A truly great public servant. He was a director of the nsc under bush i say public servant and at days when that meant something and it really mattered. And we respected people who hold these high positions. We look to hearing from him tonight. I think now, without even leaving the stage im going to get the first panel underway so we can start this. As a College Professor to get your notepads out, discussion. Were going to start the first panel. I want to invite the panelist to come up to the stage. Tim from the university of toronto was here at smu is going to come on up, tim, hes going to chair the panel and lead the discussion about this. He works on other things, nato think nato has been in the news quite a bit so make a note of that. Megan osullivan who is a Kirkpatrick Professor in the kennedy school at harvard, an expert on North America among other things. One of the officials of the trilateral commission and former member of the bush security council. And finally of course peter fever, happy to welcome peter back, he is a professor at Duke Director of the grand Strategy Program also former white house official nfc person in the Bush Administration. If you all would not mind joining me giving a big round of welcome for panelists. [applause] thanks very much jim. It is a pleasure to be back here. Its a pleasure to be on stage with the interview teams. And also some of the policy mixtures from the search. The three of us spent a lot of time asking questions of others. So it is my pleasure to ask you some questions today. As we move around the country interviewing all of the 28 people that are interviewed for the book we often how does the Surgeon Story begin for you . We asked the interviewees to set the stage with when they would start to think of what we now consider the surge. The Origin Story of this project itself. Where did this project come from . [inaudible] so, i will observe that when we did the interviews we ran into a lot of people would come up with the idea of the surge. This is one of the phenomenon that success has a thousand parents. I was not one a late claim that i will lay claims to this project. It actually grew out of work that i did as a Graduate Student on the oral history of permissive action which was a device that protected nuclear weapons from unauthorized use is the late 50s early 60s. As harvard was preparing to the oral history of the cuban Missile Crisis of a smaller project is a great idea that turned out to have four or five people who invented the idea and have been telling their grandchildren for decades they had invented. It was not until we had interviewed them and brought them on stage together they discovered they were not the only ones. It turned into an almost comical Exchange Move brought them all together. I said there were so many consequential decisions Bush Administration made, it would be interesting to do the same kind of interview folks separately to see their individual role. Bring them together collectively to see how the roles fit together. Megan said great idea. Without this to be really easy to pull off. Would start with an easy one, the surge. Then we would have so much momentum who do one after the other. Turned out a little more difficult than my part them its taken longer than we thought. Very proud of what we are able to accomplish at the end thats how the project started for me, megan what would you add . I would confirm your Thesis Everyone believes it begins with them. I think that is a good sign. This was maybe eight years ago, something like that. I left the government i started teaching a class at harvard trying to teach my students how national Security Decisionmaking happens in the u. S. Government. I structured a course was around 15 decisions based on iraq. The surge was one of them. I felt this was something useful to try to dig into these that peter said. This is a meeting of minds around some useful projects we might do. Like peter this is not how i expected it to unfold. Im very glad so many people devoted time and energy to putting this together and something would have real historical import. I think that makes a lot of sense. Success can have a thousand parents is interesting how that balance in our conversation of people learning where they are Role Fit in the broader scheme of the decisionmaking. One question i want to ask you both, your resources for the project you were able to tell us what is happening in your office or within the white house, we also learned about different parts of initiatives in different parts of government. Is there anything new for you in this project . What did you learn as we went to these interviews and pulled them all together . The honest answer is not the best answer. I learned that i have a face for radio is what i learned. The original plan we are going to do interviews, that is what megan and i thought. The important piece added was lets make it a Video Record of peoples interviews that will then make it more useful for other scholars but also the Teaching Tool for other colleges and courses. I think in hindsight, jeff was right. That doesnt magnify its use and its reach. It made the whole process so much more complicated. There were some really amazing moments when we realized we needed to travel all the way to jackson hole to interview vice president cheney. We thought we had an agreement to do the interview. It wasnt until we were all sitting there that we had to renegotiate that agreement. I was already not looking forward to submitting my travel claim for the hotel i was staying at and i had nothing to show for it. I learned that doing an interview on video does it change the dynamic of the person that you are interviewing. And it makes it harder for them to say something and then as they say something thats not what i meant, i meant something else. When you do a written interview at the Miller Center you get a chance to fix those. He relates five minutes after you set up that i bought those in october that was really in november. When youre doing it in a video you cannot do that. That makes people more cautious maybe. Called my solution to that is we would give everyone the option to say something offcamera after words. And occasionally we learn something from those sessions. That was not a perfect fix for this challenge. Let me add two things. First, your question might have been did we learn anything about the process we did not know . Certainly there are things that were new to me in reading the accounts and doing the interviews. I would say might larger take away we had remarkable visibility over what was going on. There werent any big shocks or surprises to me. That in fact was a surprise in itself. Which again does not mean we knew everything going on. The council of colonels which has now become fairly wellknown, i was not aware that was going on at the time. I did learn about it subsequent to the decision of the surge. But, we saw it came out of the pentagon is more what came up through official channels. I do think it underscores the value of oral histories. People in this room, i look out and i think about the endless numbers of Phone Calls, emails, theres a constant conversation going on with people working 16 or 18 hours a day. Is a lot of visibility over what they are doing. A lot of people working on this issue from every agency they had really good relationships there. Theres a lot of sharing. In terms of learning a little bit about this process, one of my regrets of course thats pretty common regrets. How will historians look at this later . I had to confess it did not cross my mind. If i were ever to be in the decision again as a policymaker, its a definitely something worth thinking about in the provisional Authority And Iraq there i spent a little bit more than a year we did have a resident historian. He is trying to remember his name it is gordon, i do not member his last name. He was someone who i dont think really got the time and attention because it really felt everything was pressing everything. And it was. But in retrospect i think having those people they are, at that time is worth trying to prioritize that a little bit more so that we can capture peoples insights, thoughts and feelings but not do it a decade later which is what we ended up doing. On the issue of that Video Transfer of stock available on the transcription cells that should say we are all now available on the website. People can watch the transcripts they had been with footnotes are correct wrong dates. We made this material available for teaching and for scholarship. But of course in academia this comes with a secondary question, when youre going to get the documents . What about the primary sources . We have this oral history collection. In some ways oral histories let us capture that constant Conversation Part of the lease to know theres a conversation occurring outside of the written record. We both wrote a lot of memos in government. But will change in the primary documents will the Story Change . Is going to suggest just that. That is a great question, tim. Im excited for the day they are public. I believe it will help flush out the story. A lot of official government documents might be a little less revealing than the surge documents will be. Many official documents are the product of those of us the long clearance process. People trying to forge consensus and put forward consensus abuser. There are some of that in a search policy. A lot of the surge documents a special touch the level of the president were actually written to try to clarify different positions. And at different options. And to clarify those differences and the consequences of them. And to move this to the president by think it will be useful. There are two things i hope come out of it that i think are still part of the conversation or emerging shows up in the book quite a bit. The president s decision was a gamble. That frees suggest, theres a lot in the book and some of the interviews there are two options, withdraw or double down. Basically the president didnt like the first to be second period i really dont think that is a representation of what happened and the complexity of the decision of the process is very think the documents will show the decision to go to the surge is the product of deep analysis, right . It was not he didnt like the alternative so he decided on the surge then theres all this effort to create a justification. It very much was a project of analysis. How they change from when we made our first strategy . And what are those dynamics . What are our abilities to affect those dynamics . I personally, how i was seeing it at the time was the violence that appeared to many as a civil war, that violence appeared to me to be to extremist groups stoking violence among a broader population. And if that analysis is right, if we could get at those to extremist groups we could deflate the widespread violence very quickly. However, if the violence was the product of historical animosities and not being stoked by external extremist groups, that solution was not going to work. It turned out it was the first we had under a dramatic deflation of violence in the fall of 2007. So again my point is not the President Bush was just saying i refuse to accept the option of defeats. Therefore im going for the alternative. The papers will show this, there is a very, very extensive process. Look at the drivers of the concept to look at how they might be change but what her capabilities were with the iraqi capabilities were. I think, but we certainly could not know the outcome i think we could feel confident that the strategy was based on more than a gamble. The second thing that i will make this very brief. Peter may have more to say on this as well. I think naturally, a lot of the focus has been on the military component of the search for this is true and the book gets a lot of attention. Some people of god is far to say there is not a strategy. I think what people will find when they see the documents as there is a lot more tension then has been revealed thus far on the political dynamics. Even on the diplomatic side, on the economic dynamics, changing our own structure, our bureaucracy. All of these pieces that came together with the military piece to be a strategy where they are. They are just less glamorous, less visible and some in ruling out politico for those documents will this with much more clarity. , so one of the things megan and i hoped wed be able to do was get more of the documents released in time to be used in this. We got some but not as many as we had hoped. I do believe that some of those will be revealing. I was struck by my memory about the document said was different than say someone i was interviewed. Their memory with the document said. I was pretty sure i was right. But the person i was interviewing thought it was something different. At that well and got to wait until the document comes out to see which of us has the better memory of it. I also think that if i could wave a Magic Wand and released just one of the documents three years ago in time to be chewed on for this project, it would be the State Memo Steve hadley convened the separate Strategy Reviews have been done in different departments into an interagency one chaired by jd crouch. At that moment we are trying to figure out as an interagency combined what are the options for representing to the president . There was an option coming from the state department. It was in fear of powerful written Memo David Satterfield had written that proposed a very dramatic change in strategy, chain and mission, change and goals. We spent a lot of time as a collective wrestling with this option. State department and a very powerful player, it was not a random thought out there. The interviews do not wrestle with that memo as much as they should have. And as a consequence the academic essay, the back of the book did not wrestle with that memo adequately. I think doing so would be crucial to the goal of understanding what its like to make policy when you do not know what the outcome is going to be. Knowing the president chose the surge, knowing it worked out so much better than critics thought it would make the whole thing seem inevitable than it did at the time. Wrestling more faithfully with what the options were as without they were as the protagonist on the Strategy Review were arguing for, that would be more useful for lessons learned kind of study. I look forward to that, selfishly i do hope one of the memos i wrote finally gets out. This was after the president has more or less decided on it. Steve asked me, what could go wrong . I came up with a list of 12 things are something that could go wrong. Then the idea was to task the inter agency to address each one of these. As we were addressing each one of these, three or four of them happened over the course of the next six months. I thought this may not work out. The baby may die in the cradle moment. Fortunately the team, david, the ambassador, Doug And Everybody else were more adept at dealing with these situations as they arose. I feel as an analytic product, i rarely guess correctly per theres a time i guess correctly about three or four things that could happen. And so, for my grandchildren hope that sees the light of day one day. If i could sum up what you are both saying is we need more historians thats what i hear its the pro History Argument thats excellent. There is more work to do. That raises my next question. Peter you alluded to the academic section of the book the scholarly section. The book is divided into essential with the oral History Component at the beginning, policy makers on a record and then scholars examining this. I think the chapter you wrote with mr. Hadley shows this is a blurry distinction between policy and scholarship. You both are great examples of this. You have incredible academic training we had better academic careers but also your policy experience. Could you talk about how we bridge that gap, whether we should bridge that gap . What academic scholars can bring to policymaking and what policymakers can bring to academia . Okay. So, i thought one of the most revealing moments in the project was a statement made by dick that who is a dear friend and really distinguished scholar at columbia civil military operations. Among other things hes really one of the giants in my personal area fields of study. And, we were at a workshop. We will work shopping his chapter. He and i were arguing over a statement or something. He revealed how much of a struggle it was for him to wrestle with these issues. In part because himself have been shaped by a scholar in the wake of the vietnam war. He was one of the first generation of scholars just as the vietnam was ending in the midtolate 70s. And of course have been one of the prominent critics of the decision to invade iraq. Find the academic letter et cetera. So he was telling me, emotionally invested in the Iraq War to date on one side of it. And then in some ways, now i am projecting he did not say this. As i heard him i thought you are as much invested in a particular narrative of iraq as any of the policymakers who had worked on the issue. And i realized that the design of the project was built on an assumption that probably was not true. Namely that there were policymakers who were biased because they had worked on the issue. And thus, had insights but you had to recognize they had a sku. You had to filter what they said and their obvious bias. On the one hand. And then there were scholars who were objective truth seekers who could stand apart from it, separate from it and evaluate what the bias policymakers had said. And i realize in that workshop that actually it was probably easier for the policymakers to be candid about ways they had gotten not called it wrong at the time. It seemed to me in her interviews many of the policymakers found it easier to have some selfawareness and admit when they got wrong. And it was harder for the academics. In particular if you had gone on record saying the decision to invade iraq was bad, or more to the point if youve gone the record to say the decision to search is a mistake. So many of the academics who had opposed the Iraq War also vocal vocally actively oppose the surge. It was very hard for those academics to then step back and say do you know what . Maybe the surge was a better idea than i realized. To develop that objectivity. This is of course a question for my friends on the academic panel later this afternoon. Am i overstating this case, i might be. I dont know. I do think there is at least on an issue like the Iraq War, it has become so politicized in the academy is likely there is not an objective perspective. Everybody has a stake. That is an important difference. The other difference. Political scientists ignore it more, that is the human element to the context of a decision. By which i mean these are human beings making the decisions with all of the strengths and weaknesses human relations produce. Megan mentioned it just in passing but i want to emphasize it here. One reason that the Surge Strategy emerged was because of the trust that Steve Hadley was able to cultivate across the team. Of course steve is going to say it wasnt him it was the president who was the primary trust generating while. But i think that is right. I give steve a lot of credit for growing the trust to be candid in the way we had to be. Because what we were talking about was the possibility that the most important project the president was engaged in might not exceed it. That is a very hard thing to talk about inside of a white house. And to have the freedom to do that and to wrestle with alternatives requires a lot of trust. And requires the person youre talking to is not going to be writing a memoir this going to show you in the back and make you look like a fool. And so there is one time i can vividly recall steve is about to say something and said you better not be writing a book about this. [laughter] i ended up writing something about it. But i did not do it in a way that was sticking a stick and someone. That is a human element. If you did not have that, if you did not have that level of trust that i think certain policy options might not have survived long enough to be incubated to the point they would work. And so i give credit too. Steve was a great, megan was a wonderful about allowing other people outside of her office to work in it. Ill give one last shot on the human element was of brett, who did not get nearly as much credit in the contemporary of his accounts early journalistic accounts. We now know what a great public Servant Brett has been across several administrations. But he was tireless on this issue at the time. And many others i could mention. So the human element is really important. Human science obstructs all that out produces a number. That loses all the human development, historians are better at capturing them. At the risk that the heart of this project, differences in policymakers and academics. Lets add to what peter said. Reading the final product about something i hadnt realized earlier on in my career knows work on the issue of sanctions for this is before went into government. I realized you had academics who kept saying sanctions dont work. Good policymakers that cap using with an abandon. It explains it and i realized policymakers and academics are just asking different questions. They are interested in different questions. I think this project reveals that in some fashion. Has a policymaker or at the time the question i was interested in and still interested in was, was this process mike this process provide advice and recommendations on a decision that was the best one open to the president at that time . That is what i am interested in. As we see in many academic chapters which were really useful and interesting, there are a lot of other questions at play. One of the things that animates the scholarly take on is how does this process compared to some kind of ideal . And again, i think is a policymaker youre much less interested in that. He realized theres no One Ideal that works in every circumstance. If you are asking the question i am asking, does this process produce the best decision for this president at this moment . He really is the process is going to differ from president s to president s. Let me just give you one example of what im talking about. There is a lot of talk. Not just in the book in the project but in the foreign Policy Community the honest Broker Role of the national security advisor. Brent has rightly embodied the idea of the honest broker. Want to think about this particular moment in history the Search Process i think steve happily played that role the honest broker. But that would not have been enough. If it only played the role of honest broker would not have gotten to where we got too. Had this is another topic we could talk about. I think something thats not enough in the book is how we got to the surge compared to the alternative. You might still have quibbles over the surge but we have to ask how does that compare to the alternative . Going back to steves role, he very, very adeptly managed to play the honest broker. The president had access and was aware of all of the views, and opinions, and recommendations of everyone in his national security team. He had that awareness. Seek make sure that was a case. Steve also played additional roles. He played the role of being an advisor and the role of helping the president after the decision had been made to ensure that the government was actually going to be in a position to implement the change in strategy. So being an honest broker was essential. But it was not enough in this case. I think a lot of academics would disagree with that based on the idea that the honest broker is the entirety of the job of the national security advisor. It is a shout out to steve for managing an incredibly complex process in a professional and grateful way. Its also an example of how some academics might be looking at was the national Security Player Advisor playing this role of honest broker. But me, as a participant in policymaker i much more interested in is the national Security Adviser make sure the present has all the information that he needs to make a good decision . And two, providing advice to the president had a very lonely and dark moments. And three, making sure any decision by the president actually can be implemented. Im going to turn to the floor in a moment for questions. We do have microphones of people would like to ask Megan And Peter questions. I want to ask one final question before we open it up. I think its here appropriate on the university campus, the Tower Center and the center for president ial history, my question is about president ial power. Its one of these abstractions that you mention peter. Another person who cross between academia and the Policy World famously said the power of the president is the power to persuade. I think we see that in the book. We see at times where the president understands his comments or questions may shape policy options that are presented to him. So he stays back from the process at certain times. Other times he decides is the right moment to persuade. So for those of us who have not a president. I understand the balance in this room may be tilts to the one kind for people who work for a president. For those of us who havent, can you talk about what its like to work in that environment . How important the individual of the president , whoever is serving as president has Exercise President ial power. How you set exercised in this time . What is it mean to work with the president . Megan work for a president much longer than i did. This is something ive thought a lot about obviously since i have come back and also reading the daily newspapers in the last several years. I had the privilege of working for two president. President clinton i was a very junior staffer early on in his administration. To sum up in the Bush Administration. They were very different personalities. Your interactions with them, at least my interactions were very different. I had less access than megan or certainly steve had with President Bush. Particularly with President Bush the over whelming impression i had was how different he was from the Cartoon Character than my academic friends back at duke held their version of him was not smart, not thoughtful, nor not will read inarticulate and reflective. Making impetuous decisions. In that that i saw. I saw someone who was deeply committed to the integrity of the office of the president. The notion that he was a custodian of something greater than himself. That he was temporarily a student of but had to hand onto the next person. And had to make sure he left the next person better off than he had been. That was the job of the president to leave the next person better off if he could. Im not saying he did not make mistakes. Of course he made mistakes. But there was a commitment to something that was greater than just his own legacy, his own standing, the way people thought of him. That was inspiring. He was also so much smarter than people give him credit for. I will never forget one day he came on to give an all hands meeting. This is the peace few people realize. Many, many people work at the white house and never ever see the president. They are working at a level where they do not have interaction. That was my role in the clinton administration. One of my jobs was to always beg for opportunities to at least be in the same room as the president. And so this was a moment in the Bush Administration for the president came and spoke to everyone at the nsc. Most of them was the first time in the room with the president. And he went around the world, with no notes. Went around the world so this is what im trying to do in southeast asia. Heres what im trying to do in cutter, heres what im trying to do in latin america. My job in strategic planning was to be able to see the big picture i could not have done as good a job as he did in the 30,000 foot and the and the granular region. This president knows so much more about the guts of what he is trying to do then my academic friends would believe. And, i do think that Causes Staff to loyal up. The Bush Administration, the team still has a high degree of camaraderie. We just got together a couple weeks ago for a reunion. It was striking to see the level of camaraderie. This is the last point i will say. I friends say mostly working on yourself. You have a chance to work for something bigger. That is something that the president conveyed well. I agree with everything that peter said. Certainly that is my impression and memory. I will be very brief bench at one more thing. Thinkest to the heart of your question which is about the president. Not just the President But Anyone in authority and their ability to affect the information that comes to them by just a minute gesture. President bush talks about this in his interview. How he was conscious of that. I thought a lot about this during my time at the white house. I would watch how carefully i watched the president. Not just his explicit verbal direction to me. I was one of those people when i walked into the Oval Office if those prebriefing before a Phone Call or Meeting Outlook for every queue in the room to see how much time i actually had. The action of two minutes, or ten minutes . I would relent all kinds of things like what kind of shoes is he wearing . Is he in a better mood if he is wearing cowboy boots, maybe there are other things going on. You are constantly looking for cues. Thats part of being an effective person government. The downside would be if you are a president , any joke, muttering under the breath could actually shape what you get in your next briefing. Or what people give you. That is the natural desire to please the president. The presence very conscious of the he explicitly made it clear to me hes open to me why left the white house with 400 pictures of me over the years i was there why is he making that face at you in almost all of these photos . I said its because im giving him bad news and every single one of these photographs. We come to the Surge Decision he may have said this to others, it weighed on me very heavily. I still think about it. He said to me megan, i am looking to you to tell me how we can change the trajectory in iraq. Im also looking to you to tell me if we cant. He saying you know i want to win hes not saying i only have two other conclusions. Think im capable i think im capable of working with this amazing group of people. Of finding it and abdicating for it. In my capable of walking in there and saying theres no steps we can take to change the trajectory. Fortunately we did not have to go there. The present was pretty explicit about that thats out of the character that most people would expect given some of the caricatures. I like to open it up now to the floor if anyone has questions for peter and megan. About their experience come about the making of the project . I believe we have a microphone. A microphone will come over to the gentleman in the middle. Thanks brian. Yes, sir. Thank you for the excellent analysis of the surge and the process that was used. Do you know whether a similar process was used at the time the decision was made on whether to go into iraq . Neither of us were in the government at the time. And so that is a great question to ask our keynote Speaker Tonight at dinner. How is our friend and former boss Steve Hadley. I do know that the administrations learn over time. And i remember when steve took over he said theres some things we did wellin the first term. And we need to build on that. There are some process things we did not do as well. We need to refine our process to do that. And so that is in fact how my job got created at the embassy was to do more of a certain kind of processing. I suspect all administrations grow over time. I can say having not been in the white house in 2003 or 2006 this is something that does come up in the oral history volume. There people reflecting on the Learning Process because it is so much of a part of the story. Coreys paper, he worked in the first term and wrote one of the papers, are you on a panel later on this afternoon . I suspect this topic will come up. This is something she wrote about. It is really great to hear about the inner workings in the white house and what goes on behind the scenes. How did you get into that . Was it your academic career pushed you there or something . You had a colleague there. Part of eight lottery. [laughter] so, i came to the white house after being in the Bush Administration for a couple of years previously. I joined the Bush Administration right after 911 as part of a wave of people who joined government. I went over to work at the state department. I then volunteered to go with our military to iraq as a civilian. So before the war ended up being in iraq for the first 16 or 17 months. It will be transferred sovereignty to the iraqis that wouldve been normal i wouldve gone back to the state department. But at that point i was offered a job by Condoleezza Rice who is the national Security Adviser to come to the white house. I think that was a reflection of the fact that iraq was still a very difficult Policy Issue for the United States. A lot of time and attention was being focused on it. There were a lot of things that need to be adjusted. I had been there for quite a long time and had developed some key relationships of people. Hopefully pretty good understanding of the dynamics of the ground there. There certainly was a big element of luck involved that was the path that got me to the white house. I have just connected a. By you asking that question and me sitting next to megan. I did a little bit of work on the 2000 campaign for some of the foreign policy advisers to then governor bush. And then exchange you get one bullet. Your bullet is an interview with Richard Haas whos going to be the incoming directory of policy and planning. Ive flung to the and he hired megan instead. [laughter] i just realized you got the job that i was not good enough to get. So, i was in the bleachers in the cheap seats for the first term. In the second term when steve took over he created this new office. I vividly remember him saying, he said he did not say it. But im telling my version of the story. Hes interviewing is that i want an office of someone who will look at the big picture. And only in academic would be arrogant enough to work across all of the issues that i want to work on. And so he was looking for an academic who could pass political muster in the white house, academics or not. We are not bushes core constituency. I probably had an advantage in the interview. I was able to come in at that point. I did not know steve i think the first time i met him was in the job interview. It was something of a risk for him to hire me. Although i have many other friends in the administration. A somewhat technical question and maybe for one of the later panels. I am interested in how you make decisions and how the Quality And Accuracy of the intelligence that feeds the system affects the answer. And i know you painted a surprisingly positive picture of the decision making around the surge. Im looking in the early stages the office of special plans was sort of set up to negate some of the stuff coming out of the Intelligence Community. So a general question about you fill while you were there about the quality of intelligence and how important that was. Sure i know Peter Something he was to say about this. But briefly, the intelligence was an integral part of our process. We had the director of national intelligence the director, time but the surge not going back to 2003. Not everybody always appreciates, i always think about it as an input into the process. So the policies dont spend a huge amount of time focusing on could this intelligence be right . Was this particular source considered to be accurate . These are all new questions. Intelligence is an m put in the Policymakers Job is to determine given the nature of the problem what should we do about it . There is a variety of ways. It was occurring in the Search Process was, what would happen, is it a viable Strategy Or Part of a strategy to turn over the quelling to forces buried there is an iraq Study Group that came out with the recommendation largely along those lines but had a certain appeal to people. Let the Iraqis Deal we will deal with Al Qaeda will have a division of labor. And so, this was a serious proposal by many. We investigated it and asked a number of different bodies to give us their assessment of what happens in that instance. Are the iraqis strong enough to beat back to the bounce on their own with the american or Coalition Assistance . We asked a whole variety of actors to give us their opinion. I remember the Intelligence Assessment on this was particularly important. All of the assessments if my memory serves me correctly, all said the eye iraqis are completely incapable of taking this their own. We should expect a much larger scale. We turn to the Intelligence Community for evaluations along those lines, which i remember to be very useful. The one i remember the points on what megan was describing was the question came down what kind of leader was he . When he lead as a secular while sectarian device of figure is that who he really was . Or was he just surrounded by people giving him bad information . Or was he just insecure and his position and needed bolstering . And of course that was an important unknown. But the viability of the surge was who he was. We asked Intelligence Community to make their assessment which they did it was not confident enough in the judgment. The president sent steve to personally meet with him take the measurement of the man. That was my first and only trip to iraq. Meghan courses been there many times. The three of us went. The purpose of that trip was for steve to take an assessment of this. I can tell you about this because his Trip Memo showed up in the New York times a couple weeks later. It was the scariest moment of my professional career. There are only three or four people to put access that memo, or so i thought. I knew i was one of them. I knew i hadnt liked it was not sure if i could persuade anyone else i was not the one that leaked it. Fortunately the one that leaks have been the one that had been distributed more widely. So i live to fight another day. But if you read that memo, you can see steve wrestling with this intelligence question, who is he and what can we do to change the trajectory of the way he governed . The success of the surge hinged on the president , steve and others getting that right. And i do think they got it right. There is no question, under the surge governed iraq more effectively in a way that better suited what the u. S. And needed. So steve got the analysis right. But it was an intelligence question. At the end of the day, as meghan said, intelligence could not give us a guarantee that there would be one or the other. You had to take a bit. It was not a wild gamble is a bet based on the best evidence they were able to gather. A severe second last question. I am Julie Branton i worked for the Bush Administration also for the last seven years. I was at the pentagon during the surgery and communication. Ocs tilt to the white house at one point. We are asked by the media for a lot of information he could not give them, much to his classify. Of course they wrote stories anyway, jump to conclusions, came up with their own thoughts of probably what was going on. I am just wondering, looking back at the papers and historically you piqued my interest with a historian, what role did what the media say play not that it made you change your decision but did you have to fight on another front or how did that affect . Affect legal decisionmaking, and moving forward. Very specifically this is been said about President Bush throughout the interviews. It is fairly well known, depressed, obviously we are all aware of the environment we were living in. Our families are reading the press, our families are reading the press it was remarkable in the way President Bush was not driven by the press. I cannot even remember a single day and that many years i worked on this issue in the white house where i came in the office and had to respond to something that been in the press. But i have to explain what soandso is talk about in the press. There were many mornings i came in and they were questions. They generally related to something called the Iraq And Night no. Which my office, and our team we did for the president every night. Which was not things of the press but and diplomat reporting, Intelligence Reporting and that sort of things. I dont feel neat media who drove the people in the policy making a world in very considerable way. But it obviously affected the overall environment in which we were trying to operate. This allows me too make a point which i was hoping to make. I think a one of the things that is useful in doing a project like this oral history, is also to say what did not happen in this process that so often happens in other processes . It is remarkable how little domestic politics intruded into these deliberations. I have a specific memory, very well, i member the president s face exactly. I was in the Oval Office. It is during this time and i forget what i said to him exactly. It was something about the actual policy in iraq. I made some comment about politics and how it would play at home. A member he said to me meghan, stop. I do not need your political advice. He was like just tell me what you think in terms of policy, the politics, that is my job. Was very right about that. Nobody needs my political advice. The domestic peace was incredible how little it insured into our deliberations. There was also her, but there is not a big driver. I certainly did not feel the burden of putting forward something that was going to be domestically palatable. I knew that had betrayed the end of the day, but that was not part of my calculations and what we put forward to steven the president. So i had a slightly different role than meghan. I had more interactions i think with the arguments that were alive in the press but also the Think Tank Community serve the public commentary. There is an office that worked for Karl Rove whose job it was, was to listen to the critics of the administration that were supporters of the President But Word about this, that, and the other thing. Then that office would send me, we are hearing this is going wrong, what is the Ground Truth . That particular, pete was the head of that office. He played an incredibly valuable role as the internal asker of inconvenient questions. Its one thing if someone on cnn is shouting at the administration from afar. Its another thing if someone who has the unquestioned trust of the present as loyal to the president but asked the inconvenient question. It was useful as a way of reflecting on how strong is our argument . Can i persuade pete on the merits of this or that . And if not, i could go back to meghans there we sure about this or that . It was a way of improving the rigor of our analysis. I can think of several occasions were outside critics were able to sharpen our analysis. Theres a couple other ways in which they reassured us. We would bring in the sharpest most notable critics on tv et cetera. They came and talked to us. We realize as they were telling us what they do is they didnt have a better idea what to do than we did pray that somewhat reassured us we had considered all the alternatives. There is not a good idea because of groupthink we were not hearing. And so i found the press to be a more useful sounding board and that way, just intellectually. In the last thing i will say, i know there are some members of the press that had it in for the president. And who were not fair. But many of what i would say the a team of reporters who covered the white house were trying to get the story accurately. And were trying to understand. I was within the white house one of those people that said lets engage these folks. I think they are trying to tell the story accurately. And so i dont really agree with president trumps posture of they are the enemy of the people and you have to treat them as an enemy. I think that is a mistake. Most of the folks i interacted with, salt and red were trying to get it right. Im told have a little bit more time. Maybe this will be the second last question. Im curious about how difficult it was to work at the pentagon to generate options for decisions that many of the senior leadership within the organization may have imposed. Whether there is any concern when the president was seeming to lean toward the Surge Decision about the potential risks of being perceived of overruling the military he received for maybe his top advisers . I cannot tell if peter wants to jump in first, i would say there was a lot of care taken in this regard. That it was it difficult to get options from the pentagon. I will not deny that. Particularly on questions about what would it take if we did decide the objective was to secure baghdad, what would be required . These questions sound hypothetical but wanting to get a sense of is that possible . Are the resources there . These are people at the nsc and other places cannot possibly answer. In some regards this is to where we look to get fidelity from people outside of the pentagon. But we did have a second sort of Strategy Review going on. That was specifically done of the nfc and Steve Hadley may talk about that tonight. To ask the question of what type of resources do we have . It was difficult. The point that was more interesting was your second bit about what kind of care was given to managing this . And the potential damage that could be done for the president making a decision the military gone against . The president and Steve Hadley were very, very conscious of this and very conscious of the fact to make a decision the military did not want to implement or their heart was not in implementing it was not going to be in anyones interest. I dont think this comes out in the project and hopefully come out in subsequent projects with the benefit of documents, there was really i think a very intensive effort to identify, what are the issues the military has with this approach . And what might be done to mitigate those concerns or are those truly showstoppers . The two things that come to mind, first is the strain on the force. That was something that of course was a wide Spread Concern and very legitimate run. You read about or heard about the president going to the tank at the pentagon on december 13 and being in a position to hear the concerns, to express his views, but also to be able to hold out and sign an olive Branch But Address some of those concerns but increase in the End Strength of some of the forces. I think that was done in a way to acknowledge these are legitimate concerns the military has about living in this direction. In her ways we can address them. The other one which is more critical in my mind, which is not get any play at this point, Something Peter alluded to. Its the question, is the prime minister, somebody that we want to bet on, that we want to put our confidence in . The military had a very strong doing the answer is no. That if you his way of governing was over sectarian and there very good reasons for the judgment. There were targets given from the government to our military there were almost exclusively suny pray theres a long period of Engagement Or Steve engage or the president engaged over and over again on jordan and other places. The message was very clear, if america was going to make this commitment to iraq, he needed to make the commitment to treat everyone who broke the law of the same. While you are a suny, shiite, or occurred. This is very difficult and iraq he limited at that time particularly in iraq in theater who been put in to place, by that shiite leader basically in charge of a group that was stoking violence. So, until he got that commitment i dont think our forces were going to have confidence and putting more force behind him. There is a lot of work that went into it. History shows he went before the iraqi parliament and made virtually this statement, im going to treat everyone who breaks the law equally. And he did to the point where he had to basically build a different political coalition because he lost the support of that group. He started to arrest them for their still halfway, either youre going after these guys or youre not. He made that shift. And our military sought immediately. That is an example of how that decision or this process is not only about making the decision. It was creating the circumstances the decision could be implemented successfully. And, a lot of the skill of the president and Steve Hadley and bringing people along. Not by convincing them, twisting their arms, putting them or bulldozing them but actually identifying concerns that were legitimate and ways in which those concerns could be mitigated. I was smiling because my friend and former colleague would have paid you 20 bucks not to ask that question. That is my personal hobby hoists. My job was to be a dilettante working on any issues where i have no academic on civil i did know something about. The only article i wrote while i was working at the Nsc Wasnt Article for Sam Huntington. I Member Steve is like you are not going to write an Article Way working for me. Mike know i have to do this one because political problems. He read the article said that is so boring, nobodys going to read it go and publish it. [laughter] but, i had a precommitment academic theory on how civil military operations ought to go. It was different from the weight Sam Huntington thought it ought to go. I was argument should go this way and up that way. And then, in the process of the search i remember trying to structure it to the extent i could, in the direction my own prior research said this leads to better outcomes than that. And this is how you manage the flaws in Sam Huntingtons approach. I remember doing that. What we up doing was something different. It was exquisitely painful for me as an academic and practitioner to see my theory semi not tested, some i found not one thing and us doing it in a different way and it going better than my argument would have said for the only consolation i had was sams weight was worse than mine. I was less wrong than my academic opponents were. But, this was one of the key potential failure modes for the surge. Especially i would say late december of zero six. One of the ways it could have been stillborn is if it had, and reaching this decision the president had inadvertently or the team inadvertently create a civil military crisis where the senior military said this is such a bad idea we can no longer support it. And a key portion of the president s efforts during that phase of the decision, this is mid december of 2006 wasnt getting the rest of the team, the military part of the team on the same page he was arriving at so he could say on january 10, all of his advisers agreed. That was not true. They did not agree, it was true by january 10. But it was a process to get everyone there in the to civil military was a key bit of it. I remember showing steve the final version of a threat under the bus one last time the final version of my article said theres this academic version, it didnt work for theres this academic version it didnt work we did a hybrid. C said yes obviously, academic models is not what you do in the pragmatic messy situation. Think were fortunate the president , steve and petes, i give a lot of credit to pete and incoming secretary of Defense Bob gates. They manage that process very effectively to avert what could have been a crisis. Will take one more. A couple times about the Decisionmaking Process and having the ability to see we talked about how bush knew what was going on and wanting to hear different opinions and things like that. Youve also talked about getting opinions from the Intelligence Community, from academics from non academics, from policymakers, from people on the ground over there. So if you can talk a little bit more about it, is with getting so much of that information, how did you really go about sifting through that and send it to the president. How did you sift through this this is legitimate, this is a legitimate concern, this is something you particularly agreed with but also things like this is contrary to anything i have seen, this is something i bring up. I guess that sifting through that and figure out what is really a concern of what it is not. Could you talk more about that process to be very interesting. Go first and ill try to be brief. I think again, this is a point that will be illuminated when documents come out. As people are well aware now and it is captured in this project, there were a whole series of meetings that considered a variety of things that culminated in a very intense series of national Security Account Council meetings with President Bush himself. I think a one of the things ill be obvious to people looking at the documents as in those meetings we were not having the same conversation about options from day one. We did not begin with options. We began and this is Something Peter reinforced with me early on before this became a public effort, it was really more of an internal effort. We began looking at assumptions. We began by saying where are the assumptions we have made about iraq and we based our strategy on . We kind of list of those. As a pretty shocking exercise. When you list those we looked at them and said some might have once been true but they are not true now. What is the nature of the violence . What is the driver of violence . Is it the foreign occupiers and iraq . Is it a sectarian dimension . We did not begin that process by just starting at options. Although theres always pressure in a situation when things are not going well. People want to know what should we be doing . What are the options . What should we be doing . I think steve and others gave us enough space to construct a process that started with assumptions and moved its way through. You will see in the documents that President Bush actually spent a lot of time hearing about different issues but hearing perspectives on different issues that were not different options but predicates for getting there. They won ill give you as an example as the most critical decisions he made before the big decision of the surge is, i remember this paper. Papers interested in seeing again this was one of them which is the question about should the United States take responsibility for quelling sectarian violence in iraq. They were very, very strong views about his seniormost teams we cannot take responsibility for this this is not the thing americans can solve, it is not something we have the capacity to resolve. I member very distinctly those arguments havent in an Nsc Setting and the president saying i know this is not going to be popular with everyone but yes we are going to assume some responsibility for this. It was the fact they were so the reason i find that so significant as once he made that decision to close off some options. It was a decision making in some respects. Once he made that decision there were certain options not consistent with that. The reason im saying this in answering your questions is, the debates are not just about funneling everything into options, do we go home . Do we stay . To be go bigger . It was a whole series of analysis that created a Knowledge Base upon which then the options could be debated. There was a lot of opportunity to feed it information from a variety of sources as we went. , so my answer allows me too link back to tims first question about the bridge between the academy and the Policy World. I was one of the few people in government, who could be fired and still feed his family the next day. I had tenure at duke. That made me the most expendable member of the nsc staff. As its chief said, you serve at the pleasure of the president when the pleasures gone so are you. I realized that meant on some issues, i could be the person thrown into the mix to make it an un popular Argument Or Mountain unpopular fight. If i got crushed in the process my family was still taken care of that came up twice, one time with the very significant powerful player there was arguing something the team thought was wrong. And i looked around the room and realized im the one whos going to have to jump on this grenade. And argue against it. The other time gets directly to the heart of your question, with the State Paper, the State Paper was powerfully argued. It was a compelling story of how we could perhaps do something different. But, but lets look at it as if it were a scholarly argument. What are the assumptions that are driving this . Theyre driving the assumptions under which the State Paper produced good outcomes. If those assumptions were true lets plug those assumption, those of values into the other option. We realize if those are true the other options were even better this is a dominant by the alternatives. They said no that also helped carry the day that analysis we try to teach her students to do they need that in government. Particularly in thorny Policy Issues. Is not the most popular thing, whats the easiest to sell, there is a basic piece of analysis that also needs to be done. I think much of that comes out in the book and even more of that will come out when the documents come out. It is been a wonderful day to start the event. I just want to stay when you think about the project, you think about the book and 28 Interviews Loop realize how much we depend on interviewees for taking their time. For those of you who are here today and agreed to be interviewed thank you so much for participating, Meghan And Peter you participate interviewees, interviewers, great resources as we develop questions. I learned quite a lot from you. Peter stebbins get into good questions to someone, i had to giggle and joined google what that meant. As a historian you dont have any due dates that are real. I had to do that by close of business we got it done. I learned an enormous amount for your british students learn so much me thank you so much for everything. [applause] close to one, two large commercial airliners flew into the World Trade buildings in New York city. 200763 people lost their lives. A few minutes later, american Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the pentagon killing a total of 189 people. A fourth plane, united 93 crashed into a field near schenkel, pennsylvania at three minutes past 10 00 a. M. On that morning. Fortyfour parish. These events, as everyone knows, or a great shock to our nation and the world. As a small way to commemorate this moment in u. S. History, here are some of the callers to the Cspan Network the morning after beginning at 6 00 a. M. The entire United States to shut down but you are talking to people around the country and around the world who are shaken to the roots by this. A look back on the september 11 attacks on this episode of book notes plus listen at cspan. Org podcast. Over ever you get your podcast. Weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday american History Tv Document american story. On sunday but tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding from cspan2 comes in these television companies and more. You that this is a Community Center . Notes way more than that. To create wifi students from low income families they can get ready for anything. Comcast along with these television companies support cspan2 as a public service. Cspan american History Tv continues now. From the full schedule of the week and on your program guide cspan. Org history. Major header of the international guard the morning of september 11, 2001, how did it begin for you . Well, it was an ordinary Tuesday Morning as far as we were concerned. The Fire Squadron of which i was a part had participated in eight red Flag Deployment for the previous two weeks and had returned back home early that saturday. So the commanders have given the vast majority of the fulltime force, which was not that many folks at that point in time