and so let's review some basic data in ending the discussion. in the last 11 years we had no wage or income growth in the united states. we've seen a shrinkage of the middle class. that wealth itself has been highly concentrated among a smaller number of people. that we've seen a terrible global recession and financial crisis here in the united states. we've seen the rise of economic tigers all around the world who are going to be creating much more global competition for our workers and our kids than our companies than we faced when we were growing up. and the response of the two parties to all that -- that if you just from a basic sort of here's the landscape and obviously deficits have increased, right? largely through what happened with the recent recession, this significant recession so you have a whole bunch of economic challenges and the president has come out and said, you know, we need a strategic response to these series of extraordinary challenges and talked about future growth and investing and the parts of the economy that need to grow to make us more

competitive to take the deficit down over time to make sure in a time when our workers and our kids needs more skills and more knowledge than we had and you go through the whole series of strategic responses to this economic set of challenges we have and you see coming out of the white house a very thoughtful, serious long-term strategic response to our current set of economic challenges. and look at what is coming out of the republican party? we have to cut the deficit, we have to cut spending while increasing the deficit because. i mean, this is my favorite thing. there isn't actually an economic strategy coming out of the right that actually reduces the deficit because of their adherence to higher tax cuts. and it is an anemic strategic response through a set of extraordinary economic challenges that we face. and i think that part -- for those of us who are debating this out in the -- and you heard some of the questions today, a lot of this depends on how you define what the problem is. and the argument that somehow the problem is the size of government and the amount of

spending that's been taking place, it's an absurd argument based on the actual economic data that we've seen over the last 11 years. and so i just want to say to conclude is that i'm incredibly proud of the work that jason and his team has done in the white house to sort of go against the winds a little bit in washington to have offer a comprehensive -- as the president said, in america we do big things. i think, this budget strategy and this economic strategy coming out of the white house is big. they had a big vision for where we needed to go. let's hope that the opponents in this can match that strategic response with one that is equal to the task. so far they haven't and i think that's really where this debate is going to be over the next few months and frankly for years to go. so jason, thanks so much for being here. rob, thank you, thanks, everybody. [applause]

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversations] >> c-span's book abraham lincoln, great american historians on our sixteenth president is a unique contemporary perspective for mr. lincoln, from scholars, journalists and writers from his early years as a springfield lawyer during his presidency during one of our nation's most trouble times and his relevance today. while supplies last c-span is offering the hard edition with

the special price of $5 plus, shipping and handling. go to booktv.org/booktv and click on the abraham lincoln book and be sure to use the promo code at checkout. >> c-span2, one of c-span's public affairs offerings weekdays live coverage of the u.s. senate and weekends booktv, 48 hours of the latest nonfiction authors and books. connect with us on twitter, facebook, and youtube and sign up for schedule alert emails at c-span.org. >> on january 25th, donald gregg a former ambassador from korea and a cia agent for 31 years spoke to students in williams college at williamstown, massachusetts. he discussed u.s. foreign policy in korea and the middle east. this is just over an hour. >> good evening. i'm sam crane, the forehead

green third century professor of political science here at williams where i also serve as the chair of the international studies program and i have the pleasure and the privilege this evening to introduce our guest, donald gregg. but first let me recognize the organizations that arranged tonight's talk. the stanley kaplin program in american foreign policy, the leadership studies program and the international studies program. all from here at williams college. donald gregg, ambassador donald gregg is a member of the class of 1951 of williams college. he was a philosophy major. when he left williams college, graduated in 1951, he joined the central intelligence agency of the cia and started a career there that lasted for 32 years. he held a variety of different

posts in different countries including burma, japan, south vietnam and south korea. in 1979, he served on the national security council staff for the president. and in 1982, he served as the national security advisor for then-vice president george h.w. bush. in 1989, he was appointed as ambassador to south korea where he served until 1993. after which he left government service and took on the position as chairman of the korea society. he currently holds the position of chairman emeritus of the korea society. don gregg has been here many times in my time here giving electric tours, classes in our winter study term. i've met him on several occasions. but there's two things i learned

just recently about him. one of which shows us the true breadth of his accomplishment in foreign policy and international relations. it turns out in a 1995 book by tom clancy called "opp center," there is a character, the ambassador of the south korea character, fictionalized to be sure but nonetheless that character's name is known as gregory donald. [laughter] >> and, in fact, it's believed that it's based loosely on our own donald gregg. and i also learned just this evening don gregg's middle name finny and for those of you who are historians of williams college history, you'll know one of the great presidents here was james finny baxter and indeed it's true there is a long-term ancient connection between those families. that shows the depth of don

gregg's association with williams college. tonight ambassador gregg will speak to the topic of advice to president obama 2012, a look at the cuban missile crisis in 1962 and what it tells you about military leadership and advice in crisis. it's an apt topic given that this evening president obama will be providing -- giving his state of the union address which we will broadcast in this room immediately following ambassador gregg's remarks tonight. so if you'd like to stay for that, you could. and we can see if, in fact, president obama takes the advice that ambassador gregg is going to offer. ambassador gregg will speak for about 45 minutes. after which he'll take questions. we'll have microphones to pass around, for people to use for question time. so please join me in warmly

welcoming ambassador donald. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. well, from somebody for the third century he looks pretty good. [laughter] >> you completely blew my cover and i have to say a little bit more about my career as gregory donald in tom clancy's book. my first visit to north korea in 2002, i was asked three questions by the north koreans. the first was, why is george w.h. bush so different from his father. a good question. second, how do you function as a country when you elect people who have nothing in common with their predecessor. that whenever you have a

presidential election your relations with us are turned inside out a direct comment and why don't you understand us better? and i said with paying him a compliment, i said you're what i call the longest running failure in the history of american espionage and i can say that because i was really part of that failure. i chased you around fruitlessly for a number of decades. and at that point, they said are you wearing your opp center hat? so i said, my gosh, you can't be talking about that book. and they said, of course, we are. so i said i haven't read it but my wife has and would you like her reaction to it and they said yes, we would be interested. and i said well, she refers to it as an airport-only pocketbook. and said she really didn't mind the fact i died a heroic death at the end of the book but she

was furious that i had a korean mistress. [laughter] >> and the north koreans got a big kick out of that. well, back to what i had sort of intended to say originally. when i was asked to come up here, i had -- and give this talk, i was delighted to accept and had no idea that the president would be speaking on the same evening. so this is -- he's not asked me to come and do this on the same night. it's just a coincidence. and i think a happy coincidence. and i am very glad to be able to talk about the issue of presidential leadership as it emerges in terms of dealing with military crises. and i'm very happy to be able to speak about president obama and president kennedy. this is an interesting year. this is the midpoint of

president obama's first term and perhaps his only term. 50 years ago last week john f. kennedy was sworn into office. president kennedy was the first catholic to become president. he was the youngest president ever elected at the age of 43. he beat richard nixon by a razor thin margin of 120,000 votes. and he raised a lot of doubts in the american voting public. he was young. he was inexperienced. he was a catholic. he was very eloquent. he turned everybody on by his inauguration speech asking not what you've -- your government do for you but what you can do for your government. saying things like never fear, to never negotiate from fear but never fear to negotiate, something which president obama has spoken of with admiration.

president obama is the first black president. he was not particularly experienced when he was elected. he has raised a lot of angst on people's part because he's the first african-american president. he has made some real gains in his first term but he's also fallen short in some areas. and as this is my 60th year as a williamson graduate and as these two presidents have probably made the deep impression on me of any president that has served in the 60-year period i'm delighted to try to draw a few comparisons between them. i've never met president obama. but i did meet president kennedy in 1963 when i was part of the first group trained in what was called counterinsurgency in

those days. he was a tremendously impressive person to meet. the 30 or so of us who were trained stood in line to shake hands with him. we listened to what he said to people ahead of us. i was behind general vinegar jones' son and kennedy gave him his undivided attention for 20 seconds or so, same thing happened to me and i left with a vivid impression of the feel of his handshake, the strength of his glance, the intensity of his personality. he was an electric personality. but in his presidency he got off to a few bad mistakes early on. he inherited from president obama the plans for the invasion of cuba and the bay of biggest. cuba was the third in a list of

eight countries that the dullis brothers had designated as countries where leadership had to be overthrown. i think this was a part of our history where our sense of exceptionalism was particularly strong and the dulles brothers manifested that very strongly. john foster dullis and andrew welsh dullis at cia. the first target of their disapproval was iran and the overthrow into the reinstatement of the shah was a great success in the early days. the second was gua malla where we reinstated a bloody general than someone who was too left to our likely and cuba was third and the planning had not gone well at the end of the eisenhower regime and so kennedy

inherited that bad planning and he went ahead with it on some unbalanced briefings by andrew dullis and the invasion was a disaster. and raged castro and turned him solidly against president kennedy. his next mistake occurred in june of his first year where -- when he insisted on going to vienna and meeting with khrushchev. and he insisted on doing it and the meeting went very badly. >> kennedy was astute enough to realize he had not done well and he came back and said to his brother, i've never met anybody

like that. we are talking about the possible cost of nuclear war and i said 70 million people might be killed and khrushchev looked at me as if to say so what? and khrushchev came out of that meeting a new president whom he could push around. and so the nation of castro's hostility to us in the wake of the failed invasion and khrushch khrushchev's judgment of kennedy was to place missiles into cuba. the first intimation that the united states had that these missiles were going in was over flights of intelligence-gathering aircraft. that started in early october of 1962. and we immediately went to the soviets and said, are you doing

anything with missiles or bombers in cuba? they said absolutely not. and several days after we knew for certain that the soviets were putting missiles and bombers into cuba, andrew gromeko who was the ambassador of soviet union came to washington and flat out lied to the president about what was happening. and so it was finally convened the x com which was pulled together to deal with what we ought to do about what the soviets were doing. it was not yet known in the country what was going on. and that was really very valuable because for the first six or seven days of the crisis, secret was kept and nobody knew that a crisis was brewing.

nobody except people at cia. we were well aware of what was happening. and the contingency planning at cia headquarters was unbelievably crude. the feeling was that the headquarters building would be targeted by one of the soviet missiles and that it would be accurate enough to completely demolish the business -- the building. i was taken to a file storage area in virginia where certain files were hurriedly being shifted and i was told if you survive, this is one of the places you can come to perhaps start over. the general word to people in cia was if you survive try to make it to the racetrack in west virginia in charleston. and the feeling in the cia

headquarters building was apocryphal. about halfway through the crisis, president kennedy announced what was going on. in so doing completely surprised khrushchev who was sending some of the missiles and some of the planes to cuba. in the meetings leading up to the revelation, kennedy had a mixed bag of people on his x com. maxwell taylor was chief of the joint chiefs of staff. curtis lame, the dr. strangelove of that wonderful movie was on x com. ted sorenson was there. he died last month and i think was the last surviving member of

that group. and the group was divided into two. the immediate reaction when kennedy assembled them and said the soviets are putting missiles into cuba, curtis lame was immediately on his feet saying, let's bomb them. that was his immediate reaction to that and to another occasion where i won't -- which i will mention on later on. kennedy said wait a minute. wait a minute. and said what other options do we have? and through a discussion that went on intensivelily during the six days two options emerged. one was a surprise attack on the missiles and the bomb in cuba and the other was an attempt to set up a quarantine trying to stop additional soviet ships from coming to cuba while

negotiations went on to get the missiles removed. there was heated debate and kennedy was careful to not show which way he was leaning until on the lay when a final decision was made, a general sweeney who was subordinate to kurtzis lame but was in charge of the tactical air command who would have led all the air strikes against cuba. said, mr. president, we can attack but i cannot tell you that we will get some of the missiles before some of them are launched. i cannot tell you. and the estimated killing capacity of the soviet missiles at that time, had they all been launched, was 80 million people. and so that swung kennedy toward the -- toward the option of

quarantine and things continued to look bad. because the soviets were off-line they had continued to lie what they were doing and they continued to be in denial. and the question came up, how do we let khrushchev know what we intend to do? and at that time khrushchev had written two letters to the united states. the first one had shown he had a sense of the humanity involved in this crisis. and he had spoken of the millions of dead that would result from a nuclear exchange between our two countries. and i don't know whether kennedy had seen anything of this nbc meeting with khrushchev but he was struck by that. but then later came a much

tougher letter from khrushchev continuing the confrontation, but it was kennedy's decision to respond to the earlier letter, earlier softer letter and to just pretend that the second harder letter had never been sent. and so that letter was sent. and it led to the defusing of the crisis. the key factor militarily was not the fact that we had more nuclear weapons than the soviet union. the key fact was the -- our ability to amass a quarter of a million men in southern united states and in florida preparing an invasion of cuba. and the soviets were aware that we were doing that. there was no way that they could have opposed that.

they did not want a nuclear exchange because they knew we would retaliate and so really it was our conventional weaponry and soldiers on the ground that tipped the balance toward khrushchev's decision to back off. and so kennedy's decisions throughout the crisis were right on the mark. and the country breathed a collective sigh of relief. i remember going to bed that night after the missiles -- after khrushchev had replied and slept well for the first time in two weeks. 20 years later, maxwell taylor who had been chief of staff at the x com on october 5th, 1982, when the "washington post" wrote an article called reflections on

a grim october. and his comments are very, very interesting. he said there followed six days of seemingly endless secret meetings, of course, in which the x com member study all available intelligence, determined the limited numbers of alternatives. the alternative favored by the hawks a group to which i belonged was to launch an air attack without warning on all the located missiles and il28 bombers that constituted the offensive weapons the president had determined to remove. the doves on the other hand recommended a partial naval blockade euphemistically called a quarantine to keep out other weapons most of them would consider drastic action if a quarantine proved insufficient and this is the thing that stuns me even today.

this is maxwell taylor, i might interject here that during the x com discussions, i never heard an expression of fear of nuclear escalation on the part of any of my colleagues. if at any time we were sitting on the edge of armageddon, as nonparticipants have sometimes alleged, we were too unobservant to notice it. kennedy had asked curtis lame who had immediately recommended bombing what will the soviets do and curtis lame, based on what i do not know, said they will not retaliate. and that was his decision and that apparently kept anybody else from even considering the fact that our attack might trigger a nuclear escalation. i think kennedy's ability to withstand that kind of advice

and eventually come to a good and successful decision is outstanding. and i think it means that only the president should be in charge of an issue like that because it's only the president who has to consider consequences of decisions made in meetings such as this. taylor goes on to draw some lessons. he makes the point that most of the people who were advising kennedy at the cuban missile crisis were the same people who had advised him to go ahead with the bay of pigs which was a disaster and he said in my opinion the differences relies on my experience the two officials considered between crisis. the second lesson is the importance of recognizing the president must inevitably be want manager of any crisis.

he also talked about the necessity for maintaining secrecy, which allowed debate to continue without having -- being leaked, without getting congress and all of its hysteria involved. finally, he made the point that it was not our nuclear capacity but our conventional capacity that had swung the -- that had swung the balance. now, i had some interaction with some of these same people in a war game focused on vietnam which took place in early 1964. the war in vietnam was not going well. and so the decision was put forward driven by curtis lame to start bombing north vietnam. and so a war game was pulled together at the pentagon to discover -- to discuss the efficacy of doing that.

i was the i was the cia representative on the blue team which was the representative forces and we had an argument at the working level where we should or should not stop bombing north vietnam. i felt it would be useless and argued against the bombing from the beginning. i was supported only by the state department representative. everybody else was all for bombing. and so we were outvoted. and the general in charge of this said, all right, mr. gregg, will you please sit down and write an intelligence assessment of the effectiveness of bombing. and he didn't tell me to follow the dictates of the vote. he just told me what you think was going to happen so i did. and then the superiors, the top level group, which included maxwell taylor, director john mccone of cia and a number of

other luminaries came in. and brigadier general vote said well, we had a heated discussion but we've decided to go ahead with the bombing and, mr. gregg, we'll tell you how we think that will work out. .. but i somehow survived it. we went ahead with bombing. the head of the red team played his cards very well. curtis lemay's scenario was once

we start bombing north vietnam, north vietnam would try to retaliate by bombing, they did not have sufficient aircraft to do that well so they would call upon there chinese allies and the chinese would supply them pilots and aircraft to be used to bomb saigon. this would enable curtis lemay to retaliate against china and take out its developing nuclear capacity. the war game was a disaster. red team retaliated in a very astute way. did not retaliate militarily. it retaliated psychologically and the impact of bombing not only works minimally in terms of military context the worked very badly in terms of world opinion of what we were doing.

and curtis lemay grew furious at the final session of the war game and leaned forward and yelled at general bose wheeler who was head of the red team and said you know if firebomb your country you're going to bomb mind. and wheeler said i know that is what you want me to do and that is the last thing in the world i will do. than what they said as he said many times we can bomb those people back into the stone age in 12 hours. there was a long silence and then george bundy said perhaps our problem is they are too close to the stage as it is. that was the last i saw of those people. let's shift our focus now to president obama and what he is

likely to face in the next couple of years in terms of military decisions of i think equal consequence although of slower impact. in the first place a i think that president obama is not going to talk very much about military affairs tonight. he will make an obligatory reference to what is going on in afghanistan and pakistan. he may give a sentence or two to north korea but it will largely be about the creation of jobs and i think he is very smart to do that. he is way ahead of where president kennedy was and where lbj was in terms of generalship. i knew all of the three commanders who were in charge of our forces in vietnam. i worked on that war for four

years. general harkin's, the first week four-star general told me repeatedly we will be out of vietnam with a military victory in six months. that was starting in 1962 and general westmoreland kept asking for more troops until his last request had been granted would have put over half a million men fighting in vietnam. that was turned down and congress gradually pulled the plug on funding. the final general was general abrams, by far the best of the three. i was given a lunch by the army when i left vietnam after a tour in the field and i sat next to abrams and i said general you have been here for longtime. i have been here six years. i said how do you keep going? he said i keep learning things. and iss politely as i could, what have you learned lately?

and he said i just finished reading this book about the french defeat called hell is a very small place. does a great. i know understand what he said. he said the french lost because they failed to politically organize the terrain. my thought was if it took the commander in chief of our armed forces in vietnam six years to learn that i wonder we were losing the war. i have met general david petraeus and it was a rather humorous and counter. at a dinner given in his honor i stood in line to shake hands with him. something that don't do very often but i wanted to see what he was like. and i listened to him deal with a society matron who was gushing dollar over him and he left her feeling very full of herself and that she had had an intimate

little discussion and then he talked with an ancient veteran who said i see you were at the battle of chickamauga or something like that and that left him glowing and so i put my hand out and buy said i was looking for you in vietnam but i couldn't find you and he said i was in high school. i said i know you were but we didn't have anybody in vietnam who really understood what was going on and i want to thank you for picking up men at the kernel level like mcmaster who wrote dereliction of duty and promoting them and having the let your side as you have written our counterinsurgency manual. sourcing rehab in general david petraeus probably the best qualified general we have had since world war ii. he is coping with an extremely

difficult situation in afghanistan and pakistan but of all the generals we have had he gives us the best shot at coming out of there with some kind of a viable situation. i think the real decisions on what to do in afghanistan and pakistan will come next year. there is a very fine book out on the war called the endless war written would -- which deals with our war with al qaeda, written by peter burton and it is very full of the impact of general david petraeus's thinking. he feels that al qaeda has been so violent in so much that it has done that his alienated a lot of moderate muslims and i think that he is -- he feels that we ought to hang on in

afghanistan. that we perhaps have the chance of doing something there. the situation in pakistan is getting worse and worse. i have the feeling that the general -- is a very fine officer, may step into the breach and once again pakistan may fall under military rule and that may be the only way to make a decision as to where pakistan is going. is it going to try to play things both ways supporting some elements of the taliban or is it going to take a real stand for modernity? i don't know that that is going to happen. as obama faces the decisions he also has a very fine chief of staff, mike mullen who has served in vietnam and he does call for a review of the armed

forces as they stand after ten years of continuous combat and he is concerned about the impact on the men and women who are fighting. he is concerned about the psychological impact of the general's directing it. i think he is concerned about some indications of neo conservative thinking that appear in some senior officers after they have departed. so he has called a very fine conference to be held but beyond what the individual officials are doing, there are two statements and two philosophies at stake here. and that is what kind of a country do we think we are, what kind of a country do we want to become? one of the opinions is forced

very eloquently in the limits of power. he is a retired full colonel in iraq and is teaching at boston university. he begins to quote brian hold, the great theologian and philosopher who came up here and spoke when i was an undergraduate. he says the essence of statehood is locating the point of concurrence between the parochial and the general interest. that is finding something between the national and international common good where perhaps compromise or cooperation can evolve. he says to the end of history social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are

indestructible. he also feels that our sense of specialists, this sense of the fact that we are above and beyond anybody else or the fact that the world should follow our lead has sort of let us to a sense of entitlement. he feels our sense of exceptional isn't is a very dangerous and that we need in today's world to be more considerate of the major interests of our major neighbors. i think we saw the beginning of some of that in obama's meeting with a huge and how last week. are we going to continue to be the exceptional power where we feel everybody should follow our lead or are we going to dilute that and move away from a sense

of entitlement to more of a sense of moderation and cooperation? that is one philosophy. on the other side comes a loud and clear statement from the neoconservatism's voiced here by robert kagan in an article in the weekly standard. he lists 25 interventions of the united states since taking 98. he says we have been at war for 42.5% of the last century and decade. and his closing line is history has provided some lessons and for the united states the lessons have been fairly clear. the world is better off and the united states is better off in the kind of international system that american power has built and the fended. so there you have two starkly

differing views of how the united states should proceed, how the united states should perceive itself, how the united states should relate to other powers in the world and that is the dilemma which president obama is going to have to deal with. i think he has the qualifications to deal with that effectively. he has very good people working for him. i have mentioned general david petraeus. i mentioned admiral mullen. i would mention bob gates, secretary of defense. we worked together in the jimmy carter administration. i would also recommend -- recognize hillary clinton. we are not going to hear much about this looming crisis tonight. i hope we don't feel. it is going to give the things we put in place a chance to work and i am hopeful that come next

year, 50 years after the cuban missile crisis that president obama will deal equally well with the crisis that he faces. thank you very much. [applause] are there questions? i hope so. >> i am a freshman. you enumerated many similarities between kennedy and obama but there seems to be one big difference how kennedy was deal with the cuban missile crisis.

he had a specific enemy and representative who he could call up and send a letter and crucial of controlled the opposition. and in afghanistan and pakistan, how does that difference influence how obama can deal with this situation? >> wonderful point and right on the button. it is what makes the question of dealing with radical islam so difficult. the search for a point of concurrence might work with china or might have worked with the soviet union but doesn't work with osama bin laden. we are going to have to look for moderate leaders in other parts of islam. we have to watch with great

interest and care what is happening in to nietzsche. we have to watch carefully what happens in egypt which i think is bracing for deep unrest. and when secretary of state hillary clinton, where i have been and twice, and for all kinds of crises call on arab leaders of the world to be more and better leaders. she is putting her finger on what they're talking about. that is a profound point that makes all the difference between the two crises and makes me glad that obama doesn't have to face it tonight, that he has another year with things that work and in the longest war, makes the point that the vitriolic anti u.s. wave of terrorism may --

their strains of erupting with disaffected in the united states. we have as good people as possible working on this and i am still guardedly optimistic but your point is an excellent point. >> thank you for the insightful lecture. a student from korea, i have a question another radical list might favor. about north korea. i read an article you have written that maybe you would recommend president obama to go for negotiation with north korea but so far we're trying hard to

negotiate with north korea but north korea conducted twice -- long-range missile. there's speculation without a guarantee on complete irreversible verifiable nuclear -- and the sort of nickel -- negotiation is a waste of time. i was wondering if you could note on that perspective. >> we have to negotiate with north korea. i was a friend of richard holbrooke and i lament is passing. i talked to him about his work with slobodan milosevic who he said was one of the most reprehensible human beings he had ever met. he said but i have to negotiate with the man to stop the genocide in the balkans. i think we need to negotiate directly with the north koreans.

the current leadership in south korea has undone a number of good things that were published by his two predecessors. to summit meetings were held with north korea. a number of agreements were reached at those summit meetings including something about growing new barriers in the western sea where the showing of the island took place and the sinking of a ship took place. i have been to north korea five times. what they are looking for is a guarantee from us that we will not attack them and they have built nuclear weapons as they turned against what they see as hostility on our part. that can be defused. our problem has been and was reflected in the question i was asked on my first visit how you function as a country when you collect presidents who have nothing to do with their predecessor. he was speaking of the fact that

president clinton had been invited and send his secretary of state for 11 hours of discussion with kim jong il, and state of the union address in 2002 suddenly george w. bush said north korea is part of the axis of evil. they have done nothing different but in a year they changed from someone who almost hosted a president to a country that the bush administration called part of the axis of evil. that is a shortcoming. they say you don't give us any continuity. so i am very much for continued negotiations. i am regretful that president obama has not undertaken that. i think president obama needs a high ranking full time expert on korea in the white house. he does not have one.

one of my success is, ambassador stephen wadsworth from fletcher school. wonderful able man but being that the fletcher school is a full-time job, he is also a special representative for north korea. i don't that is more than the job requires. somebody's full time in the white house that a high level and i hope that is something obama will do. thank you for your question. yes? >> thank you for your time. i am curious about your experience in washington during the vietnam war especially in the 60s. you mentioned when you spoke to general david petraeus where were you in the 60s when we really needed you, that is certainly the case but there were people in the 50s and 60s who understood the need for taking care of the political aspect of the struggle. i wonder if you could comment on edward lansdale and the failure

of the administrations to bring him in and that part of the story. >> when they all had a magnificent success in the philippines. he helped them bring the hook insurgency to a remarkably quick end. he was in vietnam but did not have the access that he had developed in the philippines. the south vietnamese were wary of him and he never developed any of the sort of influence or access that he had in the philippines which made him so valuable. we tried but the vietnamese were very different and he was not able to perform in vietnam. he was able to perform in the philippines but we tried and he failed.

>> just drawing on your experience at the cia, one enhanced interrogation technique being in play right now like water boarding, maybe some other things and that drone strikes on afghanistan/pakistan border that killed so many civilians. >> i am against enhanced interrogation. i have written about it and worked against it in vietnam and korea where i encountered it. i was appalled when it was employed by the bush administration and in the book along this war makes the point that it got us nothing in addition to what we were able to obtain by normal interrogation matters or methods and i am really deeply deeply sorrowful

that we employed those techniques. a course on making sense of cia and one of the guest speakers i had was the chief of station in tehran when the embassy was seized. the iranians knew that this man had been chief of station for the cia so they kept him in isolation and they said we want you to tell us that your orders were to overthrow the ayatollah kelly and bring back the shot and said those were not my orders and i will not tell you what was not true so they tortured him. beating with a rubber hose, prolonged stress conditions, darkness. he would not confess. they then went to him and said we are going to take you out and shoot you and phil be shooting

and send the film to your wife and mother and he would not confess. and then for some reason the conditions eased and on the day that reagan was sworn in he was taken to the airport and he felt perhaps everyone else was going to be released but not him because he had not seen a single american in the 444 days he was in prison and in the room at the airport where he was waiting a door opened and in came the man who had been his torture and he had in his hand and not a rubber hose but a heavy rope with a knot on it. the man said to tom, we have fought about what we did to un come to regret some of it so you can do to me what i did to you. and he was able to say at that time we don't things -- we don't do things like that. i am from the united states and

he was let go. he felt it was a triumphant ending for him to the end of that. i have worked against torture and i am appalled that we have done it. it is totally counterproductive to the individuals involved and the nation as a whole. your second part of the question on the drones is a very tricky one. and i fear that it may be that that is what we are reduced to doing if we cannot find a stable societal base in afghanistan or pakistan. it is a very effective, diddley but in humane method. it cuts deeply both ways and i spoke to a class today in which a palestinian student participated. i asked him how he felt about it and he was dead set against it. nobody likes it. it worked in a certain way but

it was vastly preferable in my way of thinking to enhance interrogation. >> you said obama would not deal with the situation in the year out. give some specifics on what that stability might look like especially given the entire u.s. military expenditure is twice the gdp of afghanistan? >> the council on foreign relations has done a study on what is going done in afghanistan and pakistan and it makes the point that there needs to be a tough minded assessment

-- how we assess -- an immediate effect on troop levels. various options are discussed going to what you call a smaller footprint in afghanistan and pakistan meaning fewer troops on the ground, more traders, less, that and a greater reliance on the drones. it is very well thought out by the disruption in pakistan is particularly disheartening. the governor was assassinated by a smirking guard because he had spoken out -- is really disheartening and shows in pakistan there is an upsurge of fanaticism that will make it difficult for the central government to cope with it and that is why there's a

possibility of a military coup, something that might come -- >> in the cuban missile crisis, missiles from cuba, not going to allow you to have others in the u.s.. very clearly they were not going to compete in this new program. just wondering how you think obama can deal with this issue which is up in the air. that is away from the idea that america will not tolerate the nuclear program or work out some other performance. >> that is above my pay grade.

i think everything possible should be done short of military intervention in terms of air strikes into iran. i am very interested in this new thing of some kind of virus that set back development by a couple years. i am all for that kind of thing. i think we need to keep trying to talk to iran because mahmoud ahmadinejad is not the most popular leader iran has had. there are many leaders who are not happy with where things are going. we need to keep trying to reach out to them and try to raise whatever we can in the way of opposition within iran to what he is doing. that may not be good enough but it would be where i would put my vote at this time. >> thank you for your excellent lecture. you talked about the option of

the overhead bombing and as a moderator and player facilitating cooperation driving the rule of word. i am curious if there is any prerequisite for conditions that true negotiation were in discussion that takes place going back to north korea's issue, i am deeply worried about their military action these days. and the successor of the kim dynasty is not only a military leader but also took the lead in an attack so i am curious in this case what will be your experience of a prerequisite for negotiation or cooperation to begin? >> my answer will be rather

impolite. how do you know that kim jong il had a lead role in the shelling of the island? that is part of what i call the process of demonizing foreign leaders that we don't like. we did it to polk achievement whose life we saved at the end of oral board ii. he reached out to us countless times asking for recognition and we refuse and fought a war we should never have fought. we also demonized saddam hussein, a man who deserved the the but because we thought he was such a bad guy we set of course he has nuclear weapons and has been in bed with al qaeda. we can't prove either of those things but we will invade iraq and then find a nuclear weapons and prove he had been in bed with al qaeda neither of which was true. the process of demonizing kim jong il and now his son has reached a fairly high tempo. year-ago i wrote vice-president

joe biden advocating that he be invited to the united states for an orientation tour. he spent a couple years in switzerland and speaks some english and was a basketball fan. his classmates said he was a regular guy. i thought at that point in summer of 2009 it would have been a good chance to bring him to the united states where he could learn things about us he couldn't learn elsewhere and we could learn about him that we can't learn sitting here that was not done. the democratic answer to me as to why they hadn't done it was the republicans would have laughed about of town. i am all for that kind of move toward north korea. i love the koreans. i worked with them since the korean war and the people in north korea are not that different from the people in south korea so excuse me if i have been impolite but that is what i believe.

yes? yes? >> i was curious what you see is the last 20 years the biggest failing of the american presidents in regard to korea and the biggest success either diplomatically or culturally? >> i think the biggest failure was the complete turnaround from the end of the clinton administration to the beginning of the bush administration from the invitation to bill clinton to visit pyongyang to george w. bush condemning them as part of the axis of evil. the biggest success was former secretary of defense negotiations on the north korean missile issue which was solved well enough so that general rock was invited to the united states, was hosted by vice

president gore and the top floor of the state department and it was proof that sustained negotiation by a high-level americans can work with north korea but we have not given them the high enough level participation and we have not given them the sustained wave of negotiation to be effective in dealing with it. >> to the point where older men and remember how absolutely horrible world war ii was are dying now. do you think we are getting too far away from world war ii so people running countries now and politicians in various countries don't remember how awful that war was and they are getting careless? and we are throwing bombs around and marches in the streets and sells like we are getting ready for world war iii.

>> reminds me of two things. when i was an undergraduate there was a professor named fred schuman who was born in germany and he used to say every year i was born before world war i and survived world war ii and expect to be killed in world war iii which shook a number of people up as one of the reasons i went into the cia. i think we are not getting away from that because of the extraordinary writing that is going on. there is a new book out called work by sebastian under who wrote the perfect storm. he was embedded in and afghanistan with a platoon in one of the most inaccessible godforsaken places in afghanistan and he dramatizes in river in detail what life in combat is like and makes it clear that would emerges from

that is the devotion of the men in combat to saving their brothers and for some of them when they come back civilian life doesn't offer the same kicks and they reenlist. if you saw the film her cocker you see that happening. if you are open to reading books like that it is a clear reminder of how horrible war is but i take your point. i know that people who were in war don't like to talk about it but they remember as you remember, we are fortunate that and embedded reporter is doing extraordinary job bringing home to the united states what war today is really like. >> you mentioned how important secrecy was in making sure negotiations went well. how do you think that is

concerned for a few weeks and a major leaks of information -- will have on our ability to continue these negotiations if secrecy is compromised so frequently? >> there have been some positive aspects to doing it. the quality of american diplomacy has been shown quite clearly in the way we have conducted business but it has had a chilling effect on a lot of the people we have been talking with and if they no longer can feel that they can speak to us in secrecy and confidence they are not going to speak to us with confidence and we will learn less and less about the people we are dealing with and on balance it is a very

bad thing and we ought to do all we can to struggle. the difficulty with that is it can lead to a tendency toward oversecrecy and overclassification where everything is classified so there is a balance that needs to be struck. i think the wikileaks thing is very unfortunate in itself and even more unfortunate because it may cause an overreaction toward over itclassification and oversecrecy and lack of transparency. [inaudible] >> what seemed like a trial was -- it was mid somerset last year, several articles appeared

in several places about this tremendous mineral wealth of afghanistan and problems with infrastructure on the road to get to it and mining companies to walk in with the right kind of tools and it seemed quoted by someone as another justification for an ongoing -- maybe we can get public opinion to rally behind that. a week later not a peep. how much of what is going to happen is actually political in nature and how much is going to be driven by potential profits for large multinational corporations. >> i think the more progress we are able to make and sustain in afghanistan the more ability we have to talked with afghans who

see themselves as having a potential as a business entity, the more easily that kind of consideration can come in as a plus factor but i think until we are able to have that kind of dialogue which is extremely difficult today with the pervasive atmosphere of corruption's which rocked everything we are doing in afghanistan that kind of thing will be at the edges and it will be sort of the prize for efforts on the part of these people. so i think that is the best we can say. has the potential of great good in afghanistan if afghanistan can move toward a greater degree of normalcy in which business development can take place free of the fear of into it -- in austin to assassination and

death. >> question down here. >> ten years ago worse though i was under the impression that dirky was viewed as a toady of the u.s.. under prime minister bedouin it has moved away from that position and in has common borders with many countries like afghanistan and i was wondering, a significant military, what role you think can turkey take at this juncture with afghanistan? >> the fact that i spent two weeks in turkey with you and various others is a real plus in my thinking about the future of

islam because we saw in turkey a functioning country with a middle class, a country that unlike egypt relishes its own past because it has the money to take the buses to see the monuments of the past which the egyptians to not have. i think that europe has blown it in terms of its reluctance to bring turkey into the eu. we were shocked in our brief stop in harlem on the way back to see the prejudice against turkey because of various population shifts. i think that if turkey were able to get involved more with the eu its potential for reaching out to afghanistan would be greater. i am not smart enough to know why turkey has -- has any troops in afghanistan or not.

that is probably a key decision as to what role they want to play and they may be issuing military involvement feeling that after nato is effected turkey can move in. that is the best i can do on that. thank you very much for all your questions. [applause] >> how will the local protests spreading across the arab world affect the economy? today the carnegie endowment for peace will host a discussion with economists from the middle east. you can watch live beginning at 3:30 p.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. >> c-span's book abraham lincoln, great american historians on the sixteenth president is a contemporary perspective and mr. lincoln from 56 scholars, journalists and writers from his early years as

a springfield lawyer to his presidency during one of our nation's most troubled times and his relevance today and the publishers are offering to c-span viewers the hardcover edition of abraham lincoln for the special price of $5 plus shipping and handling. go to c-span.org/books and click on the abraham lincoln book can use the code of lincoln at checkout. >> officials from the white house and department of health and human services discussed ideas to help low-income families. we hear from maurice miller whose family independence initiative allows low income families to control and tailor their own assistance programs. the new america foundation in washington d.c. hosted this 90 minute discussion. >> great. welcome to our event today,

social innovation and community solutions for a new war on poverty. we are pleased to have you in the room with us today and also as part of our virtual audience out there with c-span and on-line at noonamerica.net. we have a significant audience from california where maurice lim miller works. good morning to all of you out there in california as well. i am reed kramer. i directed the assets building program at the new america foundation and in this program we explore innovation in social development and economic opportunity especially in ways that promote savings and building up of assets and resources for families over time. our work is informed by the basic insight that social development isn't assured at a

particular moment but rather unfolds over time as part of a long-term process and this means we need to be on the lookout for policies and programs and support structures that can help families move forward in their lives productively. this insight is relevant when thinking about issues of poverty and helping families meet their challenges that they face on an ongoing basis. of course income matters and being able to access support structure that kick in when there is an unexpected event or long term disability or very important process. they have to be part of the solution. this means that we do constantly concerned about this, the state of our safety net. very important that we have a

strong safety net in the policy arena to help families. historically we have identified that it has some holes in it. particularly now it looks like it is frame further. this needs to be addressed and strengthen the safety net during these economic times and one way to do this is to make sure the safety net has springs in it that actually can propel people forward in their lives and so that is where the assets building framework can hold promise and help inform the thinking about interventions that can be successful. looking back at how we approach property issues we can all recognize it hasn't been easy. it is very challenging. we have had some successes and failures. but we also know that we have got limited resources so we

constantly need to be on the lookout for innovation that works and that are effective and cost-effective given our resource constraints. in that spirit we are pleased to feature maurice lim miller who is going to be sharing his perspective on this search for social innovation and community solutions for a new war on poverty. he will tell us about his work with the family independence initiative which is based in oakland, calif.. is a very novel intervention which is demonstrating real results. very exciting. he has been appointed by president obama to the new white house counsel for community solutions and already had a long and kind of distinguished career working with low income and low resource families so this is the current iteration of his work. at this point it is fair to say he is a social entrepreneur.

he is trying to make ideas work, collaborating with families in the community to develop and scale and innovative anti-poverty approach. the family has gathered together to identify ways to promotes economic mobility. there is collective engagement. there is a way they decide to allocate their own resources. it is and impact approach ended is costing a lot less than the way we have done it in the past so it is something to take note of. in a lot of ways it tips over the apple cart of how we have done case management in the past. a lot of social work schools should be taking note of this process. some are and some aren't and there's some push back forcibly and they take issue with maurice's approach and others applaud the effort but at this point is helpful to have engaged discussion about how the

experience has been and what its potential is and what the implications are. he will tell us about his trials and tribulations, who he has made a angry and who has applauded his work and wanted to learn more. we are not here to fight. we are here to engage in a discussion and began exploring the policy implications. in doing that we will be joined by some distinguished commentators we are fortunate to have with us. a senior policy adviser to the white house policy council office of social innovation and civic participation is filling in for her colleague, sonal shah. she is at the forefront of this work looking for innovative programs working for low income communities and she has played a big role in the obama administration's ongoing efforts to captured this innovation and replicate it.

the obama administration has put some money behind this effort in a social administration fund but they're very much committed in this effort in this observation and replication. it is and important effort we are going to learn more about. and mark greenberg is deputy director -- assistant secretary for policy within the administration for children and families at h h as. the invitation went out saying he ran all of hhs. mark is a longtime promoter of innovative anti-poverty work. he is one of the people that is one of the most thoughtful people i know who is looking at these issues, looking at poverty programs, what works and how to improve them. pleased to have him here and he is one of the ones i am thankful, digging into these issues. we will hear from mark. we are releasing two papers that

are part of this work. they are available on our web site noonamerica.net. what is and as a by maurice which will offer his perspective on launching the initiative and overcoming the obstacles that were encountered. the second is by my colleague, mark o'brien at the new america foundation, exploring the policy implications of the lessons learned from this experience. an important piece. and is a fabulous indicator in her own right. she is a policy entrepreneur and has incubated a number of ideas about helping families access financial services and increasing helping families increase their savings and assets and build wealth overtime. she has been active in california and at the national level and significant piece we

are pleased to work with and she has collaborated over the years too. very committed to learned about the experience and how it informs the broader policy discussion. hurt co-author mark o'brien is another bright mind and rising star. research fellow here who has done a lot of work in a fading policy thinking of a round reforming public assistance programs to make sure the rules don't discourage savings but rather encourage it. he is completing his doctoral study at princeton and he is co-author of a new book coming out called passing of a 4 soon-to-be released and we will have a book from catherine and mark at the end of march. look for that. that is the introduction. let's bring maurice lim miller up here for 15 minutes. then mark and margot will give comments and we will have an engage discussion with all of

you. please welcome maurice lim miller. [applause] >> good morning. thank you for having me. nice to be here. some people that i know beeper to lie appreciate that. thanks to the new america foundation. it has been really great except that the weather got really cold and are just flew in. so this talk is really about presenting what we think is what we call a third way of addressing poverty. the way to give you a picture of that takes me back to a cartoon i saw a decade ago which depicted these two men looking over the water and out in the water there was another man that was drowning and he was waving and trying to get some help and the man standing to the white right was yelling out you should have worked harder and learned how to swim. the man standing to the left says hold on, we are really

designing a program to help you. my story is there is a third alternative and what we would see in this cartoon is the next iteration that the man out in the water yelling back to these two guys give me your boat and our will paddle to the shore that i think will help me and my family the most. this is really about the boat and who should be paddling. my story starts back with my mother. she was mexican, two kids, my sister was a lot older than me. she came to san jose to build a new life for both her kids and had to work two jobs, long hours. my sister being new in the country got in with this abusive italian guy that got her pregnant at 16 and pulled her out of the house and took her to new york and my mother was

devastated. she came to america to build a new life for her kids and almost immediately lost one. then she goes to me, this won't happen again and she spent the rest of her short life getting me into college. i went to berkeley and became an engineer to told what my mother told me to do which was take care of everybody else. after i lost my mother and watching my sister in this other relationship i felt the price we paid to get one kid out was too hy so i left engineering and started working non-profit. my first job was training gained kids how to do construction because i knew how to do construction so they could get out of the gains. most of them wanted to be out of there. what ends up happening is i read an organization called engineering and design which was a large -- large organization recession -- organization recognized by clinton and other folks and we were one of the largest organization in the country and i was wondering if we were having an impact.

ten or 15 years into my work i start seeing kids of the first kids i trained coming back into my system and i knew the families and everybody wasn't destabilized but they were like my mother. they weren't able to keep all their kids out of trouble and out of crisis. i was seeing a cycle happening in my family. i started questioning my work and we got these accolades. around 1999/2000 i got a call from jerry brown who is now governor of california. at the time he was mayor of oakland and he was calling me saying that i was on the board of prime minister accounts and the got $10.2 million and he was mad. you think those mayors would be happy when $10.2 million is coming to their city. have you looked at the proposal? i got the proposal and go to the budget page ensure enough, we are going to hire 120