speakers to the campus, and a week later we called with the opportunity to host secretary rice's first appearance on her book tour event. thank you very much. >> they sponsored other speakers, contracts span wineberger, ross perot, nba commissioner david stern, david gergen. sue and chuck have served their community and are a for met able diplomatic corps from iceland to miami. the two served as u.s. ambassador to jamaica during the same time when secretary rice was national security adviser, and governor jeb bush appointed

her as secretary of state in florida from 2005 to 2007. interesting twist, she is an alumna at stanford university where secretary rice is a distinguished member of the faculty and former provost, and the university of miami school of law. chuck cobb was the u.s. ambassador to the republic of iceland during the administration of george h.w. bush, and during the reagan administering he served as undersecretary and assistant secretary of the u.s. department of commerce, where he was responsible for trade development, export promotion, and international travel and tourism, and he was appointed by florida governors to serve on statewide boards. both sue and chuck serve on the board of directors on the council of american ambassadors. chuck is a double graduate of stanford. while we can't claim him as an alumnus, he is a long-time

member and past chairman of the board of the university of miami's board of trustees, please welcome ambassadors cobb. [applause] >> thank you, president shalala. dr. rice, ambassador cobb. guests. we're really pleased to have you here. this whole thing sort of unfolded around the interest of my husband in leadership. so, when we have been able to have outstanding leaders come through this area, we have arranged to have the university of miami students and our guests participate, and that's been an extraordinary pleasure.

this year we hit the jackpot with condoleezza rice. we do have a relationship that goes back, as you know, i think -- dr. rice was a provost at stanford and is back at stanford now at the woodrow wilson institute. chuck and i spent eight years on campus at stanford. it was not because we couldn't graduate. but -- [laughter] >> that's a different story. we have many mutual friends from our service in government and stanford and elsewhere. and of course, we also had the privilege of service to our country at very constance sequential times. i think about leadership and thing about dr. rite as a transformational leader and i

think of president shalala and ambassador cobb as transformational leaders, and you might ask the, what are the common traits? vision. contextual knowledge. understanding the environment in which you're operating. communication and motivational skills. they're challenging but empowering, rock-solid integrity. unusual determination, and perserverance, per very veerance and perserverance. i'm a great admirer of dr. rice. not quite as much as moammar gadhafi i don't have a crabbook. -- i don't have a scrapbook. [applause] >> die have an enormous regard for dr. rice and am very, very pleased she is here, and to do

her formal introduction, i'd like to invite ambassador cobb to the stage. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. thank you, president shalala, and my wife, for those nice, nice comments. and before i introduce condoleezza rice, i want to share with all of you a favoritism i have, a bias i have. and this bias is that i have a strong affinity for smart, strong, powerful, successful, and charismatic women leaders, and as evidence of that -- [applause] >> -- as evidence of that i've been married to one of those ladies for 52 years. but a second -- [applause]

>> but as second evidence of that, i had the pleasure to chair the search committee for the university of miami president, and our first choice, by far, was donna shalala because she had all of those skills and all of those -- [applause] >> and then thirdly, i'm on the board of the woodrow wilson center, and i had the honor to chair its search committee recently, and our first choice was condoleezza rice. who clearly has all those skills, as i'll talk a little more about in a moment. [applause] >> unfortunately, we couldn't get her away from stanford, and we couldn't get her away from writing this great book. and so we were successful in

encouraging congresswoman jane harmon, congresswoman from california and also a very charismatic, driven, powerful, wonderful, smart lady. so, it's quite obvious, i think from all of this, that i really do have this bias, and for that reason it's really an opportunity and a pleasure for me to introduce the most successful woman in the world. and i really do believe that. so, you've heard from my wife about leadership skills. and clearly condoleezza rice has all of those. but in my opinion, the most important leadership skill she has is -- i think all successful leaders have this -- is the ability to bring people together, to team-build, to seek a common ground, and no one is more skilled at this than condoleezza rice. at national security advise york

as you all know, it's her job to bring really diverse personalities together, and so in her case, it was dick cheney, the vice president; colin powell, sect of state, and donald rumsfeld, secretary of defense. really different personalities. really strong personalities. a lot of tension in the room, at you will read in this book, but she brought a consensus, and under her leadership, and the president's leadership, they made some of the most important decisions of this century. and because of that great ability to team-build. now, she also used that skill as secretary of state and dealt with some really tough problems. with palestine and israel on one hand. then pakistan and india on another. and then day after day, countries that had really diverse and different

fundamental differences and, again no one was better in bringing everybody together than dr. condoleezza rice. at age 38, secretary rice was named the provost at stanford, as you heard, that's our alma mater. she was the first woman, the first minority, and the youngest provost in stanford's history. she showed exceptional leadership skills at stanford, that since that time universities all over the country are trying to get her to be their president. but, again, they were as unsuccessful as i was earlier of getting her. she is a leader with incredibly diverse skills. a concert pianist, sports aficionado and because of her leadership skills has been offered to be the commissioner of the pac-12 and has been considered the commissioner of the nfl and a lot of other sports franchises. she served on the board of pew hue let packard, chevron, charles

charles schwab, and many other boards and civic organizations. it's my really distinct pleasure, and no higher honor does this university have, handto have a leader with so many talents and experiences. so i present to you the former secretary of state and the national security adviser, condoleezza rice. [applause] >> thank you. that was beautiful. thank you very much. [applause] >> madam secretary, william. how long have i been inviting you here? >> a few years. >> most of our questions today were submitted by students, and let me start with the first one. one student asked, how die get to be secretary of state?

>> good question. let me just start by thank thanking you very. i have moan president shalala as secretary shalala and also as my friend donna, and so thank you very much for having me here at -- for the' "u pow pow. [applause] >> i want to thank my good friends, the cobbs, the ambassadors cobbs, for their service to the country. and for their extraordinary friendship as well, and thanks to you university of miami students, for having me here. well, so how do you become secretary of state? all right. you start as a failed piano major. that's how you start. i actually went to college to be a concert pianist. i studied piano from the age of three. never any doubt that's what i was going to do. in the summer of my sophomore year i went to the a music

festival and a lot of prodigy were there and 12-year-olds were playing what i could play. they were 12, i was 17. and i thought i would be playing at nordstrom someplace, fine careers but not for me, and fortunately i wandered into a course in international politics, taught by a soviet specialist, a man who was madeline albright's father, and he opened up the world of diplomacy and eastern europe to me, and all of a sudden i knew i wanted to be a soviet specialist. the first lesson on how you get to where i am is you find something that you absolutely love to do, and so i would say to each and every one of you as students, find your passion. not what job you want. not what career you want. but what going to make you get up every day and want to go and do that.

secondly, if you're fortunate, your passion and talents come together, and i went on to become a professor at stanford, and i met -- when i was a young professor in a seminar at stanford, man named brent scowcroft who had been the national security adviseyear to president gerald ford and would become the national security adviser to george h.w. bush. he took an interest in my career, and when president george h.w. bush was elected, he took me with him to be the white house soviet specialist, and i was fortunate to be the white house soviet specialist at the end of the cold war. and the second lesson is fine someone who is interested in your and your career and guide you. people say they want to get there on their own. nobody gets there absolutely on their own. there's always mentors. sometimes we say you have to

heal role molds and mentors who look like you i had been wait fog are black woman soviet specialist mentor, i would still be waiting. so your mentors and role models can come in any color, shape, size. just find somebody who really cares about you and cares about your career. the final part of that story is that when, in 1990, mikhail gorbachev came to the white house, and we were sitting together in the lawn of the white house in marine one, the presidential helicopter, getting ready to take off. just me, gorbachev and his wife and the seek vet service, i thought to myself, i'm really glad i changed my major. so if you work hard and don't worry too much about what comes next, incredible opportunities do open themselves to you. finally, i'd say, get involved in politics at some point. find a candidate you like.

work for them. ultimately that's really how i got be secretary of state. i worked for george w. bush and became his secretary of state. so those are the thought is have. the most important starts right now. find your passion. , in, in. [applause] [applause] >> let's talk about the organization of decisionmaking in your role in the nsc, the national security con council. that role was almost painful to read it. it was herding cats. if you were to advise now, after your experience in that job in particular, a president of the united states, would you suggest to them that one characteristic of the members of that team, whether it's the secretary of defense, treasurery, even the vice president -- would be, gets along well with others? >> yeah. well, that might eliminate a fair number of people in washington.

so, i'd be careful about that criteria. there's no doubt we had very strong personalities, but i hope i gave the impression in the book that they were debates about substance. these were not personal issues. nonetheless, we got along just fine until the most stressful times, and the most stressful times were around the war on terror and around iraq. and so perhaps the lesson is that in so-called normal times, so the degree that anything is ever normal in decisionmaking in washington -- you can -- it is important to have different voices. you can even do with some tension. but when things get really tough, it is easier if people get along. and that, perhaps, is the lesson i would say to the president. a knew president. you can do fine with personalities that may clash if things are going well. when they get rough, it's a lot harder. >> let me follow up on that

question. it's the personality but it's also different points -- very strong points of view, some black and white, some more knew yawned as you described it in your book. does that fact that each political party has this kind of big ten strategy -- does that need to be reflected in the foreign policy leadership or just bring people in to consult? >> pushing you hard how you put the team together. >> right. well, it is a really fine line because if you put a team together where people have views that are too similar, you get group think, and that's not a good thing. when i was secretary of state, i actually had a couple of curmudgeons on my staff who would challenge me about everything i wanted to do because i have always thought that if you're constantly -- this is true for you in school -- if you're constantly in the company of miami say amen to everything -- company of people who say, amen, to everything you do, fine other

company because you don't test your assumptions. i would tend to err in the direction of people who do have strong views, who do express them, but who can also put them aside ultimately and find a way to work together. >> within the political party, the republican and democratic party, they have people with widely different views. if you were actually advising a president, you can't anticipate you're going to go through tough times so what characteristics of that foreign policy team? in past years we had people on foreign policy teams that were lawyers. >> but not necessarily the substantive expertise you have. >> we had on our team quite experienced foreign -- don had been secretary of defense. dick cheney had been secretary of defense and chief staff and vice president, and colin powell

and i had been in the white house before so we had a lot of expertise. i'm really to this day not quite sure why sometimes the personalities didn't gel, and i don't actually think it was observable in -- before we got to washington. that's why i say i think it was the times that perhaps tested us. but i would say to a president who is choosing a foreign policy team, think about talking to people about internal dynamics, bus -- >> think about the team part. >> about the team part -- have strong views because strong views are important. you don't want a president who is just hearing one side of the story. but think about the team dynamics as well. >> let's talk a little about latin america and the caribbean. do you think it makes sense to focus on latin america and i the caribbean as a region begin the fact the countries differ in

their stage of development and so many of them, their issues are global issues? >> well, there's one sense in which i think we want to think about latin america and the caribbean as a region. i would even say the western hemisphere. there is a national affinity for trade policy. we do share some problems of just the kind of transnational borders of trying to deal with trafficking in persons, trafficking in arms, trafficking in drugs, and so there are reasons to work as a region. i also think that since the organization of american states has a democratic charter, we should have a view of our hemisphere as being democratic. but you make a very good point. once you get beyond the big categories, you really are talking about countries that are

very different in how they interact with the globe. brazil thinks of itself as a regional leader, but brazil is also one of the most important emerging economies for the whole global economy. it's one of the, as we call them, the bricks, one of the emerging economies with a chance to structure how the international economy is going to look going forward. when you think about countries like -- of course, obviously the united states has a global role. when you think about countries along the pacific rim of the -- of latin america, they may connect more to the economies of asia. i was always struck when i would go to something called the summit of the americas, which was really about latin america and the caribbean, and we would have discussions and chavez would take off and everybody would close their ears and -- whatever. but then almost a week or two weeks later we would go to the

asia pacific economic council, and there it's the pacific rim countries of chile, and all the way to canada and all the way out through japan and china and korea, and the conversation was completely different. it was about global trade. it was about free trade. and so i actually always thought that in that sense the countries had more in common with their asian counterparts than the latin american counterparts. >> is how they perceive themselves and they're state of development? >> when you look at places like chile, now quite developed. colombia getting there in terms of development, a country like brazil -- it's interesting because on the one hand it is one over leaders in the global economy bit with huge income distribution difficulties that

keep it more on the developing countryside. if you look at the poorest countries in central america, like guatemala, you can't even reach the farmers in the island by highway. so their problems are to try to build infrastructure so they can join the 20th century economy. forget the 21st century economy. so you have radically different levels of development and have rad chris different levels of development within countries. look at the north of mexico and interior of the country and very different levels of development. >> does a secretary of state look at cuba differently than as part of the region because of the domestic politics and the relationship? >> i think we think of cuba differently because it is the one country in the oas that can't even take a seat at the table because it's not -- doesn't have a democratically elected president, and unfortunately we have a history with cuba of castro's decision

to install soviet nuclear capable that threatened the territory of the united states, highly antiamerican regime there, and so there are foreign policy reasons, principally, we have a different relationship with cube. cuba. i hope that the cuban people can't be left behind. it has to be the case that when fed del castro goes the cuban people get a chance to elect their next government and it's not just handed to raul castro. [applause] >> that was a setup question. in miami. >> both the national security adviser and certainly the secretary of state are almost firefighters part of the time. get woken up in the middle of the night. someone does somebody stupid, either within your own organization or around the

world. how do you anticipate the future, though? there's some evidence that while it was the basis for the arab spring or even others predicted the soviet collapse, how do you anticipate the future when you're in those particular leadership roles for both the president but, more importantly, for the country, and how do you organize yourself to do that? >> well, obviously, you try to have experts who are keeping an eye on events, and in this regard, having embassies with people who really know the place, and can get out into communities. one of the things i tried to get foreign service officers to do was not staying in the embassy, not talk to other foreign officials but get out in the country. get a sense for what the conversation is on the street in the country. and that sometimes will give you a bit of early warning. secondly, on the arab spring, i

think we knew something was coming. the freedom agenda that we launched about the middle east, i gave -- president bush had given his second inaugural address in which he talked about the need for there to be no man, woman or child who lived in tyranny, drug the middle east. i gave a speech at the american university in cairo, saying egypt needed to lead this revolution, and i remember seeing mubarak the morning before i gave the speech and saying to him, mr. president, get out ahead of this. get reforms started, before your people under the streets. because what you could feel by being in the middle east, was the kind of seething anger that was growing against authoritarians who were corrupt, who war planning dynastic successions from. thes to their sons, and you could essence that ben ali in

tunisia were increasingly isolated by team telling them their people loved them. but on the streets the people didn't love them. so we had a sense that this was coming. what you can never know is what is the spark. that the spark would have been a man -- a shopkeeper, self-emmow lating in tunisia is what you can't see. you see the tensions gathering but you don't know when it's going toking neat. the best thing to do is expect it might ignite at any time. and try to get ahead of it. and so trying to get particularly our friends in the middle east to reform before their people were in the streets, was our way of trying to get ahead of the -- what happened ultimately in egypt and few niece should and other places. >> talk about the soviet union in terms of what scholars now about the collapse. you were right there. >> i wad. we used to laugh that people would say gorbachev is pound to

fall from power. thank you, but when? was the issue. because you -- general sense that things are going bad is not enough. people knew that the infrastructure, political, economic, social, of the soviet union, was weak. i went to the soviet union for the first time in 1979 to study language. i was a student of the soviet military, and i remember thinking, i had this image of the soviet military as ten feet tall, and i remember going into a store to buy some little thing for my family, and they were doing the computation of the prices on an abacus and i handseep an abacus since second grade in alabama, and i thought, wow, this isn't a very developed place. you start to get a sense that something is really wrong there i think socialess -- receivess

-- receivess e -- it could triumph over the fact people werees stonen and you trainan and took people who could believe you could reform the soviet union -- gorbachev tried to reform it and then it collapsed. still, in 18990, the soviet union collapses on december 25, 1991. in 1990 when we were unifying germany in me fall of 1990, i don't think anybody thought the collapse of the soviet union was a year away. >> a student wanted to make sure i asked about social media and how the foreign policy establishment follows social media around the world and whether that's part of the intelligence-gathering. >> it is now. when i went to state, i took with me someone from the white house who was very interested in what was then an emerging social

media. there was not facebook or twitter but people were on the internet and chat rooms and we understood better what was going on there i also asked a former student of mine, a gentleman named jared cohen, who would later on go to work for secretary clinton to go and start thinking about, did we want to even try to help people to use social media to demomcrat ties. so he created groups of friends who, for instance, people who helped to overthrow terrorism in colombia, who could chat with anymore the middle east who were trying to deal with terrorism. so we were starting to use social media. what i've begun to understand now -- social media is an accelerant. not a cause but an accelerant. what is very interesting is what is happening with social media in china, because the regime is

doing everything it can to control the internet. it's terrified of the internet. in fact, hacking into servers to find the last human rights at slow cat who might be online, and apparently social media is going wild in champion. the regime is not so certain that maybe it's -- maybe it's not a bad thing, that people have a way to vent through social media. so, you remember the story of this young girl that was run over in the streets and people -- that exploded into the social media in china. i would say to the regime that it's one thing -- think people will just vent but they're eventually going to take action. so it's going to have a luge impact our revolutions and reform takes place. >> so foreign policy experts in the years ahead are going to

have to follow -- >> absolutely. >> social media. >> absolutely. >> plus off intelligence. >> one of most important sources of understanding the pulse of what is going on beneath government, because governments are not irrelevant but populations are more empowered than they've every been by social media. >> thrive ask you about iraq. one of the things you do is put a broader context and a broader justification on the reasons to go into iraq and you describe it as a kind of imminent security risk. my question is, first, how did you change the corruption of intelligence information after your experience in iraq? because clearly there are real questions about how accurate the information was. >> well, the most important thing that we did was to re-organize the intelligence

agencies -- by the way, both as a result of the intelligence failure prior to 9/11 and the intelligence failure with iraq -- because in the prior case, we had a wall between domestic intelligence, which the fbi did, and external intelligence, which the cia did, and when they crossed, as they did in 9/11, we couldn't -- they couldn't talk to one another in iraq, i think we began -- >> condi, would you explain -- many of the students may not understand why we have that gap between the fbi and the cia. >> absolutely. the gap -- the wall, as i like to call it, was there for very good and legitimate reasons, which was we did not want our foreign intelligence agencies, the cia, being active inside the country, and perhaps spying to use that word, on domestic events, on american citizens and so forth. so, the cia was kept to a

foreign intelligence agency. the fbi, which operated under rules and laws -- think law & order -- the fbi was the internal gel generals agencies. just to give you one example, few nights before 9/11, a telephone call was made in san diego by one of the men who would ultimately be one of the suicide hijackers -- to afghanistan but we couldn't track across that boundary because we didn't want the tracking of phone calls inside the united states by foreign intelligence. so, would i like to have known what he said a couple days before 9/11? when we realized that, of course, we had been internal security problem, an attack on our internal security, we lad to sew up that gap so the cia and what they knew about what was going on outside the country,

and the fbi and what they knew what was going on inside the country, would talk to one another. and that's the so-called patriot act actually closed that seam. so that was one problem. the iraq intelligence problem was different but structural. we had as many -- depending how you count them -- as between 15 and 17 different intelligence agencies in the united states. defense department has one. energy department has one. state department has one. the cia has one. et cetera. the cia was one. the person who was in charge of all of those as the director of central intelligence was also the director of the cia. so the director of the cia was human, and trusted his own intelligence agency more than all of these others he was supposed to be over, and we found that some of the counterevidence about what was going on in iraq, weapons of

mass destruction programs, probably didn't get the airing and the hearing it might have. so we created the director of national intelligence, who is not the director of the cia, who is a separate person, to cull the intelligence, help the president understand when there are disagreements in the intelligence agency, and give more of a total picture of what is going on with intelligence. that was the big reform that was made. >> you also have talked in at least one speech that i know of, about self-defense as part of the context for making the decision to go into iraq. i really want to ask you, when you examined the iraq situation and there was a discussion, did you look at other countries as well? because if you look at the list of justifications, you could put those on iran as well, and so

why iraq rather than iran? and did you look at more than one country? >> yes. we looked -- iraq was sui generis in our view. it was unique. it was unique because we had been to war against saddam hussein in 1991. he signed an armistice. he was cities mat click violating that armistice. the was found in 1991 to have been one year from accrued nuclear device. he used weapons of mass destruction against the iranians and his own people. the constraintses on him were starting to break down, including by the way the fact we were flying no-fly zones to keep his air force on the ground. he was shooting at our aircraft practically ever day. i remember the president asking don rumsfeld, what do we do if he gets a lucky shot and brings down an american pilot? so we were in a state of

suspended hostilities with iraq, not a state of peace with iraq in 18998, public public launched cruise missiles against iraq, and the inspectors who were supposed to be keeping his wind chills mass dry stuck programs under control, was -- left the country. so, he was different for his having drag the region into war several times, including us. the fact he was continuing, we believed to build weapons of mass destruction and, according to the intelligence agencies, reconstituted his chemical weapons and his biological weapons and was on his way to recob constitute his nuclear program. he tried to say sass nate president george w. bush. he put 400,000 people in mass graves. he was considered the biggest threat in the middle east. as bad as north korea and iran was, they were not in a category like iraq where there were 16 security council resolutions

that said that he was a threat to international peace and security. >> does that also account for the need to focus on the israeli -palestinian issue, they're also sue -- sui generis compared to other parts of the world? >> while the israeli palestine issue isn't a key to peace in the middle east, it's a key to a different kind of piece in the middle east. any student -- from the time i was your age and in college, which is a long time ago -- but from that time, when you took a course in international politics, people started it with the most volatile region in the world and that's the middle east, and that's still true today. people have been trying to do something about that for a long time. the israeli-palestinian issue is one of the core issues that needs to be resolved to get rid of the volatility in the middle

east. >> every administration has struggled. >> every administration. >> you see hope out there? >> i do. i describe in the book that uhlmert, the president of israel, and -- they were close to a deal put on the table by uhmert. he was in trouble but abbas did not take it up. there is an answer here. there is a two--state solution that is available, but time is not on the side of either of them. >> i'd like to go back to the soviet union. given your expertise about the soviet union, how do you see russia developing over the next few years, and do you think that they're important in the -- importance in the world will increase, perhaps even surpassing china?

>> i think the russians are in trouble in term office global standing. i think they know it. russia is a -- the russian economy is 80% dependent on exports of oil, gas and minerals. that's not a modern economy. i'll tell you a little story that shows how much that oil, gas, and minerals is linked up with personal fortunes, political power, and the state. i was at the australian foreign minister's house one day, having a meeting about energy policy. and he was going around asking people about the energy policy. the russian says we understand that our oil and gas fields are technologically behind but no foreigner will ever own russian oil and gas so we're going to buy the technology from western oil companies. so i had been a director of the chevron corporation and i said, don't you understand that their

advantage is actually in their technology. they're not going sell you their technology to make you a better competitor. he said, that's a really good point. and then he said, are you still a director of chevron? i was the secretary of state. but in russia, dmitry medvedev, the deputy prime minister, was also the chairman of gas pumps. so, state and economy and politics and personal fortunes linked up together, and a fair amount of political violence, too. now that mr. putin decided he is the once and future profit russia, i think the chances that russia is going to break out of that and build on other strengths it might have, including a very smart population -- those have receded, and i think unfortunately russia will not find greater strength in the international economy.

it's pretty much an economy that's dependent on the price of oil to do well. >> so back the arab spring. what are the lessons? >> the lesson of the arab spring is that authoritarianism is not stable. if men, women and children don't have a way to change their circumstances and change their government peacefully, they'll do it violently. when we were in romania, we learned of something i now call the the moment. he went into a square in buick rest and he was ex-orting the romanian people for what he had done for them and all of a sudden one old lady yelled, "liar." then ten people, then a hundred treat people, then a thousand people, and a hundred thousand people were yelling "liar" and

he realized he better get out of there. and the young military officer delivers him to the rev exclusion he and his wife are executed. that moment is when fear breaks down, either an old lady yells "liar" or a soldier turns his gun away from the crowd, refuses to tire, or a tank is turned away from the cloud and then all that's left between the dictator and his people is anger, and that's what you have in the arab spring now and why authoritarianism is not single. >> what do you think about leading from behind as these coalitions and -- >> i don't mind multilateral coalitions. i'm sorry, leading from behind is an oxymoron. it is. you don't lead from behind. >> and i actually think -- some in the white house might be sorry they used that phrase. >> let me ask you about a

domestic issue because i actually share your view, and have had conversations with president bush about the failure of immigration reform. how serious do you think that issue is for the next presidential debate that we have? >> it is essential. when you're secretary of state you get to go out in the world and see what people admire about the united states, and there are a lot of things not admired but one thing is admired is our great national myth. you can come from humble circumstances and do great thinks. it doesn't matter where you came from and it matters where you're going. that has led people that come here to be part of that. that's why we aitch asian americans and mexican americans and german americans and indian americans. it's because people -- the most ambitious people have wanted to be part of that. now, i don't know when

immigrants became the enemy, but if we don't fix this, we are going to undo one of the greatest strengths of the united states, because the only thing that keeps us from the demographics of europe and japan, is immigration. and so i am a major proponent of comprehensive immigration reform that first and form most -- [applause] >> first and for most recognizes we have people living in the shadows and we have to deal with that. we're not a country that actually wants people to be afraid to go and take their sick child to a hospital. that's not this country. i worry that the states, because the federal government has not acted, are starting a patchwork now of immigration policies when really what we need is a federal policy that is true to

ourselves, true to our laws, and also true to the absolute fact that the united states of america is well-served by the great number of people that we are. >> three quick questions to -- [applause] >> -- wind this up. next fall, let's pretend, you've been invited to be the moderator of a presidential debate. the debate's theme is foreign policy. what is the first question you will ask both candidates? >> do you believe that america has an exceptional and unique role to play in the world? or is america just some -- any other country? because if america is just any other country, then you have no right to ask the american people to sustain the sacrifices we have and to play the role that

we have on behalf of the international community for now, better than 60 years. and so why is america exceptional? [applause] >> second question is, even though you're not responsible and can't officially wake you up anymore, what keeps you up at night in foreign policy? what are the things that you worry about that we ought to ware about? >> i worry about the list of terribles, iran, pakistan. i wore about mexico. i think that we don't pay enough attention to what is happening on our southern border, and if you live in california or new mexico, you know the drug cartels own a lot of that space between northern mexico and the southern border of the united states. it's very dangerous. last year, there were -- two years ago there were 5,000 kidnappings and murders of

officials. mexican officials. probably twice that in the last couple of years. so very dangerous. but what mostly keeps me up at night is the question of whether the united states is going re-affirm and somehow do the internal repair we need to do to lead? i worry that we can't seem to get our entitlements under control. we can't get our budget deficits under control i worry about immigration policy. i worry about the fact that in k-12 education, i can look at your zip code and tell whether or not you're going to get a good education, and that's not just wrong, it is actually probably going to undo us more quickly than anything the chinese can do to us, because if we have people who are unemployable and they will be unemployable -- they'll have to live on the dole because they have no other choice. we will continue to have a situation in which only 30% of the people who take the basic skills test to get into the military can pass it.

it will indeed pull us apart as a country faster than anything else, and if we're not confident and optimistic in one country, we won't lead, and so that's probably the win that really keeps me up at night. >> here's my final question. if you have a choice between running for the senate in california, being a university president, or being head of the national football league -- [laughter] >> what's your choice? >> no contest. well, i used to want to be the commissioner of the nfl, but i told roger goodell, when i was struggling with the iranians and russians, your job looked pretty good. actually from northern california doesn't look so good anymore. and these days -- and i have to say it -- these days being a university professor at stanford university, where the stanford cardinal are having quite a

special season -- you know, come on you know what those special seasons are like you. have had plenty of them. let us have one. that's really the greatest job in the world. >> thank you, madam secretary. thank you. [applause] >> we have the this book called "the deal from hell." what is it about, basically, and why should we? specially why should people watching in maine, new york, why should they care? >> this book talks a lot about the differences between journalism today and journalism when i started. when i got into this, journalism this, newspaper business was

archly controlled by families. not all of them were angels by any means but they really had a kind of a public service mantra, that they followed, and that basically, no one could have put it better than mike kohls, leading member of the family that owned the des moines register, and mike always said the only thing a newspaper really has to worry about is that it's -- if the public respects it. if the public respects it, you'll have readers, and if you have readers you'll have advertisers and that's the main source of revenue and income for newspapers. so you have to be respected by the public, and then around then 1960s and 70s that got turned on its head when the families wanted to get out of the business and started selling off their newspapers and a lot of times they sold them to people who -- to corporations

owned by stockholders and the people that ran the corporations had a duty to journalism and also had a fiduciary duty to stockholders, and first things looked fine because we all hat a lot of money rolling in, but sometime after september 11th, that changed, and we began struggling with revenues, and as we tried to maintain the profit margins, which is considerable, we began cutting, and we began diminishing our journalism, and i suspect all of us were also guilty of sub bored night interests of the public to our fiduciary duties to produce the returns that wall street and others expected, and i really think that kind of led us down the path to where we are today, and in the case of the tribune company, it led them to bankruptcy court, and a great

institution that was a fixture is today an institution in trouble, and i think it has -- it's an institution that -- and all newspapers like it, i don't think people understand the fundamental role that newspapers play in giving voters and people in the democracy the information and news they need. they're under threat today and it's troubling to me, it's troubling to a lot of people, and i think that's -- so everybody i think should care about this story. not just because it's about me and not because it's about the chicago tribune or the l.a. times but at it about journalism, and that's something that is vital to a democratic society. >> this book is called "the deal from hell" it's really about two deals. the first comes in the year 2000, and involves the purchase by tribune company, owner of

several dozen very respected television stations and newspaper, it's purchase of times mirror company. give us the economic backdrop at the time, the newspaper industry backdrop, and the rationale, and if you want to mention a fellow who became known as the cereal killer -- cereal like cheerios -- tell us about him and why he was critical to the tactics and strategy in executing this deal. >> i think the deal with sam was the deal from hell and the tribune made a stop in purgatory first when it bought times mirror. it was -- you know, basically

the atmosphere at the time was buy or bee -- be bought, and ao. >> time warner just new jerseyed and things were going well. so when the transcribe -- tribune decided too buy it, the future was bright. the way the deal was structured is we bought the company even though mark weller, the cereal killer who was the ceo of times mirror -- he got that title -- he used to be the cochairman of general mills where they made all the cereal, and the staff of "the los angeles times" was phenomenal -- if the staff of "los angeles times" would have done as well with coming up with nick names as doing the story they wouldn't have problem. he came in and started cutting things, cutting staff.

closed new york news day and he got that name. but when the tribune bought it, mark willis didn't know that the tribune was buying the company. they bought it when hi wasn't even looking. it was kind of a nice little back-stabbing drama that played out in a place where they literally made drama in los angeles. i think because they were trying to really do the deal in secret, a lot of things that we should have known about, that we didn't know about, came back to haunt us later, and the company got -- the things we didn't know about, like a huge tax case, circulation problems at news day and circulation fraud -- all of these things came back to haunt us and put us in troubled conditions which made us vulnerable to being sold. >> coming up next, david wellman talks about the anthrax attacks

of 2001. bruce ivins, who mr. wellman believes is responsible for those attacks. this is just under an hour. >> good afternoon. welcome to the forensic science institute. it's my for and privilege to introduce our speaker for this afternoon. he is david willman. mr. willman is an investigative journalist with "the los angeles times," and has been employed by them since 1995. prior to that he worked with the pasadena star news, and the san jose mercury news. in 2001, mr. willman was awarded the pulitzer prize for his work

in the discovery of seven drugs that were erroneously approved by the food and drug administration. he has been the recipient of many other awards, including the national press club award, as well as the george polk award. that work was his work on presidential finance and the improper use of funds for presidential campaigns. the work of david willman has not simply been read and placed on a shelf. or in terms of newspapers, read and placed in the recycling bin. instead, his work has gone on to an