foundation. it's my pleasure to begin this evening by recognize seeing a few special guests. and i'll start with a member of our board of directors the former governor of california, wilson and first lady gayle wilson. you. steve craig, a member of the board of directors of the richard nixon foundation. maureen nunn, longtime board member. sandy quinn, the board member and former president of the nixon foundation. dr. daniel stroupe, president of chapman university and a member of the board. and thank you to all of our board members that are here tonight. i'd also like to recognize lisa sparks, chairwoman of the orange county board of education and fred whitaker, chairman of the republican party of orange county. thank you both for being here. i want to acknowledge and thank all of the members of the president's council, the associates club in our audience and, those who are watching tonight online as well. because your support this distinguished speaker series at which the nixon foundation gathers business political and civic leaders from all across the country and across the world to advance the legacy of president nixon so you for your support. and if you're not a member, i'd encourage you to pick up the brochures, your seats, take a look, flip through it, and if you have any questions, you can call the number on the back. i now like to welcome another member of the board of directors hugh hewitt and you know him as the host of the hugh hewitt show on the salem radio and from his appearances on fox and his columns in the washington. but before all that, hugh was the founding of the nixon library, overseeing the design and construction of the building in which we now sit. and from 2019 to 2021, hugh served again as president of the nixon foundation, spearheading a number of important educational initiatives which he then dumped in my lap. he will have a conversation on stage this evening with our honored guest, mike pompeo. a businessman, congressman from kansas, director of the cia and the 70th secretary of state of the states. secretary pompeo now co-chairs the nixon seminar on conservative realism and national, a monthly educational program presented by the richard nixon foundation. and he is a recipient of the nixon foundation's of peace award. secretary pompeo's new memoir is never give an inch fighting for the america i love, which you should all have copies and you can purchase additional copies in the gift shop as you exit tonight's program. ladies and gentlemen, would you please now stand and join me in welcoming secretary pompeo hugh hewitt coming up, new york city. school bus driver the intersect features. david, to face his inner minnie route. looking at the promise of claire. one kid dreams, fame and fortune so ladies and gentlemen welcome this stand. i was able to interview the secretary for an hour on the radio show, and i ran out of time. so i've got 18 pages of questions that i didn't get through. but i'm going to start with a real tough one. all right. go tonight. lebron is going to surpass kareem abdul-jabbar as the all time nba scorer in. never give an inch. you you tell that you are a lakers diehard fan. yes. so if you had to pick between don't make me lebron. he kobe shaq magic and kareem who you start the team with wow goodness. so you know i'll take kobe because i took kobe's jersey because i because i took chairman kim. north korea was a kobe bryant fan and i took both a 24 and an eight jersey. so there is my pick. all right. well, you weren't you were a southern california kid. and i want people to know that you are self-described not so good basketball player. yeah, but there are some fellow love of fans here that would confirm that. oh, is there exactly are there some harbor people back? yeah. los amigos, lobos amigos. exactly. and where was the baskin robbins? costa mesa. okay. my sister and her family here tonight. she was the first one to work at the baskin robbins. then it became a family. all right. well, let's let's go to the important stuff right away. i am a baseball. that was i was play as one of the few people who have read the four fours. there are four memoirs of the trump administration by people who spent four years in jared. kellyanne conway, the vice president, and the secretary of state and cia director. and they're all good books. yours is by far, i thought, the most readable because. it talks about running agencies. these three have not run agencies were in the west wing. so what's the difference between being there for the morning brief with the president and then back and getting an agency lugubrious as the state department to do his job. oh, goodness. it's it's all the difference in the world in the sense of when you're the cia director, the secretaries say you're running big organizations, cia has a classified number. but the state department's got 70,000 employees. but that's 40,000. too many. but different. that's that's a different a different issue. these are real leadership challenges. this is just like those of you who've run businesses. i ran small companies, but had never run anything remotely like this. anything of this scale. the state department, three unions, civil service rules. it is not easily bent to the desires to break glass in the same way that we were, the way we were in the trump administration. so it was a constant challenge. it's you know, you hear references to deep state and resistance. those are those are shorthand for you have this as an institution. state bar was an institution that is fundamentally of washington and it is certainly left of center. but it is an established event bias that an inertial drag on change. and so when we wanted to move the embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem when the president said he wanted to go meet with chairman, the model that we developed in the middle east that deliver the abraham accords. these were things that were these were things that were going to cause world war three. when we want to take the strike, take the strike on kassam soleimani, the all just say, you can't that for deep historical reasons. so as the leader of that team to try and deliver is a really, really complicated problem. i think i've run seven organizations. tank platoon a couple of small businesses. i think i left them each better, maybe save for the state department. i'm not sure when i left, i'm just, you know, you try to put culture in and we all we all know that you've got to go focus on the mission and that machine hard. it would have taken more than a thousand days. i had to really leave and premature on the place we're going to guess now about the chinese because i you were going to ask if i got all the corvettes out of my great. i've got to get around to find there were lots of boxes downstairs when you were out. i want to ask about the chinese, because what do you think happened and what do you think would have happened if you had either been the director of the agency? and how in the world did not tell you that it happened before? if in fact that's true oh goodness, i, i try to picture walking in telling president trump hey, there's a balloon over the country. we're going to you're going to have to suffer this for five more days. i am confident i would have been the former secretary of state. i say that in all seriousness. i we were were decisive. both the obama administration and the biden administration are much more process oriented. that has risk both directions process is important you want to consider of different ideas, but president trump was prepared to take a brief consideration, hoping that the team had done the in-depth work and was decisive. i am confident that had we seen it approaching our airspace, we would have prepared for that. we have evaluated the risk. the president biden, you had the risk that we were going to have debris fall on folks like we would have evaluated that risk very, very differently. and i think when we came in, we would have told him, let's take this down. i mean, remember, we wouldn't have known precisely what was in it. to this day, we know exactly. it could have been the communist party has talked about weaponizing. there are lots of risks, lots of things they could have had in there. and think we would have evaluated risk. i talk about risk a lot in the book, inaction is a decision for risk to and i we would have been very decisive. you asked the second question that the biden team said that this happened on our watch. i remember when i had the first reporter call and ask him about that and i said, wow, i didn't realize i drank that much because my sister will vouch this diet coke. that's my problem. beverage. there was no recollection. all sudden, even general mattis who some thought when nobody remembers this and i think the story develops, what you're going to find is. we didn't collect against that. nobody knew none of them. no military. nobody really knew. i think they were glancing balloon flights around guam and. hawaii will wait to see what the story is, but fundamentally different than a balloon the size of three busses traversing the united, sensitive military for almost a week now. mr. secretary dealt with a lot of very interesting people from putin to kim jong un to the most evil man in the world, xi jinping, as you call him in the book. i am curious about their energy level. and i put this in the context of president, given the state of the union tonight, i'm a little bit worried about how that went i didn't get a chance to say anything up here. so i'm curious the energy level of foreign leaders that you dealt with, how did they ranged? did anyone appear to you in firm or were they all kind of on the top of their game? you talk about nbc and nbc, this book, they both seem to be highly energetic. what what are we up against? yeah, i hadn't been that question before. i mean, these these folks were all young. they were in they were in the beginning of their trajectory, with the exception, perhaps, of putin. they would be in the beginning of their career trajectory and maybe putin had a little less energy than some of the others. that is, his meetings were often. but he made up for that with variable. so that's true there was no absence of capacity there for sure but think xi jinping is still relatively young been the communist party apparatus for decades chairman kim was in his early thirties the crown prince was in the saudi arabia was in his early thirties when. we were interacting with him and emirati leader a little bit older than that. now. they were all people who were spending a lot of time working, a lot of time focusing on missions. and so the advantage that we have is that we a free country and we freely elect our leaders. the disadvantages the dictators get to go a long time and they get their standard operating procedures down in the longer run. obviously, we pick. but what advantages do they endure from the benefit of their time in office? a lot. there are many things that that time on station can teach you. i talked about my thousand days. i would have been a better secretary of state. the second thousand days. i was certainly a better cia director for the last six months than i was for the first six months i was there. you begin to learn the organization, its culture, how to make the machine operate. so if you're the leader of a country a couple of decades, you figured it out. the downside is you also have figured it out and the chance of you actually reacting to changes the risk profile or to the rest of the world is much lower because you believe now that you have figured it out. all right for secretaries of defense, for national security advisors, for chiefs of staff, two secretaries of state of which you are one, two cia directors of which you one and you pick the second one. how difficult is it to brief somebody in how in other words, how important should that transition team be to a president? oh, so this is the survivor question. how'd you do it. you know, that turnover mattered. it was incredibly harmful to our ability to work together as a team. you know, in the book, i talk a lot about this, whatever it is we accomplished. we did it together. the secretary state didn't pull any of this off on his own. the cia director didn't pull any of this on his own. this was absolutely a team and when the team is constantly changing, but it takes a long time to get them up to speed on the process and importantly, we worked for a very unique president. maybe maybe they're all unique. but to come to understand how the president processes information it works through his decision making process, takes real time. my my biggest advantage as secretary of state was i'd had the opportunity to brief him almost every day as the cia, which is unusual as president, wanted his director to be in the room with him for the briefing. it's usually a couple of very cia officers to do that. what the biden administration has returned to more traditional. but i had a to see him and observe him and see how he processed information and that was enormously helpful and there was nobody else who had that same of advantages. and so the teams would come in and you'd have challenges both up them dealing with what i called the white house circle and second, dealing out the rest of the world could see that there was of transition as well. and that meant they would often call me even if it wasn't in my lane because they'd had previous with me and knew me and had developed of a relationship with me. and so that that meant that i had more space to move as well both for good and for bad. one of the things i enjoyed about never give an inch. i always say the name of a book. times when you're on c-span, never give an inch. going back is that you brought friends with you into the government? and i think of harry hopkins and fdr, president reagan had a great friend and bibi ribadu and jack ryan. how important is it to bring some friends along with it was central to my success that is whatever worked well because i chose i had my two best friends in the whole world, a fellow named orrick and brookfield, a guy named brian buetow, who i have known each of them since july 1st, 1982, which tells you how old i am. that was my first day as a cadet at west point and. we spent our lives together. we ran business in wichita kansas together. we served in the army together. we were back in graduate school together. these are the folks who if susan and i had perished, would have taken care of our son. nick, this is close. they were and especially at sea. actually, that's not true. both places. they saved me a lot of nightmares. brian came in one day. brian became chief operating officer at the cia. right. he literally he called me. i was nominated on a friday morning. no one would have i mean, literally happened like lightning. i write about it in the book. i didn't get a chance to call anybody. my wife knew knew our son knew about it. and so brian calls me the announcement about 8:00 eastern, about 830. he me and says anything you want to tell me? oh yeah, i said, i'm sorry, brian. i didn't get to you. he no, i'm happy you'll be a great cia director. i said, the bad news is you're going to join me at the cia. and he said, what? and i said, yeah, you're going to be the operating officer. and brian, who is an incredible executive, does the cia have a chief operating officer to which i had to plead ignorant and say we're going to make one or 2 hours later? he called back, had cleared the deck. he was running a big operation in dallas. they said, i talked to my bosses. i'm good. when do i start? just amazing. amazing friends. amazing patriot to 82nd airborne guy he came in one day the state department it's do you know what's outside that door about 8:00 at night? i said, yeah, that's my elevator. it's how i get out of here. and he said, he said, that is fort apache, those are trying to cut your head off and i'm saving you every day as only friends can do. i've got to tell people, having read five never give an inch yet that the most important achievement that secretary had at cia will be near and dear to some of your hearts. and i tell my wife, i said he, got five guys into the agency. so explain to people how you managed to get five guys into the agency and why it mattered. yes. so i am literally a god at central intelligence agency because i brought greasy and french fries to the lunch every day. there's that there's that little plaque. you go there. there's all the famous logo that you see in the movies, all the portraits. but what i really about is there's a black director. established 2017. all right, let's go to this serious part of the book. and i think if i watch media reaction, they have all stayed away from russia. russia. and your chapter on when you got to the cia and did an after action report on the intel briefing that brought the president so much heartache and you eviscerate it in the same week your book comes out the columbia journalism review comes out with a four part series on how off or confirming your story your story to bed six months earlier and. they are a left wing organization. you were a trump secretary of state. do you think we yet understand how purposeful was the assault on donald trump. i know when you say we know the majority of the american people do can't how intentional fraud was that was perpetrated on the american people. i that's a strong word but it is fundamentally true it's definitionally accurate in the in the book i talk about january 6th and it's a little bit tongue in cheek because i talk about january six, 2017, a january 6th, that cnn and msnbc will never talk about. it was it was it was remarkable. i was still the congressman from kansas. i was the nominee be cia director. and i got a call from bannon. he said, you've got to come to washington or, to new york, to trump tower. the president's going to get a briefing from john brennan, the then head of the cia, jim clapper, then dni and jim comey, the head of the fbi. and i said i'm not supposed get involved with things. i got a confirmation hearing. i'll have to talk about this. and he says, you got it. you're the only one with the top six top secret security at this point. roger. i'm okay. so president trump was briefed day essentially by jim comey and told that he was a russian asset. you can imagine this is a guy who's been selling real estate in queens and bronx and running casinos in city and the head of the fbi says we have information that suggests you are a russian asset and. we can now see as we have unfolded and i did work cia director trying to unpack the his role in that document. we can see that it was completely without foundation and that relatively early on senior leaders at the fbi knew that it was without foundation and much after that they knew it was false. not only could you not confirm it, as you have to do with any intelligence report, they knew that much of what was contained there was untrue. and for and a half years we suffered under that and the administration, not just president trump, but all of us. imagine you're the secretary of state traveling around the world and that foreign that prime minister or that president has no idea if you'll be the secretary of a week from now. the president could get impeached and convicted and a new team will arrive, by the way, they don't know is it true that your president is a russian asset? cnn is saying that it is. congressman schiff is saying that it is the director of the fbi is saying that it is. i mean, you laugh this is the reality. i mean, congressman schiff, from your wonderful state here in congress, i, i left here with intention. and so, no, i don't think it is fully appreciated. what the columbia journalism review wrote fundamentally true. they didn't access to the intelligence collection. i did. and i couldn't share much