>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, bob gates, former secretary of defense, talking about his new book, duty. memoirs of a secretary at war. >> i not only had the task of trying to help salvage two wars, which at the beginning of 2007 were not going well. but i ended up, you know, in war with the congress, in a war with my own building, and at times with the white house and other agencies, and so it was kind of a constant fight every single day to get, to get good things done, whether it was cutting wasteful programs in the budget, whether it was prolonging the surge in iraq, whether it was getting the right equipment to the troops, everything was a fight with somebody or another. >> rose: and you were exhausted? >> and i was just spent. >> rose: bob gates for the hour, next. funding for charlie rose was

provided by the following. >> there is a saying around here, you stand behind what you say. around here, we don't make any excuses. we make commitments and when you can't live up to them, you own up and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it is needed most. but i know you will still find it when you know where to look. >> rose: additional funding provided by these funders. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

>> from our studios in new york captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> the day after i became secretary of defense in december 2006, i flew to iraq and visited our troops there. i was struck, i was struck by the fact that all of them were the very same age as the students i had left behind, except these 18 to 25-year-olds were wearing full body armor, carrying assault rifles and living in peril, putting their lives on the line to protect all of us, all of you. >> rose: robert gates is here, he served as secretary of defensive for two presidents, george w. bush and barack obama, and also spent 26 years at the cia and on the national security council. this week he made international

headlines with the release of his new book, the book is called duty, memoirs of a secretary at war. the book delves into some of the diagnosisest national security issues of the past decade and also gives a behind the scenes look at the white house and the pentagon under both presidents. some say it is one of the most candid accounts of washington ever written. i am pleased to have bob gates back at this table. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> rose: so please explain your neck to me. >> well, so i, what i am telling you my wife becky and were, i were sitting at the kitchen table and i just happened to mention casually i was thinking about going back into government and the next thick i knew, thing i knew i woke up in the er with a broken neck. >> rose: and she said i don't know what happened. >> but in all seriousness, just pure clumsiness i tripped on a rug. >> rose: on a rug? >> in our house on new year's day and just crashed. >> rose: but you are okay, though? >> yes. i have to wear this apparatus

for a total of 12 weeks, but there is no pain and no impairment, well, we will see whether there is any impairment. at least no physical impairment. >> rose: we will make a judgment -- >> exactly. the rest remains to be seen. >> when president obama asked you to stay to be his secretary of defense he said, what? you promised him a year, right? >> when we had our clandestine meeting in the firehouse at national airport at the end of our conversation i said, well, why don't we think in terms of a year, and say that, and he said, well, let's not say anything, but we will think in those terms. and when i, at my farewell ceremony, i talked about the president asking me to stay on and on and on. >> rose: and so why did you decide that this was the time to leave, the moment you did leave? >> charlie when i left i had

been secretary of defense for four and a half years. we had been at war every single day in two places, and i had been in the job longer than all but four of my predecessors, and as i say, during wartime and what the book is about is that i not only had the task of trying to help salvage two wars, which at the beginning of 2007 were not going well, but i ended up in a war with the congress, in a war with my own building, and at times with the white house and other agencies, and so it was kind of a constant find every single day to get, to get good things done, whether it was cutting wasteful programs in the budget, whether it was prolonging the surge in iraq, whether it was getting the right equipment to the troops can, everything was a fight with somebody or another. >> rose: and you were

exhausted. >> i was just spent. >> there was also the emotional weight. >> well, this was -- this is something that i write about. i had gotten to the point where every time that i talked to the troops or even when i started talking about the troops, where i would start to choke up, beginning about 2008, i began telling the troops both in iraq and afghanistan but then also in service academies and elsewhere that i had come to feel a personal responsibility for each of them as though they were my own sons and daughters, and i got to the point toward the beginning of 2011 when i began to realize that my determination to protect them against additional wars was probably clouding my judgment in terms of hardheaded national security.

>> rose: can you give an example of that when you were more worried about them and protecting them than maybe maybe ago right decision about national security? >> i think it was a real factor in my opposition to our intervention in libya, and at one point in the situation room i said to people, i said can i just finish the two wars we are already in before you all go looking for another one? there is a scene in the movie gettysburg at the end where jenilee and general long street are sitting around the campfire .. and long street is beloved by his troops and loves them and lee admonishes him, general, you mustn't love the army so much that you are not prepared to sacrifice it. i thought about putting that in the book but because it was fiction i decided not to, but that line ran through my mind fairly regularly.

>> rose: and what was it that made this deep connection to the troops? >> charlie, i think it got started by the fact that i came to the job from being president of a big university, so every day for four and a half years that i had been president of a&m, every day i had been around thousand and thousand of kid 18 to 25 walking around campus in backpacks and shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops and kind of going on around on their way, and literally overnight i was in iraq and saw kids exactly the same age wearing full body armor, carrying assault rifles, putting their lives as risk, living in wretched conditions and it just had a huge impact. the kids the same age kids were putting their dreams on hold and putting their lives at risk to protect the dreams of all those kid back home and as well as the

rest of us, and i decided early on that signing con do lens letters wasn't enough and then i started handwriting the letters, parts of the letters and then i felt as you were just suggesting, i wante want to knoi didn't want these kids to ever become statistics for me. i wanted to know about them, and so i started -- i asked that the packages that brought the materials to me include their hometown newspaper stories, and interviews with their parents and their coaches and their brothers and sisters or their wives and their pastors and so on, and, you know, kids who loved to fish and hunt or kids who were aim less and found a calling in the military or kids who were really good students and came from well-to-do families and decided this was something they needed to do for their country, and it was just

the full range, to tell you the truth, the book is dedicated to the men and women of the united states armed forces and i wrote it for them and for their families and for the america that sent them. this is not a book written for the beltway, for washington, d.c. this is -- i wanted them to see the passion with which these issues were debated, the way presidents as well as i and others wrestled with these questions of life and death and success and failure, and to humanize this in the washington world in a way that i don't think that the news media or historians, perhaps, captured. >> rose: as you know, i will ask you some questions you have been asked before, why now? because was it necessary, some believe that you shouldn't write

about a sitting president, if you have been given a position of high command and influence while he is still in office or she is still in office. >> well as i suggested, i think that the issues that i work -- that i describe in this book are ongoing issues, and -- >> rose: and are relevant to the decisions to be made tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. >> today. whether to attack syria, militarily, whether it is to attack iran's nuclear program, if the negotiations don't work out, how to deal with china, how to deal with russia, how to deal with close allies like israel and saudi arabia. what should the shape of the defense budget look like? what kind of military capabilities do we need? when we are making decisions to deploy military forces, what do we know about the other side? what do we know about what we are getting into? and those issues are being

debated today, and they are questions of war and peace. they are questions about our national security going forward. another question is what is the impact of a polarized and perilized congress in the ability to conduct a coherent national security or foreign policy? so i believe these issues are relevant to today and quite frankly when it comes to reporting on conversations with the presidents, i think when people actually read the book, they will see that most of the conversations that i write about actually portray those presidents in a positive light, in the sense that they are asking tough questions. they are pushing back. they are not being spoon-fed information but are wrestling, i think in a positive way with very, very tough problems. >> rose: when it, i will come to some of those in a moment but

back about war, this book is about war, it is about getting in war and getting out of war, the risk of launching a military operation, and all of that. so what have you learned about war that is relevant to the choices facing a secretary of defense, a president of the united states, a secretary of state, chairman of the joint chiefs? >> i think that the first is that we almost always make wrong assumptions, and the first assumption we always almost get wrong is that it will be short, as i suggested earlier, that we will get this job -- i mean you go back to world war i, this is going to be short, we will be done by the end of the summer and it is all over. >> rose: i think that is what secretary rumsfeld and general franks thought about in iraq. >> that's what everybody thought both about iraq an afghanistan and the initial successes in the book became long, grinding wars. >> rose: so the mistake is?

>> the mistake is first of all being very careful about when you deploy military force. and having a better idea of consequences, trying to examine if we do this, then what happens next? this is why i opposed the use of force in syria. imposing a no-fly zone or a humanitarian zone in syria, first of all, means attacking syrian air defenses. that is an act of war. it is its two closest allies are russia and iran, what are the consequences of attacking syria what are the second and third order consequences? and i think we don't -- i think we don't think about those things as much as we should. and i think we -- i make the point in the book and it actually is, i think, i thought it would be one of the more controversial things in the book and maybe after people have read it, it will be, but i make the

point in the book that i believe presidents in recent decades have been too quick to pull a gun to solve a problem, rather -- an using military force as a first choice rather than a last resort. >> rose: but do you think president obama agrees with you on that? >> you know, we never discussed it quite in those terms, but i suspect that he probably does. >> rose: you see, that is amazing to me, in all the conversations you never discussed the idea that this country may be too quick to use military option. >> i did talk to him about that, in fact, in the context of the libya discussion. >> rose: right. >> i made that point. >> rose: and syria, not recommending we do something. >> syria really exploded after i left office, but certainly in the case of libya. >> this book's reaction, you say it was not written for the beltway, but that is where the reaction has come and it is -- what did you say about biden and

what did you say about former secretary of state clinton and what did you say about the president? and are you trash it will president? >> trashing the president? what do you make of that criticism of you? >> as i said before, i think the narrative of the book was highjacked in the early reporting. most people had not read the book. the book doesn't even come out until tomorrow. >> rose: right. >> but there are copies out there for review. >> for press and so on, but only after most of the press only got them after that initial couple of -- >> rose: so they were writing about what they read on excerpts. >> they were writing about what they read in other newspapers and i think there was this narrative put out there that this is an anti-obama book, this is a book that takes issue with his strategy and everything in afghanistan, and it is just completely wrong. i mean, i make very clear in the book i supported every single one of the president's decisions

on afghanistan from the day he took office until the day i left office. >> rose: so other than that, what is it about what has been said in the early reaction that you find exactly wrong? >> well, i think that the preoccupation -- the problem is it is not exactly wrong in the sense that they do have quotes from the book that are accurate quotes from the book but they are out of context, so for example, let me just give you one example. so a lot of people are sort of making fun of the fact that i report on a conversation with the president when we are talking about iran that the president says i am not making any decisions, and he looks around the room and then that stay pretty limited number of people in the room and he says for those of you writing your memoirs, let the record show i am not making any decisions and so -- and i say how offended i was by that, but what is missing is the context, we were talking about specific military options

against iran, and what offended me was the notion that he thought anybody would write about specific military options dealing with that potential adversary of the united states. that, it was that very narrow subject to which i was referring. so there are these things taken out of context. i will give you another example. the quote, the frequently quoted item about secretary clinton. >> rose: right. >> talking about her opposition to the surge being political. i made clear -- >> rose: go ahead. >> i made clear in the book that first of all it caught my attention because i had been on the other side of that issue on the spring of 2007 defending the surge so i was surprised that it was said in front of me, but the other was that grabbed my attention was because it was such an anomaly. in all the time we worked together, i never once, and when

she was secretary of state, i never once heard her bring domestic politics into the conversation as part of a recommendation, as part of her discussion of an issue, it was always what is the national interest here? she wasn't alone -- >> you sounded critical of her and it it seems like lots of decisions like that are made in a political context if they are politicians. >> i think that the issue is, the thing that caught my attention was that she made that statement in front of me. >> rose: ah. >> and i cite another example. that particularly the first months, the chairman of the joint chiefs mike mullen and i would sit in the situation room and there would just be this unadultrated bush bashing, miserable state of the world he left, the president, the vice president, secretary of state, national security advisor and so on, and this, you know, what a

miserable state of the world bush and his team left us in. >> rose: and you were on the team. >> and mike mullen and i have looking at each other, what, are we invisible? do they not realize we were integral parts of that team? so it was in that vein that i think hillary's statement caught my attention. >> rose: it was an aside. >> yes, it was an aside in the context of her strong support in going forward with the afghan surge. >> rose: there really seems to be suz some misunderstanding abt this and i want to figure out exactly what you saw and heard and what you have written. it is about the president and afghanistan, and the man that you met when he asked you to be secretary of defense, you have described almost a perfect pitch with respect to the military and use of the military, correct? >> correct. >> you believe that he supported the surge in afghanistan, the

addition of troops because he believed it was the right decision to make after an agonizing process. >> virtually all of his political advisors and others in the white house, including the vice president were very much against the decision that he made. he made a decision h he believed was in the national interests, despite the advice of his political advisors and everybody else. >> the president began to feel that he was being boxed in, that, by the military to put him in a place where his options were restricted. did he believe that, first? >> let me draw a distinction. first of all, when the president made his decision to intervene in libya, he told me that it was a really close call that it was a very tough decision because there were just almost all down sides as far as he was

concerned, that he was persuaded by secretary clinton and others that we needed to do this with and for our a allies. when he made his decision in november of 2009 for the afghan surge, he did not express such reservations to me. i believe the president when he made those decisions believed that strategy would work. as time went along, through 2010, significant elements of that strategy yearly were not working, because that strategy included getting pakistan to stop its hedging and help to the taliban. it included trying to get the afghan government to be less corrupt and more competent, and as the civilian side of this strategy began -- was not

producing, i think it fed his concerns, and i talk about that in the book. >> rose: right. >> and so the irony and i write about this is, is that the one part of the strategy that actually was working reasonably well, although slower than anticipated by the military, was the military side. i supported the president's decisions and the truth is, despite what i have written, the president has continued to stick with the strategy he laid out in november of 2009 and then reaffirmed in december of 2010 to this day, in terms of a full withdrawal by december 2014, and i write in the book. >> rose: which you support. >> which i support and i think negotiating the strategic follow on agreement with the afghans is exactly the right thing, trying to leave a residual force there is exactly the right thing. my concern with the president on afghanistan fell into two

buckets. the first was his suspicion of the motives of some of his senior military leaders. he clearly believed and so did everybody else in the white house, that the military leadership was trying to box him in and force him to make a significant additional commitment of troops in afghanistan, and as i write, and there was cause for him to be suspicious. in september -- >> rose: he had reason to be suspicious? >> yeah, because in september of 2009, admiral mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs was up for reconfirmation and in his confirmation hearings strongly supported a significant addition of troops in afghanistan, about a week later, general mcchrystal, the commander in

afghanistan, his assessment of where we stood in afghanistan leaped, basically saying if there wasn't a significant increase in troops, there would be mission failure. >> rose: let me stop. do you believe that general mcchrystal leaked that memo? >> i don't believe, first of all, i don't know, but i don't believe general mcchrystal leaked it. >> rose: but someone who worked with him or his interests? >> may have. >> rose: okay. and the president thought it came from the military? >> yes. absolutely. and frankly at this point, i think the odds probably favor that. and then just a week after that, general mcchrystal gives a speech in london and in the q & a, question and answer period afterward answers in a way that basically dismisses out of hand the option the vice president has been putting forward in our internal counsels. >> which is a counter-terrorism -- >> right. >> rose: and, of course, that

leak. so here you have in the space of about two and a half weeks three different -- and then one other thing is, general competent address gives an interview to a columnist who had been a former george w. bush speechwriter in which he talks about the need for more troops. so you take all these four things together, and there was, as i write in the book gentleman lit jat suspicion in the white house this was an orchestrated campaign in the military to force the president's hand. i didn't believe it then, i didn't believe it now. >> rose: that there was an orchestrated campaign. >> right. there was an orchestrated campaign to force the president's hand into -- >> rose: so the president had legitimate reasons to believe there was? >> as i write in the book, i can easily understand why those in the white house, including the president, believed that the military was trying to do this, and that it was an orchestrated plan, and i tried to dissuade

the president of that, but i was not successful. so that was one area where i was concerned, was this suspicion of the president. i understood the origins of it and as i write it actually began as early as february, march 2009, when he made the first troop increase and the vice president felt that the president was getting the bum's rush by the military. the second was the president's lack of public passion in calling for success in afghanistan, and i put it more in the framework of the troops. if you ask young men and women to go out and risk their lives, you need to be out front. it seems to me, as commander in chief in telling them why their cause is noble, why their cause is just, and why their sacrifice

is worthwhile. in the fall of 2009, i told the president, don't pick a middle option, either agree to a significant troop increase or make a dramatic decision in the other direction, meaning a radically reduced -- >> rose: don't do it halfway. >> don't do it halfway. and the president was committed, the president made tough decisions, and i -- and i admire him for that and i supported all of that, but i think that, i think, you know, i mean our troops are not -- they are very smart. >> rose: but what i principally saying is that the reason didn't have reason to be suspicious that he was being boxed in but he didn't make enough speeches to let the men and women on the ground to let them know he supported them. >> i am faulting him for not going out and defend ago war and

a mission that he was sending young men and women out to accomplish, and they need to hear that from their commander in chief. >> rose: so he was supporting them but not saying look, this is a mission that can be accomplished, and i believe in this mission. >> this notion that i support the troops but not their mission, i think -- >> rose: he wasn't saying i don't support the mission, i mean -- >> absence, as i write in the book. >> right. >> i don't have any problem -- i told emanuel about his speeches about exit strategy and how we get out of strategy. >> because he campaigned on that idea. >> and -- >> rose: and would like for that president to have done because you too were tired of war and wanted to see an extraction from iraq and afghanistan. >> but i told rahm emanuel he needs to take ownership of this war. >> rose: after afghanistan i feel people people figure he did own the war. so let me ask you this. so he began in private

conversations with you to express some of his concerns, he was worried about was the strategy working and that kind of thing. don't all presidents do that in private counsel with people who they trust and have important understanding of the nature of the war? didn't lyndon johnson do that about vietnam? >> sure. >> rose: don't generals say, you know, this may not work, i mean, eisenhower's famous speech about the d-day said, you know, if this fails, to the troops, i take responsibility. >> and i write about the fact that george w. bush had exactly the same reservations about his strategy in iraq, and at the end of 2006, essentially changed his whole team. >> rose: what is wrong with having reservations and skepticism and expressing it privately to your secretary of defense? >> absolutely nothing is wrong with it. >> rose: unless he writes about it and it suggests that

somehow the president didn't believe in the mission. >> and it is important that any absence of the president speaking publicly in support of the mission, that is the concern i had, and it goes back to the beginning of the conversation about the troops and what was on my mind is, these kids need to hear from the guy who sent them why what they are doing is important and it is valuable and we are not in this for a tie. we want you to be successful. >> rose: and if we are asking you to sacrifice your life we promise you it is for a cause we believe in and is winnable? >> and this is one reason why i never said anything about this while i was still in office. >> rose: but we still have men and women in afghanistan. >> well, my point is, they know the score. i mean they know what they have not heard, and frankly i think my book doesn't, doesn't inform them of anything they don't already sense, don't already

know. i think that, my hope is that as we continue our effort in afghanistan that the book will contribute to maybe people saying, getting this end game right in afghanistan is important. >> rose: okay. just today we are looking at a terrible situation in iraq. do you believe that if, in fact, we left 10,000 troops there this would not be happening? >> i think there are two reasons, charlie, why iraq is facing the problems that it is. one is that prime minister maliki, first of all, we handed over a very stable, pretty secure iraq in 2009, 2010 to the iraqis, and -- >> and it was creek can i but reason by working democracy, especially in a middle east contest. >> rose: after the election. >> and so we basically handed this situation to the iraqi government on a silver platter, in my view.

one of the things that has created in problems is that prime minister maliki over the last couple of years has essentially done almost everything he could to antagonize the sunnis, in iraq, he has tried to arrest his sunni vice president, he has arrested other sunni officials, h he has not invested anything in anbar province that would give them a stake in the success of the central government, so on and so on so first of all you have maliki's efforts and my hope is what has happened in fallujah and ramadi and so on has been a wakeup call for him that he needs to reach out to these people. >> rose: my perception is wakeup call happened before fallujah because he was here seeing the president, basically asking for help. >> as the problems began to grow. the second is, the syrian civil war and the spillover inside of iraq because of that. i think one of the contributions that our military presence made and to tell you the truth the

sides was of secondary importance in my view, but it was the presence of david competent address, ray odierno, austin who in partnership with the ambassadors were able to bring the factions together in iraq, bring them together to dinner, make them talk to each other, pressure them to engage and solve their problems, whether it was the shy a, shia and the you kurd or the shia and the sunnis and so on and i think we had, because we had a presence, we had leverage, and that leverage, i think, had we been able to maintain a residual force, i think we could have used that leverage over the last year, year and a half or so to try and push maliki harder to be more inclusive. >> rose: and, therefore, to, even though karzai is being -- >> karzai. >> rose: karzai.

and is being, therefore, difficult, unimaginably misunderstanding. >> well, i write in the book that karzai is probably our most challenging ally since charles de gaulle, and what they both had in common is that we put both of them in place, for all practical purposes, and they were solely dependent on us, and yet each wanted to be recognized as the leader of his people and was very sensitive to pride and sovereignty and so on. >> rose: right. >> and i think we haven't paid enough attention to that piece of karzai's personality. >> rose: the difference between karzai and degaulle had to do with corruption and winning a war and some other things. let me just go back to the president for example, there was a meeting that you described with you, admiral mullen and the president and the president --

see, i like this in a president, you know, do they not believe in me? is it because i didn't serve? what is the issue here? and it seems to me that is a reasonable thing to say to a secretary of defense. do i have a problem? am i recording properly here? >> i know the book, i have been criticized for including some personal conversations with the president in the book. >> rose: right. >> the truth is, i think that if you look at those private conversations, what i report, in the case of both presidents, i think they show the president in a favorable light, they show the president asking tough questions, they show the president pushing, disagreeing with the military, questioning the military, and i completely support the president's approach to that. i did a lot of that. i questioned the military a lot, and pushed them and i fired a bunch of them, so -- >> rose: a bunch of the military leaders?

>> yes, so pushing against these guys is exactly what a president ought to do and i think that the portrayal of these conversations shows the president is doing what presidents ought to do. >> rose: you do object, though, very much and you have said that the white house staff and the security staff, you know, that they were, in your own words, the most aggressive and in talking to four-star generals, the most aggressive in terms of centralizing power in the white house. >> micromanaging. >> rose: and micromanaging, and -- since the nixon white house. >> a. >> and i would say they have probably done that one better. >> rose: and you hated that? >> well, again, i make clear in the book, i strongly believe that the white house and the national security advisor need to drive the policy process.

the big bureau situates, defense, state .. i have seen this through my whole clear rarely if ever come up with big ideas or controversial ideas. that has to be driven by the white house and it has happened in virtually every presidency i have served so i never had a problem with that. the problem that i have is when they begin to become operational, and when they are starting to micro manage military operations, when they get in the interfere, in effect, with the chain of command. those are the things that got under my skin. >> and got under secretary of clinton's skin too did it not. >> that certainly was my impression. >> rose: so when you look at the president versus president bush, 1,000 people have -- including me about the difference, you say, number one, very different personalities. how so? >> first of all, i think

president obama is very analytical. >> rose: president bush is not? >> president bush, i think, relied more on his gut, on instinct. i think they both were willing to revisit decisions. they both would argue that they don't, but as you point out, all presidents do that, and particularly when it involves the use of military force. president bush changed strategies, and i would say that what president obama did was in his -- in expressing his reservations, and, again, and i really probably don't go into this enough in the book on how during 2010 it was the failure of the nonmilitary side of the equation, the strategy, as much as anything i think fed his concerns. >> rose: you said that you

talk about a president as smart, deliberate if the, and all of those kind of things, but you say they shared sort of a contempt for the congress and no interest -- [laughter.] >> well, again, charlie -- >> rose: they shared that with you. >> that's true. but, again, the context of the book is when i say that, i am comparing them to other presidents that i worked for, so when i talk about -- >> rose: bush 41, like reagan? >> when it comes to the congress, you know, their approach was very different than lyndon johnson, gerald ford, ronald reagan or george h.w. bush, who really worked, all of them really worked at cultivating or intimidating the congress. >> rose: yes. you say -- you said the congress had neither -- they neither like

the president, in both cases nor that they had neither fear nor -- >> neither liked them much or. >> rose: neither feared them or admired them. >> and as a result there was no natural network. >> rose: to work -- >> that they had of support up there, other than the self-interests of the members or political, and when it comes to foreign leaders, again, the comparison is not an absolute statement, it is in comparison to what i saw jerry ford do, what i saw ronald reagan do, what i saw george h.w. bush do. >> rose: you mentioned this speech about -- the cairo speech, what was wrong with the cairo speech? >> absolutely nothing. >> i didn't think so. >> the cairo speech was a great speech and i say that in the book, it was a very important speech, but the problem is it created significant expectations in the arab world. >> rose: exactly. >> and the lack of follow-up. >> rose:. >> to the speech produced a great letdown. >> rose: so suppose you were

secretary of defense and there was a war that had public support, let's say. would you rather be serving under president obama or president bush? >> that is a very tough question and i am not sure i know the answer to it. >> you don't? why -- what are the factors that would go into your decision or answer? >> i guess, charlie, my answer would be i would be willing -- i would be willing to serve under either one of them. >> rose: yes. but would one be better than the other? >> they both bring different strength but they both -- as i write in the book, i saw both make decisions that were contrary to their political interests but were in the national interests and i quote there by earning my highest possible respect. >> in your judgment we do not yet know how iraq will turn out and, therefore, the wisdom of

going this is not yet fully answered? or lack of wisdom, either one. >> what i write in the book is that i think for the iraq war to be viewed in a more positive light historically will depend on whether a decade or two or three from now the ouster of saddam hussein and the creation of a quasi democratic government in iraq in a multiethnic state is seen as the first crack in the facade of a authoritarianism throughout the middle east that eventually and with difficulty led to a more democratic region, and we won't know that for a long time, but i also say, the truth is, the war will always be tainted and i have said this publicly, even when i was in

office. >> rose: right. >> the war will always be tainted by the fact that it was launched on what turned out to be wrong premises, that there were weapons of mass destruction. >> and iraq today represents the great, one of the great conflicts in the middle east, sectarian war. sunni versus shia. >> well the problem we face in the middle east and one of the reasons why what i have written about war and about these wars in the book i think has contemporary value is that we are seeing major regional conflicts in -- that have emerged in the middle east, sunni versus shia, authoritarian versus reformers, secularists versus islamists, and then over laid on all of that is whether artificially created states such as libya, syria, and iraq that contain historically adversarial

ethnic groups, tribes and religions can hold together absent repression. or whether centrifugal, centrifugal forces will tear those countries apart, so we have four very different but interconnected conflicts going on in the middle east now, it is going to be a big challenge for the united states going forward, and frankly that is one of the reasons why i think the book has contemporary value. >> rose: and what will be your advice to a president at this moment about that -- about the choices we have? because every day i read an article about how, you know, we no longer have the kind of influence we did have, because of all the factors you just suggested. >> yes. >> rose: you know, we are in a much different place and there may be a quote power vacuum and some of the other powers in other countries that may have looked to us for leadership don't do that anymore. >> well, i think there is a perception in the region that we are withdrawing i think that

perception can be corrected but without military force, i think a military presence is important and i would argue for keeping the naval forces that we have in the region there. i would argue for continuing and expanding the military relationships we have with a number of traditional allies in the region. i think we need to work harder at communicating with and bringing our allies in the persian gulf and jordan and elsewhere, and bringing them in close so that they have a better sense of what we are thinking, what we are planning, where we are headed, where we can work together and so on. i think you can do all of those things. i think the administration is -- i saw that secretary hagel was out in the region and so i think that -- and obviously secretary kerry's engagement in the palestinian dispute is

important, but consulting more often and engaging more with our friends about what we can do with respect to -- with respect to syria more aggressively, what we can do about these other conflict that i describe i think is important. >> rose: do you think -- what is your take on the agreement that is in the paper today, the whole notion of nuclear accord with iran advances that is the lead story in both the washington post and "the new york times" negotiators put final touches on the iran accord. what is your take on that accord? >> >> is it a good thing for the united states? do you think we will get something out of this? >> i believe the united states had no choice but to say yes to negotiation. i think in some ways this can be seen as iran coming to the table can be seen as a validation that the strategy of economic

pressure that actually began under president clinton was significantly intensified by president bush and even more so by president obama has, in fact, created the circumstances inside iran that brought them to the table. the key will be that it is not the agreement today. the key is what happens in six months, and i would argue that the since months immediates to be a definite deadline, there needs to be a date certain, because the iranians, the persians are expert at rolling these things along and well let's take another month or take another two or three months so i think there is a very real danger of these guys slow rolling us for a protracted period of time. >> there is a breeze now as they say. >> well there are still other things going on but there are some positive things that are happening during the period of this accord. but they do not stop or reverse the iranian nuclear program in

the larger sense. and i think that first of all there needs to be this deadline. frankly, if i were, in terms of the u.s. congress and dish sanctions i think the congress is wrong to pass additional sanctions now, but i think that the president ought to take advantage of congress being willing to impose dramatically increased sanctions the day after that six-month deadline is reached, so that the iranians know that they are going to lose something significant, that they are going to suffer even more if there is no real agreement, and then finally, i really strongly believe that there should not, we should not reach an agreement that leaves iran as a nuclear weapons threshold state, where they could dash to a weapon fairly quickly. >> rose: to do that we have to have them dismantle some of the

centrifuges and other things. >> yes. >> rose: you spent much of your life in the cia rising to the top position there. and you naturally i would assume be suspicious. >> you know there is an old line about intelligence officers that when they snell the flowers they look around for the coffin. >> rose: i didn't know that. so you are suspicious. >> i am naturally suspicious. >> rose: having said that, is it possible that the iranians have finally said, look, you know, this is to the worth it. >> i am not sure they know. >> rose: ah. >> i think they are playing this out, to see, you have two sides in this negotiation, you have the iranians wanting to change as little of their nuclear program as they can get away with and as much relief from the sanctions as they can get and the position of the united states and our colleagues in this negotiation are just the

reverse. how much, how much of a reversal can we get of the nuclear program and how little of the sanctions do we have to lift in order to force iran to do that? >> rose: finally there is edward snowden who is in russia, a man who -- >> under the umbrella of protection of that famous protector of human rights and civil liberties and privacy, vladimir putin. >> rose: and george bush says he looked into his eyes and he saw something, a christian i am not sure what you said and he said when i look at those eyes i saw a cold stone killer. would you, and under any circumstance imagine support some kind of amnesty so -- >> absolutely not. >> rose: so you are living in seattle, washington, you have got another book after this one. what would you change now that this book is out there? did you go too far? are the things that you should have said you didn't?

>> no, i don't think so, charlie. and for those, for those who -- let me just make two additional points. first of all some folks accuse me of hypocrisy. >> rose: right. >> of saying things in this book that i didn't say when i was in office. believe me, there are no complaints in that book that i did not raise with the president or with people working for the president in, the white house chief of staff and so on, and though i did not raise the micromanage issue with the president i certainly did with the chief of staff and the national security advisor, so there is no issue in that book on which i did not express my views very forcefully while i was still in office. the other is, in terms of reporting on conversations and the more, but more importantly the whole idea of should i have published this now? >> right. >> -- i would just ask interviewers and others to be sure to ask the same question of

secretary geithner and secretary panetta and secretary clinton when their books come out before president obama leaves office. >> rose: indeed they will be, i assume. i know leon panetta -- there is finally this. so four and a half years to write this? how long did it take to write this? >> about 20 months. >> 20 months, four and a half years is how long you served. 20 months to write. you sat at a desk in this room here, writes the washington post, and i assume that may be where you fell, i don't know but -- >> unfortunately. >> rose: and you have another book you are going to write about leadership? >> it is really more about -- it is really more of a book about how you lead change in big organizations and particularly big public organizations, having done it successfully as cia, texas a & m, the defense department, it is really a step -- it is not a leadership book,

it is really more of a step-by-step, here is how you actually can get things done in a public environment, and this is one of the themes in the book that i underscore. despite my hidden rage at the congress or seething at the congress, the fact is i was able to cut nearly three dozen major procurement programs that i considered wasteful or unnecessary, cut $180 billion out of overhead over a ten year period and get congressional support to do all of those things, when most of my predecessors were lucky if they got two or three or four programs cut, and it was because of the way i worked with the congress and what i say in there is you can make this work, even in today's environment in washington, you can be successful in leading change. >> rose: there is finally this. even though you have made a joke about how you received your neck injury, when you ventured to consider going back to

washington in the end you are going back to washington when you die you have asked to have your final resting place at arlington national cemetery among the men and women. >>

the following production was produced in high definition. and their buns are something i've yet to find anywhere else. >> cause i'm not inviting you to my house for dinner -- >> -- breaded and fried and gooey and lovely. >> in the words of arnold schwarzenegger - i'll be back! >> you've heard of connoisseur -- i'm a common-sewer! >> they knew i had to ward off some vampires or something. >> let's talk desserts gentlemen, cause i see you