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>> good evening, everybody. i am the director of the reagan institute, the d.c. office of the ronald reagan presidential foundation institute and i hope you all have been enjoying this reception for christine's book launch which we are excited to host this evening. i wanted to extend a special welcome to kristin's mother and widow. and kristin's husband, thank you so much for being here this evening. i also want to welcome chairman of the reagan presidential foundation institute. thank you so much for being here this evening. >> thanks, fred. >> well, here, we are recognizing kristin's work for the publication of get me carlucci. in this release is really near and dear to our hearts here at the reagan institute because kristin's father, secretary

carlucci, had an outsized impact on the reagan administration, serving in a variety of roles both terms. before serving in the reagan administration, they served an illustrious career in the foreign service, and cold war hotspots across the globe in the 1960's. he was a political appointee in the nixon and ford administered shins -- administrations, ambassador to portugal, deputy director of the central intelligence agency during the carter years, and he was reagan's first secretary of defense, his deputy and the department of defense during the first term and then served as president reagan's national security advisor and then secretary of defense in the second term. a resume unlike pretty much anyone else. if you could compare to what the secretary did during those years of government service. now, the secretariat is

remembered here at the reagan institute as one of the most accomplished and longest-serving figures from the reagan administration and he was a consummate public servant, what secretary weinberger called a hero among civil servants, devoted to service, hard work, and statesmanship which of course is unusual in this town. he got things done, as we were just discussing. so we will talk about all of this and more. please join me in welcoming him to the stage where we will engage with a discussion on get me carlucci. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> to our viewers on c-span, here is the book. we will do the most important thing i can do for you this evening and tell everybody to go on amazon and purchase this book. >> right now that we have dispensed with the most important business, we can go back to the reception. just kidding. it is a great title.

and i think it is an even better story behind it, washington post story right soon after your father became deputy secretary of defense and they were trying to explain who indeed is this person? that has just become the nation's deputy secretary of defense and what did they find out in the article? >> yes, so the title is from that washington post article from 1981. my dad had just served in the carter administration and was easily confirmed into the reagan administration. and in this washington post article, they say that nixon, reagan, kennedy had all said, who is this guy? get me carlucci. everybody is asking for him. and that is basically what this book is about. it is about identifying the traits that make my dad so

wanted, so desired in this town. a consummate professional, skilled public servant, that everybody wanted him in their corner. republicans, democrats, even though he was a republican, but that he was -- he got things done. so i thought it was a very appropriate title. >> absolutely and the image at the beginning, the story of president kennedy -- get me him. and your father is sitting i think in foggy bottom, having lunch with colleagues and next thing you know, he is kind of brought in to the white house to meet someone who is a statesman from the congo, yes. >> he had just come back. he was a foreign service officer and had served in the congo and he had come back to washington. he was having lunch. that is better. he was having lunch and a

minister was sitting down with president kennedy in this minister who my father had known in the congo because during that period of congolese independence, my father had gotten to know everybody in the congo, and this minister in the congo says, with president kennedy, -- which is where is carlucci in french? president kennedy says who is he and why is he not hear? so his chief of staff, kennedys chief of staff says go find this guy. you need to find this guy so my dad says he thinks he was shoveling suitcases -- shuffling suitcases. he is asked to translate from president kennedy and the minister from the congo. in the end, he says he did not do a very good job so he was never asked to translate again. >> the next time he translated for someone may have been

president or something. translated with three words, i believe. let's take a step back for a second because this is such a unique way to write what is effectively a biography. you have a memoir that your father kept but never published. you were around for important parts but not all of his life in public service and you really got to know your father in a different way through this project so share a little bit about the memoir you found and kind of how you came to discover your father through this. through this journey. >> share. it is a very unusual way to write about. my father was so humble. he was not prone to self-aggrandizement and he thought the idea of writing a book was absurd but in the final years of his life, he considered me the writer in the family.

i had a history of writing so i was urging him to put his thoughts to paper, put his memories to paper, so he put together a small memoir of his life and i was grateful he did. he would send me copies, drafts, and he would say, is this good? i would say, that is great, dad. thank you. your memories down. and in 2020, like all of us, we were going to a period of transition and i had run across this memoir again with a friend and she read it and said to i knew your dad's life was interesting. i had no conception of how interesting it was. is this available to buyer? i said, no. and that really kind of got me down this path of, ok, i need to convert it. i need to make this into something that is actually a book people can buy but it was missing pieces. it was missing context and i had to fill in the blanks of the history of the time as well as he had left out a lot of family

details in his memoir. he kind of assumed only we would be reading it. so to melt two voices was a difficult thing to do and i became the narrator and there was a lot of things i could not ask him -- ask him so i asked other people and conducted interviews with colin powell who passed away. and other contemporaries of my fathers. and then thankfully, my family likes to hoard things so i have boxes of his papers and his photographs and newspaper articles in our basement so it was a treasure trove of material to work from and i was astonished at how many newspaper articles there were about him and about this time period. >> you go back pretty far. you would expect a newspaper cover from this time -- in some ways, you know, they were capturing him from the foreign service. >> yes.

>> i want to ask you, you know, about the personalities here. because this book is so interesting from understanding what is happening in his career and public service but certainly for people watching this, the sorts of people he was engaging with and when. so i'm going to throw out some names and just tantalize everybody with how your father got to know them and when. one of my favorites, and we did not prepare this beforehand so i am not violating anything here, but dick cheney. your father's friend, donald rumsfeld, from princeton. he is working in the nixon administration. and then brings in his friend. >> intern on capitol hill, yes, so that is how he first meets him. >> so your father now is the number two and he's interviewing him.

>> yes, dick cheney. so you imagine, i mean, this is kind of the environment that they are getting to know each other is that they are young washingtonians doing the jobs in washington and we know a lot of these names and this is one of -- this is another reason i decided to put this together is that we just did not know -- i don't think anybody had an appreciation for carlucci which is why i brought this about. >> let's continue. ok. frame him. he was responsible for bringing cheney in early on but it was really donald rumsfeld. >> i don't think he was. >> but then you go from there and this is one of my favorites in the story. so he's doing great in that office and then he is recruited to omb. the phone rings and who was on the other end-of-the-line? george shultz. and he says, i would like you to

come be my deputy. and then what happens next? >> he's working for weinberger. clancy gets pulled into treasury and then he ends up -- yes. >> who he had met at oto, actually because weinberger was with reagan and he got in a little spat with then governor reagan but he develops this -- i mean -- host: governor reagan is fighting a particular program in california. he wants to kill a program in california what your father said -- guest: no, i don't want to kill this program. my father finds a diplomatic way to make both things happen. it is another line that flows throughout this book. there's a federal program that governor reagan wants to kill and my dad, working there, doesn't want to kill it, so he says, well, why don't we appoint

a three-judge panel in california. two republicans and democrats, to see if this program is actually as bad as you say it is. >> because reagan was going after this program. waste. >> the three-judge panel says, no, this program is ok. so my dad says, well, this provides you the political cover you need to say -- this independent counsel says it is ok and it ended up finding the longest grant of this program's history. so i do think that, you know. host: exit governor reagan for this stage. guest: yes. host: let's continue having this personality. all right. we have george shultz. he leaves, working for weinberger as a deputy. this is kind of just remarkable because here, you have a career foreign service officer finding himself in this number two cabinet level position in the

executive office of the president. and then he continues, right? guest: yes, and then he goes to the pentagon. host: health and human services. guest: yes, hhs. host: and then he returned to the foreign service because henry kissinger, because of course, how do we talk about this period of time and not mention henry kissinger. he surfaces. personally asks president ford to have -- well, i guess, it is get me carlucci to portugal. tell us about what was going on in portugal at the time and why henry kissinger thought your father was a person who could address what he needed in portugal. guest: during this period of time, portugal was transitioning .

the 50 years prior, portugal was under an autocracy and kissinger was extremely worried that -- and convince that portugal was going to fall under communist rule so he wanted to send carlucci to portugal to change the situation. my dad, nominated as ambassador there, goes to portugal, and within -- and is the kind of same things he had done in the foreign service. he lands in portugal. he's able to speak portuguese because he had served in brazil. he was the first ambassador there to speak portuguese. and he assesses the situation on the ground in portugal and figures out, actually, no, i don't think this country is going to stay communist. i think there's going to be a democratically elected prime minister. host: sorry to interrupt you. this is the sort of thing you don't do, henry kissinger at the height of his power, going

insane, actually, where you see communism as the outcome, i see something different. he did not appreciate it. guest: henry kissinger not appreciate that. my dad said, i think you are wrong. and he was pretty staunch in the opinion and he came back to washington and he said, i think you are wrong, and he was proven correct. host: i believe henry kissinger said, what are you -- then you do it. guest: and he did. host: pretty remarkable. my sense was that post was perhaps one of his favorite moments in his career. obviously, they went on to other more senior and perhaps consequential goals but that seems to reflect me kind of his qualities that were able to play out. guest: for 50 years now, portugal has been a democratic country. so his influence there, he was

able to give the portuguese the spirit of the united states behind them, right? so i think that was -- that was the most consequential, you know, position that he held. there were probably more higher positions in the u.s. government , but i do feel like that that one, especially my mom was there with him. i think that one was the most meaningful. the residence there is now named after him. and the school there is named after him. so in portugal, he's quite a well-known name. and i think when we think about democracy, sometimes we take it for granted and i feel like, you know, for the portuguese, that was quite meaningful. host: i loved it because it in some ways reflected that president reagan held very deep

and abiding point of view that people want to be free and wasn't ready to write them off as they are communist and taking the approach to bring them over. a remarkable job with that insight into what portugal looked like during this moment of the cold war. all right, well, we are done with the ford years. enter president carter. we go from republican to democrat. what does republican frank carlucci do now? he actually, before -- there was discussion whether or not he could take on a more political post. the view was that it was not going to work. guest: right. he comments that carter really likes him and wanting to work at the state department. but he laughs at them and says there is no way i'm going to get confirmed at the state department. so he goes and works for turner

at the agency for a couple of years under president carter. host: president carter has a great story in the book because it wasn't his first time interacting with president carter so not only did he deny governor reagan, he also challenged governor carter when he was working as a deputy with weinberger. give us a feel -- they were slightly off. guest: they were wrong and he admits it. and i believe it was -- i think you have it in front of you but it was a head start program. go ahead. yes. host: they were going to tell carter that we are going to override your veto and push the program in. and weinberger is hesitating and this is what carlucci says.

when he hung up, i turned. you are quoting from the memoir. a really nice device in this book when it is coming straight from the memoir. he is a lame-duck governor. you will never hear from him again. override the veto. >> yes. he was wrong. >> but what is remarkable about that is, you know, in our politics today, and this is a theme throughout, if you would have overrun a governor who then became president, he would never work for them, let alone -- they would not let you in the town and he ends up becoming a part of the administration. guest: and he ends up saying, carter liked me. he liked me. so i worked for his administration. because that is what he did. he was a public servant. he always put public service and service to the nation before anything else. host: that did come at a cost on little bit, at least with one senator. jesse helms never forgave him for it.

maybe we can move there. and this is really one of the remarkable things about your father that comes out in the book, his ability to deal with difficult, certainly strong personalities. and i think the one that kind of comes out brightest in the book is the relationship between weinberger and george schulz. to set the scene and maybe comment on it, he wants your father to become his deputy and then soon after, george shultz becomes the secretary of state and later on, he's national security advisor, managing these two day today and it came across like diplomacy. tell us about those relationships. host: right, -- guest: right, well, first, how did he become national security advisor? when he was asked by president

reagan to be national security advisor, he came in and he thought that the president was going to give him accolades on how intelligent he was and how he might be a great visionary. he said, actually, no. you were chosen because you were the only person that they could agree on. so i think these two personalities, he knew in particular weinberger very well and i think he commented quite a few times that he was able to manage these two personalities very effectively. he would get them to -- i even read later that he would get them to write down their differences, what their opinions were on pieces of paper. he would take them to the president and he would give them both to the president and the president would ask what my father thought and he said, i would give it. i would still give what i thought but he was able to manage both personalities extremely effectively.

in particular, he was a lawyer and often, you know, was quick to make judgments and my father wrote particularly, if those judgments were public, he would very rarely go back on what he said but he said, you know, this is particularly -- at the end of the day, my dad would meet with him and he said, i would always save the contentious issues for the last thing we discussed and he said, often, i would be able to mediate him down from what he was thinking and change his mind. >> yes. it really comes out throughout the book that he had an intuitive sense of people and he knew what made them tick and therefore could work with them and kind of go manage and lead and certainly, some of the toughest personalities.

your father writes about -- he agrees with george shultz's assessment that cap is a position taker and george shultz described himself as more analytical and he was able to work with analytical minds, the lawyer, the economist, for example. and support the president. another personality, we referenced it earlier, but i would love for you to expand. he had a very close relationship and made him a better secretary of clearly. but also was a wonderful mentor and close friend and confidant with colin powell. he had conversations with colin powell in preparing this book before he passed. talk about that relationship. what i love about it is the decades, weaving in and out of the various roles that he had. somewhat writing humor. he did not give me much choice but clearly, appreciation.

>> yes. it was such an honor and i will always remember it, being able to interview him a couple of weeks before he died for this memoir. they were dear friends. and had mutual admiration for each other. but one story in particular i think really illustrates how my father really respected him. that was right after he was chosen to be national security advisor, you know, this is right after you unconscious so he had decided to streamline the national security council and the only person he wanted working for him was colin powell , who had just gotten a kush gig in germany and had no interest in returning. i can see you guys know this story. so he calls colin powell on the phone and says, i would like you to be my number two.

colin powell says, i thought you were calling me for my congratulations, right? for your new position. he said, i have no interest in returning to washington. you know, frank, i am here. my wife really likes germany. i am commanding troops over here. i don't want to come back to washington, d.c.. is like, really? i'm going to need a call from the president. later that evening, my dad gets president reagan to give colin powell a call to say we need you back here. so you know, he comes back. [laughter] host: that relationship, of course, he became a military assistant. there was another example where cap weinberger, somebody reaches out to him and asks him to be his military assistant. he had not fully appreciated the years that they had worked together. guest: when they switched, my father was so low-key. when they switched and my dad is told he's going to be secretary of defense, they are at this

long table and you know, colin powell reiterates this story for me. he just passes him a note and says, congrats. you are the new national security advisor. colin powell reads this note and he's like, what? [laughter] guest: mike there's no fanfare. -- like, there's no fanfare. there is none of this nonsense that seems to accompany people nowadays, but there's just like, yes. host: and the humility of your father. i think just before that story, he recalls how -- you recall the conversation he had with president reagan and who is going to take your position and he said, who would be better at the job than i am? great admiration. let's talk a little bit. we have a few more minutes and then we can go to questions from the audience here. do you want to talk about how your father viewed president reagan and their relationship as

well, being his national security advisor, secretary of defense? but his time as secretary of defense really stood out in the memoir is coming in after iran contra. as you know, all that money going into the department of defense to carry out reagan's vision of peace through strength. but he really came in and tried to reform the place, particularly acquisitions and contracting and really came out in a way i had not fully appreciated prior to reading this. kind of expand on that. his tenure as secretary of defense is 14 months. guest: right. i think he was concerned about wasteful spending. i think the other thing, when he reflected about his tenure as secretary of defense, oneness -- one of his top accomplishments he would have told you was the brat commission.

which is base realignment and enclosure. you know, he was very concerned with not cutting personnel, not affecting the morale of people in the military, but he was aware that the infrastructure of the military could be reduced. remember a story that he proposed this idea of the commission to the president and the president, being an elected official, said good luck with that. you know? but it was successful. he came up with this idea of an independent commission to reduce infrastructure and give it an up or down vote in congress. and be able to reduce spending overall without, you know, cutting costs to military personnel. >> you write that weinberger became the outside person, probably sparring with george

shultz. your father was the one really overseeing the buildup of programs and budgets and the like so he was probably in this position. let's take the last few moments and open up to questions just to get your sense of how your father viewed president reagan. there's a great quote from the memoir what you have here capturing kind of different elements of president reagan. one i really liked -- i will read to you. we also knew that whenever we got to trouble -- when we got into trouble, we could make up the cue cards and put them on television and sway the day. he could bring people on like nobody iav known. i imagine that was a nice security blanket for a cabinet official or national security advisor. guest: i think he really viewed him that way. i think there was a number of things that were helpful.

i think you viewed -- first, i knew he viewed working in the reagan administration as an honor. and he writes about that extensively. i think the second thing is reagan was a strategic visionary but not a day-to-day manager was for my dad was super helpful. i think, you know, he writes later that he had a meeting a week with president reagan as secretary of defense for an hour and he said, i don't think we even use that full hour because he was so overwhelmingly supportive of what we were doing so he didn't have his, you know, he wasn't involved in every decision but he didn't need to be because he had the best people placed to do it, to carry out his vision. host: there is a note in there before -- the excerpt i shared that after president reagan passed, he was surprised to see all the notes -- absorbing it.

guest: he wasn't quite sure about how much he was absorbing and how much he wasn't. host: there you go. last question and then we will hand it to the audience to bookend this, where we started. here you are. we look at this person's career, your father's career. so remarkable, spanning decades. strong personalities, difficult personalities. from carter to reagan, couldn't be more different. and yet it was consistent. do you think in america today, in washington today, with the deep partisanship and division that we are all grappling with and regret, but it is a reality, we can never have another friend carlucci? -- fran carlucci? guest: that discussion is one of the major reasons i wrote this book is because i feel strongly

that his life is one that we should think about and remember and aspire to try to live out in some ways, even in in washington that is not conducive to it. >> questions from the audience. the gentleman in the back over here. please wait for the microphone and make it a question, please. less commentary. thank you. >> numerous successes and challenges your father faced, is there any particular challenge that stands out above them all in the memoir and in your life that you can think of was really the most challenging? >> most challenging. i don't know if he had one particular event that was the most challenging for him. i would say, i mean, if you ask

me what would probably have been the most challenging for him, it is probably his earlier years in the foreign service. if you read the book, i mean, it sounds like they dropped him into the most conflict ridden zones in the world at the time and said, do your best. >> a physical victim of that conflict. >> he got stabbed in the back in the congo. so i think in terms of trying to , you know, do his best in those situations, that is probably when he had the toughest time. i mean, i don't know that -- i don't know if he would answer it that way. maybe he would say washington is tougher but from my personal point of view, that would probably be the case. >> you have time for another question? gentleman over here. please wait for the microphone. >> could you comment on the issue with south africa in the

mid-80's? reagan was dealing with the issue of sanctions against the apartheid regime. at the same time, he recognized how important it was for the u.s. and south africa to be close allies in the fight against communism. one of the things reagan did was appoint the first african-american u.s. ambassador to south africa. what role did your father play in promoting that kind of dynamic? because it created a very interesting dynamic where the afrikaner government was forced to confront the issue of their racist past, same time engaging with the united states to promote, you know, national security interests. >> that is an excellent question and what i do not have the answer to. i'm so sorry. >> we have time for one last question. anybody in the audience have a

question? let's go to our distinguished scholar here standing up in the back. professor henry. >> thank you very much for a really exciting evening. >> ok, it is on. you are good. once i was wondering whether or not your father was ever asked for whether he discussed with the family running for public office. and if not, why not? it seems to me he had all those qualities that would have resonated well in the public arena. guest: somebody told me recently that he was asked to run for pennsylvania governor or maybe it was pennsylvania congressman. but other than that, i don't know. and i was a child at the time so if he was, it would not have reached me. host: that would have been a fantastic counterfactual. maybe if he was running for

senate. guest: he was born and raised in pennsylvania and still has strong roots in the area. i don't know that he had much interest in it. he had the colin powell philosophy. but yes, somebody did in this book to her era, somebody did tell me that. host: for our viewers, if you enjoyed this book launch, please stay tuned for our social media online announcements for future book events taking place here at the reagan institute. please join me in thanking kristin for her book. [laughter] >> president donald trump appointed tesla and spacex ceo elon musk saccone lead a new department of government efficiency. mr. elon musk was the subject of a biography by alter isaacson. here is part of a discussion on that book. >> walter, talk to us first about your arrangement with elon musk, how it happened, how you

found out that it happened, and whether your relationship with him about writing the book changed over the course of writing it. >> you know, i always like doing people who are pushing the edge of innovation and for elon musk, he was bringing us into the era of electric vehicles and he was bringing us into the era of space travel again, space adventure. i thought, that is really cool. we had a mutual friend who put us together on the phone and we talked about an hour and a half and i said, look, i would love to do this but not based on interviews. i want to be by your side and spend weeks on end, you know, just living in the airstream trailer in texas near his launchpad, a walk in the factory lines with him he he said, fine. you can be with me all the time. nothing is off-limits really. i said the other thing is no control over the book. i'm not even going to send it to you first. i don't even know if he has read

it. he said fine. i said, ok. that is pretty amazing. because he controls things. and i went back with kathy and we were visiting somebody. we went to the main house because we were houseguests and after a while, i said, my god, i'm doing it. he just tweeted out -- it was like in the middle of the conversation had he tweeted out that i was going to do it so i said, i guess i am on for the ride. >> did that relationship stay the same and that arrangement stay the same through the book? what's he has never asked to see the book. he never pushed, pressured anything. he just didn't -- i thought i would be -- it would be the heisenberg principle. by observing him, it would change him, but all of his mercurial moods, his, you know, inspirational things, dark things, they were all -- he never seemed to notice me. i would just always be buys -- by his side.

he never tried to do anything. sometimes, we would sit in the conference room after meetings and there would be a break and sit there for 15, 20 minutes. half of a in silence, and then he would start talking in a monotone, telling me about his childhood and telling me about other things. >> the full program is available to watch online >> democracy. it isn't just an idea. it is a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select you with guarding its basic principles. it is where debates unfold, decisions are made and the nation's course is charted. democracy in real-time. this is c-span. giving you your democracy unfiltered. >>