing Foreign Policy with authoritarian leaders. A lot of the Foreign Service officers in afghanistan for example fought so much as corrupt people that didnt have an interest in afghanistan and the u. S. Was pouring all this money into the. That is just the way it is but part of the job especially for the ambassadors is focused on these individual leaders and the ambassadors have to go every day they have to go up to the palace and not on the front door and no matter how they feel, all these characters theyve got to get along with them and build trust with them because it is part of the relationship because the u. S. Asks a lot of these leaders to do this and they dont necessarily want to. Its politically risky for them and if they dont have confidence in the ambassador they dont have trust in the ambassador, then its not going to work. A need to think that is one thing that will draw them. One of these issues is going to be a motive for a lot of young people. I also think if i could it is also about feeling like that service is valued and one of the things i hear when i talked to the Foreign Service Junior Officers many of them are not quite sure that the idea of diplomacy and that Foreign Policy of the less selfinterested Foreign Policy is off value right now and that is putting some of them off a little bit. In a way it isnt like being in the military. I like being in the navy because i think it is a value of the service that they are struggling with right now. Im Tracy Wilkinson with the Los Angeles Times and i have the task of succeeding paul in the state department. What they saw as the importance of the media to get the message out or to not get the message out, was it a hostile adversarial relationship, was at one of more collaborative or where they saw each others oths roles contrasted with what we have today . , befor among the four there were different attitudes. You might notice, for got alongg well with the press and he was hoping this would constantly even though i wasnt there he helped me out a lot and ryan crocker was the same way friends going back to lebanon during the civil war the civil war people like wright and tom friedman so crocker has always gotten along well and he knows they all knew maybe with the exception they all knew what the rules were and what to expect of them. I think that Anne Patterson was a little weary because she could sometimes be so candid she would sometimes say too much so we loved her but she could sometimes get in trouble son her hands always kind of got anxious when she was with the press. Thank you. T thanks for the buck and an interesting discussion. I was in damascus with ambassador ford during that time. Looking at the role of diplomats, a lot of what is not recorded because this is when things go right, the quieter actually not engaged in reacting to violence or in a crisis but actually through our work preventing crisis but that often doesnt get reported as much because things are normal. How do you see the role that the press does in creating the environment where it the work of presenting the crisis is more valued and the role of routine diplomacy might be more valued than the sort of sensational aspect of reacting to crisis . There are ways to write about things going right, but its just the nature of the beast when theres news and that isnt regular so i dont know if theres any way around that. Theres expectations and its coverage and airplanes are not supposed to crash and so when they do that makes news. Wouldnt you say access and relationship with building the hadia is important because you do have a situation where it is a complicated policy that you are trying to drive home and it doesnt necessarily make spectacular headlines but if you have a relationship with the press you could provide that context and get some discussion and all of them to some degree i nsdidnt know mr. Stevens but ty try to tempt those media arelationships just as strongly as the host country. Thats right and if you are spending time with the press at explaining the dimensions and the situations they are going to find Something Interesting in there. Barbara harvey retired officer. It was possible to bring in the congress and say we may understand what youre going through but dont forget we have a congress and at the time there was a congress who was very concerned about human rights and so if you want more airplanes or Something Like that, you have to be sure that youha are not beatg up on people and shooting people banning newspapers in the press tso the congress has a role. I guess that isnt a question. The question. Especially on this human rights issue which is really what youre talking about. They are the ones that are setting the rules often. When Anne Patterson was in colombia in 2000 and 2003 she was in a situation where they met up with military hardware because the government was threatened by this insurgency which have basically taken control of a lot of the land that the u. S. Was concerned that the military and some of the militia they had enacted laws that they were going to continue to get aid from them and follow certain guidelines and so patterson went and met with these military leaders and said youre not going to get money because congress is so so congress in that situation definitely played a strong role. My name is rightly and my question is how do you think that our foreign counterparts perceive the Foreign Service differently or whether it does in light of the president s attempt to denigrate the Foreign Service and how do you think that they are able to make commitments on a lower level than they are operatin operating inconsistently at the stand they could graciously at worst. Your first question is how do they look currently . I think we have a different system than some of our allies because we allow long career people to become ambassadors, and i thinkam a lot of allies ad countries like china and russia think that they are crazy. They are perplexed with what is going on in the Foreign Service. The career people generally know the Foreign Service has been kind of reduced in stature and so many of the decisions for example in ukraine are being made by others outside of the formal process and the state department and so the foreign leaders and diplomats are learning they need to go to the Political Network and pay less attention to the career diplomats who are articulating a the policy debate that it used to be. My question follows up on the one about the press and im wondering after studying the phenomenon that you did after the fact how well you thought elthe press covered the story including i guess yourself. I can take that one. [laughter] there was a lot is said and written about how the press fell down on the job for the iraq invasion it was too much support for this policy that turned up so badly and there was only a few journalists in town or deeply skeptical about the invasion of iraq at the time and the ones who were dubious are called heroes now in movies and things like that, so that was a big mistake and there wasnt enough skepticism about it. Theyve certainly been skeptical persons. S. Hello and thank you very much for taking the time. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about who you think the audience for the buck and related to that what you think the Foreign Service could do to tell the story better to the american public. Thats an interesting question. I was talking to the head of the Foreign Service union the other day and he was of course worried about whats going to happen next in the Foreign Service but he said they were going to try to take advantage of the crisis by trying to get out the word about with the foreignbo service does and how its helping americans even though they dont know it its helping promote business and prevent the spread of disease. It has a real image problem is that ordinarintothe ordinary amt know anything about the Foreign Service think of people that drink cocktails in an evening dress. It would be useful for the Foreign Service if they were able to get theey t word out. The struggles for these people is about the details of the Foreign Policy. You want to be where the action is, this is the job for you. They always need a lot of jokes about how boring they were and theyay said i dont think western europe is important but of course it is important. You need to go there to make a connection to someplace interesting. [laughter] in researching and writing the book were there surprises for you because you covered these people and events for a long time. Did you uncover something new and surprising that you havent thought abouhadntthought aboutn before . One thing that i havent read about anywhere was w chris stepn when he died, people just correctly praised him but people didnt know that he had such misgivings about the iraq war. He was young he and was in a situation and to be shut out of the syria so wanted to work around them to use social media to get out the word and explain and experience the us position on this. So he used social media to engage in a backandforth and there were a lot of people on the side of the machine to argue bitterly and he argued back and also use social media toll carry images they said we havent had any troops or equipment and so ford would put out pictures of the artillery. He found his way he wasnt getting much instruction from the smart knowledgeable people that was experimenting as he could. Working on the hill for ten years my job involves Foreign Policy services. All this peace and stability all these acronyms. Oirregular warfare. But it seems to me that there is a chance for the state department to tell a different story that is especially possible which did not allow for civilians to talk about what they did domestically. So to be finally revised but it seems to me theres got to be a better way for Foreign Service officers to show up in public in the United States and to get some of the institutional memory back because obviously when i worked on the hill so much experience of International Relations and its a lot because congress will not fund the civilian side of policy. You could see the hearings are with the nato hearing you show for six people in the state department sometimes talks and answers questions really well but what do you think the whole civilian side of the International Presence could be doing collects and it isnt always a scandalous or crisis moment and people love them for like the last couple of weeks. It is a tough challenge. I was talking to the head of the Foreign Service union and he is talking about doing basic Political Affairs work to get the word out but Foreign Service doesnt have the pizzazz. And with the special forces of the council of Foreign Relations said theres no tickertape for diplomats. I would say a couple things that i have noticed with a spokesperson from the pentagon. I do give great credit to mr. Pompeo whoe can get the merger done between the bureau of Public Affairs and the bureau of International Programs in about what we are doingng oversea overseas. But they have done that they called the bureau of Public Affairs which is a bigger mandate. And the other thing is when i took the podium at the state department to see all these wonderful think we are Foreign Service officers are doing when to open my briefing with that thats a great answer. And then to say no. You cant say that you cant talk about it we want the host government to own this program. It was very frustrating for a military spokesperson. Thato is what we do. But it was more difficult at the state department but i dlso respected this work was about advancing other peoples interest and to take a backseat. I dont know if there is an answer for that if culturally that is acceptables to Foreign Service or keeping their mission to be. But the impeachment inquiry so if you know anybody that is young and considering the Foreign Service. To look back as and unusual. Dont you think quirks how we get back to less of that and the diplomatic corps would have more prominencerps. I hope so. Military leaders tell you at the way to reset the force and focus like russia or china or iran and that has been hard to do involved in interventions in the middle east is difficult. What is the difference between the career Foreign Service officers and the political hack ambassadors . They work for them and there is a relationship where some political appointee from a different line of work in business or in politics they go and they are the investor but thehe real brain in the embassy is the number two who tells them what to do thats often the relationship that they have to get along it is an unusual relationship but thats the way its supposed to work. There have been some terrific ambassadors like Caroline Kennedy in japan and her appointment meant so much because her president was the first to visit after world war ii perk on most of them when they do this they are giving up a lot of their time not saying everybody has a purest of motives because to that point those hard jobs and difficult places for career Foreign Service officers. Right they go to those particularly in eastern europe. Some countries like the saudis not have a career person but someone they think is close to the president. Thats the way they see the world. Can they pick up the phone. Thank you for coming. This is terrific. Thank you. [applause] good afternoon. Welcome to the Aspen Institute i am the executive director of the Aspen Strategy Group its a great pleasure to see this crowd. You are on cspan so be on your best behavior we are here to launch a very important ncbook on the future of the Us China Relationship called the struggle for power first i want to recognize some distinguished guests