he said there's nothing i'd rather do. [laughter] i had no idea what i said. but the language really was quite funny. if you put a call through to new england come you say or? if you say to an american are you through, and means you are connected. it is a completely different language. ..

>> i want to make a couple things clear. one, i have been called a hero, i am not. i am just a guy who did his job and did his duty. this country has been good to me, and it was the least that i could do to spend some time serving my country. and there are a lot of ways to serve. and i think that what the houston hospice does is one of the best ways that one can possibly serve. and i would submit to you that those who care for others at the end of their lives are certainly heroes in every sense of the word. and i would like to just give another round of applause. [applause] i know well that that is, that can be a hard task, it can be a thankless task, but it is a needed task, and i can promise you that our communities are

better because people like you are in them. so, please, accept my sincerest thanks. one of -- what i essentially wanted to chat about today briefly was the idea of leadership and why it is so critically important in our nation today and in some ways you guys are getting a preview or an insight into the leader's code which just hit shelves yesterday. but if you think about it in many ways, in our country we're at a crisis of leadership. our political institutions receive low double digit approval ratings, our business class has been hammered by the poor examples that cropped up in the recent recession. and many of our local leaders have taken a fall as well. but as i think to myself, you know, good leadership could not be more needed whether that's internationally, nationally or locally. our gridlocked political system needs someone to step up and take responsibility, serve with

the nation's best interest in mind, not their own re-election on mind. i would tell you with the europe in crisis, with rising countries like china looking at us, they can either look at our model and say, hey, we value the same -- we see that you value economic, political and individual liberty. we see what that produces. we see the kind of cup that produces, and we think -- the kind of country that produces, and we think that is the right way forward. or we look at your system, we think it is a product of the past, we think your leadership is ineffective, and we're going to choose a different model. locally we have people in our communities who have been ravaged by the recession, and they need others to step up to stand in the gap and to serve and make a difference in their own lives. and so what i would like to do today is share with you a few thoughts about how we can do that and encourage you to think about how in your own lives you can do the same thing.

but before i get started, i want you to know i'm not a real author. in fact, when i told my brothers -- i have four of them, four little brothers -- that i had written a book, they said you wrote a book? so when did you learn to read? [laughter] all right, all right. thanks, guys. i also recognize that by admitting that i can read and write, i in some ways kind of ruin the good name of the marine corps, but i'll do my best to make it up. the first book, you know, i didn't mean to write it. i'm not a writer. that's not what i do full time. and the only reason that i wrote it was because, um, i really felt like i let my men down when i was at war because, it's hard to explain, but if you have a 19 or a 20-year-old and he charges a machine gun because he's worried that his buddies under fire are going to take more wounds and he runs at the thing thinking he's going to die but

hopefully he can save them and he lives through it, the only thing you can do as his officer or as his leader reward him is give him a medal. you can't give him a vacation, a bonus, a to motion or pay raise. the only thing you can do is take a little bit of ribbon, a medal and pin it to his chest and say, hey, congratulations, marine, thank you for what you did. i didn't do enough of that so when i was leading my marines i got into business school, and i thought there's something i've got to make write. i can't go back and write 'em up for the awards they deserve, but at least i can tell their story to them to their parents, their wives, they fiancees because they weren't telling it. so i asked my professor and said, hey, can i write this down instead of taking a leadership class. and he said, absolutely. the next thing you know, the book, "joker one," was produced. and with this most recent book i

was flying around the country in '09, and i was watching business leaders leaving their companies in chaos and disarray saying, look, i don't know much about this, i don't feel responsible for it, and i compared them to one of my team leaders. he led four other guys. and i remember one day we'd just come back from a mission, and we were walking down the middle of the street of rah ramadi, and we were doing the morning route sweep which is where we looked for bombs with our naked eyes. and this guy, corporal teague, was at the very front of my platoon, and he was at the front of my team. i said in some ways you may want to walk behind them so you can see what they're doing and give orders appropriately. he said, hey, sir, these guys are my men, and one of these days one of these bombs is going to blow up. we'd seen enough of that to know that it would happen to us, and it did happen to us.

he said, sir, when that bomb blows up, i want to make sure that my body is between my bomb and my men. if i can save them by doing that -- i thought i've got a 19-year-old here, and that's how he leads, and i'm comparing that against people who are three times his age who have less than zero percent of his same sense of self-sacrifice. so that's one of the things i wanted to talk to you guys about today and to give you a little of the background of the learnings that i extracted from that environment. i'd like to tell you a little bit about that tour. in '03, i was given command of a marine infantry platoon whose radio call sign was joker one. every single one of these kauais was between 18 -- guys was between 18 and 21. for three months we trained together for a pretty hazy mission because in '03 the marines had pulled out of iraq entirely thinking that combat operations were over.

in fact, i was on one of the last marine helicopters out. but in '04 it became increasingly apparent that there was still a lot of fighting to be done and that the marines would go back and joker one and i would be in the first wave of returnees. so we were deployed to the volatile ann bar -- anbar province. we were deployed to the heart of the heart of the insurgency, because we were deployed to the capital city, a city called ramadi. when we went in, we thought we'd do a lot more rebuilding than fighting, and we could not have been more wrong. as the spring and summer wound on, my company of 160 found itself responsible for a city of about 400,000 people. battling and trying to keep the peace. we never rested. we were never pulled off the front lines. and at one point in time in june, one of my outposts was the most attacked outpost in all of

iraq, and for most of the summer we were the most attacked unit in all of iraq. isic actually made the coffer of "the new york times." -- cover of "the new york times." it is one of our engineers driving a vehicle out of an ambush. he was actually killed the very next day. by the time we finished, nearly a third of my platoon had been wounded, i had lost one man. in my company the casualty rate was higher, it was one out of every two wounded, and to this day we have been told that that many casualties in that short a period of time is a rate tahas not been exceeded by any other marine unit, or army, since vietnam. i returned from war in october of 2004, and by ought -- by august of '05 i was in cambridge, massachusetts, preparing for year one of business school. it was not an easy adjustment, but it was a good one. shortly after i graduated, i was involuntarily recalled, and i served a third deployment in

january of 2008 with afghanistan supporting the u.s. special forces. i spent yet another wedding anniversary overseas and is missed most of my daughter's second year of life. so if i think about it, essentially, i spent my 20s at war. it wasn't necessarily my plan, but that is what happened. and it was not easy. it was not an easy or a comfortable experience, i can assure you, i did not, i was not thrilled about redeploying to afghanistan after i felt that i had finally got my life in order. but i would not trade it for anything in the world. and the reason for that is i think it taught me things that i don't know how i would have learned anywhere else. and i think most fundamentally it taught me good leadership. and as i've had the time to process that and apply that outside of the military and outside of war, what i've discovered is that the fundamental leadership principles that the marines taught are just as necessary

outside of the marines, outside of war and in all facets of our lives. and i thought it was -- it was so interesting to we to be at harvard, because so many of my class mates said, hey, we get it. we know that you've served, but you have to get something, donovan. the way that you lead in the military just doesn't work in the civilian world, because all you do is give orders. and i thought that is not true. nothing could be farther from the truth, because at the end of the day you stand in front of, say, 40 young men, and you say here's the deal, guys. we're going to show up at two a.m. tonight, and we are going to fight for 36 hours straight. and they tell us that a third of us will not make it back. so you guys look to your left, and you look to your right. know that one of those guys won't be coming back with us. and those 18 and 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds and they look at you, and they say, roger

that. we'll see you at two a.m. what kind of individual, what kind of leadership inspires that kind of behavior when they know that there is nothing in it for them except perhaps wounds and death? well, the fundamental thing that the marine corps taught us, taught me is that good leadership is based on good character, and that character comes before competence and that to build character you have to pursue virtue with the same intentionality with you pursue -- with which you pursue anything else in life. if you want to run a marathon, you train, you plan, you prepare and then you execute. the marines told us it is no different with character. because when the chips are, when the chips are down, when the lives are on the line, when you have to make life and death decisions in seconds or less, it is not the person that you hope you will be, it is not the person that you want to become, it is not the person you wish

you were that makes that decision. it is the person that you have trained yourself to be over time that's either going to make the right call or the wrong call. and unlike many other institutions, the marines took it one step further. they told us specifically which virtues we needed to pursue. the first of those virtues was humility. you see a picture of abraham lincoln up here. he built one of the best leadership teams about -- from a group of men who had hotly contested him for the republican nomination. on his left, your right, is edwin stanton. he was one of the most disappointed not to have received the republican nomination that ultimately went to lincoln. and, actually with, lincoln had encountered him before the nominating convention, some six years earlier as fellow lawyers on a case if ohio. and he had asked stanton to walk to lunch with him, and stanton refused later telling a friend

that he did not want to be seen walking to lunch with that long-armed ape. well, fast forward six years, and that long-armed ape is now the president. and he is now his secretary of war. and a congressman comes in to lincoln's office from secretary of war stanton's office, and he says, hey, um, mr. president, secretary of war stanton has just called you a damned fool. lincoln paused, and he said, did he now? yes, he did. and he repeated it. lincoln said, hmm, well, stanton says that i am a fool, then a fool i must be, because he generally says what he means, and he generally means what he says. i will step over and see him. lincoln was known for a singular virtue: humility. which allowed him to set aside his own insecurities, his own feelings, his own need to be right and focus solely on how to navigate the existential crisis

facing his nation using the best and brightest of resources no matter how they made him feel. and i think a lot of people misunderstand this virtue. theyty it's self-effacement or lack of confidence. i think perhaps the best explanation or the best way to say it is that it's not thinking less of ourselves, it is thinking of ourselves less. it is having the most accurate view of ourselves possible and transmitting that view clearly to others. the picture you see up here is oliver cromwell. he was the general who led the 17th century english forces that overthrew the english monarchy and established a parliamentary democracy. probably the most powerful man of his generation and certainly the most powerful man at the time in his country. and in 1654 he sat for a painting. and the painter on the first round painted him as an idealized roman god. and he took one look at it, and he demanded that it be redone. you see, he had noticeable

facial warts, and you can see them up there. the painter had left them out. and he looked at the painter, and he said you will paint me just as i am, warts and all. and i think that is possibly the best explanation of humility possible. i know who i am, and i am just as i am, warts and all, and i am unafraid to transmit that accurately to others. and i think pursuing that virtue in the marines told us, taught me that pursuing that virtue means you have to ask for forgiveness often. you have to seek constructive criticism often and accept it willingly. and you have to be unafraid to transmit your knowledge of yourself to others just as you are. the next thing that the corps taught us was discipline. and a lot of people have a negative connotation of this. they think it means punishment. it wasn't always so. the word discipline originates from a latin word which means teaching or learning, and it

first entered the english language to refer to the systematic instruction that was given to pupils to train them in a craft or to teach them to follow a particular code of conduct or order. in this case marines taught us and what i believe discipline refers to when it refers to leadership, it is a virtue that keeps leaders on the straight and narrow, that helps them to adhere to written and unwritten standardsover behavior and -- standards of behavior and to to general morality. this picture is the picture of legendary polar explorer ernest shackleton's ship, the endurance. and his story stands as a testament to the power of discipline in a leader is and how that can affect a team. in 1914 he and 56 others left british waters to attempt the last great heroic feat of antarctic exploration, a journey across the continent via the south pole. but misfortune followed hard on their heels.

in january 1915, the endurance found itself frozen into an ice pack. the crew left their ship's berth and ultimately slept on the open ice itself. most of their provisions sank when ice crushed the ship. supplies were rationed, every man ate the same amount of food served to them in the same aluminum mug. they had the same three utensils. no man took more than his dues. shackleton himself went out of his way to do the menial chores that he asked of his men. he ate after they did. when it was his turn to serve the men food from a large pot, he went to every one of their tents and did so. when it was his turn to stand a four-hour watch, he stood it, and when it was his turn to strap himself into a sleigh and pull like a sled dog so they could move their camp from one location to another, he did. in large part because of his example, not a single man gave up, not a single man quit, and

after over a year stranded in antarctica, every one of his crew was rescued. he was an example of executional discipline. defined as strict adherence to the standards that we ask others to observe. there is another type of discipline. i would call it ethical discipline that a leader must observe. i will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do, sums it up well. and most of us aren't going to have to apply this code in life and death ethical decisions or navigate a complex right and wrong dilemma where our lives or our decision affects thousands. but all of us face smaller decisions like this every day. and because they seem lower in magnitude, they can seem lower -- lesser in importance. for example, does it really matter if i tell someone i've almost finished that presentation when i haven't really started?

does it -- do people really care when we tell them we'll handle something minor, and then we walk away from that conversation and forget all about it. do my little girls remember when i tell them i'll be at their dance recital? does my wife remember when i say i'm going to be home at 6:30 and then i'm not? the answer to all these questions and all of those little ethical questions that we ask ourselves is, yes, they remember. those little ethical failures over time make us, set the stage for larger ethical failures. and i suspect if we were to ask bernie madoff did you set out to be known as the greatest cheat and liar of all time, was that what you set your heart on to do when you graduated from high school, did you hope that your name would become a biword for fraud, he probably would have said, no. the problem was he did not apply

ethical discipline. he stated i made one decision once to hide a small loss, and decision after decision piled upon one another until all of these small decisions became a big one. the next thing i knew i'm being marched to prison in an orange jump suit, and my wife is wishing she never knew me. so i ask you, i encourage you as you think of how you lead, think of the small ethical decisions that you make every day. the next virtue that the marines told us to pursue intentionally was the virtue of excellence. and i think this picture here, dick and rick hoyt, exemplify that better than about anything else. when he was 37, dick hoyt -- the man pushing the wheelchair -- entered a five-mile race with his wheelchair-bound son rick. he was a former air force officer, flabby -- totally makes sense. [laughter]

sorry about that. i couldn't resist, i mean, i was a marine. he didn't know how he was going to run five miles. after all, the air force probably hadn't made him do that befo. [laughter] he certainly didn't know how he was going to do that pushing his son in a wheelchair. but he did finish. in fact, he finished next to last. and for an hour after the race, he lay on the floor gasping. he had no idea how he had managed to finish, and he was sure that his short and unhappy racing career was over. but during that hour his son rick typed out a message with his head. that was the only body part he could move. took him an hour to type it, and here's what he typed. dad, when i am running, i feel like i'm not even handicapped. and since that time dick and rick have run over 300 endurance races, and he ran them because he could do something that his son could not. and he ran them determined to give it his all no matter what

the outcome. and when you are training for a marathon or a triathlon that you know in advance you have no possibility of winning, that says something about you. from his determination something amazing was born which is inspiration to hundreds of thousands. he did -- dick did this because he had a gift that was given to him that was not given to his son, and he was going to do his best with that gift no matter how it turned out. and i would suggest to all of you that time is a gift. i have lost a lot of my buddies in war. and i think now i understand this gift a little bit better. when many of your friends and comrades do not have a tomorrow because they bled their lives out in a nameless street in a nameless city that no one back here has ever heard of, you start valuing every day just a little bit more. because you know that tomorrow is no longer assured.

you say to yourself things like my buddy whose widow i moved out of his house would love another day with his wife, but he's not going to get it. my buddy who was killed in a helicopter class would love another day with his kids, but he will never seep them again. -- see them again. but if i still live. and if i still live, then i have a gift. and so what am i going to do with the gift that i have been given? how am i going to use the time that so many of my friends wish they had but will never have again? how am i going to use it so that i can make sure that i earn it, so that i can make the most of something that i know they will never possibly have? how do you do this? i mean, how do you live each day like it's your last? i don't know exactly because it's -- even though i've been in combat, i can't conceive of what it is like to die. but i suspect it is doing something like dick hoyt does

which is giving his best and giving our best every day that we get up and have the opportunity to run the race that we call life. we can pursue the tasks that are in front of us without regard to how they will turn out with our best efforts because we know that each day given us brings a responsibility, and to do anything less than the best with the day that we have is a slap in the face to all of those living and dead who don't have what we have. we can understand with every right comes a commensurate duty. i personally lev in fear that -- live in fear that i will waste the day, the time that i have been given. and i was made to repeat as i lay in bed as an officer candidate this saying by my gunnery sergeant, and i didn't get it because i hadn't been to war. i was 21, and i was immature, but here's what he made us repeat, and i think i finally

get it now. as we lay in bed he made us repeat: today i have given all that i have, and that which i have kept i have lost forever. and i hope that at the end of days i can stand in front of my maker and say, sir, with what you gave me, i gave it everything i had. i hope that i am not weighed in the balance and found wanting. and i encourage you to do the same thing. today i have given all that i have, and that which i have kept i have lost forever. if you are going to do that, it helps to know why you are giving your best. [inaudible] nobel learned in the hard way. he learned that you need a mission that guides the course of your life, that shapes who you are and what you want to be known for. i learned in combat that it can bring out the darkest recesses in the heart of man and only knowing in advance i'd rather die than dishonor my faith or my men or my mission was the only

way to remain sane. albert nobel had the privilege of reading his own bitch ware. he was -- obituary. he was the inventer of dynamite. he created an industrial empire that spanned the globe, and his brother was touring a dynamite factory, and it exploded. albert nobel woke up the next morning, and he read what you see the headline of the parisian newspaper, and it said the merchant of death is dead. and he realized that no matter what he thought his mission was, everyone observing him thought that his purpose in life was to purvey death. and he wanted to be known for something else. and many people believe that it was reading that headline that unspired him -- inspired him to give the vast majority of his fortune to start the foundation that now gives out the nobel prizes, among them the nobel peace prize. i've thought a lot about mission and what is mine and how do i

make the most of my time here, and i think that, um, so that you can hold me accountable, it's worth sharing what i have thought about. i'm a christian, so i think my mission here is to reflect great credit on my faith, on my family and on my family name through my life and power, through my life and action, the nobility and power of my belief system. that is what does it for me. i encourage each one of you about what is it that you want to be known for, what mission are you on, what are you pursuing with your time and with your treasure, and when all is said and done, what is it you want written on your tombstone when you are laid into the ground? >> the final thing that the marines taught us was that there's a leadership model that works in all contexts. it works when life is on the line, it works when you are back in the barracks and it is peacetime, it is the servant leadership model that works. and these leaders are on high

demand and short supply in today's day and age because consistently subordinating your self-interests to the that of others is just not easy. and if you're at all like me, it is so much easier to focus on the perks of your position or the entitlements of your role than the needs of your people. but at the same time you want to purport that you're about something else because saying, hey, i'm in this myself j doesn't sound all that good. but i encourage you, never forget this: no matter what it is that you say, you reveal your values by the sacrifices that you make to uphold them. in this life we generally value something at exactly the price we pay for them. and if we cannot make a personal sacrifice for our beliefs, for our ethics, for our teams, for our missions, then all we are doing is giving these things lip service. our real treasure lies elsewhere. and anyone who cares to observe

our lives and the trade-offs that we make will know exactly what that is. so when i say servant leadership, what is it that i mean? well, it's simply -- it's simple. servant leadership is a model in which a marine puts finish -- a leader puts the mission first, the welfare of their team second and their own welfare a distant third. they look at themselves and say i exist to remove obstacles for my team so that they can accomplish a worthy goal. i do not exist to accrue glory or power or wealth or fame because, after all, naked we came into this world. and having seen a lot of funerals, i can assure you naked you leave it. you do not take anything with you. servant leadership demands that people observe what we do rather than what we say. it demands integrity, wholeness, consistency between word and deed, above all else it demands character. and lest wety this leadership

hard to -- this leadership hard to attain, i promise you it can be done. but it does take the patient pursuit of virtue, and it takes courage. allow me to tell a quick story about corporal jasonnh. he had participated in the iraq invasion in 2003, and he was scheduled to get out of the marine corps shortly after returning. but when it became apparent that the 12-man infantry squad he had led in 2003 would return to iraq in 2004, he extended his enlistment so that he could go back overseas and lead them in combat once again. and he told his mother reportedly that he just couldn't stand the idea of his guys going back to iraq without him. and in my mind that was his first great act of courage, because having left combat once and been recalled, i know that it is hard to volunteer to go back. when you know you are exactly what it is you are getting into when you go to war. but go back, he did, and lead

his men, he did. and on april 14, 2004, he and his men were patrolling when they came under fire. they were heading south to cut off their ambushers. they came upon a seven-vehicle convoy exiting the scene, and the rest of what i'm going to read to you is from the his citation for the pedal of honor. he and his team stopped the vehicle, and as they stopped the vehicles, an insurgent leapt out and attacked corporal dunham. corporal dunham wrestled him to the ground and saw the insurgent release a grenade, immediately alerted his fellow marines to the threat. without hesitation, corporal dunham covered the grenade with his helmet and body bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his marines from the blast. in an ultimate and sele of bravery in which he was mortally wounded, he saved the lives of at least two fellow marines. and unlike jason, most of us are not going to be asked to give the last full measure of

devotion for our causes or our people, but we are all guaranteed to make -- face hard choices and make hard sacrifices to uphold what we belief -- believe is right. we are all going to encounter a situation where it is going to be far easier to keep silent or to lie when the truth would be too painful or to look the other way when there are practices we know need to be called out. so at those points in time i would ask you to ask yourself a hard question. do i want to be brave, or do i simply want to avoid pain? here's what i think is so great though. i think that if we can do all of these things, if we can demonstrate morals that do not fluctuate with the time or with the circumstances, if we can demonstrate that we care far more about the patient acquisition of virtue than, say, the rapid accumulation of wealth, if we can lead by

serving others, then i think this is one of the best times in our country's living memory to be the people who raise our hands and say here am i. you have a need, choose me. i think this is a once in a generation chance to shape the course of our country and maybe even the course of the world. because leadership crisis presents great opportunities for great leaders. of and i think the world is hungry for great leaders. and i would encourage you to think about it, to think about the role that you can play. i, for one, am excited to do my best to try and rise to the occasion and to make a difference by leading well. and i encourage you as you think about the role you can play, think about pursuing virtue above all else. be hummel, model -- humble, model what you expect, do what you say you're going to do,

never take a single day for granted, enjoy the day that you have and give your best at it, pursue excellence for its own sake, know your mission and know what you cannot and will not trade off ever. serve your cause, serve your teams first, put yourself a distant third and take courage. because you will fail, and you will have to make hard choices. but you can and you will persevere. and in so doing you can help insure that this great experiment that we call america remains the best and the last hope of the world. i am encouraged to talk to you today. i am encouraged to see what we can do with our country, and i am proud to be called an american. thank you. [applause] you'r watching bookt,

nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> we had this incredible inability to digest information, process it and then operate. we started to get where we could be a little bit faster, but we developed a system called f3ea for find, fix, finish, exploit and analyze. that's a cycle you go through. you find somebody, you fix them in a location at a time now, you finish by capturing or killing, you exploit whatever you capture, you analyze that, and you learn from it. it's basically a learning cycle, learning and action. and we would do that. and we would go through that process, but it would be painfully slow because we were operating with different organizations, not all organic to mind, and differentncies,

intelligence agencies and what not. and this may surprise you, but not all parts of the u.s. government work together seamlessly. [laughter] so here we are as cycle, and we have these things what we call blinks between the parts. and so one element would find a target, but by the time the information got to the people who were going to fix it usually with a predator or something like that, time would have passed, and act rahs is si of information, fidelity would have passed. then it would be passed over to the raid force. again, you'd have a loss. it's like the game telephone where you whisper around the room, and it's unintelligible by about the fifth person. we're trying to do this things in that system. we said, this is madness. it's not going to work. so we started, we went on a campaign to fix that process, bringing in different parts of the organization, building our intelligence capacity, giving ourselves a mindset that was different before. and before it was as if each element did its part of the process be, then they could take

great pride. we succeeded, we did what we were told. and we wiped that clean and said nobody is successful unless the whole process works. definition of winningis the same for all of us, only if we win this fight. and that was quite a bit different than what we'd had. by the summer of -- things got really bad starting in late march of 2004 in the iraq, and that's when the country basically melted down. and we started operating as hard as we could in op tempo, operational tempo. it's how fast you can operate. and we realized the size offal zarqawi's network, that we were going to have to hit it a lot. and we weren't going to be able to hit it once a month. by august of 2004 we got up to 18 raids a month or about one every other night. and we thought we were moving at warp speed. i mean, we thought, literally, this is the most amazing thing we've ever done. we are the most efficient and effective special operations task force on the face of the

earth. we were. buwe were still losing. so we came to the conclusion that we have got to speed up more. and there had been this fixation on just going after the senior leaders of an organization, they call them high-value targeting, decapitation. and we came to the conclusion that that wasn't going to work. i mean, it was sort of simple. we started the war with the idea that if we got zarqawi, it would work out. if the key person's taken out, does it really get worse? i worked in the pentagon, it would have made it a lot better. [laughter] so we realized you've got to go after the people who do the work. the people who do logistics, pass information, build car bombs, communicate. you've got to take those out. and so we came up with a strategy, and i know philadelphia will love this, but i used to tell people it's like rocky balboa and apollo creed. we're going to hit them in the midsection, and we're going to hit them a lot.

so two years later same month, same force, same fight, we were doing 300 raids a month. that's ten a night. now, if you stop and you say, well, ten a night, that's a lot, that's impressive, that means every raid guy on the force is going on a raid at least one raid every night. every pilot's flying one or two raids every night. and these raids are not patrols. this is not a foot -- these are going in the door, somebody's getting shot. extraordinary. and to do that, though, you can't use previous systems. one, you g'vet to be able to bring in this intelligence on an industrial scale. you've got to be able to -- we got to the point where instead of the plastic bags of information on a target, we would start to exploit their computers, their phones, we would take biometric data. it would be pumped back to west virginia right from the target to see if we'd ever had that person before. and if we'd ever even had any

dealings with them. we would move the documents back, immediately scan them, send them back to multiple places in the u.s. and in theater, and everybody would be analyzing at the same time, and we would be trying to turn this to learn as quickly as we could. and we got to the point where we could hit three targets a might from the initial intelligence. we would find joe smith at 9:00 at night because we'd been looking for him. we would find out from what we got on that target about john doe. we might hit that at midnight, and we'd hit another at three in the morning. and the reason it was important to go fast is because terrorist networks repair themselves very quickly. as soon as -- if we were terrorists, as soon as mark is captured, pretty soon i'm going to hear about it. and the first thing i do is i move my location, and i change my -- all those things, connections that i have, and you call it cutouts because it moves to repair itself. so you've got to be quicker than they can repair themselves both

the hit targets and also quicker than they can promote new people up, develop new leaders. and over time we started seeing the relative age of leaders of al-qaeda in iraq go down and the relative effectiveness go down because of that. so the op tempo became the rocky balboa strategy of pummel it as fast as you can so it can't breathe. and then over time have the decisive e fact on it -- effect on it, which we actually did along with a number of other factors. >> watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week. activist eve ensler discusses her experience with women's rights violations in congo in her memoir, "in the body of the world." jim paul who worked for 25 years in the futures industry and wren can moynihan recount mr. paul's $1.6 million loss in what i learned losing a million

dollars. in strange rebels: 1979 and the birth of the 21st century, christian carroll, contributing editor at foreign policy magazine, argues that 1979 the most pivotal year of the 20th century. adrian raine from the university of pennsylvania presents new research on the correlation between brain functions and violent crimes in "the anatomy of violence: the biological roots of crime." and richard haas, president of the council on foreign relations, argues that the u.s. needs to focus on restoring its economic infrastructure in "foreign policy begins at home: the case for putting america's house in order." look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> we're very interested in -- >> [inaudible conversations]

>> he's in prison right now, isn't he? >> i put siegelman in a bag, because i went over it, and it's not that i had any, you know, personal friendship with -- [inaudible] i didn't. i'm just saying i didn't do it out of all i know don siegelman. it's a case i read. you know, when i was in prison, too, i read the rostenkowski book, mr. chairman, and i read that book and tried for the life of me to figure out how rostenkowski went to prison and the rest of the place didn't. i read it. i read what he did, and he had some chairs and things, and it was just -- [inaudible] nothing. the siegelman case is interesting because especially the fact that rove refused to, you know, give information. >> and i don't know why obama -- [inaudible] >> no, i don't know why somebody couldn't have -- [inaudible] at that time. it was a legal case.

but it was just a very, you know, fascinating deal. and, of course, abramoff was involved in the money raising. >> abramoff, when he came out, i went to one of his lectures, and i said how much money did you -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> yeah. $20 million. by the way, it's not -- [inaudible] when he got out. he said $20 million. >> to what end? this man has been in jail -- >> here's the kicker -- [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> he wrote about it in the book. he was -- [inaudible] here's the purpose -- >> please. >> because i -- the amounts of money, you see, siegelman wanted

the legalized gambling through the lottery. the mississippi casino owners were the ones who gave the $20 million. they didn't wt that. >> wow. >> the other thing is that the judge, the second judge -- [inaudible] >> fuller. >> he secretly owned -- [inaudible] the busdministration gave -- [inaudible] and nobody knew about it. so this goes to the heart of the military industrial complex when a judge who owns 44% of the company, 300 million in contracts, and nobody knew about it. >> i think we're going to come to your book signing. >> no, no. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] i didn't know him. i just found it very fascinating when i looked at the facts of

the issue of what on earth happened. how did -- and then, of course, abramoff who at rove's request spent all that money, i thought that was interesting. when i got out of morgantown federal prison as we lovingly refer in our family, the bush housing program at that time -- [laughter] i did something i swore i wouldn't do which was to listen to ellen rattner telling me that i needed to do radio. i said i don't need anything public. i just need to be quiet, and i need to sit around a little bit. she said, no, you have some experiences and some knowledge or working history of politics and government, so do it. well, the first show we did was tom harvin, ellen d it with me. and, of course, i knew who tom hartman was. i've got a lot of respect for tom hartman. i think today in washington you're to the left or you're to the right. and it doesn't matter how tom would be classified, he's fair.

and he knows journalism. and he's an accomplished author in other fields that i've had an interest to see some of his, of his books. so i was a little nervous, but we did the show. and it really went well, and then i continued to do the whole radio gig. did my own show for a little bit, bob ney news notes out of wheating, west virginia, with longtime friend howard monroe. and that was an interesting thing to do, but after a while i didn't like doing the daily so i continue to do talk radio, which i do to this day, and then i ventured over to india for a little bit. what do you do when you want to recharge your batteries? you go to india. i have a chapter in this book called "incredible india." and when i go over there, i stayed about five or seven minutes' walk from the dalai lama's residence. it's a mixture of the indians and the tibetans over there. fascinating place. it provided me the opportunity

to actually write this book because i was able to go over there for a couple of months, really focus on it and then come back. in between watching my granddaughter and some 12-step recovery program assistance that i do for some people, i was able to write the this book. and our editor, sherry johnson, was just absolutely amazing. ellen rattner, francesca's here tonight, changing lives press. i never thought i'd do a book. but my cousin, god rest his soul, francis wallace, wrote knute rockne. so i always told the republicans, he coined the phrase the gipper. and ronald reagan, that was h successful movie, okay? the one he was known best for. so i always gave my cousin credit -- sorry, ellen -- for electing ronald reagan. [laughter] but my cousin always told me you need to write a book. i just never thought i'd write this one or write it this way, this book. so i put a lot of thought into it. i didn't do the book at first, i

didn't want to do it, and i outline that in first. and then i did "60 minutes" with my former chief of staff. and neil and i greed to do it together, and i'll tell you why we did. we said we're going to have jack abramoff, neil and you. and it was better to have the two of us. it shows, i think, more of an hon the city factor. if i say this, neil could say, no, huh-uh, bob, or vice versa. so in my opinion having the two of us side by side was a better way to do that. e went to india then and for a one month trip and saw "60 minutes," actually, other there. and when i saw it, i watched jack abramoff, and i make it clear, jack did not do this to me. i did this to myself, period. i don't want sit here saying jack abramoff made me have a dinner. i made those decisions. but i watched him on those "60 minutes," and i could feel some empathy as rg been in prison, he was in prison. i feel empathy for anybody

that's done time. but beyond that i just wondered where jack was going with his version of history. and then when i heard him say he owned 100 meers and spent a million dollars, i said, well, i got the short end of that stick, i guess. [laughter] but i sat there and said i want to tell my end of it. i know the headlines are speaker boehner on this book, but i wanted to make it more than that. he's part of the story, and i told the story of abramoff because i get asked constantly by former constituents because i still live in ohio, i'm if parts of the old district, and i get asked all the time what happened to you? and this book tls very complicated story. it's just not as easy as, you know, visiting jack, having some dinners, going to scotland and here i go. it's a complicated story where i have my part, and then there's some other parts to it. so the perfect storm is sort of the way i put together, you know, exactly the outside influences, too, that came into help with the idiocy that i

created and the crimes that i committed. also in the book and very important to me, and i want to mention this, mek, because it deals with iran and our opportunity that we missed as a country to potentially have a deal where iran would have recognized israel, where iran would have disbanded hezbollah. i sent that deal to the white house, and they chose to ignore it, and maybe things would have been a little bit different. i wanted to state that fact of the mek what they were recently delisted and made legitimate, so i wanted to mention that because i think it was important on an international basis, and i was part of that. the other part in there is about morgantown federal prison. and, you know, i was a lawmaker, i became a lawbreaker, and i went into the prison side which was very challenging and fascinating. i sat with webb hubbel who was a high profile person who i first met in the back of the anteroom in the finance committee. webb was in handcuffs.

congressman mike oxley, the chairman, rightfully said remove the handcuffs. federal marshal said we can't do that, and he said you will hear. and he came out and testified on the whole whitewater deal. and that's how i met hubbel the first time. second time i was headed to prison. i just wanted to the go to prison. i was a self-reporter, which is like reporting for your own firing squad, and alan said you've got to meet webb hubbel. i said i just want to go to prison. i sat here i don't know how many hours with webb, three, four, five, and he walked me through how you survive from day one. and that was the best amount of time i spent. he also gave me insight as a former chief justice of the arkansas supreme court, former attorney general who went to prison. and he was very empathetic, webb was, to the plight of a lot of people in prison. and i walked out of prison not angry, and i didn't want walk out of -- i didn't walk out of prison thinking, oh, i was a former congressman.

i walked out of there feeling a bond with a lot people, and i need to tell that in this book, and i have. things are going on inside those walls. i don't expect anybody to have sympathy for me, right? but i have the ability to have a network. i have the ability to stand here tonight. i have the ability to be on television, to have writers here with radio and the print media, and i can, you know, write a book and tell my story. a lot of people don't have a voice inside those walls. and we are warehousing human beings. we are not rehabbing them, we are warehousing them. this government, and the current administration too, it has statistics that you hear about. they took the big drug dealers, and they put them away. i, ironically, became friends with people that were not the white collar criminals, but with the drug offenders. there's a lot of addicts in prison. they now become a statistic that the drug dealer was put away. they're addicts. they're not getting treatment. my own personal struggle being in recovery with addiction. and i have a message i think in this book, and i say it in the

beginning, that you don't have to be in politics and abuse substances to, you know, make your life go down. it can happen to anybody, i don't care what you do. i don't care if you're a waiter, i don't care what you do in your life's profession, a reporter, whatever you are. you can ingest substances into your body, you can lose your focus, you cannot pay attention to what you're doing, you can go down a path that'll cause you a lot of perm problems. so i put -- personal problems. so i put 12-step recovery information which i think is important in this book. and i come -- i put a couple of funny stories about the congress. and i give credit to some members of congress which both sides of the aisle in this book. a few, you know, funny stories, some things that will shock some people in this book about staffers. a little section on congressional spouses which is pretty nice, but, you know, they kind of run things, let's face it. i think we kind of know that. but i came to a conclusion in the book. i almost didn't write it, and i felt compelled to. is the barrel still corrupt?

what jack abramoff and i did and our staffs, you know, and that was the, quote, biggest scandal of, you know, of its time, etc. but what we did has been codified into a legal situation today. i, if i'm a lobbyist, can take any member of congress or a staffer, i can have a fundraiser. once we have the fundraiser, i can take you hunting, i can take you to vegas. some republicans went to a bondage club. at least they're getting a little bit, i don't know, personality. they had a fundraiser. either side of the aisle can do this. citizens united, i fought john mccain on campaign finance reform twice. his bill still was worthless, i'll still tell you that today. he made loopholes that you could drive mack trucks through. but at the end of the day with citizens united ruling and the lack of a true campaign finance reform bill at that time, you

have a situation today where a super pac comes along, well, we can pick on karl rove, or we can pick on george soros, whichever side of the aisle you want to skewer. but you have these super pacs, and they go after people. the average member to go after that needs $3 million. they take their staffer, they go across the street on federal time, and they get on the telephone to the dcc or the nrcc, either of the political parties, and they do that. that doesn't mean we've got bad members. they are victims of the system. i promise you, many members of congress would like this to change too. many members do not find it delightful to raise this money. some like it, but a lot don't. so there's a lot of good members. i don't want to make you think i'm saying there isn't. the barrel's still corrupt. jack abramoff and i going away and some staff people, you know, with felonies, it didn't change anything. it might have made people feel more comfortable, but it didn't

change things. so i put that conclusion there. and i end it with a quote i really like, and basically to paraphrase, it says, you know, i had a substance, i had an addiction. and today there is another addiction, and it's to campaign contributions. and they need an intervention. and it's the public. the public can do an intervention on the hill. it's a beautiful place, and they can make it even better. so i address a lot of issues in the book, and i hope it's not just, you know, looked at as one issue or attacking one person or something. i'm not a bitter person. i spend time with my granddaughter today, i get to go to india, i have a chapter on india, as i told you. i get to do radio with ellen rattner's stations, a lot of great people like tom hartman and people to the right, the left or the middle, they get their voice out there, and they tell people a story of what's going on in their government. it's important, the journalistic side of this is critical. so i'm happy. i'm not a person that's unhappy, and i'm angry, and i want to get

everybody. but there's some things in there i had to tell. i couldn't leave it out, and it's going to cause some heart burn, i understand that, but, you know, as my grandmother always said, this too small pass. she just didn't tell me it sometimes takes this damn long. so i want to thank everybody for coming. thanks. [applause] >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> well, coming up next on booktv, "after words." this week's quest host is jenna green of the national law journal. he talks with karen-up earth on her latest book, "chasing

gideon." in the book she explores the unanimous supreme court decision that granted indigent defendants who face jail time free legal counsel and 50 years of that decision's application. she explores the many reasons public defenders are often unable to provide justice to their clients. this program is about an hour. ..