Surrounding himself herself with really strong capable, independentminded people, empowering them, delegating authority and holding them accountable. Successful, reward them in whatever way they can, and if they fail, fire them. Muchnk that this, this too of thinking about the president , and the reality is, the best president s, the greatest president s have been willing to recognize the smartest person in the room, and to surround themselves with people that are smarter than themselves. Washington and jefferson and hamilton and so on and lincoln and both roosevelts, truman, eisenhower and reagan were willing to bring strong people into their cabinets, listen to them, integrate their views with their own. They did not mind if that person disagreed with them, and expected candid is vice from them advice from them. That is important. Brian lamb it is really your life on this string and it starts in wichita, kansas in 1943. I want you to tell us at what point you started thinking about leadership. He received your ba from william and mary and your masters from the Indiana University and your phd from georgetown, Deputy Director of the cia, and you were nominated but withdrew as cia director in 1987 and went on to be the director of the National Security council in a 1989. You with the cia director back in 1991 and you are confirmed. Anddid academic speaking then you were the interim dean of george bush at texas a and m for a couple of years. You were president of texas a m, defense secretary from 20062011. Where did you learn the Different Things you have in this book . Secretary gates i write in the last chapter that my First Leadership position was a patrol leader, a Boy Scout Troop in wichita. I write that nothing teaches you leadership skills like being in charge of a bunch of 11yearolds and trying to get them to do what they do not want to do and you cannot make them do it and you are only a year or two older than they are. At 15 years old, i had the only formal management leadership scoutng i ever had, at a ranch in new mexico. I was 15 years old. That was my last formal training in leadership, but as i say in the book, i have learned ever sense them for 55 years then for 55 years. From my very first days at the desire, iays had a have always had a feeling of how things could be made better. I do not know if i would have articulated the sort of wanting to take leadership, but i saw where a Good Organization could be made better, so i wrote my first essay on how we could improve soviet analysis at the cia when i had been on active duty for two years. I am sure my superiors were waypressed, but i felt that about each organization that i have led, and in the book i have said, i love them all. I thought they could be better was they were, so i always somebody who was pressing for ,hange and to make improvements really from the earliest days. Brian lamb you tell a story in the book about a confrontation you had with governor rick perry of texas. Secretary gates well, he, this is all secondhand, but i was told when i became the finalist for president of texas and him for president of texas a m, he called me and basically tried to candidacy withdraw my , and i had heard he promised the job to someone else. I heard it was senator phil gramm, but i do not know that for a fact. He taught at a m for 10 years, i think. Rick perry,st told he said he was going to appoint all of the regents, and it was not going to pleasant for me if i decided to take the job. I said, i had heard that a lot of aggies didnt want me to, and i let the board of regents make that decision. What hadold my wife been actually going to my mind at the time, which was i had been facing off with the Deputy Director of the kgb when he was first elected to the texas house and he thought he could intimidate me, but he was sadly mistaken. Brian lamb what impact is that question what impact did that have on you . Secretary gates he had not counted votes, and six of the nine regions had been appointed by george w. Bush at the time. Five of those regions voted for me. Regentsof those voted for me. A m. Ame president of he and i became maintained outward stability. Wasll say this, while i there, he mostly left me alone. At one point he try to force me into hiring a friend of his for president of student affairs, but i had already extended an professional at the university of north carolina. I had refused to do it. At the next board of regents meeting, they change the rules that deb board had to approve any such position in the future. Brian lamb make you leadership bern and your relationship with them. Secretary gates he was always friendly with me. Time,mber one story, one he was referred to by the Washington Post and others as pork. Ing of he was pretty good about taking money to West Virginia. At one point, the post ran an editorial, complaining that the cia had decided to build a milliondollar logistics ility in the basic thrust and the basic thrust was that he had enforced the building and West Virginia. That the ciafact knew that the only way they could get the money for the facility was if they built that in West Virginia and he helped. It was the cias initiative and not the senators this story ran and i called him up. I said, mr. Chairman, would it be all right if i wrote a letter to the editor as director of Central Intelligence saying the story was wrong in setting the facts right . I will never forget, there was a long positive he said, you would do that for me . I said, it is only fair. Those are the facts. I wrote the letter and the post published it and i called them the day that it appeared to make , and a senator of oklahoma who was close to him, told me that after that, anytime my name came up he would say, that mr. Gates is an honorable man. Brian lamb what is the lesson . Secretary gates i think the lesson is, people forget, people insults,slights and but i think what people do not understand in Washington Well enough today is they also remember kindness. They also remember treating people decently, and that people on the receiving end never forget it. I think, and i write about it in the book, too much emphasis is placed on negative relationships when in fact, there are lots of opportunities day to day where you can do the right thing by somebody and it may be a small, small thing, maybe somebody works for you or somebody you work for, and they will not forget it. Brian lamb we started this program in the same format 27 years ago, and here is something i have never seen that you have in this book, i want to put it on the screen, a picture from the book. He, circle. Word f she, circle. You decide to use this word hundreds of times. Why . Secretary gates i tried to balance this book using she and places and see in places. There are a lot of women in leadership positions or who are about to assume leadership positions in companies and local governments, state governments, the national government. I wanted to make it clear, particularly for the young people, young women as well as young man, that these leadership opportunities will be open for everybody, and this will be regardless of your gender. Brian lamb do you have any comments . People havetes noticed that he use the word she throughout the book. Brian lamb you tell a story about a Sergeant Jason in the book. What is that about . Secretary gates one of the points i made at the beginning of our conversation was the importance of empowering subordinates and giving them responsibility, so the sergeant worked in my outer office in the reception area, and one of my senior military assistance decided they would be value in allowing these young men, mostly men, to participate in my , by going there a head of me and helping to prepare my visit and so on, including in iraq and afghanistan. Dosent the sergeant out to the advanced work in afghanistan, and the sergeant was meeting with the kernel ideas. Who had his own he wanted me to watch a bunch of and thent briefings, sergeant knew i wanted to spend most of my time with the troops. Kernel colonel went backandforth a little bit. Toally, jason walked over his desk and he picked up the phone and he said, one of the two of us can call the secretary of defense and have the call taken immediately. He smiled and said, i get your point. 1991, b tech in back in 1991 when you are being confirmed for cia director, this is just a clip and after we watch this i want you to tell us what this is about. What bothered me from the inception bothers me now. It is whether you were leveling with us, whether you are trying to guilt us. Notesuld have read these and could have answered our question, but you did not do that. I have difficulty with that. Secretary gates at times, those questions were asking me what i thought mr. North had been referring to when he would write something or another, and that is when i answered, i did not know, that it is far from me to know what was in his mind. It was a long hearing and i had one exchange with senator metzenbaum and i had been testifying, i think, for 10 big parthours, and a of testifying on the hill is not answering questions but figuring out what they are, because so often and never of congress is making a speech. I remember this senator at one point read a very long and , and i was just exhausted and i lost the bubble. I could not figure out what the question was. I said, with all due respect, senator, i am tired, what is the question . He did not know what the , and one aide kneeled beside him and ended up reading the whole thing over again, and i found the question and there that i thought i could. Nswer testifying in front of the congress is always an interesting experience. Brian lamb you spent two years in service and a lot of years in this town. What do you think of congress . Secretary gates the thing that concerns me is it has changed so much since i first came to washington 50 years ago. Washington, i will use the senate as an example, because i remember the names better. Our politics has always been polarized. In 1966 andshington we were in the middle of the vietnam war. Within a half dozen years, we would be involved in watergate, so things have never been smooth in washington. There were always, on the hill, a number of people both democrats and republicans, centerleft centerright who would reach across the aisle to get business done. They would pass appropriation bills, passed welfare reform, passed legislation to move the country forward. I called that body of people the Bridge Builders because they were building bridges across the aisle. The sad thing is, nearly all of those people are gone. The bill bradleys the bob bentsens, lloyd they were probably two dozen or more senators who were in that category and you could actually get things done. The Committee Chairs have Real Authority and when they committed to doing something, it would get done. Most of those people are gone. They did not get defeated for the most part, they got leftrated and set up and on their own accord. A good example of this is a 1994 when i got a call from david who had been offered the presidency of the university of oklahoma, and he was wrestling with whether to leave the senate, and i told him, david, i think it is very easy. When you are daydreaming on a plane or driving, are you daydreaming about what you have accomplished in the u. S. Senate or what you could accomplish at ou . He laughed and said, you are right, it is easy and he took the ou job. This is my concern that it is not just that politics are polarized, it is that the people who have in the past been able to come together, move things forward, so many of them are gone and so few are left. A good example of this is the absence for years of regular appropriation bills, something as simple as funding the government from yeartoyear. Years, in last 10 only two years has the Defense Department had in enacted appropriation at the beginning of the fiscal year and that was nine and 10 years ago. For the last eight years we have had continuing resolutions or sequestration, but no regular order of business. Brian lamb one of the biggest planes ever built in the united c5a, andhe sea5 congress did not want to fund this. Secretary gates the air force it, and theyire a have some of these original planes and they are so old that they require enormous amounts of money to maintain, and some of them never fly. They will drag them around the base sot the air force the wheels do not go flat. That is the only time they ever move. Because they are part of National Guard units, or air National Guard units, members of congress in which those bases are located one let them be decommissioned, no matter how much money they are costing the air force and they cannot service at all. The recent testimony, you have the leadership in the pentagon telling the congress that they facilities the military has in the united are accessed and need, but the congress will not let the military shut them down to save the overhead. Brian lamb what is the solution of that . Secretary gates i think the question is if you have one of these long and drawnout processes where you point at commissions appoint commissions to look at military facilities and then you present the congress with an upanddown , it on a list of bases takes years and it is very expensive and so on. My view is, the congress ought to authorize the secretary of defense to be able to close willities when the service testify that there is no longer a need for that facility, or for that Weapon System or piece of equipment. In 2009,s secretary most of my predecessors canceled , if they were lucky, one or two or three major chairmans. I remember when did cheney was secretary he canceled the a12 fighter, and a litigation ended two years ago for that, and the other program he killed was for the marines which is still flying because congress would not let him kill it. In 2009, i cut 36 programs. They would have cost the taxpayer 330 billion. I got 33 of them approved or acquiesced by congress the first year, and i got the remainder the following year. Partly, and it really goes to some of the lessons in the book, these were very important programs, most of them. These services had fought for them, but i involved the Service Leadership in all of these decisions. We had many meetings and the to make their own suggestions of programs they thought were no longer needed. Sometimes they put programs and their budget because they knew if they did not, the congress would, so they preemptively conceded the matter. You do not want to leave it out. Was, becausenciple i had all of the Service Chiefs on board, none of them leak and went to the hill behind my back to get congress to reverse those decisions. Second, and this is just a tactical thing, i publicly announced all of these cuts while congress was out of town. I had two weeks before they came , and there was a real groundswell of public support for what i had done in the media and elsewhere. The congress, when it arrived back in town, was behind the eight ball politically. There were so many of these programs, it was hard for members of congress to make deals with each other like they are used to, and i had the vetot, strong threat of a by president obama if they put things back in that we did not want. There are a lot of tactics on how you can get these things done, but it also involves having relationships with members of congress that ultimately are productive, and i think one of the things about my surprised that people on the hill was how negative i was toward congress because i had very productive relationships with them and very cool operative relationships cooperative relationships. I exercised an enormous amount of selfdiscipline, and in terms of keeping my real feelings about them hidden the whole time i had the job. I will say in the last two or three months, my discipline slip, began to slip, and that was part of the reason i knew it was time to leave. Brian lamb one of the things you talk about in the book is firing people you have fired generals and secretaries. Going back in 2007, this is you announcing the firing and resignation, and your idea of letting them resign instead of being fired. Lets watch. Secretary gates i have two announcements to make. First, earlier today, the secretary of the army offered his resignation. I have accepted the resignation. Army, weretary of the will have someone act as a new secretary until another one is appointed. I think dr. Harvey for his service to the nation. A new, the army will name commander for the army medical center. It must have its new leadership in place as quickly as possible. I am disappointed that some in the army had not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to Outpatient Care at walter reed. Some have shown it too much defensive mesh thi defensiveness. As you haveeddi ignored, some people think you are cold. Explain your process of firing . Secretary gates in improving organizations, i am willing to hold people accountable, and i think that particularly, and even when i was a young cia officer, whenever there was a problem, it always seemed like the people low down on the totem pole were the ones that got punished. Who should have known about the problem and dealt with unscathed. , escaped i told myself then, back in the 1970s, that if i was ever in a position of authority that was not the way it was going to be. I was not going to go out of my way to find a scapegoat. If i came to the conclusion that the problem had not been taken seriously enough, they would be in fact held accountable. What i am trying to do throughout my career, and i did a m, andhe cia, texas the Defense Department, most of these people are good people and they have given the previous service, so i tried not to humiliate them. I tried to deal with them in a manner that preserved their dignity, so i would always give them the opportunity to resign. I told one person, one vice tosident that i had asked retire at texas a m, i do not care if you go out there and say i would not work one more minute for that sob gates. I told him i would not counter that at all. You handle that anyway you want if you are going to leave. I think what bothered me for a is that people in washington lose their jobs all of the time, but mainly they lose t