Obama's Wars with Bob Woodward

behind-the-scenes of writing just Obama's Wars but the previous book that you worked on so that gives us a great sense of the process and now we'll have a conversation I'd like to do as they say take the prerogative of the chair to start on the question of Obama's Wars and then we can move in any direction the audience wishes to go including back to I mean I've got the first in the most recent right here we can go back to gordon Liddy and plumbers and jackhammers if you wish so we'll see what the audience wants to do but I would like to ask because I do follow Afghanistan very closely and I read this book very very closely you can see my notes of what I thought was a paper clip so saber clips notes my wife knows that I go through these things and call out everything that emergent note here says how can he possibly say this yeah you didn't say who he is and there was a comment I remember writing a note but there is a very important point in the book and you've already mentioned exit strategy and about President Obama's search for a way to deal with Afghanistan and to make sure that it was not seen as the endless war and in his speech which was given in December of last year at West Point he put out a date of July 2011 and that would be the date when American troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan and as we know in the title of your book Obama's Wars refers not just to the war in Afghanistan but the wars within the White House and within the White House and the military about how to proceed just last week in Lisbon a new date was put on the table 2014 and it was announced that the United States would maintain its combat presence in Afghanistan until the end of 2014 along with some of our NATO allies so my question is is Obama's war internal war over has a date been decided or do you think that this in struggle is going to continue well as anyone knows in common sense teaches you you can't schedule the end of a war and the July 2011 date comes from as the book shows and one of the endless meetings Bob gates the Secretary of Defense just says oh I think we can start thinning out that's his language thinning out our forces from Afghanistan in eighteen to twenty-four months Obama seizes on this like somebody grabbing a life raft and in fact gates doesn't remember exactly saying this but Obama seized on it and took the eighteen months and said okay we're going to begin a drawdown a thinning out obviously it's alarmed the military they don't like it great resistance to it though they all signed up and said yes this is something we can do I think the new date of July 2014 comes as a manifestation of that unhappiness in the military and elsewhere G July 2011 is only six months away how would we start withdrawing even a couple of hundred troops that would send a signal that the United States is leaving that it's over and the psychology of this is so important and so they have now come up with 2014 is the date where there would be no combat forces well in Iraq we now have 50,000 forces 50,000 troops and they say those are not combat forces how many people believe those are not combat forces I know one of the battalion commanders and it is of one of the most lethal battalions in the United States Army yeah they do not initiate contact supposedly unless they're asked by the Iraqis but they're you know 50,000 troops are very real I think Obama wants to follow the Iraq model he cited it in his West Point speech last December quite interestingly enough held Iraq up as something we should try to repeat in Afghanistan so I think that's the goal here well I would like to continue asking questions because last night Bob Woodward was on Larry King and I watched Larry ask the questions on Sunday he was on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer I watched Bob Schieffer ask the questions but I'm not gonna do that I'm gonna turn this over to the audience so with Al Gore's claim that we know about 1% in your estimation of 60 to 70 percent can you talk a little bit about how credible and authentic the leaked items might be a not what they change the WikiLeaks I think are authentic and credible but in the classification system which Rick knows well the documents that WikiLeaks got are only secret and top secret is that's where the real story is told is that fair to say and so not having the top-secret documents you have Al Gore's dilemma you are seeing something without the really good stuff and it is necessarily distorting and there is is best I can tell none or very little intelligence information there is there's a whole bigger picture in these relationships the the other question about WikiLeaks which i think is very important is question of standing an ambassador sends in a cable it goes to the State Department almost all of the time it never makes it to the White House it's very unusual for an ambassador's cable to make it to the White House where our decisions made particularly in this administration the White House and so a lot of this does not have standing I remember doing editing one weekend at the Washington Post and there was a reporter who thought he had the most important story in history because he had talked to a lieutenant colonel in the Pentagon who was drafting up contingency war plans for us to attack a certain country it turned out it was true they were contingency plans the plans had no standing at the highest level of the Pentagon let alone the White House at that time so you were you're you've seen something that's very incomplete the New York Times has said this provides an unfurnished account of how some of the biggest decisions are made in the United States government I think that's an extreme exaggeration it is a glimpse it is not the real story if I may say some of the detail and comments by the principals including the President and the Vice President and Secretary of Defense that we have in this book from notes tell you much more about what's really going on just for example if one of the meetings President Obama in talking about Pakistan and the dilemma that al-qaeda and the Taliban leadership is in Pakistan not Afghanistan he says we need to make clear that the poison is in Pakistan that one sentence tells you more about his understanding the policy and the dilemma that he faces his commander in chief could I ask you to comment whether or not WikiLeaks is another example of the Pentagon Papers or are these two cases different very different at this point now maybe there are going to be more documents we've only seen part of what's going on but they're not you know the story tomorrow's about Pakistan from the documents it was about the Middle East yesterday it was about so it's all over the lot there's no theme anyone who's young remember what the theme from the Pentagon Papers in 1871 was pardon Vietnam right what was the theme government line showed conclusively that the government had regularly and persistently lied about what was going on in the Vietnam War so far on WikiLeaks I seen nothing that really says the government has not told us the truth now there are examples where they've not told the whole whole story but that is always the case in government another question right here could you also introduce yourself as you were asking questions and please stand hi my name is Willie Powers and I'm a group manager at the US Office of Personnel Management right across the street good for you I'm always interested in a and a journalist sources um how do I own or do you rely on I'm submitting for your request to collect details for your book well almost all of the sources we used in this book are human sources submitting Freedom of Information requests it's clogged up in the system you don't get the stuff in a timely way I've submitted some Freedom of Information requests in the 1980's the Reagan administration a couple of years ago they actually answered them and gave me documents heavily redacted and for 20 years I'd had the unredacted version of those documents from a human source there's nothing like a good cooperating source who wants to explain what's going on I remember once asking bill Casey was the CIA director for Reagan would you rather have a listening device in the prime minister's office abroad or a good human source in the prime minister's office and instantly he said a human source who is cooperating and honest because from the listening device you could wind up getting hundreds of pages of transcript each day and you wouldn't know what was important the wonderful thing about the human being is that the human being can sift and select and say this is what's important this is the conversation this is the decision this is the impact so human beings are vital at the same time we were fortunate in this book to get a good number of documents or have those documents read to us so you see exactly what was said at that moment I'm Luc I'm a sophomore I was just wondering you've written a lot of books recently covering war and I'm just wondering how you decide what to write on and if it's possible that we could get a book covering something like the healthcare process a great question it's a great question I pick wars in in the in the case of Bush when Bush became president I decided that the defining event for the Bush presidency was going to be the Bush tax cut and so I spent eight or nine months working on the Bush tax cut on 9/11 even I realized that the defining event in the Bush presidency was not going to be the tax cut but the response to 9/11 so I shifted if you know anyone who would like to write a book about the Bush tax cut please send them to me because I have boxes of documents and interviews what is true about war if you travel abroad it all our wars define who we are to the world and I think in a more important way they define who we are to ourselves they go down in the history books for good reason the decision particularly George Bush's decision to invade Iraq to initiate a war is an extraordinary decision and as defined in so many ways directly or indirectly the first 10 years of this century so war matters the other element here quite practically is the process of deciding national security issues is much more regularize their National Security Council meetings there are principals meetings before there are deputies meetings people keeps notes people keep records the State Department the Pentagon the intelligence agencies the White House some of the other departments are involved so you can get the sort of concrete detail that will explain the evolution of the vision making had I picked health healthcare I don't you know I don't know I anybody here read the 2,000 page bill anyone understand what health care reform is raise your hand there's a job opening for you it's very confusing I did a book first book I did on Clinton was called the agenda about his economic plan and that was clearly focused in a given period of time something he had run on as a candidate so it was much easier to do that but you know maybe I'm missing something on the healthcare decision-making all the books that you've done or so many of them not all but so many of we have President Nixon here we have something that you said when you were on Face the Nation that you had thought at what point of naming this book a divided man divided me yes because when you maybe you would disagree with this having read through the book intellectually he understands that it's a pretty dreary story in Afghanistan he understands and actually told me when I interviewed him he said I'm we can absorb another terrorist attack a very unusual thing for president to say so intellectually he understands how hard it is he understands how hard it is in Pakistan an ally a sovereign state that is harboring our enemies not al-qaeda but the Taliban in the book I describe how that Alabam fighters go from Afghanistan fighting US troops back to Pakistan for rest and relaxation get equipped have the weekend off get new get more training and then go back into Afghanistan in our wave through Pakistani checkpoints and these people are going to kill American soldiers so Obama realizes how hard it is at the same time the other half of this division is he fully understands he's commander-in-chief he inherited this war he said this is the war I'm going to add resources to and take seriously so he's got that leadership role and at the same time he is pulled back and and and this is why after the strategy review session last year to my knowledge he never talks about winning or victory in Afghanistan which is very unusual for a commander-in-chief yes I thank you union rules I'm Dan Rosen son I'm a senior and I've read Obama's Wars and I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of policy debate and substance and I say pleasantly surprised because the media coverage of the book including in the Washington Post seemed to focus on the personal debates the bickering is sort of gossip and I just have to ask as a journalist as an author doesn't that bother you yeah it does but it but it happens all the time I agree with you I mean people have actually written reviews of the book saying there's no discussion there's no analysis there's no debate about the policy actually it is only the debate about the policy and reviewers are going to see things the way they want to see it but happily this there are a group of very serious people out who read the book and I think get it and and understand it at the same time you you have to when somebody reads a book you never remember everything obviously and sometimes the dramatic moments stick in your head the most and you know general Jones calling the people in the West Wing who are political advisors waterbugs or member of the Mafia the campaign set gets your attention and so those things tend to stick with you and I think they tend to stick with reviewers but that's that's part of the that debate about a book and the evaluation of it do you think his general Jones's references to water bugs and mafia hastened his departure I don't know the answer to that I think I know and put in the book that he was planning on leaving at the end of the year anyway he left earlier I haven't reported that story out thoroughly next question one more in the back hi thank you my name is anneka program with young professionals in foreign policy I'm going to be in Afghanistan for two weeks in March I'm not a writer by trade but I'm going to be interviewing people and doing human impact stories do you interviewing people for what I'm traveling with the nonprofit who does microfinance work and so what are you going to be asking them about well it's actually my question this is not something that I do a crazy place to go to do it for the first time I know but you know how do you get the story from people how do you find their truth how do you pull out the essence of what they want to tell you thank you takes time and you have to go back Evelyn I think you saw as you went through the interviews particularly of people who were interviewed for the third for the 15th time you peel the onion and you get down to more central truths so it's very hard in two weeks to interview people many times you have to build a relationship of trust with them if I was involved in what you were doing I would urge you to do ten interviews in two weeks and then re-interview all of those people so you do 20 interviews say and instead of interviewing 20 people I think going back is central to understanding and in the course of doing that you might say you know the first interviews not very good so I'm going to move on to a second person but but find people who are cooperating who will answer your questions build that relationship of trust and I think one of the elements in all of this is you need to convince people you take them as seriously as they take themselves common feature of the human being the you all humans tend to take themselves quite seriously and if you demonstrate that if you come in and just say you know I have three questions that is kind of off-putting I've been interviewed by all kinds of journalists from Mike Wallace to book people to people doing 3-hour interviews and often I've been offended quite frankly when somebody comes and interviews me on a serious subject for only half 1/2 an hour so I would take time and communicate that to somebody now whether that applies to what you're doing I hope it does we've just extended this for another hour so we can have plenty of time to wait we want to let you know we take this very seriously good and so your first comment was take time yeah and I have no problem with that I mean this is a serious audience and I don't have anything I have to do so and also take Evelyn with you we can go okay let's come down to here and the in the front with the mic if we could this gentleman I think that woman in the back in the green let her do that and then we'll come down to the Jaypee here yeah I could tell she has a good question you bet I do I mean huh and I'm a graduate student here at the Elliott School I wanted to know I was jealous and Amelia student in India and I read about you and it's great seeing you in person now I was wondering how have you seen investigation journalism change over the years and do you think there's a risk of desensitizing people especially with WikiLeaks and do you think all the president men all the president's men had a more of an impact than Obama's Wars especially in the Information Age your question about all the president's men and Obama's Wars was what was that do you think all the president's men had had more of an impact than Obama's Wars because we're in the information age and people are bombarded with so much information already well all the president's men was reporting crimes involving the president's men and it turned out the President himself and so that had an impact that is very unusual in journalism the question about the change evolution in investigative reporting is a really good question and when Carl Bernstein and I were working on the Watergate story we could work two or three weeks on one story and we would type it on things called typewriters and on six flypaper so there were there was an original and five automatic carbons when you typed it and then the carbon copies would go to all the editors and we would have meetings and they've questioned us and they would say what about these sources get more information if somebody would have a doubt about something somebody would say you know I know somebody who will be able to help you with this story so it was done in an atmosphere not the atmosphere we live in now of the internet cable news you know pounding impatience speed speed get it out now if you get a story at the Washington Post symbol would come into my office and hear about it and say you know can we get even just a minor advance in a story or the appearance of an advance in the story can we get it on the website by noon want to churn it out I represent the old school of patients total patience and slow I'm not I'm not in a hurry I think you've got to go back as I say I think you have to kind of the process Evelyn is described very well of what's this book about what happened can we trust this can we verify this let's we got lots of meeting notes in there see notes which are is a blessing and a curse is that fair to say because if you we would write a very long version and someone would read it the editor in New York and say you know that sounds like a meeting because it goes this way and that way and it needs to be more more focused more direct but a very slow detailed process after I interviewed President Obama in the summer about the book he said I'm sure jokingly said you have better sources than and then he said have you ever thought about being CIA director I pointed out to him that I realized that was not a job offer which it was not you mentioned your editors there fact checkers you take time your patient make sure you get the story right now the demand to get out there 24/7 and people are blogging and putting out stuff out there there's no fact-checking yeah yeah that's true but it's there and we we operate thank God under the First Amendment so you can't stop it and the question is what value is it going to have in the marketplace you meet people and they say oh I'm a blogger for you know something you've never heard of and there is a marketplace and a lot of these people are just going to be out of business you can't sit around blogging unless you can discover or design a business model to make a living so I think all of that will get smaller quite frankly rather than larger I get on Google Alerts when my name is mentioned on some blog and I'll look at the blog I've never heard of it and you look at the comments at the end zero and you wonder if actually anyone is reading this or if it has any impact if it has any coherence now some of some people do a terrific job Tom Rick's at foreign-policy his blog on Pentagon and military matters is quite astute but he's somebody who worked for 20 years at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and has that deck round so the market will be a regulator I think in the end it's going to be I don't think yeah or then I used to joke about Watergate if the Washington Post would not publish the stories we wrote we could have written the stories in letters home to our mothers but it would have no resonance I think some of this blogging is the equivalent of letters home to mother and you know but we'll see I I certainly could be wrong I'm not troubled by it quite frankly my concern is that there aren't enough people doing the in depth of reporting I mean the question are asked about health care I mean that is a mind-boggling issue and bill and who's going to unravel it because it needs to be unraveled there's a political ization of health care reform on both sides and I'd sure like to know what the facts are and how this evolved and what it means well we'll see hi I am I'm from Japan I'm am chef and Japanese journalist right now on fellow at the American University and I can say it's not just Americans all of us like the Japanese are reading you book in the learning about the journalism and but the thing is it's related to the question on when I got here and I saw even a Washington Post like a layoff that the reporters and at the same time there's a pro public eye and all these nonprofit journalism and my question is what do you see about the future of journalism which no doubt would be to the rest of the country Japan the Western Europe they all follow the American the societies so that would be the future of journalism so I would like to know about the what the future of journalism and if you ever considered about like you quit The Washington Post that you set up a news organization that maybe a lot of people who like love to work for you but do you have any thoughts about that's my question you asked the question what is the future of journalism I'd like to know the answer to that question - and obviously we don't know and there are layoffs the news business is going through a real convulsion now I think Evelyn and the young people are gonna be people like that are going to be those who founded Google and Facebook and Microsoft that there's going to be a group of people we're gonna look at this and say wait a minute we've got to if if our information system is clogged up with bad data in a democracy that'll finish us off so we've got to get good data in it I think younger people are going to realize that and we'll find the business model I don't know what the business model is obviously I'm 67 years old and you know I'm not thinking there but there are people who who are and I think we'll be able to do it so what is that it was a note for me to use my microphone I actually used to be in the broadcast journalism business myself and I've forgotten how to do this yes all right up here we have two questions and we'll just go one to the next and to the barrier I'm young-hee Kimura no professor at GW chair of the East Asian languages interest in the actually very globalized world how should you or any journalist tell the other side of the story what is the role of foreign language education because it seems to be less than less emphasized in the U by the other side of the story you mean from other countries yes well I think that's an important element and it's one of the things we we way too often and should do better on when you first said the other side of the story I thought well what we tried to do in this book is tell you what Obama said indeed in thought same with Vice President Biden adopted not his perspective is good or bad or legitimate or illegitimate but here it is the same with the Secretary of State the Secretary of Defense the intelligence people the other people in the White House and so forth so all perspectives are there but it is missing the perspective that has a little of the Pakistanis President Karzai and Afghanistan and so forth but it does not have the other countries that are involved our allies in this war hi my name is Priya I'm a reporter and this is kind of piggybacking off a lot of other people's questions as well but it seems like most major newspapers and television channels are cutting their foreign correspondents and I was just wondering what you thought of the coverage of the Afghan war in the mainstream media it seems like there's so many polls that show that Americans are so disconnected from the war and people don't really care that much and when you watch the news all day it seems like you know there's rarely ever a mention of what's really going on over there yes and I can't account for that except to say how many people here really know somebody well or have a family member who's in the US military raise your hand okay there are a few but how many people here have served in the US military you know there ten of us and that's it and if that and there's a disconnect secretary Gates gave a very excellent speech I thought down at Duke in September about the Afghan war is kind of like a video game to lots of people they feel unconnected I think that's a real shame I think if we had the draft we would look at it very differently as a country and you know maybe we should have the draft who knows I think it's a they sad situation where we have a group of people who have served this country a couple of months ago there was a soldier Army Ranger who's killed it's from Maryland I think 29 years old had served 1010 tours Compton 10:8 in Iraq and foreign Afghanistan left a wife two kids and the wife is pregnant and you know let me just what do we owe those of us who were United States citizens the people who were over there serving and fighting on our behalf what do we owe them anyone or a lot okay how about everything how about everything there are surrogates and what percentage of what they need and what they need is not just a kind of token of you know will clap and stand when they walk through the airport or have a yellow ribbon on the automobile or kind of cringe when is there is the story in today's paper about six soldiers being killed in Afghanistan we we've got to connect to that as a population now to I'll be candid and get myself in trouble here but it's being videotaped but I'm going to say I'll say what's on my mind it's a leadership question and it starts with the President and it has to do with the military leaders need to communicate that the country is behind this unambiguously and if the president in the country is not then we need to get out or withdraw and I think it's kind of in or out and I just I think the leadership question is left hanging too often and not answered and I found this interesting President Bush never to my knowledge gave a speech or did an ad a recruiting ad for the military he praised the military love the military President Obama praises the military I believe loves it understands intellectually the nature of the immense sacrifice that is made but here we have the leaders why aren't they out there saying doing the you know why is there somebody doing the recruiting ad for the Marine Corps and the Army who we don't know why isn't the commander-in-chief doing it the post has been running excellent articles about the soldiers their medical care trauma units and the rest and Walter Reed was a post story if I'm not mistaken with so the post is certainly doing its part to bring that to the attention of the American people last week an interest but never enough I mean I really think that I've agree with you those stories are excellent and so forth but I don't think you can cover the war enough and I think the post does an excellent job makes a giant commitment financially and in terms of personnel to covering the war but I don't think you can do it enough I think when our children or grandchildren read the history books what the outcome of the war in Afghanistan in particular war on Iraq war on terror the outcome is going to tell you about much about the direction and the fate of the United States we've got a question in the corner over here hi my name is Jamie I'm from the do you hatch it um my soldier it was piggybacking what you touch them on before about blogging what are your thoughts on Twitter and so should you think social media is decreasing journalism's credibility no I mean it's it's social media and it's there and it means a lot to people people's family and their friends mean a lot how many people here have Facebook accounts that are active that you check daily or more often raise your hands they part of your life I have a Facebook page that Evelyn runs I think I've never looked at it she's got me doing all kinds of weird things okay we're getting more and more questions please either right here you served in the military yes what my name is Leo Mahoney I'm AI Elliott School alumnus thank you for a great education I'm a active duty Army officer I've been in the Army 28 years what you record old now yes sir veteran of the Afghan war but don't call me sir I got out of the Navy is lieutenant I used to be an NCO son I understand first of all I want to say that you did in my opinion humble opinion you did a good job describing the you know the complex challenges regarding the security environment Afghanistan it's not difficult I had the opportunity to brief general Jones who was at the time sack here back in Oh 506 when the fight was moving from a conventional fight to an asymmetric fight and things have kind of gotten worse since then and it caught my ear when you said you almost named the book Obama divided or that divided bands the divided man because in a way I kind of see the same maybe struggle that he's going through and the senior leaders in our military and our government are going through how long you know we've been there longer than the Soviets I had the opportunity and o4 as a young major to ask then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter pays because at this time we're fighting both Iraq at very high level of intensity and in the background Afghanistan how long as a nation can we afford five billion dollars a month and an O Ford the answer off the record or on the record was I mean we have a large GDP left it open-ended but as we know you know there's a finite limit of resources and not only the US is going through this but the entire world so this is kind of touches on the different points but I'll just ask you with recite brother here you talk you know more than any of us no no I divided I think I think if Americans in general I think we correlate the conflict in Afghanistan with the attack on 9/11 we see Iraq a lot differently and I'll leave that off the table so with respect to American support as a you know military member for almost 30 years I came in just a little after the Vietnam conflict I'm not that old but I still remember those days I'm glad that as a nation we really support our military I mean we really really do and I think like you said it depends on leadership and how long we tie our presence in Afghanistan to trying to prevent another 9/11 and I think a lot goes a long way along with our allies as well how long the world in general supports what we're doing in Afghanistan but it's it's difficult so thanks for the book I'm reading it great I could there are 10 or 12 implied questions and what you said and let me just take one of them you said you talked to general pace who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs I remember interviewing him for one of my Bush books and I asked him you have any doubt about the Iraq war they said absolutely none zero zero I said no doubt and he said none and just and I said well in my business we mainline doubt we live off doubt and he looked at me sincerely and he said I feel sorry for you and I said don't feel sorry for me that doubt is an essential ingredient in any profession and one of his predecessors is chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral bill crowd after he retired taught at the Naval Academy and used to have me come every year to talk to the Midshipmen and he called me up and said will you come talk to my Midshipmen again now talk to them about doubt talk to them about the importance of doubt and I think I think it a critical element and let me tell a quick story and it the story is about not having enough doubt about getting it wrong quite frankly which happens way too often in my business and this was about a month after Nixon resigned so was September 1974 Gerald Ford was president as some of you may remember Ford went on television early on a Sunday morning and announced he was giving Nixon a full pardon for Watergate and he went on television early on a Sunday morning hoping no one would notice but it was widely noticed but not by me I was asleep and my colleague Carl Bernstein woke me up and Carl who truly then and still has the ability to say what happened in the fewest words with the most drama said to me the son-of-a-bitch pardoned the son-of-a-bitch I got it I figured it out and for years thought there was something dirty about the pardon that there was a deal that Ford would get the presidency but he had to agree to pardon Nixon there was an aroma a deep aroma of injustice 40 people went to jail because of Watergate the guy at the top gets off how do you have a system of accountability and justice if that's the case and I thought this without doubt and for sure for about 25 years and decided to do one of my books and the legacy of Watergate in the American presidency focusing on Ford Carter Reagan Bush Senior and Clinton I called Gerald Ford up and said I'd like to interview you about the pardon and I thought he would say no but he said fine and I in four hours I interviewed him in New York Colorado where he had a home his main home in Rancho Mirage California and I was able to interview everyone who was alive and who's involved in the pardon got all of legal memos looked at all the memoirs looked at the contemporary coverage and to make it short at Ford said to me said look I pardoned Nixon not for Nixon not for myself but for the country we we had to give bad economic times we're in the middle of the Cold War we couldn't have Nixon and his travails dominating the news more investigation indictment trial pet perhaps jailing him I said I had to have my own presidency the country needed to move on the country needed to heal and I examined all of this and wrote in the book shadow about the legacy of Watergate in these five presidencies that I agree with forth in fact he was quite right it was a gutsy thing to do and Caroline Kennedy the daughter of John F Kennedy called me up and said I read in your book about Ford and I and my uncle Teddy Kennedy then this senator from Massachusetts have decided we're going to give Gerald Ford the Profiles in Courage Award for doing something in the tradition that my father wrote about in his book Profiles in Courage somebody stepping out of the mainstream somebody not being inhibited by conventional wisdom somebody looking ahead and saying the large purpose of the presidency is to look out for the country as a whole and so their six months some some months later was forward accepting at the Kennedy Library the Profiles in Courage Award and seared into my head is this idea you can be so sure of something so absolutely convinced it is right and then it is subjected to extensive in neutral examination over time and it stands itself on its head 180 degrees in journalism and in your lives you encounter that time and time again so it makes you Evelyn was saying is we're approaching this book we in the research for it we weren't sure and we were getting little fragments it was really okay what does this mean what happened here are we sure it is not seizing an idea or a perspective political or otherwise in saying this is the book just because it so often turns out to be not what you thought and I'm sure in your academic life or your personal life time and time again you're going to see that and the alarming just personally for me alarming is to see people on television people in the blogosphere people in on one side or the other of the partisan divide so sure that something is a certain way and it may be totally right and it may be totally wrong and so it's it's a great lesson and I think it's pretty much agreed general pace was not a very successful chairman of the Joint Chiefs in terms of presenting independent military advice to the President the Secretary of Defense in the National Security Council pardon I said that you nodded though yes you did they've got the camera on me but I saw you not you can't be court-martialed for a nod particularly when you deny it I don't know but you can annoy me he's not in office now you can make a judgment on him you prefer not to okay I'm sure that's not the first time not to I don't think we could end this session on a better note than what we've just heard from Bob Woodward so I would like to I was given a signal of one more and I'm going to do one more which is what is the next book that you and Evelyn are going to bring out to us do you have an idea no we don't know because what you know it's the world is very confusing and we're you know you try to write about things that are of consequence and topic a and it's not readily at this time in November 2010 what what topic a is and hopefully we will find it in some way that can I tell one more of course this is not not about I this was a number of years ago maybe 10 years ago and my wife and I were in another one of these conferences you think I go to conferences all that time I don't and they had a panel on Aging and it's something that interests me a great deal at this point in my life and and they had psychologists doctors psychiatrist and James Watson who was the co-discoverer of DNA on the panel and everyone was holding forth about oh it's wonderful they've aged and you know somebody had written a book I'm finally a hundred and can enjoy life and dr. Watson hadn't said anything and the moderator finally at the end said dr. Watson what you know what do you think about aging how do you cope with aging how do you deal with aging and he looked up and he said I have one piece of advice for how to deal with aging stay away from old people stories not done so sitting in front of my wife and myself was Henry Kissinger the former national security adviser and part of this panel was they handed out little sheets where you self-score your how you know kind of your health how often do you exercise how many bowel movements do you have a week do you eat red meat have you smoked you know other conditions and so forth and you go and then you add it all up and tells you how many years you have to live and so we're Kissinger is doing since a word yeah journalist it seems it's fair to look and he goes through her scores at all up and turns out he died four years dr. Kissinger was not happy with this discovery so he decided to open negotiations with each of the questions and it turned out he didn't smoke it turned out he exercised eleven times a day turns out he never ate any red meat in the last 45 years and so any going through a pencil rescore in this and at the end the the rescore after extensive shuttle diplomacy turned out he had eight years to live now what was fascinating about that was not surprising but to see it in the raw this he wanted to live he wanted to survive and he all of a sudden he received indication in information that he wasn't going to survive instead of changing his behavior maybe he did change his behavior he renegotiated and if you read his books you will find the same tendency to renegotiate with the facts and what really happened time and time again but it is in in the end it is a survival game and it was interesting to see somebody like that right before our eyes go into a panic well um I we do not know the name or the subject of your next book but I would like to give to appreciation or when you do write it taking pen to paper or however you go about this we're delighted that you've been here we're delighted that you can spend a few moments outside signing books if you still have time

Channel: The George Washington University

Views: 12,262

Rating: 4.7402596 out of 5

Keywords: GW, GWU, George Washington University, Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars

Id: Y2L6fEZ5Otc

Length: 60min 17sec (3617 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2011