Karl, you know the difference between right and left; right . You are on their right. [laughter] okay. Welcome, everybody. Im susan eisenhower. It is a terrific pleasure to be here today to have a conversation with dr. Cheney and karl rove. This is a real honor for me and a real treat to be able to have kind of an intimate conversation about the executive power in the United States, to actually wield power alongside of the president of the United States and also to talk about what its like to be behind the scenes. Let me just say very quickly if i cough, im not sick. Im having a little you came back from wuhan with that cough. I was a little worried about it. Are you feeling all right . Youre a little warm. Do you want to change . I think the two women ought to be here i had to clean up somebodys fireplace the other day and inhaled some fire smoke, so in any case, dont be alarmed if i find myself coughing. Let me just say it is a thrill to talk to again and as i had some experience as a child with what its like to be in the company of people who wield enormous power, to observe the both the pressures of the job, along with the loneliness you might say of power and obviously it comes with privilege but also great sacrifice. Lynne you have said over time that you have carved out a remarkable career for yourself, but this proximity power probably started for you when your husband dick cheney became chief of staff to gerald ford. And i didnt see him for two years. Is that right . Thats just sort of the way it is. But i was so interested in what he was doing that he learned to come home at night and tell me what hed done all day, and so thats a really fascinating inside look. You and i were joking before, if youre the president of the United States, youre called potus. If you are the first lady of the United States, youre called flotus. First lay day of the United States first lady of the United States. If youre the wife of the Vice President youre called slotus. [laughter] my family had an enormous fun time with that. Have you been tempted to turn it into a twitter handle . There you go. I dont think i really feel comfortable about twitter. Im always afraid i will send something i didnt know i sent. Good point. Karl, you have been in a powerful position in the white house. I have to ask both of you, if you dont mind, i think were badly in need of humor today. I dont know if you all agree. I would like to know the funniest and strangest thing that ever happened to you while you were in the white house arena. Me . Yes, you. Well, there were a lot of them but i stole a car. I think that was the highlight. Oh my. So now that was funny it was very funny because i had this colleague al hubbard, head of the National Economic council, very successful business guy, originally from jackson, tennessee. He spoke with this sort of southern accent and sort of sounded like sort of a slowminded guy from jackson, tennessee, hiding the fact that he had a harvard mba and started at a very young age with a private Equity Partnership in indianapolis that was successful. Their strategy was buy the last manufacturers in america, consolidate them and make a lot of money. They did. He stepped aside from that to come in and serve as the National Economic council director. He had a really nice bmw, really nice. Uhoh. You are at the white house, you are spending a lot of time in meetings. I had a meeting across the way from the west wing in the Old Executive Office building, and it ended early, and i had a few extra minutes before my next appointment. I was walking down the navy stairs and across whats called old executive drive. It is the street between the west wing and the ike, Eisenhower Executive Office building. Right by the entrance to the basement of the west wing hubbard had parked his car. I noticed hed left his keys in it. I got in it and moved it up west executive drive. Now, remember, to park on west executive drive, you have to be a senior aide to the president. You go through three checkpoints manned by people with automatic weapons. Your car is swept for bombs and you pass over some kind of devees embedded in the device embedded in the concrete that i dont know what it does. Maybe it xrays you, i dont know. This is very secure. I took the car and drove it up west executive drive about 75 yards. After the 9 11, they had four trucks, looked like ice cream trucks that were parked at the four corners of the complex and sampled the air for chemical and biological agents. It was just large enough that when i parked the car behind it in a vacant space, you couldnt see it in the west executive entrance. So i wasnt there, but i have eyewitnesses who said at the end of the day, hubbard came out, took a look around, couldnt see his car, took out his flip phone, hit the speed dial to his assistant, and said my car is gone its stolen my car [laughter] he found it, the next morning of course at the senior staff meeting with sort of a tone an edgy tone but nonetheless good natured, he accused me of stealing his car. Big mistake. So i kept stealing his car. [laughter] and id work it out so, you know, like one time i worked it out with the secret service so i parked it by their loading dock. Can you imagine that call . Mr. Hubbard, your car is blocking the loading dock, and were expecting a load of surfacetoair missiles. This went on for a great deal of time. It was funny. Every time id steal his car, he would accuse me of it at the senior staff meeting. After the first time i would always get somebody else to be in the car with me. He said you stole my car. I really dont appreciate it. I say al, i dont know what you are talking about because i saw somebody else to get out of your car, which is true, because i got them to get in the car with me. Long story short, final week im at the white house, flying back from reno nevada where the president spoke to american legion, we finally had television there on air force one. Im watching television, and im sort of mystified because theres a camera at the corner of the white house and whats called pebble beach, and when you see the north of the white house, thats being shot from pebble beach. The camera is not looking at the white house. It is swivelled down looking down executive drive and looking at a car that has messages spelled out on postit notes on all the windows colored postit notes forming letters and words and somebody has wrapped the car in giant sheets of cellophane and decorated it with stuffed animals. [laughter] it is my car. [laughter] and cnn is saying we dont know whats going on executive drive but someones car has been whose car is that . Eventually it is like weve been told on Good Authority that it is Senior Advisor karl roves car. We dont know whats going on. I get back to the white house. I called him. I said, fantastic man, you paid me back for every time i stole your car. I got the white house photographer at west exec, i want to get a picture of you, me and your handiwork. He finally fesses up hes done it. I said look this is the greatest nobody has ever come close to this. We have to have a photograph. We send word through the white house, and people come spilling out of the ike and people come spilling out of the west wing, and its about 6 00 in the evening, and people start applauding hubbard and the photographer is having difficulty with his camera, and people are coming out and applauding hubbard. Hubbard is starting to get into it. Hes sort of a modest guy. Hes like yes, i did this. Isnt it fabulous . Really fantastic. Up walked two uniform Division Officers of the secret service and put him in handcuffs. [laughter] and then the white house photographer takes a picture. [laughter] and it really creeps hubbard out. It is one of my favorite photographs. It creeps hubbard out that i keep it in my bedroom. Theres a picture of hubbard being put in handcuffs. Am i really in trouble . Is this funny . And these two officers look, i was the mayor of the west wing, these were my people. So theyre putting him in handcuffs. Im like oh, buddy, you got me, but i just got you back. [laughter] it is good to know that theres a sense of humor amid all the pressure. You have to. So you know, the white house and the Vice President s house, these are very formal places. Theres a reason why theres a down stairs official area and then the living quarters up stairs because there really is a difference between this public life and this private life. What about you, lynne . Im sure you have many funny stories, but have you had strange ones as well from that period . Well, this is funny and strange. Funny and strange. We spent a lot of time at camp david as karl knows after 9 11. It was the undisclosed location. And we had our kids, you know, and its the same as karls story in the sense that, you know, you find joy in life, even though youre in a dreadful time. We also had our dog, a big labrador, yellow lab named dave. Dave was the love of our life. And so we took him everywhere at camp david. Dogs are allowed everywhere at camp david except one day, okay, karl, help me, is it laurel where we eat . Yeah. Laurel lodge, dick walked in and had dave with him, and theres powell sitting here, and barney who is the president s dog and kind of a mean little dog. Is that fair . He used to bite me all the time. [laughter] the son the president never had, barney. [laughter] well, barney was a troublesome dog, but dave thought he was probably a squirrel because he was little. He set out after him. And barney being chased by dave is going around and around this table at high speed while powell is going like this. The president walks in. He said what going on here . And dick, knowing this probably wasnt a good thing to have dave chasing barney, pulled a donut or something off the breakfast trays, said, dave, come, and dave always came for food, so he got the donut. He got dave out of there. And we went back to our lodging, and ten minutes maybe, a fellow knocks on the door. Hes in full dress uniform. Hes the camp commander. And he said sir, to dick, sir, dave is not allowed in laurel again. And obviously been sent by the president to tell us not to bring dave to laurel again. But the president was really nice about dave, but not about dave chasing barney. That was not yeah. Pets play an enormous role. During my grandparents tenure in the white house, they brought heidi, and heidi had an accident at one of the rugs and got sent into exile at gettysburg. One unknown fact about the white house the Burial Ground of our pet parakeet on the third floor named pete and pete died so we were allowed to give the bird a dignified burial in the rose garden. We put up a little my siblings and i put up a little pete rest in peace, but they took it down to mow the lawn. Oh. I know. Youve got to wonder, roosevelt the first guy who has the west wing also had a gigantic collection of animals. His children and he had enormous collection. You have to wonder how many of them we know several of them died during their days in the white house. You have to wonder about the burial locations for all the president s of their favorite pets because most of them are like of course im going to have them buried at the white house. We ought to have an archaeologist going over the grounds. I think so. The probably is you cant go back and visit their gravesites well, except dave is buried at the Vice President s residence, and were sure we know where the site is, and if we ever are invited back to the vpr, we will go visit dear dave. Does he have a little headstone . No, we thought that was too showy. Im feeling better about he has one in our hearts. [laughter] apropos of that, one of the interesting things to me was how important both the Vice President s residence and the white house are to the political and policy business of the government. Right and both the cheneys and the bushes were enormously good at entertaining a lot of people, both formally and more importantly informally, and, you know, a little bit problematic for staff because if youre going to have 20 members of congress down, youve got to have some staff there too to sort of jolly them up and they all come down with lists of things that they want to have done, and it is easier for them to give it to you than to give to it the president , but it was amazing to me, particularly at the holidays how eclectic you know, youd have the party for the press, and youd have the party for this, but it is really interesting the Vice President s residence and the president s, when youd have there would be holiday parties that were clearly geared towards, you know, their official business and their friends. And it really was important how many times youd have some hardnosed democrat who would be down at the white house smoking a cigar in the truman balcony and their spouse would be jumping up and down on the lincoln bed, you know, it may not have gotten their vote, but it helped establish sort of a sense of community. After we left the white house, in the years since, i cannot tell you how many Democrat Members of congress theyve run into said you know, if you told me i would have spent more time at the white house with a republican president your guy, than my guy, i would be surprised but they did but it was because the Vice President and president both knew the Vice President from having been at the white house as chief of staff and the president as having being the governor of a state with a democratic speaker, democratic lieutenant governor, democratic majorities in legislature and how important it was to do what you could to reduce that tension. I think thats an extremely important point. I know it is virtually a given that we all recognize that were living in tremendously turbulent and uncertain times. I think we have to all recognize that, but i must say that the 2000s were also very turbulent and uncertain. Of course what immediately comes to mind is 9 11, this extraordinary moment in American History when so much changed for this country. I have to ask you, lynne, what was that like to actually be trying to first of all you were in a highranking position during those years at the National Endowment for the humanities. I wonder what that was like, also to be supporting your husband and to be, you know, a symbol of this country during that tumultuous time. Youre such a nice interviewer and im going to make a publish confession that i had never made before. I was getting many i was getting my hair done and the nice fellow who was doing my hair and said a plane just flew into the World Trade Center. What a weird accident. Then a few minutes later he came back and said there was a second one. Of course the secret service hustled me out into the car. You could see smoke from the car. It was pentagon burning, but you dont know what it is. You just see it coming up from over the buildings, unexplicably to this day they took me to the white house, which everyone else had just evacuated, but it was, you know, such a memorable day being down at the president ial Emergency Operation center to be in the peoc and watching the country be run, watching all the planes being shut down in the United States and do it, you know, with great command normanetta. Normanetta a good friend to this day thank you, karl condi rice was there. You were off with the president , i think. Yeah. But it was the same experience karl had only more serious, on the way to the peoc, there were a bunch of cabinets, and you watch the secret Service Opening the cabinet and grabbing very large guns, you know, and passing them on. It is like a movie. Its that was stunning to me. And then when the day was over, i did take notes that day, which, you know, were subpoenaed or whatever, but it was okay with me. I didnt write anything secret, and moreover i was shaking so much, i didnt even know i was. Theyre barely legible, but i didnt miss those. At the end of the day, we flew in a helicopter to camp david, and when youre lifted off the south lawn, you could see the pentagon. You could see the fire burning. And i couldnt help but think of the burning of washington in madisons time. Washington of course then was just a small village, and this was a much greater consequence, but it certainly is a day lodged in memory. Yeah. What was it like after that because you go to an undisclosed location, but was it think about that for a moment. Think about that. The decision is made that the threat is so unknown and so dangerous that the Vice President and the president of the United States cannot be in the same place unless absolutely essential. The Vice President must be taken to an indisclosed undisclosed location that in the event the president is dead, we have continuity that was the nature of that moment. Incredible. There were worries about airbornes, poisons, anthrax, ricin was talked about. Thats when the sniffer trucks show up, make their way around the white house staff. They walk in and say they have a little device. They say they punch a button and it makes a noise and they say if you hear this noise, it means it is a chemical attack. Then they handed me a big plastic bag. They said this is your mop suit, take it out and put on the helmet and the mop suit. If you hear this sound, it is a biological attack, and what you need to do is take this needle, stab yourself in the heart and then put yourself in the mop suit. And i said sure like thats going to happen. [laughter] and my assistant Susan Ralston is standing there listening to this lecture, and i said okay, wheres her outfit . They said we dont we have a limited number of suits. It will be several days before we have more, and i handed mine to susan and said okay dont tell me when you stab yourself in the heart. [laughter] i dont quite understand that. Could you help us with that . What . Stabbing one self in the heart . It is adrenaline okay. You stab yourself in th