indeed. and you've seen a lot of leaders. i guess i was thinking of -- >> here's a leading scholar on presidential leadership that is going to ask me a question of leadership. i feel like i'm back in school. >> sandhu. some just write about it. but when people in my line of work read about george w. bush, what you think would be the shortcomings that one achieves? >> well, i am 78 years old. i have lived a third of our country's history and almost every republican president was considered not very swift. dwight eisenhower played to much cause they say. he had a poor syntax. my goodness, gerald ford they said they too much football without a helmet.

[laughter] didn't matter that he gone to yale law school. didn't matter as one of the leading experts on the u.s. budget having served on the appropriations committee. >> not to mention the best athlete in the white house. and they contended he was a stumblebum. i mean come you go from one to another. ronald reagan was characterized by clark clifford as an amiable dunce. and then people read his letters and saw that this man was thoughtful, knowledgeable. and while not a micromanager, a strategic leader. and a superb and highly successful strategic leader. george w. bush was described as not curious, not knowledgeable and he had gone to harvard business school. he had gone to yale i guess and was clearly and is an intelligent human being. i mean, i didn't know the man.

i work with his father in congress, but i didn't know george w. bush. and i watched him as a president clearly asked penetrating questions. he worked his way with foreign leaders in a skillful and engaging manner that developed relationships that were construct do for our country. and yet, he was -- people make fun of it, all of this president. and i don't know quite what it is about our society that does that, but i must say i've watched a lot of presidents and i would say that george w. bush -- i mean, you think what he did with the surge in iraq -- >> is that something you would've supported had you stayed on quite >> indeed. what he did was interesting. a lot of things combine to make it work. the anbar awakening to place.

the training and equipping of the iraqis military had come to a very advanced point, where we had hundreds of thousands of iraqis trained and ready to participate. ..

of the so-called army which was sent an army it's a group of people that can get out in the street and make demonstrations the event quote because they didn't know what would happen. but the center of gravity shifted from iraq to the united states as the say in the military the real locus of the problem was in the united states and the congress was about ready to pull the plug and as they did on vietnam and the old miss of what george w. bush did belies the situation and made it possible for the war to be successful. he deserves a lot of credit for that. >> how much should the war be judged by success? sue lyndon johnson's viet nam war ended in victory in 1966 would we be looking at him as a great war iraq leader and someone who did it the right way? >> the historian seems to me that i don't know who said it

with the war is a series of catastrophes and by success. they are untidy, difficult, hard, the enemy has a brain. on eisenhower i think said the plan is worth less. planning is everything and the plan is worthless because the na -- >> one of rumsfeld's rules. >> it is a rule that i quote from someone more intelligent than volume. >> with full credit. >> indeed. but it's true every time you try to do something for every offense or defense, for every defense there is an offense and if there's a constant change that take place on the battlefield, i think that we are unlikely for a period of time to end up with the kind clarity we had in world war ii because of the nature of the world we are

living in. it is asymmetric, it is ever changing and it is clear to be a challenge for our leadership. it's come to be a challenge for our country. but the growing lethality of those weapons -- what president bush was faced with when he made his decision on iraq was there was a study by johns hopkins university called dark winter and if my memory serves me correctly, a series of experts got together and they said what if we took smallpox and put it in three locations in the united states of america? and in a relatively short period of months the dark winter exercise come by johns hopkins university concluded -- and i'm going to be rhomboid -- but concluded somewhere in the

neighborhood of 800,000 americans would be dead. some one here knows the exact number. where is keith? that's close enough. and something, a multiple of that would be infected with smallpox. imagine in our country of that happened think of the martial law, think of being diligent to move from state to state. free people, that's what we are. we are people that want to get up in the morning and go where will want and see what we want and think what we wanted the purpose of terrorism is not to kill people, the purpose is to terrorize. it's to alter your behavior. and imagine this country if we had 800,000 people dead from smallpox and martial law imposed the process and that study

exists it's available and it is that concern that caused george w. bush to step up and decide you couldn't wait to be attacked the only thing you could do is try to put pressure on terrorist states and put pressure on terrorist networks and make every single thing they do harder harder to communicate with each other and keep the pressure up for the weekend and gage and act like that again. >> we have a couple more minutes so i will last two more questions. one is what is the story and why about donald rumsfeld the second time that the pentagon? >> of the devotee vitter or 20 years. >> journalists like to think the right the first draft of history

i don't know that i use the word history with that first draft. i served a lot of years in government now live been out for four. i debated whether i should write a short book in the year and use my memory or whether i should digitize this incredible archive the light accumulated over my lifetime and start and played the confiding people into the faces of my life and the eventide been involved in it if you look at the acknowledgment section its many dozens and we would talk and transcribing and go back to the records and then i think if i've got that archived why shouldn't be digitized? and see if we can make it available to the reader? and i told that maybe for the first time we know are going to have available in e-book which

means electronic books i told they didn't used to have those when i was a kid. and you can read the book gives you can look at the end notes and see the source where i decided something and then you can go to the website and pull up the entire document and see right there whether or not the context or the perspective that i provided, which is worked to try to make accurate and fair and say i would have done it that we but there are thousands of pages of documents, hundreds of different documents many of which have been recently declassified that are available on this website. savitt we have the documents. in 20 years i will be

98-years-old you can read whatever you want. [laughter] this book as i mentioned has a very detailed accounts of secretary rumsfeld's encounters with all sorts of public figures, world leaders, people with very influential and important positions but one of the most intriguing is your encounter with elvis. >> leggitt lescol elvis presley. a lot his songs were not really waiting. [laughter] >> why does that not surprise me. [laughter] on any given sunday today if joyce and i can't get to church

we have some elvis presley singing gospel and they are wonders and we played them sunday after sunday after sunday. how did this happen? mo i was running the so-called war on poverty simi davis jr. was on the advisers board. we were giving a speech and it coincided with his underperformance of one of those casinos, the fans or something. so we went to see his show and he and his wife were there and they performed the issue was spectacular. it wasn't an accident bickel seeley davis jr. the world's greatest entertainer. he said to joyce and me the next light i often going to take you to see the best entertainer in las vegas and he didn't tell us

who it was. so the next night he went to another casino he and he got a dinner table needless to say right up front. and it was elvis presley and say and believe elvis presley was the best performer in talent and he was in his later years and he was large. he was wearing a sequence jumpsuit >> i've never seen the man and i've never heard the man and what color is it it's got red, pink, scarlets and he would wipe his face, he would get up and sing it was fantastic to see the most ridiculous thing in the world and people would cheer and yell and love it and i would sit

here and go like this. then he would sing a ballett and it was absolutely beautiful. this man had a voice that was spectacular, and i love country music and i love ballots and he would sing and you would just -- you would be carried away with it. then he would take the scarf, wipe the sweat off and throw it in the crowd. so he threw one and gave it to a joyous and its frame. what happened afterward as sammy said to joyce we are going to go back to the dressing room. you go in this place and its large and here are all these people. sammy is getting dressed and walking or not at all the showgirls are are selling and

cigarettes with western jewelry and turquoise and what have you and all the hangars and their staff and joyce it's turning away talking to somebody and she couldn't find the it finally elvis presley had recorder was against the corner and he was and i was him behind. he was talking about the united states army. if you remember there is a draft during that period and some of the people did not go in the draft. they went to canada and he went in and through the united states army and he served in germany and want to talk. he left the army is valued his time serving and he was going back and forth with the about

this and that and the other thing and i just found it fascinating to rest slim who committed ago had been of they're wiping the sweat off his face and for when these things and everyone screaming what you read this dressing room if he was standing there asking questions after the united states army. >> takes you inside the world of nonfiction books. every weekend on booktv. 48 hours of the best in office, politics, current events, issues and trends. find out more online at booktv.org including video of our future programs, completely can schedules and the latest on the world world of publishing. booktv every weekend on c-span2, and online at booktv.org.

>> and here's tonight's lineup for booktv in prime time. >> the iowa caucuses are just a week away, and the candidates are busy with campaign appearances in the state. today we'll bring you three of those events live on c-span.

>> next, former vice president dick cheney talks about 9/11 and this time in the bush administration in an interview with stephen hayes. mr. hayes is the author of the book, cheney, a biography of the vice president. this is an hour and 10 minutes.

>> good morning, everybody. e welcome to the american enterprise institute. i'm danielle, the vice president for foreign and defense policy aei.icy sudies. let me first remind everybody, the please, to turn off theiryour telephones or to put them onor vibrate. and ask everybody when the session ends, to please remain seated in order to allow oural speakers to leave the room. room. a final housekeeping note, booksellers are available at the book in the reception after the end of the event. wind aei president arthur wirtz, who unfortunately couldn't be here, and fight to the vice president cheney to join us today, it was a remembering the

tax of 9/11 ten years later and considering some of the lessons learned and those that were not since that date. the first thing to recall since 9/11 and about brolan war that we are still fighting is the mini that gives their lives. the family, that sacrificed loved ones, and the awful loss. first and foremost, now is the time to remember the brave americans who died at home are fighting men and women who risked everything so that we can live in freedom and our invaluable allies fertility countries to name who share our cause. as some of you know vice president cheney recently published a memoir in my time written with his daughter, liz cheney. we understand and will debut at number one on "the new york

times" best-seller list. [applause] today he joins us with weekly standard senior writer and best selling author speed late for a conversation about the attack on a nation about the decisions made since then and reflections on of an amazing life in politics and pretty much whatever else he and steve choose to talk about today in the hour that we have treated it hundred and after that conversation we will have a q&a session moderated by steve. lynn cheney has been discovered at aei for many years. dick cheney is a board of trustees. you're so glad to have them as a part of our aei family, and we thank them and you all for joining us here today. [applause]

speed remember you are a reporter. >> i get paid back. >> i just want to say a word and then i will turn it over to mr. hayes to read the book i wrote as a more that covers all years of my life. the early years with a lot of good stuff to write about in the period of time. but the last half of the book focuses on the ad ministration and lawyers as vice president, and the book opens in the prologue which recounted the defense and i saw them on line 9/11 event it deals with what we had to do during the course of

our seven and a half years to keep the country safe, some of the controversies that we were involved in on things like the terrorist surveillance program and enhanced interrogations'. that is a large part of the book is relevant with respect to 9/11 and the aftermath with other subjects as well. i guess there were five republican at ministrations worked closely with a fifth, the administration as part of the house republican leadership and so i try to cover all of that period of time but there is enough there that steve is trying to make a living writing articles about me. [laughter] so i'm going to turn it over to him. >> thank you and thanks to the indian aei for having us. just to give you an idea what i thought i would try to do this

morning i'm going to start with questions about my 11 specifically in the push you in particular about your personal views on these things because i know you love to put yourself on the couch like that. publics of reflection. and the line going to go and talk about a number of different ways in which the policies that emanated but you i think in large part helped drive it try to fill in some gaps i spent a lot of time looking of the interviews you done since the book cannot and i've read it now twice and some questions i have for a meeting for you. so, that's how i would like to proceed and that we will throw it open for any additional questions that will be much better than line. the first part we would store is on the morning of 9/11. i would be interested to know when you first knew we were under attack. not when you first heard about that but when did you know that we were under attack and when

were your first thoughts that moment? >> i was off in the west wing working with my speech writer with my secretary called in to the report the plane had struck in the world trade center and return on the television after the first plane had gone in before anything else had happened and the immediate reaction was what was possible in perfectly clear whether there was no way to account for it and then as we watched we saw the second plane hit and that immediately in my mind triggered the notion this had to be a terrorist attack in the world trade center it not have it be anything but a terrorist attacks. shortly after that i talked to a present all in florida it to the

statement he was getting ready to issue it was whether or not it was proper to talk about terrorism within that context of the statement and the words he used was probably a terrorist attack on the united states. it was in a relatively short period of time and people begin to gather in my office secretary rice and the national security adviser was there with my chief of staff and probably had seven or eight people, and then all of a sudden the door burst open it is taking over to the desk where we were sitting and said we have to leave for a meeting please come with me. we have to leave immediately. put one hand on the back of my bills and one hand on the back of my shoulder.

i didn't have the option of not going. the pause for that, the reason he did that is a he explained to me as he was taking me down to the presidential emergency operations center on the white house was yet received a report that there was a hijacked aircraft headed towards crème been code for the white house and that turned out to be american 77 which came in and made a circle and then went into the pentagon. at that point i was down partway. i haven't gotten there yet of a immediately use the telephone that was there to place a call

the president and to let them know washington was under attack and the secret service strongly recommended he not come back. i also recommended that he not come back be leaving the was important stay part so that we didn't become a ripe target that we didn't know at that stage what was happening. >> he didn't like to hear that committee. but he saw the wisdom of it. i know from that spot went into the pmi itself isn't always presented by norman who was our secretary of transportation responsible to have an aircraft

they believe have been hijacked at gunpoint. we thought that it was six, but they were the two major drivers in terms of what i thought about in that morning as we work through a crisis in that day. number one was we had to get all the planes down out of the sky so we can isolate the river had been hijacked and account for the hi tract including the list we had at that point it would account for three of them, to of the new york and one of the pentagon so that was a major part of the effort and then the other thing is it important that i focused on some of you are familiar with especially during the cold war we had developed programs and procedures for