they called the berlin wall because they both had names that sound the germanic. he did not want that. he went over as allied commander in europe and ask me to comment. told him i wouldn't do it, it could be done. the model the design was not going to work. he said i know that now. it ..

>> when you have an embattled president functioning in the white house at that point was deemed illegitimate, watergate had drained the reservoir of trust in our country. and for the first time in our history, i president of the united states had to resign. it was a stunning event. in our country, in the world. when you drain the reservoir of trust, which is how we govern in our country, we don't govern by

command. we governed by persuasion and through leadership, and you have to be able to persuade. and if there's no trust, you can't persuade. people don't respond. in the white house wasn't that terrible, terrible, terrible circumstance. the effect of that was that he had a dilemma, should he go for continuity, which would reassure the american people that he, a total unknown who had never been elected president or vice president, with no campaign staff, no platforms, no knowledge about the country having campaigned the country, no base of support, he felt a need to reassure the country that there would be continuity. the alternative would have been, which i favor, that he would

favor change. and mighty was that if that institution of the right -- the white house was deemed illegitimate, and not trustworthy, then-president ford had to create sufficient change that it would be seen not as a continuum of the nixon ford white house, but as a ford white house. he needed to make enough changes in the cabinet and the staff that people would see him as stepping forward with a new team. he opted for continuity and pay the penalty. [inaudible] >> i don't. i think he should make enough changes. he was such a decent, kind man. he said i don't want to let anybody go and have it appear that they did something wrong. there were a handful of people who did something wrong in that white house, and it was not a large number and there were truly wonderful people there. at moynahan was there. alan greenspan was there and george shultz was there, and a

host -- doctor stein and doctor whitman and so many people of wonderful repetition. jerald stored -- gerald ford could not bring himself to fire anybody. he just didn't want to do because he felt it would be h.r. nish on the reputation. >> in this book a story about how the elder president bush, george h. w. bush went to the cia in 1975. do you want to tell us briefly historic and what the real story was? >> what do you mean what i feel the real story was? [laughter] tell the false story in god's truth. >> god's truth, now you're talking. george herbert walker bush came to congress and i think 1966 and i've been elected in 62. he came in with a wonderful group of people and then have answered in the congress with him. he at some point ended up i think running for the senate,

and then he went over to china as our representative. he wanted to come back, and he told president ford that he wanted to come back and serve in an executive position. and i was chief of staff of the white house, and periodically i would be asked by the president to send in a group of names to be attorney general or director of cia are some of the cabinet officer, department of housing and urban development, or what have you. and so the staff in the white house would produce these documents, here are six or eight names of people come here are the pros and cons, here are the people who favor these, where they ranked them. and then the president would look at them and ask to have the fbi take a check or ask other people to but them out. that kind of a thing would end when the president said director colby wanted to leave the cia. bush's name was on that list. that the staff produced.

people had him first, second, third, fourth, above the line are below the line. and for whatever reason it was a myth that was created that because i had been considered for vice president when president ford picked nelson rockefeller, and george herbert walker bush had been considered, that we were competitive. so the myth came out when he was sent to the cia assisted we won't confirm you unless you agree that you will not the vice president. so we kind of ruled him out. and i told president ford i thought he shouldn't do that, but he definitely should not allow the senate to tell him who the country should have as a vice presidential nominee. and i urged him not to agree to it. the facts are that george herbert walker bush beg the president to tell him he would

not be vp. he wanted to be director of the cia. is why i think what a book and said he was thrilled to be nominated for the. and somehow or other the myth it came around that i was one who masterminded all of this and arranged for him not to be considered for vice president. >> and you write in the book that he believes that. >> i don't know that he believes the myth persisted. i finally was tired of it and the road president forward and said, give me a letter that tells me what the facts are. he wrote back and said you're quite right, george herbert walker bush beg to be head of the cia, wanted to be head of the cia, and you have nothing to do with it. that's the long and short of it. >> okay. >> in our world, narratives and theories get strung out over a period of time until it's like they're chipping stone and two,

not withstanding the fact that are totally based in midair without any roots are substance to them at all. >> and in this case. let's move the clock up a but because we don't have a lot of time, 2000, george bush is elected a president did you have any thoughts you wouldn't be asked to go into the cabinet? >> oh, goodness, no. i was an old man. george and i got your 50th high school reunion in illinois, in the year 2000 i think september, and choice, with her perception and wisdom and foresight announced to our friends that this was the beginning of our rural period. this was in september of 2000. we have no more idea in the world that i would end up back in government, no particular desire to and we were happy. life was good. i had been in business for a period of years and very successful.

>> tell us about that. >> and served as chairman of several government commissions, one on the ballistic missile threat and one on space, and felt that i was contributing in a volunteer way. >> when she became secretary of defense, how have things changed at the pentagon in washington in jail since 1957? >> i wish i knew the actual numbers, but for one thing, congressional staff had ballooned and had grown to a multiple of five tentatively two, three or four. the authorization bill is a piece of legislation that the congress passed in each house and then have a conference and then there's a piece of paper, papers that represent the authorization bill telling the department of defense what it can do for the next year. when i left the secretary of defense in 1976, the defense authorization bill had 74 pages.

when i came back in your 2001 the defense authorization bill had something like 574 pages. that's going to be off by a few but it's good enough for government work. you get a sense of what had changed. would have changed is that the department of defense is enormous, and there's no way it can be efficiently run. government is almost inherently inefficient as it can't die. it doesn't go away, unlike a business. when you drive down any street in philadelphia you'll see a retail shop that was there one day and it's gone the next. it can fail. government just stays there. and so the inefficiencies compound. the effect of it is that it is not efficient at into that something is not sufficient in

the congress concerned about representing their constituents, feeling of responsibility for oversight legislative oversight, the something wrong and decides the way to fix it is to require another report, or to hire more people to monitor something, or to have more hearings and to look into it. so what you see is how many kids are old enough to remember gulliver's travels? remember gulliver, a great big guy and the people were this big. oliver, they put so many threats over gulliver that he couldn't move. no one of those threads was doing the job. thousands of threads that prevented gulliver for moving. and that's where we have arrived in government. they have so much oversight and so many pages of micro-requirements in so many reports to be filed, that it consumes just an enormous amount of time.

there are over 10,000 lawyers in the department of defense. imagine. i've got nothing -- i get nothing against lawyers, but i don't know how -- >> many lawyers walking out of the room right now. >> i do not any organization can function with 10,000 lawyers. [laughter] >> just kidding. >> i want to push you to skip to the rest of his because we haven't got much time and i want to get to the other things that happened during that decade. 9/11, in retrospect do you think 9/11 could have been a burden if you're able to sort of rewind the tape, and if earlier presidents had behaved, was that to some extent the extent of what some presidents did or did not give? >> you know, i'm not one who can answer a question like that.

you know, on the one hand, just logically you say to yourself, well, there must've been something that might have been done differently. on the other hand the task of intelligence community is truly difficult. it is a very, very tough job. the world is a big place. the terrorist networks and the closed societies in many countries make it enormously difficult to gather intelligence and to be useful and actionable. in my adult life i've seen literally dozens of instances where our intelligence community has failed to predict something. there was a very funny book called pearl harbor by roberta, the forward to the book was written by i think he was at

harvard at the time, doctor thomas schelling. he wrote this board about surprise, and he characterized pearl harbor as a failure of imagination. and, of course, there were so many hearings after pearl harbor what might've been done, who might have known this, was a riot, the concentration of our battleships and mobilized and vulnerable as they were, with all of our planes on the ground on a sunday morning? i look back on 9/11, and i'm aware of the reappraisals and the lessons learned, studies that have been done, and there's no question but that the fact that the united states of america in the case of somalia, after being attacked, pulled

back, in an instance in haiti was attacked, some ships and pulled away. and i think it was bosnia, some folks went across the line and were captured and we pulled back several kilometers. in lebanon after the marines were killed in the barracks there at the airport in beirut. the united states withdrew their forces. after the khobar towers and uss cole were attacked by terrorists, the reaction of the united states was minimal, i would say. they were cruise missiles launched on a couple of occasions, but if you think about it, the terrorists that organize these kinds of activities, they don't have countries to defend. they don't have populations. they don't have real estate and infrastructure that they want to protect. they operate in the shadows, and you can lodge an awful lot of

cruise missiles and drop an awful lot of bombs into precious little damage to a terrorist network. they came away having drawn a lesson, and have said as much, osama bin laden has said on many occasions on video that the united states was a paper tiger. the united states is hit, it will react. it won't reach out and do damage to the people imposing that damage on our country. so someone could make a case that that pattern, that weakness is provocative, but to the extent we behave in a manner that is weak and allows those kinds of things, that it provokes people into doing things they might otherwise not do. they wouldn't think of doing it if they felt there was instantaneous problems for doing it.

listen, the last thing i would do with these, there was something somebody could have done to have prevented september 11. i would say it, like pearl harbor, it was a failure of imagination, and probably a relatively understandable failure of imagination. >> maybe a couple of questions from the audience. one is about iraq and did not appear to think about the comparisons? >> there are certainly similarities and there are certainly notable differences between the two. the vietnamese were not likely to come and attack the united states of america. the terrorist threat, the dangers in iraq and on the terrorist list, the terrorist threat was a very real one to our country.

and al qaeda have demonstrated that it would come and attack america. now, there was no direct link between al qaeda and iraq. there certainly was between afghanistan and iraq. and iraq was on the terrorist list. and iraq have a pattern of having developed weapons of mass destruction. and so there was, there were these things that affected it. but i would say that i think the differences were greater than the similarities, but they're certainly worth similarities. >> how about, you and i both know a lot of people worked for lyndon johnson. one thing the office is a tough thing for them is when someone comes in and says i lost my son in vietnam, why did he die? what would you say for iraq? >> it is the hardest thing. i think anyone who isn't position of responsibility, when

a conflict occurs and you, as joyce and i would go to the hospital, he those lives were changed forever. meet with her family and meet with the families of those who were killed, we would think to ourselves, we are going in, what is it that we could say or do to help them understand the appreciation that we and america share for the sacrifice, the individual sacrifices and the sacrifices of families as well, he does they sacrifice and they serve. and we would come out of those meetings almost invariably inspired, not feeling that we help them, but feeling that they have helped us. the pride they have in their

service, the cohesion they deal with the units they were in, their desire to get back, you just could not fail to come out of those meetings inspired by the young men and women. the big difference between the vietnam war and the conflicts today is that, thanks to milton friedman and richard nixon and the congress, we have an all volunteer military. every single one of those people who serve our country serve because they want to serve. they serve because they consciously decided they wanted to raise their hand and and go and help protect our country. and that dedication and patriotism and pride that they feel is so powerful.

now, how does one answer that? i guess the answer is that -- >> can i say what the johnson people said, don't push us to say exactly what the sacrifices is made for? does anybody do that when you see them? >> oh, sure. >> what you say? world war ii i assume, that's not hard, but a war like iraq or vietnam or something that is not, you know, full throttle, what do you say? >> a war is armies against navy, air force is against air force's. that's clear. that's understandable. it starts and ends. it ended in world war ii on the uss, the battleship with the signing ceremony. what we went through in the cold war was quite different. it was many decades long. it was an ideological competition of ideas. and it was never going to be a signing ceremony. while we're in today is much more like that.

it is a longer period of time. it is a marathon, not a sprint. it is a competition of ideas, but for whatever reason, we are hesitant and not skillful in engaging in the competition of ideas. we recognize that the overwhelming majority of the muslim, but they are fine people who have a religion that is different from christiani or judaism or other religions, but they are not radicals they are not terrorists. they are fine people, and yet they are a small minority of muslims that have engaged in terrorist acts that organize to do those things. and we are reluctant as americans to take up that debate and compete with those ideas. they are not reluctant. they are out recruiting. they are out raising money. they are out organizing, and

they are out planning attacks against a nationstate concept. because they have the conviction that it is their calling to do that. so the fact that we are not willing to engage in that debate, gore not skillful at it are reluctant to do it, lease people with the vagueness as to why, why people have to do things. the wonderful thing i found of the men and women of the armed forces is that they are there whether they are serving in korea or in bosnia or in iraq or afghanistan. they know what they are doing. they understand it. they are proud of what they are doing, and thanks to modern communications, e-mails, they are able to commute it with their families and their families end up having a sense of what they're doing and why they are doing it. and when there's a loss of life, it is heartbreaking.

when there's a loss of limb, it's heartbreaking. and yet you talk to those families and you talk to those people, and they don't ask why was i there. they know why they were there, and they are proud to say they were there. and we are a very fortunate country. >> that's for sure. you are very close to do leadership as well as leadership yourself. [applause] >> indeed. and you seem a lot leaders. i guess what i was thinking of -- >> here's the leading scholar on presidential leadership and he's going to ask me a question about leadership. >> some do -- >> i feel like i'm back in school. >> some just write about it. but when people in my line of work right about george w. bush, what do you think would be the shortcoming is mentioned, what was achieve? >> well, i'm 78 years old.

i've lived a third of our country's history, and almost every republican president was considered not very swift. dwight eisenhower play too much golf they say. he had a poor syntax. my goodness, gerald ford they said play too much football without a helmet. [laughter] didn't matter that he going to yale law school. did matthews one of the world's leading experts on u.s. budget having served on the appropriations committee. >> not to mention the best athlete at the white house. >> exactly. they contend he was a stumbling him. you go from one to another. ronald reagan. he has been characterized as an amiable dunce here and then people read his letters and saw that this man was thoughtful, knowledgeable, and while not a

micromanager, a strategic leader. and a superb and highly successful strategic leader. george w. bush was described as not curious, not knowledgeable, and he had gone to harvard business school. he had gone to yale, i guess and was clearly is an intelligent humane been. -- human being. i did not the man. i worked with his father in congress but i did no george w. bush, and i've watched him as a president and he clearly ask penetrating questions. he worked his way with foreign leaders and a skillful and engaging manner that developed relationships that were constructed for our country. and yet, and people make fun of it. all of those presidents, and i don't know quite what it is about our society that does

that, but i must say i've watched a lot of presidents and i would say that george w. bush -- when you think what he did with the surge in iraq. >> is that something you would have supported had you stayed on? >> indeed. what he did was interesting. a lot of things combine to make it work. the anbar awakening took place. the training and equipping of the iraqi military had come to very advanced point where we at hundreds of thousands of iraqis trained and ready to participa participate. the iraqi government had matured and was beginning to provide more skillful political leadership for the country. but what he did, what he added, i forget what it was, 20, 25,000 additional troops. we had done that to a three times. it was the additional troops that made the difference. he galvanized the situation in iraq i his boldness.

when the congress was about ready to cut off the funds, he made a decision to increase the number of troops. and it caused the people in iraq to say, oh, my goodness, he means business. he's not looking for a way out. he is looking to win. and that cause the political situation in that country to jail and coalesce, and analogy, went into the south and took care of the dissidents. but sadr army, the tremont on which was an army, a group of people they couldn't get out of streets amid demonstrations. they were quite because they did know what would happen. at the center of gravity of that war had shifted from iraq to the united states. as they say in the military, the center of gravity is the real focus of the problem was in the congress. about richard pull the plug, cancel funding as they did in vietnam. the boldest of what george w.

bush did galvanize the political situation. >> and made it possible for the war to be successful. >> exactly, and he deserves a lot of credit for that. >> how much should a or b. judged by its success? laissez lyndon johnson the vietnam war had ended in victory in late 66. would we be looking at him as a great war leader and someone who did it the right way? >> you're the historian. it seems to me that, i don't know who said it, but wars are a series of catastrophes in the by success or victory. they are untidy, difficult, hard. the enemy has a brain. eisenhower i think said the plan is worthless. planning is everything, and the plan is worthless. >> that's one of rumsfeld's rules spent when i say rumsfeld rules, it's a rule i took from someone more intelligent than i am but with full credit. >> indeed.

but it's true. every time you try to do something, or every office visit events. for every defense there's an offense. and there's a constant change that takes place on the battlefield. i think that we are unlikely for a period of time to end up with the kind of clarity we had in world war ii. because of the nature of the world we are living. it is asymmetric. it's not symmetric. it is ever-changing, and it is going to be a challenge for our leadership. it's going to be a challenge for our country. but the growing lethality of those weapons, when president bush was faced with, when he made his decision on iraq was, there was a study by johns hopkins university called dark winter, and if my memory serves me correctly, what this series

of experts got together and they said what if we took a small pot and put in three locations in the united states of america, and in a relatively short period of months the dark winter exercise done by johns hopkins university concluded, and i'm going to be wronged by a pit, but concluded that something in the neighborhood of 800,000 americans would be dead. someone here knows the exact number. is that -- [inaudible] >> where is keith? that's close enough. and that something, a multiple of that would be infected with smallpox. an imaginary country is that happen. think of the martial law that would be imposed. think of the inability to move from state to state. i mean, free people, that's what we are.

we are people that want to get up in the morning and go where we want and say what we want and think what we want. and the purpose of terrorism is not to kill people. the purpose is to terrorize. it's to alter your behavior. and imagine this country if we had 800,000 people dead from smallpox. and marshall law and post across our country. and that study exists. it's available. and it is that concern that caused george w. bush and his administration to step up and decide that you couldn't wait to be attacked again. the only thing you could do would be to decide to try to put pressure on terrorist states and put pressure on terrorist networks, and make every single thing they do harder. harder to raise money, harder to move, harder to communicate with each other, and keep that pressure up so that they can't

collect themselves to the point where they could engage in an act like that again. >> we got just a couple more minutes so i'll ask two more questions. one is what should a historians write about donald rumsfeld time, his second time in the pentagon? >> i think i would give it 10 or 20 years. i think pretty effective is good. and journalists like to think they right the first draft of history. i don't know that i would use the word history with that first draft. i served a lot of years in government. now i've been out for four years and i debated whether i should write a short book in a year and use my memory of whether i should digitize this incredible archive that i became that of my lifetime, and start inviting people in to discuss the phases of my life and events that i've

been involved in. and if you look in the acknowledgments section, i don't know how many people are listed there, but it's many, many, many dozens. and we were talking transcribe, and they would go back to the records. and then i said if i've got that archived, why should we digitize it and see if we can make it available to the reader? and i'm told that maybe for the first time we now are going to have available in e-book which means electronic book i'm told. [laughter] they didn't used to have those when i was a kid. and you can read the book and you can look at the end and see the source where i decided something, and then you can go to the website and pull up the entire document and see right there whether or not the context or the perspective that i provided, which i worked just like the dickens to try to make it accurate and fair and

correct, you can then look at the entire document essay juice up, g., i would have got this way or i would have done it that way. there are thousands of papers of documents, hundreds of different documents, many of which have been recently declassified that are available on this website. >> which is great. okay, we'll have the documents but what will be right about your years in your terms of the pentagon? >> in 20 years i will be 98 years old. you can write whatever you want. [laughter] [applause] >> final question. this book as i mentioned has very detailed accounts of secretary rumsfeld encounters with all source of public figures, world leaders, people in very influential and important positions. but maybe one of the most

intriguing a short encounter with elvis. why don't you tell us about that? >> oh, my goodness. elvis presley. a lot of his songs were really not my thing. [laughter] spent why did that not surprise me? >> but on any given sunday, today, if joyce and i can't get to church, we have some elvis presley tapes singing gospel, and they are wonderful. and we play them sunday after sunday after sunday. how did all this happen? when i was running the so-called war on poverty, sammy davis jr. was on the advisory board, and he cared about the country and he cared about the poor. i was out in las vegas giving a speech and it happened to coincide with his 100th performance at one of those casinos, the sand or something.

so we went to see his show, and he and his wife were there, he performed and he was spectacular. it wasn't an accident they call sammy davis, jr. the world's greatest entertainer. he just was a superb entertainer. and he said to joyce and me, the next night i'm off, i'm going to take you to see the best entertainer in las vegas. and he didn't tell us who it was. so the next night we went. we went to another casino, and we went in and he got a dinner table, needless to say it was right up front, if you're sammy davis, jr. las vegas you get a good table. the four of us sat down and it was elvis presley. and he believed elvis was the best performer in town. and he was in his later years, and he was large. [laughter] spent he was wearing a sequined jumpsuit. not quite the uniform of the

white house spent no, no. and, of course, i'd never seen a man and i've never heard the men. and he had these, what color, isn't chartreuse? red, pink, scarlet? he had scarlet scarves and he would wipe his face. he would stand up there and sing, and it was fantastic he would sing the most ridiculous thing in work and people would cheer and yell and love it. and i would sit there and go like this. then he would sing a ballad, and it was absolutely beautiful. i mean, this man had a voice that was spectacular. and i love country music and i love ballads. and he would sing, and you would be carried away with it. then he would take the scarf, wife -- wipe his face and done out in the crowd and everyone was great. he threw 12 altovise and she gave it to joyce.

and it is framed. [laughter] [applause] >> but what happened was afterwards sammy said to joyce in the cut, were going back to the dressing room. now, i'm not the type who hangs around las vegas dressing rooms. and you go in this place and its large, here are all these, sam is getting dressed and he's walking around and all of the showgirls are there, and there are very attractive women with trays selling cigarettes and western jewelry and turquoise and what have you, and all the hangers on and step in everyone, and they're all milling around. and joyce gets carried away and she's talking to somebody and she couldn't find me. and she finally looked around the rim, and way off in the corner ellis presley had me cornered. i was against the corner, and he's a big. he was like this and i was kind of hidden right behind him. he was talking about the united

states army. if you remember, there was a draft during that period and some other people did not go in the draft. they went to canada or they refused. and he went in and served in the united states army, and he served in germany, and he wanted to talk about it. he loved the army. he valued his time serving, and he was sitting there going back and forth with me about this at that and the other thing. and i just found it fascinating that here was this man who a minute ago had been up there wiping the sweat off his face actually these things and everyone screamed and they were all these gorgeous women walking around his dressing room and he was standing there asking the question after question about the united states army. it says a lot for the man. >> what can i do after that but say thank you, mr. secretary. thank you all for being here. [applause]

>> this event was hosted by the national constitution center in philadelphia. to find out more visit constitution center.org. now d.k.r. crosswell recalls life of american general walter bedell smith. he served in the military for more than four years and played a significant part in the alex strategy in world war ii. d.k.r. crosswell discusses his book at the annual association of the u.s. army meeting held at the washington convention center. >> why would somebody in their right mind, that might be a stretch, spent 25 years of their life setting a staff officer?

a man past middle age, wrinkled, intelligent, old, with eyes like a codfish. but at the same time unresponsive, cool, calm and as composed as a concrete post. thank you with a heart without charm or the friendly german minus bows, passions or a sense of humor, happily never reproduce and to finally go to hell. there is no doubt who the template for patents description, and that was walter bedell smith. the quintessential desk soldier known as a the biggest square wheeled son of a in the united states army, known as a hatchet man, known as an empire builder, known as someone who punched way

above his weight. well, perhaps. but the point here is that any book about smith equally at lisa smith as chief of staff, equally must deal with eisenhower, his personality and his style of leadership. this book, if it makes any contribution at all beyond telling smith and store it is a reevaluation of eisenhower and his leadership in the second world war. now, as i said, to point, one, the first book was good. it was good. it was a product of my dissertation. i was toy something at the time. and i fell grown to a common pitfall, and that was received wisdom. the received wisdom about general marshall, bradley, hodges, patent, the british, churchill, alan brooke, alexander and, of course,

montgomery. and eisenhower. basically what i did i simply infuse smith into that story, the best job i could. but the thing is that once i dig deeper and deeper into the research i found that there's a great deal more to smith and considerably less to general eisenhower. point being again and eisenhower was what one might term a passive negative commander. acid thing he never looked for problems to solve. in fact, he tried to evade them. and negative, doing time he was firm in a decision when he was determined not to do something. so conversely he need a person who was the inverse, aggressive, affirmative chief of staff. so smith could not be the backstop, the quiet backs are. he had to be almost deputy commander. in addition to which eisenhower always a good political commitments, and that meant smith essentially served as his

foreign secretary. the other point was that my first book was a military biography. i did not do a thorough job on his postwar career, which was a hooch oversight at that was on the product of a member of the ph.d, who insisted that i had this chapter. frankly, i did smith a disservice both in terms of not telling the full story the first time around and not dealing with this postwar career. which was important. smith was committed to his duty. he couldn't say no. what he wanted after the war was what he thought was just desserts, and that was to follow marshall and eisenhower into the chair of the chief of staff of the army. that never happened. and with secretary of state burns was looking for a hard boiled son of a mac to go deal with stalin and the boys and the but in a, he suggested smith and

truman. as eisenhower said, serves those bastards right, the soviets, for getting smith as their ambassador. he met stalin twice, once when he present his credentials, and he told stalin, bringing the message from truman that we want to cooperate with the soviet union, but to no mistake that for weaknesses. and next time he met him was during the height of the berlin crisis that eventually spun into the berlin airlift. bedell smith coming from london obviously talk to a soviet official, interesting thing here is that smith bought as point man for the west that he had handled the deal with uncle joe. but as it turned out the state department and marshall thought otherwise, and that never came to be. now, smith was suffering from chronic health problems related

to ulcers and other complications. he wanted to leave moscow which was no garden spot. he returned to command the first army which was for old soldiers go to fade away. he had half of his, and much of his do want them removed any major city. he found time to write a book about his observations about the submarine and which in hindsight could be very president. again, duty called. truman asked him to take over the direction of the cia which was in founder, just after the failure of the anticipation of the north korea of the south. what he had in his own time of his career he had that was carte blanche. our to restructure the cia, which he achieved. so he created a vertically integrated structure based upon functional lines. and that structure serves as the basic foundation for the cia

throughout the cold war. now, with eisenhower's perspective election as president, smith thought that finally he would get the big prize, chief of staff. he was disappointed. mccarthy hearings during the truman. no, obviously beetle smith and tailgater joe didn't get along well. is also responsible to regime change, the overthrow of governments, the job and that eisner asked him to fill was number two to john does, undersecretary of state. line behind john foster dulles was kind of like playing behind lou gehrig. the relationship was very testy.

dullest most wanted smith to troubleshoot foreign, administration ricky handed over western hemisphere affairs, but basically the relationship as we said was not very friendly. his last act was asked american representative, dulles wouldn't go. deny state did want to associate with another yalta. the conference in geneva that resulted finally in the partition. smith comments, i was head. he was a lying son of a bitch who said it was loaded with time is what crypto communists, his advisers were crackpots, perverts and assorted crackpots. again, he recommended that united states signed the agreement, but again owing to the domestic consideration primarily, that never came to pass, and we on the passionate we all know.

smith left office his health failing. when he died in 1961, a british friend said the wonder was that he did not die, is that he lived as long as he did it as you can see in some of these photographs, he was virtually a cadaver. interestingly, before he passed away, he had a meeting with vice president nixon and they were pounding a few scotches back, and beetle began to cry. very much out of character. and he said that, you know what? ike has always had left his frat boys and we been his bread with the obvious he was embittered that he never fulfilled his ambition. and that was to succeed that necessary eisenhower, but marshall because he was always a marshall man. indeed, he's buried across the river very close proximity to general marshall. interestingly an important element of the first decade of the cold war era again,

marshall. another aspect of his career that i gave short shrift in the first book was the important role he played as secretary to general marshall in the war department general staff, as his chief troubleshooter, but more important perhaps is the role he played, fundamental role as the architect of the structures of the combined joint chiefs of staff. this as a colonel in a brigadier general. clearly he punched way above his way. and he also had a major voice in considerations of whether the allies should attack across the channel or operation towards north africa, which smith supported almost alone among the senior players. as eisenhower's chief of staff of course he had a light force headquarters in north africa, became a model of allied cooperation, plenty of flak

between not only the british and the americans, but also in terms of the problem of north africa. most famous episodes, to probably, the one was smith brokered the decision on the invasion of sicily in an algeria laboratory with montgomery. but more importantly, he led the negotiations, actually the extortion to force the japanese -- the italians in discerning. this picture tells it all. smith, sweaty, normally no hair out of place, all this coupled fashion all disheveled. after the long tenuous negotiations with the italians. eisenhower blows in crispy and blows out immediately. most famously of course, he is chief of staff.

again, still very useful. only 48 years old at that period in time. the usual suspects. eisenhower, supreme commander, the deputy chief commander, montgomery, ground commander,'? ramsey and leigh mallory, naval and air. smith, chief of staff. bradley had no combined role but i guess or american bookends is in the photograph. smith again plays an important role in organizing, preparing the multitudinous of problems of both political and military in preparations for d-day. it's interesting that in that fateful meeting where eisenhower decides not to delay, lest to go but not to delay, he turns to smith last, not montgomery.

now, after the war eisenhower -- rather, smith writes a book called eisenhower. more about that in a second. what transpires me after the war of course is the onrush of the cold war. and folks want to blame the allies, primarily general eisenhower for failing to take berlin, prague, and the division of europe. shortly thereafter a number of books appeared. ralph ingersoll's book, a book loosely based on patents diaries. what eisenhower called crackpot industries. on his way to missouri for his famous iron curtain speech, told smith that he was the perfect guy to write the definitive inside history of world war ii

at the higher levels. but smith still have designs of the, chief of staff andy passed as we did write a series of articles for the "saturday evening post," later became his book, "eisenhower six great decisions." eisenhower was also writing his version of the war called crusade in your. this is the advice of smith gave eisenhower to stay it frankly until your own as with the tools with which you are working. and by that i'm in your commanders like patton, montgomery and brad. bradley gets a free pass on this. we all know about patton and mud. don't pull punches i feel so strongly joe to yourself, your associates into history the simple unvarnished truth but, of course, they never got the simple unvarnished truth. eisenhower's account was all the eisenhower even the eisenhower didn't much appear in it. now, if we use of smith as our modus operandi here in terms of

the six great decisions, again, d-day. the normandy, the broad funds advancement of the battle of the bulge, the crossing and the completion, the decision on berlin. what smith argues is that eisenhower always had it right, that he was an affirmative and that he stayed true to the plan from the very beginning. this is ironic because montgomery has suffered under 50 years of abuse because of his claim in normandy that everything went according to plan. yet both eisenhower and smith argue that indeed the whole operation in north west europe went according to the plan. it also had given the opinion that smith always agreed with eisenhower. that's not the case. in terms of the normandy, the whole plan was basically

unprecedented on taking in seizing the brittany peninsula. the invasion was the whole of the peninsula would be staged come would be used as a huge staging area for manpower and material to flow along the lines of communication that flow up and from brittany to paris and beyond. of course, the decision was not to complete the operation in brittany, as envisioned. but instead attempt to encircle the germans and the same so called -- everybody suffered from the victory disease, including smith. smith was always more aware of the logistical requirements that eisenhower. so there's a difference of opinion over that. front, the ample debate. smith argued that they should

either cancel and the. and what was near south of france. those troops and their bridges certainly agreed with, should they move now and staged into brittany to complete the operation there. it didn't take place. again, smith agreed with the british against eisenhower, of course eisenhower got his we. and the whole issue about why the u.s. army and the british were unable to complete the destruction of the german armies in france. everybody always wants to blame the law just exhumed. it's easy to blame jesus christ himself. but the real problem was a structural problem. from the moment that eisenhower became chief of staff, september 1942, he was pressuring eisenhower to restructure the staff. and to give priority to manpower, a separate manpower to men as well as centralizing to just expect it never took place.

so a lot of reasons for the breakdown, but it's overly simplistic to simply blame it upon times he and the largest issues. the other issue of course was a bridge too far. smith was livid because eisenhower would never issue definitive demands of montgomery. montgomery was right. he was never ordered. it was isaac tertiary priority. in fact the order was finally written by smith and eisenhower couldn't ebay that because marshall happened to be touring in the theater at that point. again, how that dynamic work between smith and eisenhower. the bolts, we needn't go into. the crossing, smith was a very important role because again he is lead men out the conference when he