about his work the untold story. and just past 11:00 p.m. ronald reagan. all of this tonight on book tv on c-span two. portions of the annual tech conference with app developers discussing the latest developments in information technology. here is a preview. >> there already that on the platform. many of you will pretend not to hear about this. it's an adult firm's --dash film star. it was extremely interesting. if you ask anyone in this room

are you serious. but if you were to ask if you can list your thoughts on the way here. it comes out really easily. you're actually seen a saying a lot about you. that is what comes out the margins. tonight it will air on c-span at 8:00 p.m. eastern time. this week on q&a the former secretary of defense robert gates he discusses the book the passion for leadership on change and reform for 50 years of public service.

>> robert gates in the house on foreign relations recently have a column that the next president of the united states was on the top for leadership. what would you want the next president to take away from your book on leadership. >> i think surrounding himself or her self with really strong capable independent minded people empowering them and delegating authority to them and holding them accountable if they are successful reward them in whatever way they can and if they fail fire them i think that too much of what we always think about just the president and the reality is

the best presidents in the greatest presidents had been willing to recognize they weren't the smartest person in the room and to surround themselves with people they thought were smarter than them. in lincoln and both roosevelt and truman and eisenhower and reagan were all really to bring strong people into their cabinets listen to them integrate their views with their own they didn't mind if that person disagreed with them and expected candid advice from them. i think that is really important message for a president. >> it is really your life on the screen and it starts in wichita kansas in 1943 what i'm looking for as we go through this for you to tell us at what point you started

thinking about leadership you have your ba from william and mary. the cia started in 1996. national security council 74-79. and you are nominated but withdrew as cia director and 87. here the national security council. and then we have cia director back in 1991 when you were confirmed. you did academic work speaking and then you were the interim dean of the dean of the george bush school of government and 99 for a couple of years. president of texas a and m. defense secretary. where along the way did you learn the different things in this book. i write in the last chapter of the book that my first leadership position was as a

patrol leader and boy scout troop 522. i write that nothing teaches you leadership skills like being in charge of a bunch of 11, 12 and 13 years old and trying to get them to do what they don't want to do and you can't make them do it and you're only a year or two older than they are. and then 15 i have the old and -- the only formal training i ever had that was at film out scott ranch. that was my last formal training in leadership but as i say in the book i had been learning for 55 years ever since then. i don't think that i've always had from my very first day at cia a desire i've always have a feeling of how things could be made better and i don't

know if i would articulate it as wanting to take leadership but i saw where a good organization could be made better. and broke my first essay on how we could improve soviet analysis when i had been on active duty at the agency agency for two years. i'm sure my superiors were unimpressed but i felt that way about each organization that i've led and i say in the book i love them all. i always thought they could be better than they were. i've always been somebody who is pressing for change into make improvements and really from the earliest days. >> you tell the story in the book the confrontation you head with rick. texas. >> when i became the finalist for president of texas a&m he

called me and basically tried to push me to withdraw my candidacy and i've always heard that he promised the job to someone else. have taught at a&m for about ten years i think. i finally just told him and he said he was going to appoint all of the regions it was i can be pleasant for me if i decided to take the job. i said i've heard a lot of them didn't want me to come and i just let the board of regents make that decision. i later told my wife what i had been going through with my mind at the time i had been facing off with the deputy director of the kgb when he was first elected to the texas

house and if he thought he could intimidate me he was sadly mistaken. what impact did that have on you. he did go ahead and appoint those. six of the nine regions had been regents had been appointed by george w. bush at that time so five of those voted for me. his three appointees voted against me and one courageous' soul obscene. he and i maintained outward stability i think most people didn't know that we didn't have a great relationship and i will say this while i was there he mostly left me alone. he tried to force me into hiring a friend of his the vice president for student affairs.

i have artie extended the offer to someone. and i refuse to do it. the next board of regents meeting they changed the rules to make it so that the board of regents had to approve any such appointment in the future. you make a point about senator bob byrd in your relationship with him. he was a very interesting guy he was always very friendly to me i remember one story one time he was referred to by the washington post and others as the king of pork and he was pretty good at taking federal money home to west virginia. just about everybody -- everything i say is named for him. they wrote an editorial complaining that they have decided to build a

billion-dollar logistics facility in the basic thrust was that he had forced them to build in west virginia. i knew for a fact that cia knew the only way they could get the money for the facility was if they built in west virginia and he helped them. it was cia's initiatives not senator byrd's. the story ran and i was director of cia at the time i called him up i said would it be alright if i wrote a letter to the editor. seen that the story was on and setting of the facts right. i will never forget there was a long pause he said you would do that for me i said it's only fair and those are the facts. i wrote the letter and post publish it. and i called him the day it

appeared just to make sure he sought in the senator of oklahoma who was also close to him told me after that pretty much anytime my name came up he would say that mister gates is an honorable man. >> what was a lesson? >> first of all people forget people remember slates and insults but i think what they don't understand in washington well enough today as they also remember kindnesses. they remember treating people decently and that people who are on the receiving and never forget it. and i think too much emphasis is placed on negative relationships when in fact there are lots of opportunities day-to-day where you can do the right thing by someone may be a small thing

maybe somebody works for you or somebody you work for and they won't forget it. >> we started this program in the same format 27 years ago. and here's something i've never seen i want to put on the screen. it's a picture from the book and we have the word sag circle. when you would normally had that. hundreds of times why. i tried to balance it. first of all it's 2016. there are a lot of women in leadership positions who are about to assume leadership positions i wanted to make

clear particularly the young people that these leadership opportunities are going to be open for everybody and that they apply regardless of your gender. >> did anyone comment on it since the book was out? >> they used the word throughout the workbook. a sergeant by the name of i wanted to find out what that point was all about. one of the points that i made at the beginning of the conversation was the importance of empowering subordinates and getting them responsibility. so sergeant easton worked in my outer office in the reception area in my senior military assistance decided there would be value in allowing these young men to

participate in my overseas trips by doing advance work by going there ahead of me and helping to prepare my visit including in iraq and afghanistan. so he sent sergeant easton out to do do that work. and he was meeting with a kernel who have his own ideas about what he wanted me to do mainly of the at the colonel wanted me to sit and watch a bunch of powerpoint briefings. and he knew from me directly that i wanted to spend time with the troops and so he and the colonel went back and forth a little bit and one had a full eagle on his shoulder and the other one had some stripes and finally jason walked over to the colonel's desk and he picked up the phone he said one of the two of us can call the secretary of defense and have the call taken immediately and the colonel smiled and he said i get your point he did it jason

the way. when you were testifying for the confirmation committee for the cia director you have this clip with your relationship with senator metzenbaum. i want you to tell what this point was about. >> what and bother me from the inception bothers me now. whether you are leveling with us whether you were trying to gild the lily a little bit. >> did you get that. he could've answered could have answered our questions. but you didn't do that. i have difficulty with that. >> at times they were asking me what i thought mister north have been referring to when he would write something and that's where i would answer that i did not know it was far for me to know what was in his office.

it was a long hearing they were testifying at that time for about ten straight hours and a big part of testifying on the hill is not answering the question but figuring out what the question is because so often the member of congress is making a speech i remember the senator at one point read a very long and complicated page and i was just exhausted and lost the bubble i couldn't figure out what the question must and i said with all due respect senator i'm tired what's the question and he didn't know what the question was an 18 came up and sat down and they were going through and another

aide came he ended up reading the whole thing over again i found the question in their that i thought i could answer but testifying in front of congress is always an interesting experience. he spent two years in the service and as we saw a lot of years in this town. what you think of congress? >> the thing that concerns me is that it's changed so much since i first came to washington 50 years ago when i came to washington and i will use the senate as an example because i remember the names better our politics has always been poor i came to washington in 1976 so we were in the middle of the vietnam war. within half a dozen years we would be involved in watergate so things had never and smooth here in washington but there

were always on the hell a number of people both democrats and republicans who would reach across the aisle to get business done. they would pass appropriation bills to pass welfare reform to pass legislation that moved the country forward. and i called that body of people the bridge builders they were building bridges across the aisle. in the sad thing is nearly all of those people are gone the bill bradley's the jack dan fourth. they were probably two dozen or more senators who were in that category you can actually get things done and the

committee chairs had real authority and when they committed to do something it would get done. and most of those people are gone they didn't get defeated for the most part they just got frustrated and fed up and left on their own accord. a good example of this is a 1994 i got a call from david warren and he'd been offered the presidency of the university of oklahoma and he was wrestling with brother to lead -- leave the senate and take this. finally i said at the end of the conversation i think it's very easy when you're daydreaming on a plane or your driving are you daydreaming about what you can accomplish in the u.s. senate or what you can accomplish at ou and he laughed and he said you're right. he took the ou job. i think this is my concern that it's not just the politics are polarized it's

that the people who had in the past been able to come together and move forward so many of them are gone and so if you are left into good example of this is the absence for years of regular appropriations bills just something simple as funding the government from year to year. under the last ten years only to years had they have and enacted appropriation at the beginning of the fiscal year and that i was nine and ten years ago. so for the last eight years we had have continuing resolutions or sequestration but no regular order of business one of the biggest planes ever built in the united states and you point out in your book that you wanted to retire some of this it's a very big plane in congress didn't want to do it

the air force wants to retire it because it eats money and they have some of these original c-5 a's they require an enormous amount of money to maintain and some of them never fly they will drag them around the tarmac at the air force base said that the wheels don't go flat that's the only time they ever move but because they are a part of national guard units or air national guard units members of congress in which they are located won't let them be decommissioned matter how much money they cost the air force and they can't perform any kind of mission at all. >> how often does this happen the recent testimony you have the leadership of the pentagon telling the congress that they have 24% of the facilities the

military has in the u.s. are access to need but the congress won't let the military shut them down and say that overhead what is a solution to that? >> i think it's whether you have one of the long drawn out you point at the commission to look at military facilities and then you present the congress with an up-and-down vote on a list basis it takes years and it's very expensive. my view is the congress ought to authorize the secretary of defense to be able to close the facilities when the service will testify.

when i was secretary in 2009 most of my predecessors canceled if they were lucky one or two or three major procurements. when dick cheney was secretary under the first senator busch. senator bush. he canceled the a 12 fighter and that was a 1992. and maybe 91 and the litigation for that ended just two years ago and it was owned by the marines which of course is still flying. congress would not let him kill it. i cut 36 programs they built out the completion and they would've cost the taxpayers about 300 $30 billion. i got 33 of them approved by congress in the first year and i got the rest the following year.

partly it was i involved that. these were very important programs most of them. the services have fought for them but i involved the service leadership in all of these decisions we have many meetings. we the opportunity to make their own suggestions it was no longer needed. sometimes they put them in their budget because they knew if they didn't the congress what so they just conceded the matter. leave the politics to me. but then i announced because i have all of the service chiefs on board none of them leaked and none of them went to the hell behind my back to try to get the congress to reserve those decisions. i publicly announced all of

these cuts will congress is out of town and i had two weeks before they came back on a really strong on the ground swell of public support for what i've done in the media and elsewhere. when i arrived back in town. there was so many of these programs it was hard for them to make deals with each other like they always use to i have the threat of a very strong threat of a veto if they put things and they didn't want. it ultimately is productive. i think one of the things about my book, duty, that surprised a lot of people was

how negative i was towards the congress toward the congress because i had have a very productive relationship with them and very cooperative so i think i just exercise at that enormous amounts of soft discipline. the whole time i have a job. i will say in the last two or three months my discipline began to slip a little and there were a couple of occasions when i got pretty sharp on the hell and i was probably her of the reason i knew it was time to leave. >> one of the things you talked about the book was fired people. i want to go back 2007 this is you announcing the resignation. i want to talk about that in the idea of letting them resign. let's watch this. i had two announcements to make. first earlier today the

secretary of the army offered his resignation i have accepted his resignation. under secretary of the army the acting secretary until a new secretary is in place. i think dr. harvey for his distinguished service to the department into the nation. second, later today the army will name a new permanent commander for the walter reed medical center. it must have its new leadership in place as quickly as possible. i have disappointed that some in the army had not appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to outpatient care some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging in to addressing the problems. as you know you have acknowledged that some people think you're you are cold when it comes to firing explain your philosophy of firing someone.

as part of my view of improving organizations i am willing to hold people accountable and i think that even when i was at young cia officer whenever there was a problem and always seemed like the people low down on the totem pole were the ones that got punished and superiors who should have known about the problem and should have dealt with the problem escaped unscathed. i told myself then this is back in the 70s that if i were ever in a position of authority that was not the way it was going to be. i was gonna go out of my way to find a scapegoat or something but if i came to the conclusion that someone had not taken the problem seriously enough or have made a big mistake that they would

in fact be held accountable. what i had tried to do throughout my career and i did this at cia on texas a&m and i did in the defense department. most of these people are good people and they've given good previous service so i tried not to humiliate them i tried to deal with them in a manner that preserved their dignity so i would always give them the opportunity to resign.

>> what's unusual, is people losing their jobs because they didn't do the job well enough. or that they had made a serious mistake or that they had failed, in some way. so, when i find that a problem like we had at walter reed, frankly a couple of senior army people tried to pass that off of a couple of n.c. o's not doing their job. which just inblamed me.

they should be held accountable. >> how often did you fire someone face-to-face? >> every person i relieved or fired i did face-to-face with the sole exception when i fired the chief of staff for the air force and the secretary of the air force over mishaps in our nuclear weapons program. there i intended to do it face-to-face. but, news of what i was doing, was beginning to leak and they were out of town. so, i asked admiral mullen to talk to the chief of staff, and he was chairman of the joint chiefs, and, was going to be in the same place as the secretary of the air force, so i had them do it, face-to-face. when i decided that, i had to

relief the commander, i flew, to sit down with them face-to-face. this is not something that -- it always bothered me about presidents. i only, as best as i know, only two of them, i ever heard, fired people face-to-face. gerald ford and jimmy carter. everybody else had a hatchet man. but i always felt it should be done face-to-face. >> another incident, where you were talking about, and they want to know, what you do about this, when it happened, here is the general, this this is a facm point, before the iraq war started where he talks about the number of troops needed, in iraq, if we go in there, and

this would have been back in february 2003 the war started, and, give us some idea, for an occupation of iraq following the successful completion of the war. >> i would say, that, what's been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousands soldiers are probably, figure that, would be required. we're talking about post hostilities, control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant with the kinds of ethic tension that's could lead to other problems, and, ground force. >> you weren't there, was he fired because of that statement.

>> as you say i wasn't there. what i have heard was that he wasn't fired so much as just sidelined. and, cast into the outer darkness, for the remainder of his term. >> was he right? >> well, one of the things that i think, that it's not written into law, but, it is a practice and it is a question, that, the senate armed services committee asks of every senior officer who comes before them, to testify, that is if we ask will you give us your professional military judgment on any given question? and the answer is always yes. and, i put what the general did, into that category. so i had officers, including the chairman, who would go up to the hill and say things that, the white house, the president

really didn't like. but, i defended them, because, i thought they had a responsibility, to, in preserving their integrity to answer the questions, that they were asked, they needed to be truthful, in offering that opinion. frankly it's a tool in the hands of the congress, to try and drive a wedge between the profl mill their and the political leadership, whether it is the secretary or the president. but even being aware of that, i think sometimes, i hold some of the members of congress more responsible for some of these episodes because they know they're putting the officer in a terrible position and only because of the integrity do they know they'll get the answer.

so, i'm more inclined to blame the person who is posing the question than the officer. i had a number of cases like that. both president bush, and president barak obama, chew on part he is of me and i told them, that's their their responsibility. >> 8 presidents did you meet them all? >> i never met lyndon johnson. >> other those years, who was, most angry with you, at any given time and why? >> oh, i think, i think president barak obama and, it was because we had a difference in, i think that the issue over which we, first of all, let me say, he was really good about letting me be honest with me and

push back on him when i disagreed. he never cast me into the outer darkness. he never should beed me or stopped talking to me. he, i think he valued the candor, and, so i have always given him credit about his patience and willingness to hear me out. i think that probably, over don't ask don't tell and it was over a difference in strategy of how to implement it. in particular, he wanted me as part of getting a federal judge, had, in california, had ruled don't ask don't tell unconstitutional. that meant that the law was a goner, right then, unless we got a stay of that order, from the 9th circuit court.

and the president was very unwilling to seek the stay. he wanted to go ahead and get rid of don't ask, don't tell. and i said, you really can't let this be down by an act of a single judge or your order this needs to be down by the support and consent of congress. i'll seek the stay, in the -- i'm direct the attorney general to seek the stay but you have to suspend application of the law. and i said, mr. president, i can't do that. there's either law or no law. you're the constitutional lawyer, but i have an obligation to, i took an oath to fulfill, to obey the constitution and obey the law and i can't do that. and finally, we, it was pretty tense. and finally said i won't make you do anything, you don't feel is right.

but it was very clear to me, he was very angry with me. as it turned out, we did the review, we learned, that three quarters, two-thirds of the military had no objection to changing the law, and, having gays serve openly. part of that two-thirds were people who thought it would lead to an improvement. i think it paved the way for the smooth introduction of don't ask, don't tell. a lesson from the book, we surveyed 400,000 troops. 150,000 mill favor spouses. so they felt like we respected them enough to ask them, what problems do you foresee? how do you think about this? so, this was really the first time ever, that we had taken a

survey to figure out what they really thought. some members of congress said you're doing a plen what site. no, the military never takes a vote what we do but i do want to know what they think. you like task forces. and you call them i'll low busters. you say you were in 61 meetings that lasted 1-8 hours. talk about task forces and how you have used them. >> a lot of people -- for a long time i bought into the definition of a committee as a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured, and, strangled.

and i found, and, all three of the places that i led, the communication up-and-down generally goes pretty well. but communication, is almost always very poor laterally. >> one part doesn't really communicate with another part. except at the very top. so, my view was, if you get people out of their normal environment, and where they're not under the eyes of their supervisors or not compelled to defend their home turf, that you can tap into the creativity and the talent that you have, in getting ideas on how do we make this place better? but the key is, making sure you appoint the right kind of person as the head, somebody who not only can move it to a good conclusion, but make sure that consensus isn't the objective. the objective, is what are some

really bold proposals to move us forward. but also a person chairing it who can be a defender of the recommendations and the institutions, so you want someone respected enough that they have clout within the organization. and then, perhaps the most important thing, or two most important things, very short deadlines, and then disband them. as i was writing in the book unconstrained task forces are a danger. >> how hard was it to ruiz the budget by 180 million. over ten years. >> yes, 5 to 10 years. part of it was -- was actually a budget exercise that was i think unique. i told the services, we cut 80 billion from the department of defense, more broadly, and we returned that had to the treasury.

the other 100 billion i told the service, to find those cuts, through consolidating headquarters, removing programs. and just tightening up. way told the services, was, we need to do better at cutting overhead so we can use the money to strengthen our military capabilities. we're wasting money on overhead. headquarters, too many contractors. here's the deal, if you cut x. dollars out of your overhead and you make a good case, on how you could use that money to strengthen military capabilities, i'll give you the money back. and they did. they cut the overhead, and then when used it to buy more aircraft and ships and do more things, in terms of military capabilities. i think there's room to do more of that.

>> is the department of defense ever been audited? >> well, in different ways by different people. but, when it comes to a formal general accepted accounting practices, the answer is no. and, department has been working for years, to get itself into a position of where it knows where all the money is going and has that documented and can present it in formal accounting practices. do we know where the money goes? yes. does huge, do huge amounts of money just disappear into the ethier and nobody knows where it went? no. the congress, and inspector general. are looking at us. i think that there isn't the

lack of having what would be called gap practice's auditing, i think doesn't mean that the department's spending or records are out of control or useless. what it does mean, in a formal accounting sense we have fallen short. the service have been making a big effort to try and get that right. >> i wrote a bunch of things down from the book. you say how you became an advocate for greater france parenty. there's too much that's being kept secret in the government, that, the department of defense leakes like asivesive. as i write in the book i spent

my live, in c.i.a. and defense department, in an ocean of secrecy. i had clearances i had forgotten about for programs i had forgot existedded and so on. at the end of the cold war when i was director of central intelligence. i came to believe very strongly that, the american people had given c.i.a. a pass on a lot of things because of this conflict with the so viet union. and i believe that after the ends of the cold war we were going to have to be more open about what we did and why. to help them understand why intelligence was important to the government and presidents. and, so, i committed to release de classify all the estimates,

c.i.a. had ever done on the soviet union, and de classify details, on covert actionses, to make some more senior officials available to the press and for open hearings on the hill. i felt the same way in the department of definite. now, sometimes the transparenty isn't to the public but internal. they say if you only knew what i know -- you know why i decided. >> that portrays somebody who is arrogant or insecure. i found, in being transparent about what i was trying to do, as director of central intelligence, and defense, inside the building, there were no secrets, that it was a strength. so, when i had all these task

forces, i would, when those task forces gave me their reports, i made them widely available in c.i.a. and intelligence. when i would draft at decision memo, i would make that draft available. it seemed to me, i'm sitting up there, on the 7th floor, and if some gs 13 is going to have to implement it, he may have a better idea of how to do it than i have. i want to hear that. if they thought that i could reframe this, in a way that would make it better, i wanted to know that. in the defense department when we were cutting programs or fighting two wars, if people had ideas, that they wanted to share, i wanted to hear it. and i wanted them to know what i was trying to do, at the same time. so, my experience both as director of central intelligence, and as secretary of defense. and also, at texas a&m.

i remember my first staff meeting, on the budget. and, i invited the speaker of the senate and the chair of the president of the student body in and i said this isn't c.i.a. we don't have any secrets here. so my experience, in all three places was the transparent six build trust, and it reassured people that there weren't hidden agenda today's, and it made people feel that they were a part of the process. which of the presidents, did yoy on a day-to-day basis? >> i would have to say george hw bush. i was assistant to the president, and deputy national security adviser from january

1989 until november 1991. and, first of all -- he's just an amazing human being. good humor. open. eager to hear people's views. willing to banter back-and-forth and have a debate. willing to see his own people debate. but he was also a -- an amazing time. i joined, it, from indiana university to do my bit in the cold war. so i go to the white house, with him, in 1989, and we have the liberation of eastern europe, germany and nato. victory in the cold war, the collapse of the soviet union. i was spending 2, 3, 4 hours a day. traveling with him. because he wanted either the general or me with him. it was just an amazing time.

we knew we were making history everyday. he was so good at it. he managed so well. everyday was exciting. he made it also fun. >> i want to run a clip, it's about a minute long. a man named mike love chron. he was a staff member in the budget committee and he looked at your book, duty, the first book, your second book, and then analyzed you, here, after 2014. so what the republican, what's a democrat? >> well, i think, to dispose first of gates, he is an ideal logical operative of the permanent redome, that exiforts whether you are a democrat or a republican, in the oval office. these people pose aztec na

accurates. as expert's natural security or, for that matter, like larry somers, they pose as nonpartisan experts on economics, and fiscal policy. but, in reality, they are all deeply ideological. they believe in military force abroad. then in the washington consensus or neoliberalism, or free market style at home. >> you used to work for john kasich. what do you think of the analysis. >> i guess i have to say i disagree. i think that, first of all, if -- when he lumped me in with people saying that we were for theoff military force abroad, he clearly didn't read the last

chapter of duty where i expressed the view that i felt the american presidents had become too willing, to use force, in resolving international problems. and that theoff force had become too easy for american presidents. so, it's in writing, that i have a very different view than he just described. in terms of croneny capitalism, i don't know what that means for somebody who's been in the national security arena. i don't know what his bed is, but, i don't think -- i don't recognize the person he describes and i don't think most of the people who worked with me either. >> a couple years ago he wrote a piece and it is dated. but said that there were 30 generals that were on the boards of the top-ten defense contractors. x. generallals.

what do you think of that trend. >> i think it's a concern. i have turned it down. the only board of directors that i serve on, is starbucks. i think people have to be more sensitive to the appearances of things. but i think you can take it too far. for example, we have reached a point where the ethics ruled, are so strict, that it makes it very difficult, if you take defense industries as a example. if you work in the defense industry, if you know how it works, and how the contractors play the game and you have worked for one of them, chance

are you're not going to be allowed to become a senior official, in the department of defense under the current ethics rules. so, what what do you end up with? academics or hill staffers or people who have no real world experience in defense contracting. it seems to me that through transparency or blind trust, there should be a way for people who know what they are doing, to be able to come to work for the government. without people thinking that they're just feathering their nest for the future. in terms of -- i think to a degree you can reverse that. i think for a defense industry, having a general officer who has real world experience, in how those products are used brings real value. i think that, retired officers,

just need to think about appearances, because, what i'm trying say, i don't think one size fits all. i don't think there should be a blanket prohibition on this. but i think people do need to be senseitive to whether there is the appearance after vicious circle of people moving in-and-out of government into defense industries. do you know how many you sold of duty? >> i think close to a half-a-million. >> what surprised you about that experience of duty? what was the reaction that you didn't expect? >> i think that the -- the thing that surprised me the most was

how well it was received by current and former members of the military. that it gave them an insight into the decisions that affect their lives and, to be honest, made them reassured them that the person who was in charge of the department really cared about them as individuals and the well being of them and their families. i was prepared for the usual washington hub busch when it first came out. i was struck by the fact that the obama white house never said a negative thing about the book. >> get any reaction, from the president. >> no, i sent a copy to

president bush and, so i -- i think that, i think most people thought it was pretty fair. >> what was more interesting to write, and how much of it did you where i yourself, the duty i wrote it, that's one of the things that i have been proudest of, of duty, i did it all myself. none of the reviews or anybody to this point has pointed out factual error. but, i wrote them both myself. duty was more an intake grations of information and documents, and, it was a lot of things to pull together and put together a story. this book, passion for leadership is really all out of my head. just based on the experiences

that i have had, starting 50 years ago. >> are you going to do another book. >> the publisher is talking to me, i'm not sure i'm ready to have another baby. >> if you did, what kind of subject would you write about? >> take on more of a policy oriented subject. >> our guest has been robert m. gates, the block is a passion for leadership. thank you very much. >> thanks for having me ♪ ♪ tomorrow, tammy baldwin of

wisconsin. she talks about her career and wisconsin political history. "q and a" starts at 7 p.m. each week night through the enltsd of august. >> coming up, books focusing on issues of the 60s,70s. 80s. next, witness to the revolution, and, 67 shots. kent state and the ends of american innocence. >> eruption, the untold story of mount st. helens. and jacob, on his book, on ronald reagan. >> now, a look at the political situation. she talks about her book,