>> monday september 26 is the first presidential debate live from new york about between him

through to

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to see president bush. eleven end with president reagan not 1.increase bat was a surprise. and later i remember then

introduce me to the first faugh lady to talk about all the commanders in afghanistan to say he had exaggerated my role to say that someone is looking to have that background and knowledge and and commitment to the united states. >> but he suggested just to write a memoir? why? >> because the president's

style of leadership was one that he selected a the people to give the person abroad mission and kill and to say how why did some of the things. and they told me that to because there are some things they have to do in the initial days been to be communicated said is just one interesting memoir to do

where the rubber meets the rug so to speak n then unusual characters with a lot of stories end of book of those characters and events that would take place in. >> to put up on the screen your background to go back at 1985 with a special adviser to undersecretary of state for policy planning the director of strategy doctrine at the rand corporation and then ambassador to afghanistan

and to the united nations. of all of those jobs which was the most interesting? but it was some rewarding and then to stand up to the soviet union for because

they have a doctrine but then that is a huge achievement and that will contribute to that and then to abandon afghanistan to feel bad we have done together but then i was reluctant to accept a job but then i said mr. president and what do i do that you want to send me back?

he laughed why don't you go with the presidential on for a? with the special envoy of 9/11 and then read did a lot with say relatively easy and rewarding job. >> the names soleil, made karzai but all these names comedy did you know, before this happened? >> but from when we were in

school together. >> that was the most shocking experience of my life than there were attempts to kill me in the most shocking coming through afghanistan that i never left afghanistan and then that cosmopolitan city by comparison in the nettle of the summer and not to

operate a shower or a bathtub and could not sleep the first night and to see that vast city with all kinds of people and it anastasia annette town of northern california and i had known each other before at the american university in beirut so i have known way over 40 years.

>> just building on the dates where did you finish high-school class. >> in california and 1967 but then i went back to afghanistan with another six months i had to go to school >> your next agreed? >> dave bachelors from the university in beirut -- beirut. >> 1972. then i got a master's from american university in beirut and in the of ph.d. from the university of chicago 1979. >> 12 sure you video.

>> tad differing risks with the central america in the persian gulf war and in such cases and many of the alliance and as well as sharing the burdens with us. >> one of the great nuclear strategist with one counter

and getting ready to get the grades and study hard to anticipate and after school started i was taking a class on comparative politics and

and when i run into my friends indulge hall at the international cat house and to come back to the dorm to listen to this professor with those classical and nuclear wars. and when he talks about president kennedy he calls him jack or kissinger henry. and bb just enjoying listening to them. and to set with the back of the class and then to talk about the of possibility of

a nuclear war. so any 1.and is in that a permanent peace at any time? said then we get to permanent peace at that point. what was my name? he said i want to talk in said he has to take my seminar rather than of the class. i told him i wasn't even taking his class but for the rest of history i took all

of his glasses. with the area of interest a nuclear strategist and dash a work with him of the adviser of the health department and some projects of what i have done because the government classified it and wasn't just a citizen so i could not read my own work again for a while and tall i had clearance is. so a brilliant man and the piece of of world of the second strike with the

nuclear equation of the soviet union the requirements of the second strike and were tarred including visiting iran and the shah because they were concerned about the nuclear program at that time. i learned a lot from him in to work on terrorism but that is the attack on pearl harbor. >> paul will fall when its and this man married his daughter. watch this. >> you dedicate your part of

the book who was he? >> a great man. probably the single most significant of the strategic thinking of the postwar period from the research university professor at the university of chicago he was trained in mathematics and logic and was extraordinarily rigorous and always asked the question. >> what would he have thought of afghanistan or iraq quick. >> with the iraq the first time and was working at the pentagon there was kuwait and we successfully pushed

salaam saddam hussein out of kuwait. i used to get calls at that time catbird very persistent of when he became convinced of something to call anyone and everyone at all levels to keep pushing his point of view. and he thought at that time that the united states should have pursued saddam hussein and to bring about change by enabling iraqis by helping them not only with arms the firepower effectively employed.

and he would call me with the andersen that they are blowing it. that was uh combination of u.s. airpower to solve of problem in the enduring way. so let me if icu -- advise you. but the chairmen of colin powell that what they have suffered with the morale of the armed forces, they have done a great achievement and with so law-enforcement if

you tell them then they will not be of your prescription of your ideas. so i will never tell them anything but what i have told u.s. an opportunity by stopping where they have. sign i am sure they have been very critical not in terms of the objective to overthrow saddam hussein because he was a high style but how we did it those questions were very rigorous in his questioning and i suspect it would propose a different strategy.

>> you talk about telling stories and want to get some of these and but the time when the prime minister of iraq was going to hang saddam hussein where were you and what role did you play? >> it was around christmas time i had taken a few days off and left iraq. i was ambassador to iraq at that time. yes. i got a call from the person that i had left behind, margaret. and she said the prime minister had called her and wanted us to turn over

saddam hussein's to them to enforce the judgment of the port which was that he should be hanged. but i was concerned about the timing because the islamic celebration along to visit mecca was imminent. so i said let me talk to maliki and i said are you sure mr. prime minister that you want to do it that quickly? because the islamic gathering takes place and it is a time of festivities at

that time as prisoners you are part of those festivities based on islamic tradition. he argued with me about exactly when the festival begins because base celebrate one day purses the others and he also said they had information that the extremist would take over a few schools to bargain for saddam hussein so the sooner rico with the problem the better. so i said but treetop to my management in washington so

i talked to dr. rice to was the secretary of state and the national security adviser on the phone and leave pointed out the risks of antagonizing in the islamic world and why we needed the support for iraq because of the composition of the population with a significant number of the cities to make the recommendation difficult and then they told me that we should differ to the prime minister of iraq that the country was sovereign and then after you describe that the and the potential risk

thomas of the night told the folks in baghdad to turn him over. >> how long did it take to execute quick. >> a few hours. >> but maliki was shia. so what is the difference but nobody has ever really need to find the difference between the two. >> about 98% they are the same. but the fundamental difference is that move was the legitimate successor to the profit so who should have succeeded him? she had -- the shi'ah believe the sun in lot of

the profit it was muhammed all leave the he was the first and was married to the profits daughter and his father's name that they should be the successor. but this division started right after the death of a profit subjectivity of people had the right to appoint or silk - - select a successor because that was part of the caliphate that is what they were talking about to reestablish but

basically that is the ruler. so that means the states have the ruler so that is the first offense that the shia think with the right success for to the profit then there was of series from the house of the profit . . .

came much more significant. politically, once iran embraced shiism as the state religion with arabs and turks mostly adopting sunni is him, i'm of the other smaller ones are inheritance and the sunni legal system, the daughter is not entitled to equal inheritance rights as the sons and the shiism, so that's why you have even some sunnis who have only daughters and in order to keep the wealth in the family, they become shiites so the daughters

can get all their wealth rather than some of it going to other relatives because they didn't have a son. there are some minor differences, the fact that islam is the last religion, the perfect religion, the last word of god and man and mohammed is the prophet anchor on is the holy book of islam and the law that should be applied there, both shiite and sunni believe in those. >> you married a non- muslim and your two sons take her last name, explain all that. >> well, this was to help them in their country, the united states because it's not an easy name to pronounce, last name and my wife who is a feminist

thought that not only it's right that they should have their mother's name, but also that it would make it easier for them in my last name being so hard to pronounce. >> there and last name is bernard. >> go back to another story before we run out of time. the story of vice president joe biden. >> , two stories about the current vice president. one, when i was a special envoy in afghanistan, it came once and i was very impressed with him because it was very rudimentary at time. he had his own sleeping bag and slept on the floor like i did. >> in the embassy and in the office.

one day after his meeting that i did not go with him, he came back to tell me he had caused me a huge problem and i said what happened? he said threatened the minister of afghanistan with b-52 attack. i said what you mean? i told him it was the northern alliance doesn't behave properly we would do the same thing to them as we did to the taliban and the b-52s are still flying over afghanistan and the minister got very angry and got up and walked out. i told him that my being of the constitution as senator does not put the senator in the chain of command for ordering attacks. he was saying he was very sorry, i said we have to fix this problem.

he said what you mean. i said were going to call the guy and you're going to visit him and you're going to fix this. he said we can do that? i said what you mean, we just liberated these people, remember, of course i can call him. so we did and we went there and he did a great job, the two of them made up, i left because i had an early morning meeting but they stayed on until the middle of the night to talk. that's one story. another is that we had very limited facilities in kabul in those days. there were only two operational bathrooms and we had 182 people. we had these long lines to go to use the facilities and you didn't pull rank though he could've, to go to the head of the line, he was standing in

line holding a towel around him and a young marine from behind took a photo on the back of his head and turned around and said what are you doing in the guy said he's taking his photo for his mother and he said how would she recognize it and he turned around and said take the photo now and the marine did and he was very pleased. he said some colorful things also so the vice president did come for a visit and spend some time there. >> this is not a serious policy issue, but you also talk in the book, when your are you an investor about staying at the wall of the story a and you say in the book, we pay as a country

$60000 a month for the ambassador to stay at the waldorf. here's some video of you and your wife in the apartment when you are ambassador from abc. >> it's an incredible part of an investor's life. home sweet home. the apartment at the waldorf which we to read. >> who is this? the problem is his size because he easily get stepped on. >> in this elegant home filled with american art and personal family treasures prominently displayed you find a memento of his previous service. >> what was that on the wall? >> that was a machine gun that belong to saddam hussein and the u.s. armed forces that command in baghdad presented it to me as

a token of their appreciation for my service in iraq. >> $60000 a month, that obviously got your attention. is it worth it for this country to spend that kind of money? >> i would have preferred that we taken a beautiful townhouse that we could use by the un ambassador but the state department in its wisdom rejected that thinking the maintenance and security cost would be perhaps significant but the un secretary general now lives in that townhouse that was offered to the u.s. it is quite expensive the president, one reason he said that i should take the un job as

he referred to the accommodation saying his father had had that job and used to be gone for weekends at a time and they said they are quite comfortable and they were and he had known that when i was ambassador to afghanistan and iraq, i stayed in with a couple of containers and although there was some improvement when i went to iraq but nothing like an ambassador to the united states that was one of the selling points of the president that this was for my work and hardship in afghanistan and iraq.

[inaudible] >> quite significant because when you're in a war zone and you have a lot of responsibility to the united states with regard to that country, we have armed forces and intelligence and we spent a lot of economic resources and we have a role in facilitating agreements in both iraq and afghanistan, i hope both countries with the constitution being. [inaudible] the influences considerable and i'm very anxious to meet with you and if you don't have a meeting they summon you a lot you have a lot of resources, people are always pleading with you for help financial to deal with the problems that they face , you also have a lot of

information so you know what's really going on through collective intelligence or people who work with us or for us. in those situations in war zones , the american investor has an influential job. >> you talk about a man who was assassinated and here is some video and he suggest that this had a major impact on what was going on over in afghanistan. >> my message to president bush is the following. if he isn't interested in peace in afghanistan, if he doesn't help the afghan people to arrive at their objective of peace then the americans and the rest of

the world will have to face the problems. >> how important was he to the story? >> very important. he was resisting the taliban and in afghanistan. he had worked against the soviets during the soviet occupation. their occupation was 79 internet and then there was a period of civil war for a while and then when the taliban and took over he had to go to the mountains. the taliban allied themselves with al qaeda they had military assistance to the taliban and

the taliban allowed them to plan and exit and recruit and train on this territory. : >> pretending to be journalists and wanting to interview, but in fact we are working for al qaeda. and they blew themselves up. this was a favor that of al qaeda was doing for the television and it was an

exchange for what they must have known that al qaeda leadership was coming which was an attack on the united states. by doing this favor they had hoped that in the coming crisis the taliban and it was a huge favor to get rid of the opposition that existed. in fact, the taliban taliban did not turn over al qaeda and osama bin laden after 9/11 when president bush gave him the option of either turnover al qaeda or the united states will attack the taliban. >> c-span: you referred earlier in our conversation that you are threatened and somebody tried to kill you? >> guest: quite a few times and during my career with iraq and afghanistan, it was always about

this or that plot, but but one time the afghan authority arrested a group near where i was toward the end of my tenure and that had come across the border pakistan to assassinate me. one other time i had thought the end had come, so to speak, i was in iraq where general casey was the commander of our forces and i was turning over a military facility into crete at saddam's birthplace. birthplace. the iraqis sounded like i rocket had been fired toward us. the next thing i knew general casey was on top of me and he had put himself at risk to protect me and i joked

afterward, no one can say that civil military relations are not excellent in iraq. but there was also several attempts, i did not know whether it was specifically focused on me, the residence where in baghdad. so i had excellent security. i didn't live in fear, but of course being in a war zone, flying around, driving around, i did not want to be locked up in the embassy. there were risks but i understood those and we took appropriate security measures. >> c-span: we lost 64877 americans in afghanistan and in iraq. here are some criticism of the event by a fellow named joe b warwick. we played so you can get some background with someone who disagree with some of the stuff we did.

this was recorded in 2015. >> i strongly believe that the iraq invasion was the original sin, not just the invasion itself which essentially gave jihadists to cause that they had been looking for. particularly zarqawi zarqawi wanted to fight americans and predicted the fight would take place in iraq and was ready for americans who arrived in 2003. but also not but also not having security apparatus in place, disbanding the -- party which essentially anybody who is a professional inside iraq in the early 2000 had to be a member of that party. dismantling the armed forces. iraq is what about the americans anyway but windsor cow he comes in he was able to meld this it extreme as him with iraq he discontent and bring the two together turned out to be a very powerful brew. those people who started the group in 2004, 2006, that is isis today. >> c-span: let me add to this. you were in in government in 1991 with desert shield. >> guest: i was in the pentagon.

>> c-span: you are in 2003 when we invaded iraq. what you think of his analysis, and and what impacted you have on the 2003 invasion? >> guest: i think he had some good points, particularly whenever you think of whether they should be invaded or not, and remember the context of the time there was universal belief and that saddam hussein had chemical and biological weapons and it was about the president of the united states and the prime minister of great britain and quite a lot of other leaders here in the united states given the vote that took place. they thought that the problem of saddam needed to be addressed. and it turned out that we had a

huge intelligence failure that in fact he didn't and he was pretending as i later learned when i was in iraq that he was pretending because he wanted to scare iran from taking advantage of the conventional weakness because out of the defeat of iraq he the balance has shifted against iraq in terms of conventional weapon. he was signaling signaling that he had weapons of mass destruction. i do think that with the gentleman was saying about some of the things that we did afterwards, the disbanding of the army, the being used by others, mostly the shiite politicians against the sunnis, that contributed to the violence that later on we saw. we did a number of things together were problematic.

one, we had said that we are not going to rule iraq, we declared an occupation authority afterwards. now we said that we are going to do the iraqi armed forces and not ban it and after that was established that other authority to disband the armed forces, essentially anchoring hundreds of thousands of people who knew how to use weapons and then we did this deep ratification. so yes, mistakes were made a part of what i try to do in the book, why these changes occurred, why we went from one set of plans that people say that we did not have plans for afterwards, the fact that we did have plans but we abandoned them afterwards, why did that happen,

i took my time i interviewed the president, and many of the principles were involved, the ambassador in clue did as to why the change. and how my deliberation occurred. how my assessment had been taken into account. we did not have enough forces ourselves to maintain order, yet we disbanded the first that we are going to count on to establish order or maintain order and then the borders of iraq was not guarded. so it was the policies together that did not help they added to the insecurity such as the extremist such as zarqawi that exploited. but we corrected it toward the

end of the period that we were there, the search, by reaching out to the sunnis and building in building up iraqi forces, by establishing a unity government, killing zarqawi and then bring about violence way down. unfortunately when we left in the vacuum was filled by rival, regional powers they escalated and we have isis now. >> 's before when did you start the research for this book? did you keep a diary? >> guest: i kept a diary, not every day but often i would take and write notes and i started work within a year after leaving the government's. >> what year was that? >> guest: 2009. i would not want to do a rushed book. i wanted to take my time. i led the heat of the battle so to speak between various people and forces internally. and then they had time to reflect and my goal was to draw

some lessons for future diplomats and intelligence officers and military officers. hopefully to be helpful to them. >> c-span: over your government work all of these years, who did you disagree with the most that you had to work with? what did you disagree about? >> guest: the biggest isis -- the biggest disagreement was the period when i was in afghanistan our goal became, not only to overthrow the taliban but to bring the people who had committed the attack on 9/11 to justice and to make sure afghanistan did not return to being a haven for terrorists.

the third goal i thought we did not have a strategy or consensus of what to do to avoid that return. we did not have a plan for afghanistan when 9/11 happened. everyone was shocked, my god and my our leadership. this is a country known and now what do we do. stated state and nation building was very unpopular at that time. president bush had been elected criticizing the previous administration for doing nationbuilding in the balkans and same way was secretary rumsfeld of defense. very much against engagements and entanglements. but as i thought the pizza territory that we regard as

vital the strategic if not vital, we needed to have friendly forces to control that territory. and then we had been in europe, korea, in japan after world war ii. this piece of territory called afghanistan was strategic because of the issue of terrorism that had been a huge challenge and we recognized it and it needed to be held by friendly forces. that meant that we had to enable those forces to hold that territory. that meant that we have to help them establish institutions to be able to carry out that mission and therefore we had to do nearly what we would call nation building. we came came to that reluctantly and i remember a secretary rumsfeld telling, get your hands often i lost my cool and i said mr. secretary,

tell me where this bike is because when i went afghanistan there hardly anything, this was a state that had been at war for over 20 plus years. kabul was like a dead city. there is nothing in their banks, literally. literally. they had no army, no police. there were two currencies that there was worthless. one of the north and one in the south of the country. i was shocked by what we had taken on given the depth of the problems. and so there was one area or one time where slowly we embrace that idea that we needed to help afghanistan come along with others, not only ourselves because terrorism was a problem for europeans and others and to

do it in a burden shared way. we brought nato along in other countries taking lead on different issues, the japanese on disarming militia, the brits on narcotics, the italians on building the police force. germans and others also play an important roles, the police in particular, and the rule of law. so that was an area at the time that initially there were disagreements. >> c-span: finally, you mentioned early on that your wife was a feminist. then you tell us in the book that you have two sons and your wife and two are on one side and two on the other, politically. >> guest: right. i remember when i was at the un, there is an election that john

mccain was the republican nominee and barack obama was the democrats although during the primaries hillary clinton was also running. and that cheryl was supporting hillary and my younger son max supported president obama. it had been senator obama. my older son alex supported senator mccain. we had very lively debate, publicly i was neutral representing the united states and the un. but as a republican i was obviously supported of senator mccain. although i was pleased about her country and we did what the vast

majority of the un members that we believed we would do which is like have an african-american as president. >> in the name of the book is "the envoy". a former u.s. and ambassador to afghanistan, iraq and the un. thank you very much for joining us. >> guest: thank you. i appreciate it. >> ..

... >> at 8:50 pm from chicago tribune printers row lit fest bradley birzer on his biography of russell clerk. and then reza aslan at the los angeles times book festival on the life and times of jesus of nazareth. at 10 p.m., a panel on violent crime in the 19th century from the san antonio book festival. and at 11:00, a panel on dora hurston.