will discuss health concerns related to vaping and e-greats. and the relationship between the united states and ukraine. then in our spotlight on magazine segment, bloomberg "business week's" susan berg field will discuss the oversight of generic pharmaceuticals. watch "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. saturday morning. join the discussion. >> tonight on c-span, watch president trump deliver remarks at an event for hispanic heritage month. live coverage starts at 6:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> i need one of those -- >> now we take you back to the texas tribune festival in austin, texas. coming up, we hear from former national security advisor for president obama, susan rice. you're watching live coverage on c-span. >> thank you for being here. this is important.

what we are doing today. this whole festival is about the idea that we all have a stake in government.of our and we as citizens should be more engaged and better informed as a way to motivate civic participation tams complicated and simple as that. for 10 years, the texas tribune's journalism, we have tried to give all of youened everybody else in texas and elsewhere, a way into that conversation. it is public service journalism in the ideal. we believe in it, we believed in it then, we believe in it now. your being here makes an enormous difference. it tells me that like all of us at the tribune, you care. and you believe. so it is not insignificant that you're here. we love it. my job today is to say thank you. this will be the second time ambassador rice has been at the tribune festival in three years. honestly, i can't believe we get her to come. she is an ex-triretnary public

servant with a great story to tell. this is the first time that margaret is here, she's a journalist that every one of us in this business admires. you are in for a treat. please welcome our panelists. i hope you have a great rest of the day. thanks again. [applause] margaret: thanks, everybody. hopefully you had a chance to cool down. good afternoon. i'm the politics and white house editor at axios. on behalf of the texas trib welcome to the festival and to our one-on-one with susan rice.

we have an hour together. that's going to include at least 15 minutes of time for your questions and answers so if you've -- so you've got 45 minutes to think of some killer questions, and i'm looking forward to hearing them. you all know ambassador rice. she served as president obama's u.n. ambassador, then national security advisor. and previously as the assistant secretary of state for african affairs you should the bill clinton administration. and you may also know that she's got a book coming out soon, it's "tough love: my story of things worth fighting for." it's not out officially for another week or so, week and a half, but you can get it today. she'll be signing copies of it after we're done here. fest hink that's at the sal hub at 800 congress avenue. that's after this. this book, because none of you has read it yet, let me give you

a preview. it's a book in three parts. it's about ambassador rice's personal story, her family life. it's a book about her experience in government. and then it's a book about the obama administration, the andcies and her explanation thoughts in the rearview mirror about some of those policies. one of my favorite parts was the personal chapters. i want to spend some time talking about that. but because it's friday, at the nd of a very historic news week, i want to start out by talking about the development this is week the ukraine, the house's action on opening abinquiry toward impeachment and all of that and then give us time to talk about the book. you've closely followed everything that's happened this week and the transcript and the whistleblower complaint. i guess i'm just curious, based

on the information that's now publicly available, what would your next set of questions be? what do you want to know that we don't know yet? susan: thank you, margaret, so much for doing this good afternoon, everybody. great to be back here. i'm really delighted to come back to the texas trib festival. thank you to evan for that generous introduction. one week. and what a set of revelations. i think the most striking thing from my vantage point is, this is yet another particularly stark indication that we have a resident who cares nothing for the national interest and is all about his personal political and financial interests. and it's there in black and white. in that remarkable transcript. so just to put this in context, as you know, ukraine has for

five years been suffering from an invasion, an occupation, by russia. that war is still going on. there are ukrainian soldiers being killed every week. and the united states, as a ader in the west and as an adversary of russia at this stage, by choice of putin, frankly, has been supporting ukraine economically, politically and militarily. with assistance to help it combat this russian aggression. and what president trump did, it appear, is to with hold congressionally appropriated $400 million worth of assistance that ukraine desperately needs in order to, it seems, to extort information

or bogus investigation that he could use against his political opponents domestically. it's an extraordinary interference in our democratic process. sponsored by, encouraged by, solicited by the president of the united states. and nowhere in that phone call does he talk to the new ukrainian president about the issue that was long concerned the united states, russian aggression, sanctions, thousand support the ukrainian government. none of that it's all about what zelensky, the president of ukraine, can do to help donald trump advance his partisan political objectives. margaret: do you believe that it is within the president's purview to use military assistance as a lever to prod policy actions?

susan: yes, if it's policy action in service of u.s. national policy goals. the u.s. has leverage. we employ sanctions sometimes. we give aid, we don't give aid. but we don't do it to advance the president's personal political interests. and then we don't hide it. we'll do it openly and transparently and communicate to the world and to the government in question why we may be providing or with holding assistance. so what is so striking about this is that it was not utilized to advance our national interests. it was utilized to advance his personal political interests. and frankly, this is part of a pattern. it makes you have to go back and review very carefully what we learned about 2016 and it makes you wonder about all these other interactions that have seen somewhat dubious, whether it's with muhammad bin salman of

saudi arabia or, you know, any number of leaders from kim jong un to other adversaries he's praised. and wonder what's underneath all of. this margaret: there are internal transcripts or notice for almost all of those calls or meetings if not all of them. as a former national security advisor, you, i'm assuming, have always advocated the importance of a president and other foreign leaders being able to have a modicum of privacy in their conversations, for it not to be made fully public so that can be room for actual conversations to happen there how do you balance those two interests, the precedent of the need for presidents and foreign leaders to have internal deliberations that are not entirely shared with the public, vs. what you're talking about here. are you advocating for the transcripts or the notice of

president trump's calls with .b.s. work putin, with -- with the , with others to public? susan: obviously in normal time there's utility in the communications between foreign leaders having a measure of confidentiality. these are not normal times. what is unprecedented is the president of the united states office.busing his that's what's unprecedented. i care about these other things you mentioned but i care more about what we don't yet know about what the president of the united states has done behind closed doors that run counter to u.s. national interests, and this ukraine example is the perfect case. and recall the other problem, the other problem is according to the whistleblower report, that instead of this transcript which by the way we have not

seen the full, verbatim transcript an normally there is a full, verbatim transcript, it would appear, what dithey did instead of storing it in the normal system which is protect and classified, even though there was no classified substance in that actual discussion, instead of putting it where it normally resides, ey hid it on a very highly sensitive, highly compartmented server that very few people in the u.s. government have access to. in order to bury it. they would not unless they were legitimately in their contents classified. but it's rare that a presidential conversation would be classified to that highest level. it's not impossible. but it's very rare.

even when they are two leaders discussing classified information. here's a case where there was nothing classified and it was moved to the most secure, sensitive server. margaret: the contents of those notice released to the public would never have been moved to a classified system normally? ok. i want to ask you another question before we get out of this. do the white house and n.s.c. have concerns about the vice president's dealings, vice president biden's dealings in ukraine or his son's dealings in ukraine? president trump has raised this as an issue. was that ever an issue or serious concern in the administration? susan: no, and let me explain why. last complete distract and deflect play going on here which is to try to conflate what vice president biden did at president obama's behest on behalf of transparent and overt u.s.

policy objectives, pushing back on corruption in a country where the united states and her allies were providing millions of dollars of economic assistance, and trying to bowles they are nascent democracy in ukraine. vice president biden made phone calls and took steps in support of that u.s. policy objective. it was transparent. it was stated openly. it was backed by our western partners in the i.m.f. there was no creditcy about it. there were no hiding the records or the transcripts. it was all the basic work of diplomacy. and to suggest that there's some equivalence between the president of the united states, this president, trump, extorting a foreign leader to advance his partisan personal interests, and the vice president or president of the united states in biden or obama pursuing a policy that was open and transparent and backed

by congress that was pursuant to outinterests, is completely of the norm. >> before this past week, thinking about the book, i had asked -- margaret: before this past week, thinking about the book, i asked you to pick a short excerpt to read since nobody in the audience has had a chance to read the book yet that sets us in the mood for your experience and the story you wanted to tell the public. would you do us the honor right now? susan: thank you. i'd be delighted. let me explain what this is. as margaret pointed out, the book is, it's really got four parts. the first is my childhoodup bringing, my family history in part. growing up in washington, d.c. in the 1960's and 1970's and the story of my parents and grandparents on the one side this edescendants of slaves in south carolina, on the other side, immigrants from jamaica,

who came to portland, maine in 1912. and what they shared in common was this extraordinary commitment to education, to the american dream, rising in each generation bettering the next. and that was the foundation in which i was raised. and then the personal story continues with a pretty bald discussion of my parents' very painful divorce and the impact that had on me. the second part is after my education, my early years in government, eight years in the clinton administration, and that's the section from which i'm going to draw an excerpt to read to you. then the third part is about my time at the u.n. the fourth part about my time as national security advisor. all of which includes stories of my family and balancing motherhood and having elderly, sick parents and all of that

combined. but what i'd like to read is a is just a -- it's a small story that occurred when i was assistant secretary of state for african affairs. in 1998 i was a very young assistant secretary of state, took the job at age 32. most of my colleagues, the ambassadors who reported to me were 20 to 30 years my senior. i was a brand new, breastfeeding a her and on first blush not particularly expected leader of this bureau in the state department. we're on a trip in africa. small plane. three of my colleagues. and we're flying from south africa to angola.

from praetoria to angola, about a four-hour flight. let me take it from here. such trips were intense and exhausting. as we hopped between distant capitals on small private planes, commercial airline connections in africa were scarce, unreliable, an often dangerous. as an assistant secretary rather than a cabinet official, i did not rate a dedicated military plane so we often leased four or six-seat propeller planes. jets were a rare luxury which were vulnerable to weather and mechanical challenges. on this trip we flew in a small plane on what became a particularly memorable leg from praetoria, south africa, to angola a,500 mile journey that required a refueling stop in namibia. it's approximately a four-hour flight so we left south africa in early morning to arrive in

angola by mid day and go straight into meet wgs senior officials. along the way we plotted our message to the angolans. the four of us sat close, almost toe-to-toe. gayle and i faced forward with john and howard facing us. flaying backward on our tiny plane. it made for convenience conversations but soon was too intimate. about an hour into the flight, i start feeling clammy and weak. as my perspiration increased my stomach turned over, signaling it was quite discontent. i announced to my colleagues, i'm not feeling well. and reached for the airsickness bag which thankfully was handy. with muffled apologies i opened the bag, apologies to you all as well, and threw up voluminously.

suddenly, to my horror, i felt my lap growing warm and wet. the bag had a hole in the with the tom. and i was covers in puke. my lightweight rayblue dress with white polka dots, once ready for a a meeting with the president of angola, was ruined. and i would have no time to change before our meeting. in a flash i caught howard and john sitting there slack jawed n shock. but gingerly trying to pull back their feet to try to save their shoe fless vomit pooling beneath us on the floor. as soon as i finished being sick, and realize the gravity of the situation, there was only one thing i could do. laugh. hysterically.

they joined me in howling at the insanity of the moment but we still had the problem of the dress. and the leader of our delegation being a smelly, unpresentable mess. we landed on a dirt patch in nowhere, namibia, to refuel as planned. there was a single gas pump, a water hole with hose, and some rudimentary bathrooms. the men gave us some privacy and gayle turned the hose on me and my dress. spraying me down until i was thoroughly drenched in the desert. she and i then went into the bathroom to strip down and ensure we washed away all signs of vomit. confident we had succeeded, all that remained was for me to air dry on the ensuing couple of hours.

[applause] margaret: not what you think of working in the white house, vomit, get hosed down, go back to work. both your parents died when you were working in the administration. i can relate, both of my parents died too while i covered the administration. so in the book a lot was dedicated to filling in gaps you weren't able to ask your questions anymore when you were able to come up for air after a long time in the government. your dad was one of the tuskegee airmen. your mom was the mother of the ell grant.

how hard was that, and why did you want to share that with the public? i know your experience, the tragedy of benghazi as a public servant and also your experience the media and how many americans know your name now, for better or worse, was part of your motivation to write the book. but why did you want to share your personal story with the public and what did you learn that you didn't know before about your parents? susan: let me begin by sharing hy i did this. first of all, with the unusual background i come from and the extraordinary privilege that i've had to serve two presidents to represent the us and keep us safe, i feel like i have learned

some things along the way from my family from my upbringing, from my service, that i want to share. i wanted to share how if you get knocked down to get back up. but i also felt personally for the years between benghazi in 2012, when i was characterized by the right as a villain and by the left, by some, as a victim, that i was really unable until i left government to do anything other than speak for the united states and the president. i didn't have the ability to speak in my own voice until -- and tell my own story. and there was -- that rubbed me the wrong way. because as you might discuss, one of the critical lessons i learned from my parents was not to ever let anybody define me

for me. that i had to be my own advocate. my own champion. and my own spokesperson. and that overlays with some lessons on race which we can potentially come back to. so i wanted to tell my own story. i had to be honest. i had to tell not just, this is in the a book for, you know, self-promotion, running for office, some other kind of thing. if i am i surely wrote an unorthodox book to do that. this was a book to tell my story in all its dimensions. and that required talking about the big stuff but it also enabled me to go back and spend excavating ng and some of these chapters in my life going back to my childhood

my parent's divorce in particular. i just rushed through in order to keep trying to strive and excel and do my best. margaret: that was a painful story. susan: it was very, very painful divorce. violent. and terrifying. and it shaped me in many ways because i was a little 7-year-old firefighter trying to mediate between my parents and protect my little brother. d i had wonderful parents, highly accomplished, brilliant, devoted, who gave me and my brother everything we could hope for but they had no business being married to each other. they broke up in a bitter way and put us through that experience in a very bitter, public custody battle and out of that, not only did i learn, for better or for worse, a little something about mediation and conflict resolution, but i learned that, you know, i could

take a hit and keep going. thatsomething that painful early wouldn't get me down. that was very valuable also down the road. you asked what i learned that i didn't know. it's interesting. i had a child's perspective on my parent's breakup. with the prosofse writing this book i actually, and i -- i actually saw the documentary records. found my deceased father's papers, legal depositions my parents had to provide in the course of their battle. and nobody should ever read the legal depositions of their divorced parents, it's not pretty. but it was enlightening. because i came to understand both their perspectives much more clearly and could digest them from the vantage point of a grownup who is married myself and has children. there was a lot that i learned.

i'm glad i had the opportunity to do it. margaret: your parent's divorce was a foundational experience. you had another difficult experience, the you didn't know about it until later, i hope it's ok for me to share this, it's in the book, you actually would have been a twin. you had a brother and he was stillborn. and you learned about that many years later. susan: my mom and dad, as i said , one of the early indications they had no business being married was that my mother wanted kids and my father thought he didn't want kids and my mother got pregnant and my father blamed her for tricking him. and i was the product of that first trick, so to speak.

it wasn't a trick. and it turned out that my parents learned that my mother was in fact bearing twins. and they had been living in nigeria when i was conceived, long story, i won't go there yet. and they were making their way back to the united states from west africa, flying thru paris. and they were on a plane crash, the plane took off, t.w.a. aircraft took off and instead of lifting off it crashed nose down into the ground in, i guess, may of 1964. noiven passengers were killed. they all evacuated safely, including my parents, but it was a traumatic, emotional and physical experience for my mother. when they got back to the united states, she was on bedrest for much of the rest of her pregnancy. and when she came to deliver, my baby brother was stillborn and i

survived. and i didn't know about that until i was 12. my parents i think had wanted to keep that from me until they thought i was old enough to appreciate it. but in the context of a heated fight that i was having with my mother as a 12-year-old i said something flip like why do you always treat me worse than the others. and she heard that in combination with some other things i had said other the years to suggest that i had some intuition that in fact i was a twin. and she blurted out how did you know you were a twin? i said what are you talk act? i had no idea. that was the first time i learned and what was hard about it was i asked her, what happened? why did he die? and she said, you know, we don't know. for sure. it could have been the plane crash. it could have been the pediatrician who wasn't paying careful enough attention to what was going on, i never had full

confidence in him. it could have been that you were just the stronger of the two and that you consumed the lions share of the resources. and i heard that as, am i being blamed for the death of my sibling? i know that's not what my mother meant but that's what i heard. nd so that was a moment that i ever really let go of. margaret: you take somebody else's job as well, take someone else's work as well as your own, do you feel you carry that with you? susan: i don't know that i thought about it that way. i'd known from my childhood that i was a strong personality and a strong character and that i had a lot of self-confidence even from an early age. and i was an athlete, a tomboy.

threw around a few elbows when necessary. but i didn't associate that with taking from somebody else. margaret: just a sense of responsibility to go the extra mile? susan: i do feel that, but i'm not sure where it comes from. margaret: i found that story incredibly haunting to read that excerpt. we're not going to have time to talk about this so i want to share a glimpse of some of the passages in this book because we have a couple of things we have to talk about. you told the puking storying. ere's the time you gave dick holbrooke the finger. highly recommend that pass. . there was the decision you had to make about whether to attend john mccain's funeral given the course of your relationship in

the final years. and why you decided what you decided to do. there are some interesting passages on your relationship with the former russian ambassador with the u.n. the late russian ambassador who compared the u.n. meetings to important. -- to porn. i'll let you guys figure that out on your own. there's some tough lessons from south sudan and rwanda. the plot to the -- attack president obama in a trip that i was on in ethiopia, that i didn't know anything about it and guess who else didn't know anything about it until they were back on the plane. susan: we're in ethiopia in 2015. this is one of many presidential trips we took overseas. we had just come from kenya,

which was president obama's first trip to kenya as president. lots of enthusiastic crowds, as you'll recall. in ethiopia, the first night we were there, after the state dinner, i went back to my bedroom, as usual, and planned to get ready for bed. there was a knock on the door d it was anita decker-breckenridge, the white house traveling chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, playing the role of chief of staff, i'm still in my gown she said you've got to come with me. i didn't have my shoes on. still had my ball gown on. we go down to this secret service tent, you know how we have secure tents on these trips for communications. and we go into the secure tent and in it is the head of the president's security -- secret service detail. a number of other senior agents.

representatives from our embassy in addis ababa who were on the security side of the embassy. and they wanted to share with me that they had just learned very reliablely that al-shabab, an east african terrorist offeringnyization with links to al qaeda that carried out a number of attacks throughout east africa, had a plot under way to attack president obama the next day as our motorcade was leaving the african union headquarters and making its way to the airport. you were in that motorcade. so was i. so we get this information, obviously we take it very seriously. i call back to washington to make sure that we're putting all of our assets on trying to chase down this threat strain. we're in communication with the ethiopian security forces who are actually quite capable and

efficient if also very ruthless. and they keep assuring us that they are following the suspect and they have the suspect under surveillance and that we shouldn't worry. nd of course we worried. so you know, we get to the next day, we're at the african union. the president gives his speech. we're about to get into the motorcade to head to the airport and all of the ethiopian assurances that they have everything under control are ringing hollow because suddenly, the americans have information that suggests that the suspect is at large and on the streets. on the route, by the way, of the motorcade. so the president is hustled into a hold room. he's getting increasingly frustrated because he doesn't know why precisely he's being effectively detained by his own

people in this hold room and prevented from going back home. and i'm in in a meeting with the ethiopian prime minister and several of my colleagues trying to underscore to the prime minister how concerned we are and that we can't move the president until we get this resolved my friend and colleague, gayle smith who lived for many years in eethyopia. is on the phone with the head of ethiopian security and she is saying to this guy, we've got a serious problem. we have reason to believe this guy is on the loose. and he's like it's not a problem. she's like it really, we're very concerned, it's a problem. he said, it's not a problem. and she said how can it not be a problem? where is this guy? and finally the security chief says he's with me. at the airport. and we're like he's with you at the airport? yes, he's in my car. and i'm thinking he's buried in

his trunk. not getting out. where fact, i don't know in the car, i never asked. the secret service verified that this was the case at the airport and we were able to move the president and you on to air force one and leave and we took off. i don't know if you recall, we took off at the most extraordinarily steep ascent that i've ever been on except in a war zone. and that was, we were getting the hell out of dodge. we told the president after wheels up what happened. we had a few extra drinks on the way home. margaret: i read that, i was like what? i was on that trip! but i guess in a situation like that you're like is it safer to hang out in ethiopia or get him on the plane and get out of here. susan: once we knew the guy was in custody we could get out with

relative confidence. we weren't going to hang around for nicities. margaret: i'm going to take you back to the spring of 2015, i know you don't want me to do this but i'll do it anyway. you're at a correspondents dinner which you hate. susan: i hate. and i was honored to be your guest. margaret: thank you for coming. someone is coming at you for a hug and you realize the person coming at you far hug is donnell trump. and he wraps his arms around you and whispers in your ear, you've een very unfairly treated over benghazi, and, quote, you're doing a great job for the country. and he puts his arms around you and you pose for a picture. susan: that's a true story. there were a lot of awkward some might that

even say creepy. i had my back to him, he came up behind me. i had never met him before. never met him since. and he really sort of pulled me up out of my chair and gave me a hug. and it wasn't -- i don't want to misconstrue. it wasn't a gross hug. it wasn't inappropriate. but -- except for the fact that i didn't know him, had never met him before. but what was notable about it was what he said. you've been very unfairly treated over benghazi, you're doing a great job for the country. hell, yeah, i was surprised. margaret: why were you surprised to hear him say that? susan: in public, on twitter, he's talking conspiracy theory. six weeks late ore something like that he declares his run for the presidency. and every subs again mention to me i've heard out of miz mouth,

i've been a criminal, i've been this, i've been that. i've not been very unfairly treated. nor has president obama. so -- interesting was the intrast between what he said private and what we've heard efore and since in public. margaret: benghazi was a tragedy in 2012. ending this elife of several americans including a u.s. ambassador. your mom told you not to do the sunday shows. she said i smell a rat. softball question. is that why she sent you out there? susan: no. she didn't send me out. the back story is, horrible week. we had lost four of our colleagues in a terrible tragedy.

many of our other embassies around the world had been subjected to violent attacks, demonstrations, it's about 10 days before the opening of the u.n. general assembly. i'm the u.n. ambassador. and many of the issues that i work on from syria to palestinian statehood to the iran nuclear issue will be at the fore. and the white house calls me on a friday afternoon. and says you know, we've asked secretary clinton if she would go on the sunday shows. and we're waiting to hear from her. but if she can't, would you consider doing it? we need somebody to go on. and i said well, call me when you hear back from her. a couple of hours later they call back and say she's not able to do it. that was mption was because she was emotionally

spent after a very wrenching week, tired, didn't want to do it. and they said would you please do it? and i said ok. it was not how i planned to spend my weekend. in fact, i was taking my kids the next day to columbus, ohio, for the ohio state football game. against berkley. and my kids had never been to a big ten game. i was determined to take them and i did take them. but on my way home from work i stopped by my mother's house my mom had just a few, a couple months later had a stroke -- a couple months earlier had had a stroke and after her fourth or fifth cancer surgery and i stopped in to check on her. and we were having a conversation and i said, you know, she said what are you doing this weekend? i said i'm taking the kids to ohio state and then i agreed to go on these sunday shows, all five of them, at the white

house' request. she looked at me and she said what? i said i'm going on the sunday shows. she said why you? i said because they asked secretary clinton, she the clined. i agreed to do it. -- she declined. i agreed to do it. i was trying to be a team player. she said, i smell a rat, you should not go on these shows. i said don't be ridiculous, i've done this many times before, it'll be fine. and of course it wasn't. so i'll be honest. i think my mother had that mine. on but it wasn't what i think perhaps my mother understood intuitively and maybe secretary clinton and tom donald, the national security advisor and other likely suspects, understood better than i did, was that the first person who speaks publicly about a

crisis, where the details are unfolding, is inevitably going to have information that in some way, shape, or form turns out to be incomplete or inaccurate. and that was what happened in this case. and i provided the best information that the u.s. government had at the time. it was given to me by the intelligence community. it was consistent with what i knew to be our intelligence. and i shared it. caveating it by saying it could change an it was preliminary and it ended up being erroneous in one important respect. there was no demonstration at our facility in benghazi. but having delivered that message, i became -- it wasn't just the message that was the target of the president's political opponents in an election year. it was the messenger as well. and it had frankly not occurred to me, it would the next time, that i should put myself above a broader mission.

but you know, the lesson out of that, among others, is one, most importantly, you know, we lost four americans. and their loss has been overshadowed by all the politics and back and forth over this issue, the least of which was my portion of it. but just generally their loss has been overshadowed. in the real world it showered washington's interests in helping to stabilize. so it had real world consequences as well. but the other lesson i've learned is, you should listen to your mom. i tell my kids that. margaret: listen to your mother. we have only a few minutes left. i want to ask you one more libya question, i'll tell a couple of quick stories. susan: they get 15 minutes for questions, right?

margaret: if i talk fast enough. looking back with hindsight do you have any regrets about the way the administration approached libya and stuck with it? put benghazi aside or make this a prelude to benghazi. were there things you would do differently there now if you could do it again? susan: yes. as i discuss in the book, i advocated for u.s. intervention in libya. i was on the side of the argument that said we ought to intervene to protect civilians. i made that case forcefully on behalf of the united states at the u.n. and we won the at the to vors it. i still think even though it's not a black and white call that that was the right decision. where i think we made mistakes and underestimated both the willingness of our european allies, willingness and ability of our european allies to contribute to the post-conflict faze and u.n., we also underestimated the complexity of

trying to unify a society that had only lived for 40 years under the rule of one man. had no institutions to underpin it. and we did not -- when i say we, i mean the united states, europeans, u.n., all of us. africans, who were engaged in this, didn't do enough, swiftly enough, to try to help libya co-here and stabilize. now i had no idea, honestly, whether we could have succeeded. but the tragedy is we can't make that judgment because i don't think we put sufficient effort into it when it would have attered. and then came benghazi which was the death nell. and then when i was national scubt advisor, about a year and a half later work president obama's forceful support and encouragement, we turned a lot more effort and attention to

libya, to diplomacy. to try to resolve the internal conflicts, to building up their capacity. but i think in rhett are spect it was too late. margaret: there are a couple of other things i want to flag for readers out there. you identify one regret with respect to russia policy you wish the administration had been more aggressive about sanctions in 2016. you also -- margaret: and wish we still were more aggressive about sanctions related to 2016. margaret: you talk about two other things, president xi and president obama, right before the end, he couldn't want a trade war with president trump but if he forces him to have one, china will play to win. margaret: this was president obama's last bilateral moment with president xi xinping an

we're talking about all different issues. out of the blue, without rning, xi says what was just relayed. that he said look -- he looks president obama in the eye and said china does not want a trade were with the united states but if you start one, we will fight to win it. an of course president obama was not meant to be the recipient of that message. but it stuck with me as unusually cold and stark, a warning, and narrow -- and now we're seeing what that meant. margaret: we could do a whole hour on this. the f.b.i. ran a counter intelligence operation on you, they weren't sure you were supposed to be meeting with iran's u.n. ambassador, that's another session. before we go over to questions, there are just two people we haven't talked about yet, one is your daughter, maris and your

son, jake. you may know jake as an active republican as stanford, university -- at stanford university. the other is that your daughter, you reveal in this book, around the time of the benghazi by ode, was so stressed out being a 9-year-old kid processing what was happening to you that she began having hallucinations. i want to ask you before we turn to questions, in both of those ses, kind of your takeaway from balancing parenthood with a very stressful, high profile job like the national security advisor. susan: in the case of our daughter, maris, she started telling us about, she was seeing images of men coming out of walls at her. and we were, of course, very freaked out.

she's a very happy, healthy, normal kid. she was at 9, she is at 16, almost 17. and we couldn't figure out what was going on. of course we took her to, you know, the best place in washington to get tested at children's hospital and they were looking at did she have a brain tumor. was she psychotic, did she have some visual problem. what was going on? they went through a battery of tests, ruled out all the worst case, scare yow scenarios and concluded that ultimately it was a stress reaction. and it was, you know, on us to a large extent because we hadn't realized that with the tv on for a period of time in the ackground she was imbibing the bile that was directed at me and had no basis for understanding it. my mother, by the way, also suffered from this but she had a clear consciousness of what was

going on but was still emotionally traumatized. i include that story in the book with mari s's permission, because i wanted to illustrate that the politics of personal destruction in washington don't come for free. there are innocent children, loved ones, friends, colleagues, who suffer as well. and maris is fine. she is a top student. a great athlete. a wonderful, happy, healthy kid. thank god. but you know, she is not the only kid in washington who has suffered because their parents have been attacked. and it's not going to change, i'm afraid. but we shouldn't be oblivious to what it costs. margaret: before we go to questions, the only thing i'd leave you with is that with jake it does seem there's, if you and

jake can bridge your differences and still be extremely close, anyone can. let's get to questions right away. if you would tell us who you are and ask your question. >> i have a question. what would you say to democrats now going through what they're going to go through, what are the things they should tell the american public about why it's so dangerous, what president rump has done? susan: well as hard as it is to persuade people, this really shouldn't be viewed through a partisan lens. we have had presidents of both parties going back as far as we can remember, with whom we may have agreed or differed, but at least in my lifetime we've never had a president of the united states that acted in a fashion that wasn't consistent with what he believed to be the national interest. and you know, you can agree or

disagree about the iraq war or vietnam or whatever but the presidents who prosecuted those efforts, i think, did it because they thought it was the right thing for the country. they weren't doing it for their financial gain or their personal political gain. and now we have reason on a national and bipartisan basis to question quite seriously whether what motivates the commander in chief is in fact the national interest. and to our collective dismay, i think there's mounting evidence and frankly the ukraine is only he most recent and stark example, but you can ask, you know, why are we in bed with kim jong un. why did we invite the taliban to camp david? why is vladimir putin sitting with the president in private meet wgs no note takers and the president coming out and denigrating our intelligence agencies and praising putin? there's a whole lot of things

that don't make sense. and none of them seem to be clearly in the u.s. interest. so that's the fundamental problem. and that is something that in my opinion, for better or for worse, merits scrutiny and investigation. >> thank you. thank you for writing this as a human book about such difficult and political things. my name is tim, i'm with the "washington examiner." when you were saying you underestimated the complexity of making libya peaceful, i'm just think og of the iraq war and the regime change war in the muslim world turned out to create a hot isisf terrorism and helped in the way that it helped al qaeda and the only reason i can see that president obama seeped to take from iraq is the dangers of nation build bug that plays right to what you say said was

the problem, the last thing the president in libya afterwards. was there anything the obama administration learned from the iraq invasion that you applied in the libya invasion and if so why did things end up exactly as badly. susan: good question. let me put it in confection. first of all, president obama, as you recall, opposed the iraq war. i personally opposed the iraq war when i was out of government in the bush years. but oppose the iraq war because it didn't seem to be justified on the basis for which we were told we were going to war, the weapons of mass destruction. and it seemed to detract from and distract from what was our principal counterterrorism challenge at the moment, which was in afghanistan against al qaeda. president obama learned many things from iraq. starting with, don't put your ground forces into a combat zone

when your national interests are -- your vital national interests are not at stake. libya was a humanitarian intervention. we did it with the bless og they have world and with the partnership of the europeans and arabs. we did it because we thought at the time and i still believe at the ability to affect the protection of human beings was achieveable at a bearable cost and risk. we knew we could do it without putting u.s. forces on the ground. without an occupation. so the mistake, if there was one, in the aftermath, was not that we didn't put u.s. forces on the ground, that was in the what i was suggesting. it was that we didn't invest with the europeans and the united nations and others sufficiently the diplomatic capital, the post-conflict reconstruction, the stabilization presence that the united states might have

provided, in order to try to -- to try to help libya co-here at a moment where, for a short period, i think there was a collective will to co-here. but it wasn't about putting u.s. forces on the ground. it wasn't an unlearning of the iraq lesson. it was trying to see if we could accomplish a humanitarian objective at a reasonable risk and cost. the other thing i'd say is when you look at how we approached issues down the road, of counterterrorism, whether in wrells on the african continent or in southeast asia or wherever, we used partners and we worked by, with, and through, that's the military term, partner forces on the ground. that's how we did, fought isis in syria. that's how we ultimately try 20d tack -- tried to tackle isis with the reconstituted iraqi security forces in iraq. the principal lesson of the iraq in against saddam hussein our estimation was you don't

necessarily have to put tens of thousands of u.s. forces on the ground and occupy a sovereign nation in order to accomplish your counterterrorism bjectives. >> i just wanted to say first of all, thank you for your service. at this last week we saw testimony from dr. mcguire and he said the warfare we face in our country is no longer kinetic but cyber. being a young person, frankly, i agree. so my question to you is, what do you believe the obama administration as well as the trump administration did to keep, specifically in regards to elections being secure, and it's not enough in those two -- if not enough in those two administrations, which i assume personally, what do we need to do to secure our elections? susan: great questions. first of all, in 2016 when we

confronted the russian threat we worried about several things. we were worried about whether the russians would be in a position to infiltrate our electoral systems in each of the 50 states, or any of the 50 state, and corrupt the voter roles or the actual voting ballots in the count itself. we were worried that they had already stolen emails from the d.n.c. from hillary clinton's server but that they could not only publish those emails which they had start to do, but they might be able to falsify them and make them look real enough in that fashion corrupt the process. those were among our most immediate and principal concerns. we also saw the russians using rt, the russian television ation, and sputnik and other

propaganda vehicles, to infuse our political debate. what we didn't see what we didn't see clearly and only came to light subsequently in 2017 and beyond, and which we therefore underestimated the severity of was russia's ability then and every day since to use ocial media and bots and activists on all sides of various divisive issues to pit americans against each other and to undermine our confidence in each other as americans and as a democracy. so what the russians are doing every day now, as we speak, and we saw it initially in 2016, but it's continued, is they are playing on both sides of every divisive issue. whether it's race or immigration

or guns or what have you. and sometimes they're utilizing americans as their vehicle. sometimes they're utilizing, you know, false flag operations. but their whole purpose is to pit americans against each other. and we are enabling that by virtue of our own domestic political division. if we weren't divided, they couldn't exacerbate those divisions. because we're divided, they are taking advantage of that. and so what i write at the end of the book, and i mean it quite seriously, is that our domestic political division in my judgment are the greatest threat to our national security. that's bad news. the good news, though, is it's a problem of our own making. and therefore by definition it's a problem we can solve. but we have to see it as such and we have to be willing to tackle it with urgency and i talk in the book, in the last chapter, not only about my son,

whom i love very much and whom i differ with on some important issues. and how we wrestle with that as a family, because i got a daughter frankly on the far left and a son on the far right and my husband and i in the middle, going what the hell do we feed these kids? [laughter] but it's a sort of microcosm in our household of what we face as a nation. and many of the lessons that i think apply on a human, individual, family unit level have resonance on a national level. >> everybody, we're out of time because i talk too long. i hope that you'll get a chance to talk with ambassador rice. [applause] thank you for being with us. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019]

host: quite a shift in the impeachment momentum this week. with speaker pelosi announcing the start of the inquiry. what did we learn from these two impeachment inquiry events? reporter: well, wlerned that the democrats view this episode with a whistleblower raising flags about president trump's interactions with ukraine, that's enough to move democrats who are on the fence now to forcefully in favor of an impeachment inquiry. the fact that they're doing that at all suggests that there will be a vote on articles of impeachment in the very near knewture.

and the d.n.i.'s testimony sort of lending credence to what the whistleblower said, although not confirming a lot of key details. i think only kept the fire lit. it didn't change the trajectory, which is, again, in favor of impeachment proceedings and possibly articles in the near future. host: all of this happening ahead of the two-week congressional break. ahead of our interview, you tweeted this, though. the house intelligence committee is eyeing next friday for a possible ukraine hearing as democrats advance impeachment effort. tell us about what the intelligence committee and other committees on the house will be doing during this two-week break. reporter: sure. typically impeachment is the province of the judiciary committee but because we're dealing with an intelligence community whistleblower and some potentially classified information, the intelligence committee is taking the lead here on what could end up becoming the central article of impeachment. and because they want to move fast, there's been some concern that this week two-week recess

would slow the momentum the democrats have tarted to pick up and would give the president time to regroup on this. so instead what they're going to do is try to work through -- plow through the recess, just the intelligence committee, they may try to hold hearings. they want to sit with this whistleblower himself if they can so that when congress returns completely, they're ready to go with some speed. host: why pelosi and her party finally embraced impeachment. what finally sparked her decision and how much has the caucus rallied behind her? reporter: almost 100%. at my last count there were only 10 democrats out of 235 who hadn't fully endorsed the impeachment inquiry. including many who are very skeptical -- were very skeptical beforehand. it really was this whistleblower with the catalyst and trump's relief of the transcripts of his call with ukraine, which he seemed to say was going to be

exculpatory, turned out to be very, you know, confirming the worst fears of some people who thought that it was going to be incriminating. the whistleblower himself and the trump administration's attempts to block the whistleblower from reaching congress and then the release of the transcript combined really pushed everyone over the line. host: let's go back to that whistleblower complaint for a second. the acting director of national intelligence obviously testified before the house intelligence committee, but he also had a briefing to the senate intelligence committee and they heard from the inspector general, michael atkinson. what do we expect, how do we expect the senate intelligence committee to proceed forward on this? reporter: well, they're somewhat at the mercy of the house. they are also trying very hard to maintain a sense of bipartisanship. at least outwardly. they've done that throughout their investigations related to russia and other very

politically sensitive subjects. so i don't expect to hear very much from them. but they're going to try, you know, they're actually a good bell weather. because when you hear republicans on the that committee talk about the graphicity of what they're learning, it can cut through a little bit of the partisanship and noise that we usually hear. host: we're hearing about an interview with the senate majority leader, mitch mcconnell, with n.p.r., telling him about the -- he would have, quote, no choice but to proceed to a -- conduct a trial to determine whether the president should be removed from office. should they to move that direction. so as best you can, give us a general sense how the timeline of the house anyway, in terms of impeachment, may proceed. reporter: what we started hearing toward the end of this week was, the house wants to move very quickly, while they have momentum and they believe unity around this particular episode related to ukraine so that could take a matter of weeks, four to six weeks to get

articles through committee, probably the intelligence and then judiciary committees. and then to the floor. and given what senator mcconnell said, that means we could have a senate trial before the end of this year and really a shocking turn of events. we thought impeachment might never happen, to it could be over and done with by november, december. host: kyle cheney covers congress for "politico." you can read his reporting at politico.com. thanks for joining us. reporter: great to be here [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] >> secretary of state mike pompeo has been subpoenaed by three house committees for information involving the impeachment investigation. the chairman of the house foreign affairs, intelligence and oversight committees gave secretary pompeo an october 4 deadline to produce documents related to the impeachment inquiry against president trump. today, a panel