>> charlie: welcome to the program. tonight, jay carney, press secretary to president obama takes us inside the white house for a look at how the president communicates with the public and the white house press. >> there's a h hi arcky and ultimately you're there to serve the president, the white house and your country. and the press is a very important institution in our current and that is part of the overall service you're providing, but, you know, first and foremost, you're there to speak for him, accurately represent what he's doing, why he's doing it, take questions and some heat for him and for, you know, what you believe -- and this is where it matters most -- what you believe is right.

>> charlie: jay carney for the hour and this program note, friday 8:00 p.m., 7:00 central, nbc news will have a special report on normandy. u.s. veterans as they return to the place that changed their lives and the world. we'll have brine williams on this program tomorrow night. tonight, jay carney for the hour. #

>> charlie: jay carney is here, the white house press secretary, has served in that role since february 2011. he was previously dtéector of communication for vice president biden. he spent much of his career at "time magazine" including a stint as moscow correspondents during the collapse of the soviet union. his last position at the magazine is washington bureau chief. last week, president obama

announced he accepted carney's resignation. >> one of jay's favorite lines is i have no personnel announcements at this time. but i do, and it's bittersweet. it involves one of my closest friends here in washington. in april, jay came to me in the oval office and said he was thinking about moving on, and i was not thrilled, to say the least. but jay's had to wrestle with this decision for quite some time, now. he has been on my team since day one, for two years with the vice president, for the past three and a half years as my press secretary. >> charlie: i am pleased to have jay carney back at this table. welcome. >> charlie, thank you. i'm glad to be here. >> charlie: what was that moment like for you? >> you know, i thought about it for a while because we wanted it to be a surprise, and once i had gone to the president in april

and had, i think, a really sad but gratifying conversation with him about why it was time, with my children the age that they, are for me to move on, we both decided with the chief of staff and a couple of others that the best way to do this was quickly and discreetly and wouldn't it be wonderful for once to surprise he three and a half years with him. the best thing about it has been, in mid life, to find myself amid all these new people who are all focused on one thing, which is completely not

self-interested, to be on this team and make really close friends doing it and to feel as i leave that these are people i will always want to fight for and fight with forever, and it's been a remarkably rewarding and humbling experience. >> charlie: you talk about many things, but the eltionship with him, he said, he's one of my best friends. you were not part of the inner circle who got him elected. generally those are the people closest to the president, and it was true with this president. how did you go from a guy whofts a member of the press in good standing as washington bureau chief through biden and then to the president and create a situation where he comes out and says, he's one of my best friends? >> i'm a perfect example of why one of the myths about barack obama is a myth, that he's

insular and doesn't want many people in his world, because i barely knew him when i came to join the white house. i, as a reporter, met him a few times, facilitated a few meetings with editors. but until i came to work for the vice president, i hadn't had much of a relationship with him, and i think what i love about it, also, is that it says so much about the -- you know, our country that one of the reasons why i think we got along and we get along is because even though he's barack obama who was born in hawaii, grew up in hawaii and around the world, and i, you know, jay carney from virginia and with my background that we actually have a pretty similar world view and temperament and come at things in a way that's very, you know, unified. he's a few years older than i am, but we both have two kids,

we both have been through a lot of the same things in recent years with our kids, and when we sat down and talked, long trips on air force one, it would often be about those things and not just about what the press was saying or what the latest policy developments were. >> charlie: which raises an interesting question. as you might imagine, i've talked to some people in the press corps at the white house about you, and they said to me, a couple of them, it was amazing how fast he hav he went from a r at the top of his game, having written books, served around the world, been in moscow which was a great experience of his life which i want to talk about, from that skeptic, probing, prove it, show me the facts, show me the deed to a guy who went into the white house and became, as one said "a true believer," fast,

quick... >> well, i don't disagree, but i don't think overnight. >> charlie: he's one of us, then he's one of them. >> well, i don't think you sign up for something like this if you don't believe in it or believe in the president and the vice president. you know, whichever party you're with or whichever white house or administration you join, if you're not doing it for that reason, you shouldn't do it, and i did. even though i was an old-school reporter and played it down the middle and tried to, was not an advocate as a reporter for "time magazine," you know, even had a lot of folks who i think were surprised, thought maybe i was a republican when i joined the obama-biden team. but i believed in what they were doing. i believed the time was right for the change they represented and have been very comfortable and proud of what the president has done. >> charlie: as i understand it, you placed a call to the administration after day one

saying maybe there's a job for me. >> well, the truth is i called one of my best friends, tony blink en. >> charlie: the national security staff. >> and he was at the time working for joe biden in the senate and as a senior staff member on the foreign relations committee. tony and riin a terrible garage band together. we're real fans. he's certainly more talented than i am. i was excited for him and congratulated him. he knew my personal feelings about how gad i was they had won. and we talked, given my foreign policy and russian background, maybe i should do this, too, and that led to a conversation about the vice president was looking for a communications derrick. i spoke to my wife and basically no one else and said i would be interested in that, that's

exciting, and i knew senator biden, now vice president biden a little bit, but not well, even though we had been in washington a while. a long story short, during that transition, i was leaving time e magazine" after 20 years and two weeks to go on a new adventure and join the white house. >> charlie: before you disillusioned with reporting? >> no. >> charlie: were you disillusioned with the relationship between the press and the government? >> no, that came after. (laughter) >> charlie: anything having to do with you unsettled with what you were doing or disillusioned by the way the world worked as you played it out? >> no, i loved my 21 years as a reporter, 20 of them with time. i was there during the coup in august of $91, in moscow, in air force one with george bush on

9/11 and covered a lot of things in between. the only factor that played into my decision at the time related to my feelings towards journalism is i was ready for something new. not because i was disillusioned, but -- you know, i wrote for a living for 21 years, and every story came hard for me. some people, it's easy, they write and write. i wish i could have been one of them. for me, every story was tough. some of them turned out well, some of them i wish i could have back. but i had gotten to a point where i wasn't as -- you know, i didn't have that kind of fear when i sat down to write a story about, jeez, can i really do this? that told me it was time to do something new. what was great about getting the opportunity to go to the white house is, for the first six months in both jobs, first as the vice president and then as press secretary, you know, i woke up every morning wondering if i was really cut out to do this job, and that's thrilling. >> charlie: cut out to do it,

or whether you had the core competence to do it? >> well, it's new. when you cover a white house as i did, president clinton, president bush, you think you know a lot about how the white houses work, how press shops work and communication strategy works. i tell you, within five minutes of joining the vice president's team, i learned i had a lot to learn, and i only knew just the very surface about strategic communications and, you know, making decisions about how to -- how you want the say things, how you want to frame policy choice and how you want your principles, the vice president and president, to go out and talk about it. i was very lucky, because the reporter you mentioned before about saying how quickly i changed perspectives, well, part of that i was very lucky because i spent two years behind the scenes working for the vice president, not at a podium, and i learned a lot and had a

lot of great teachers like robert gibbs, my predecessor, and david axlerod, and the chief of staff who is one of the smartest guys i've met and taught me a lot. so by the time i had done the two years for the vp i felt ready. >> charlie: did you make a mistake saying i am saying goodbye to journalism. >> in the way i practiced it. >> charlie: you will not be a reporter again? >> i don't think i see that in my future. you know, maybe i'll write some more. but i don't think i'll be out there, you know, going after the story the way i used to, although i also have fond memories of doing that. >> charlie: there was a sense, look, i'm saying goodbye to a part of my life. >> yeah. >> charlie: you can't go back and forth and back and forth. a few people have, but not so

much. >> i think i had done things i felt really good about and had great experiences. >> charlie: you were reporting on history at a big time. >> and this was a way to have a front row seat again from a different perspective. >> charlie: a big-time new york editor said off story story -- you have a story to tell? >> i think so. >> charlie: what would that story be? >> i think the story i could tell is twofold. one, it's about the government and the press, the media and the white house and the perspectives that i've had on both sides of it that not everybody or very few people have had. then also i think a story that is very positive about -- as dysfunctional as it can be how the process works, at least the process in the executive branch because there's a lot of mystery, by necessity, around how decisions are made and policies are formulated and

crises handled, and what i saw is some of the best people i know, in an imperfect set of circumstances and facts, sitting around a table trying to figure it out and, ultimately, turning to the person whose chair is 2 inches taller at the table, whether in the cabinet room or the roosevelt room. >> charlie: what percentage would you say reporters covering the white house every day whose business it is to understand and discover what's going on, what percentage of what's actually going on do you think they know or can know? >> i think the good ones know 15%, 20%, and because they're good, reasonably and carefully extrapolate a little beyond that. >> charlie: 15%? 15% to 20%.

but a lot of what you don't know is not necessarily the most important information. but one thing that you find inside is just how much passes through the white house. the band width of that building and all those who work in that building or come to work, it's extraordinarily broad, and there's so much going on in there at one time in one day in one week that it's too much for the reporters who cover it, and that's partly a result of what this sort of concentration of focus on a white house that's been, you know, developing for decades, but where the -- i mean, if you look at the way news media cover washington and politics, and especially the networks and tv, but everyone, more and more, everything is focused on the white house. they used to have reporters covering the agencies and subcommittees on capital hill, but now it's just sort of this is the locust of power and that

thing gets replicated internally where all the big decisions have to be made at the white house instead of the agency. >> charlie: is social media the biggest change since you were a reporter till today? >> unquestionably. and it's funny and interesting to talk to my predecessors from previous administrations about how different the job was, and how the cycles which seemed fast when, you know, the advent of cable news with cnn -- >> charlie: 24-hour coverage, yeah. >> -- suddenly, all the engines were having to turn much faster and longer because of that. >> charlie: they're tweeting while you're speaking. >> at the briefing room, half the questions i get are people looking at their iphone or blackberry and saying, jay, i just saw this on twitter or this break and can you respond to this? so you're in a dynamic that's

fueled in part by the instantaneous revelation on the hour. >> charlie: this would be a question i was going to ask regardless of how much i had read, which is how different is it than you imagined -- specifically about the white house, but clearly the first difference you saw working for vice president biden -- but what is it from the inside you didn't understand or expect? >> i think the first thing i noticed was how small it was. >> charlie: how small what is? the room, the number of people, it goes to the humanness of the enterprise because it's the center of power in the most powerful country on earth, and yet -- and even when you're just down the hall in the briefing room, you're removed enough from it that that mystery creates a sense of grandeur that inevitably doesn't exist to the

extent you imagine it, when it's -- you know, it's a handful of people sitting in the chief of staff office or the oval office or the roosevelt room tore the situation room -- or the situation room sorting out policy options or incomplete information coming from abroad in a crisis and trying to, you know, get to the decision point. >> charliepoint. so that struck me, the independenintimacyof it. what also struck me was the scale. >> charlie: and the president deals with everything, foreign policy and congress and -- >> and every challenge that arises, a natural disaster or an event overseas or a scandal in congress, they're all something hey hahe and the press secretare to answer for, because i go out every day. when i became press secretary, i

learned the scope of questions i might get asked on a given day -- we were just imagining what the subjects might be, we always had a list of 40 to 50 every day and some of them would stay the same... >> charlie: did you have a problem in the white house with not having access -- this has happened in previous administrations, as you know -- not being at the meeting, not having access to the way the decisions were being made and the conversations about making policy, other than somebody saying this is what we want you to sell? >> the answer is, no, i did not have a problem. when i came in, i was clearly not in the inner circle, and i think there was a goal -- my predecessor was obviously very close to the president and had played a role both as press secretary and advisor -- >> charlie: and was on the senate staff as well. >> and in the original senate campaign. >> charlie: right. so i was the return to the most traditional press secretary

structure, but i made the case early on to what ended up being a series of chiefs of staffs and others that it was important for me to be in the room not necessarily because i was going to volunteer policy advice, although, you know, i might if i felt like i really had something to say -- >> charlie: and you did? at times, but i was very careful about doing that, especially early on. but i needed to hear it talked about and i needed to hear the president talk about it because, in those rooms where he talked about his views of things and the decisions that he was making and the way he was looking at the decision, i learned the parameters within which i could describe the policy decision he ultimately made or the process. so it created kind of -- you know, beyond here's the policy, here's the talking points behind the policy, i knew his scope on the thinking about these issues. i always felt more comfortable

about going out and talking about something if i heard about hit talking about it inside. i knew what he would say. >> charlie: you learn to have the same access robert gibbs had when he -- >> i had no problems with access to the president. >> charlie: if you went to the president and said, i don't understand this -- >> sure, and there were times when, because we do have prep for my briefing and we would go through prep and there would be some sensitive issue or some presentation of what we're saying about something that i just didn't think worked and, you know, if it made sense, i would go down the hall and say, can i get him for a couple of minutes in or i would go down the hall and his door was open, he'd say, hey, jay, what's going on? i would go in and ask him. everyone's careful about abusing that because there's nothing more valuable than a president's time. but i always felt comfortable asking, and i think he always appreciated from me and others being asked. because i think what you don't

want and what happens in institutions, organizations, not just the white house, is people are so careful, or there isn't that relationship that allows for the kind of give and take with the president or the c.e.o. that you need, and he can be removed from his staff. and that definitely is not the case in our white house. i think senior staff have ac isess to him and -- have access to him and wants to hear what he thinks and he wants to hear what they think. >> charlie: what's his day like? >> he'll be the first to tell you that one of the great joyce of being elected is for the first time in a while he was with his family more than he had been. >> charlie: john kennedy said you could walk to work. >> thyes.

>> charlie: he's up at 6:00, 7:00? >> he gets up, sees his girls before they go to school. he works out in the morning, as the learned recently learned, whether traveling or at home. >> charlie: i want to talk about that. that's this morning. >> yes. >> charlie: we're standing there watching this and someone is photographing the president overseas working out. >> mm-hmm. he's just a regular guy. >> charlie: obviously, secret service is everywhere around him. >> yes. >> charlie: and you knew everyone in the room working out at the same time he was. >> well, they were hotel guests. yeah. it's funny we haven't seen this before because the president does this everywhere he travels, and -- >> charlie: he works out at public gyms? >> he goes to the gym in the hotel. the service checks it out, and they don't ask everyone to leave. if you're in the president's hotel, the security screening has already taken place, and if you're a guest in your gym

clothes, you might have to wait for the leader of the free world to get off the treadmill so you can take your turn, but, you know, he works out like anybody else. and it's part of, i think, what keeps him level-headed. he's very disciplined about getting that in. then he comes in and, you know -- >> charlie: he works out in the morning. >> works out in the morning, not unlike i think most presidents' schedules i'm aware of. first thing he does is his intelligence briefing, the daily briefing. >> charlie: who's there. hief of staff, national security advisor, vice president, vice president's security advisor, deputy national security advisor. >> charlie: and you? no, press secretary is never in the p.t.d., not that i have been aware of including in this white house, because there's an intelligence presentation as well. we all have security clearances but you don't need to know the raw data every day, you just need to know what's going on in the world and what decisions are being made.

and then after that, it could be anything. it could be policy meeting, it could be a make a wish visit, you know, it could be a speech or a rose garden ceremony and announcement, or we could be -- you know, heading out on our trip. i mean, one of the things that never gets old and is always something to marvel at for me is i would be in my office and my assistant would come in and say, okay, he's ready, and i would grab my bag and walk the 20 paces to the oval office and the president would say, let's go, to the backyard and get on a helicopter, fly off past the washington monument, and the first time you do that you feel like you're going to hit it, it's so close, and it's an amazing experience. >> charlie:eth like being in the white house, period. >> it is. every single day i have been there, i have spent at least a brief moment to look around and

say, it's a pretty special place to be. >> charlie: so his day, does he have private time in which he simply studies? >> yes. well, they try to carve it out, his schedulers, and the chief of staff and others try to protect that for him so he can read and, you know, get some time, podus time, we call it. >> charlie: yeah. one of the things i was struck by early on when i began traveling with him is he's got to be the most old-school reader of magazines who exist in this country anymore. i mean, he will plow through magazine after magazine after magazine, read in-depth articles in the new york or atlantic harpers as well as, you know, "sports illustrated" and espn. he is constantly reading and he likes the magazines themselves

in paper format, although he certainly read a fair amount -- >> charlie: is he a guy who learns thing best by listening and being briefed on them or roading about them? >> he does both. i've certainly seen people who are one or the other, but he reads a lot. it's gratifying if you write memos and the policy people do it more than we do, but i know they appreciate the fact that when they go in for a meeting after they've written a memo that he's read it. sometimes they're dense and filled with complex issues. i've seen him do it. he consumes a lot of information all day long. >> charlie: when does he go upstairs? >> 6:30 is the sort of dinner with the family, and it's pretty inviolet, obviously, if there's a crisis or a>xtroblem, but, again, a virtue and benefit of living above the store is you can get back, and then he keeps working usually by phone and by

email and keeps working pretty late. >> charlie: your day, tell me what the job of the press secretary is. >> well, it's a little -- >> charlie: both in terms of how you define your function, your responsibility, and how it works through a day. >> i wasn't the first to say it, and you know because you have been there, the west wing is much smaller than most people through. it's much smaller than it appeared to be in the west wing television show. it's a very small piece of real estate. on the main parlor floor, there's the oval in one corner and the chief of staff and the national security advisor and then the press secretary, and the press secretary who has enjoyed a pretty good piece of real estate for years and years and years. you know, what that means is it becomes kind of our meeting space, and it also is strategically located halfway between the briefing room and the oval office, all very close

together, and it's probably 20 paces from the briefing room to my office, maybe 25 and then 20 to the oval on a triangle and i think that represents symbolically what the role of a press secretary is and the press office which is to serve both the president, the white house and the administration on the one hand, and the press, and i know that, you know, i'm sure as has always been the case that members of the press feel like i serve them more than him -- >> charlie: no, my friend bill l moyers said you can't serve two masters. >> there's a high yarky. you're there to serve the president, the white house and your country, and the press is a very important institution in our country and, you know, that is part of the overall service you're providing but first and foremost you're there to speak

for him, to accurately represent what he's doing, why he's doing it, take questions and some heat for him and for, you know, what you believe. this is where it matters most, what you believe is right when it comes to what he's doing. >> charlie: i'm interested in the mindset of the press secretary. is it that i've got to spin our case all the time? my responsibility is to sell our story rather than my responsibility is to try to help this person who wants to tell a story as best i can, and is there a difference in that? >> i -- >> charlie: clearly, your interest is to make the president of the united states look as good as he can, in this case. >> well, we certainly try to -- i'll say a couple of things. i and others who work in the communications -- on the communications team in the white house, you know, we try to -- we

explain and defend what he's doing because -- and, yeah, we try to explain it in a way that reflects what we believe, which is that he's doing things for the right reasons and they're the right policies, acknowledging that, substantively, there will be disagreements. but here's the other thing, there's a big difference about, in my role between what i do at the podium and what i do in my office with reporters. because the podium has become -- the briefing has become theater, i think most people feel who participate in it or watch it. >> charlie: by preparing his regrets -- >> he's apologized to everyone, the press secretary. >> charlie: and do you agree with him? >> i do. >> charlie: why? because it becomes theater and the reporters are more interested in their questions than your answers? >> they may be interested in the answer, too, but what happens is there is a competition for

creating moments, and if you can bear to watch an entire briefing, you will note that, especially out of that front row where most of the tv correspondents sit, that i'll get the same question six or eight times from those reporters in the first 20 minutes, often asked with, you know, increasing degrees of righteousness indignation, and the answer is going to be the same. >> charlie: there's been real sharp criticism from two friend of mine about the way this white house operates. one tom freedman, you read his criticism, said it's one of the worst white houses he's had to deal with. david sanger same thing. >> jim, a great foreign policy writer, when he came to do a piece on the vice president in 2009 and i took him across the

street to the old executive office building where most of the offices of people who work at the white house are to meet with some mid-level white house security security council person he said in eight years under bush i never crossed this street and never had anybody help me talk to a mid-level national security council person. so i accept we're not open comonoon everything. >> charlie: mike duffy who worked with you in "time magazine" said, when you look at the way the white house operates, you should add 10% -- politics at least 10% more influential than you assume -- poll six. >> well, that's interesting, when i mentioned 15% figure, i was remembering something duffy said because he and i worked

together and he was my boss and taught me about covering washington. i can't remember if he said 15% or 30% and the good ones extrapolate. we're both quoting mike duffy here. but i think that equation has been reversed. >> charlie: thatteth less politics? >> that there is the assumption of politics at the start, that everyone views everything, now, as though politics were the determinative factor. part of it is because of hyperpartisannism we have. politics is easy compared to policy when you're covering it. it's candy. you can see, if you watch the briefings, how everybody lights up and gets excited when there's a question that can be run through the 2016 grinder, you know, if it has a bearing on secretary clinton on

vice president biden or governor christie, that's what they really want to talk about. they want to talk about the horse race, even though it's 2014. and there is an assumption everything we do and past white houses have done is driven by electoral considerations. i would just say the recovery act, bailing out detroit, you know, wall street reform, healthcare reform -- i mean, the major things that this president has done, tell me, if those were done because they were for political reasons, because they were politically popular, then the people who were telling him what was politically popular weren't doing their jobs. those were tough choices but the right things to do for policy. >> charlie: those are things he essentially wanted to do because he believed they were essential to do and he also had some eye on legacy, too. >> well, because he believed good policy would pull the country out of depression, save

a vital industry. >> charlie: let me just give you -- david sanders quoted, this is the most closed, control-freaked administration i've ever covered. tom freedman, there's never been a unified message, i've worked here since 1989. i've never seen a worse communicating administration on a basic level. maybe somebody out there would be interested writing about it. not since i have been in washington, he says. >> well, you know, again, i respect those guys both tremendously and, you know, the closed control freak, i mean, you know, if you look at the newspaper any day or watch the news any day, i think it's pretty evident that we're not controlling the news or having it, you know, dictating what's in it. >> charlie: do you think it would be better if you were? >> people will assume we're more effective than we might want to be. i'd also note there's been a lot

of talk in this space about clamping down and the chilling effect. >> charlie: the chilling effect. >> in the last two years, there have been more serious national security leaks to the media than in any time you and i can remember, and this is supposed to be in an era when there's a chilling effect. i'm when lynn downey came into my office. >> charlie: this comes out of the white house. >> no, i'm talking a lot of people who talk about this says our approach has caused sources to clam up, and i don't see evidence of that. there's a very interesting poll around the white house correspondents where reporters were asked if their sources were shutting down and 90% said no. >> charlie: do you believe this president has gotten fair coverage? obviously, it depends on the news institution.

>> sure. >> charlie: but overall, has this president received fair coverage from the american press? >> i think within the context of the overall coverage, yes. i think that our coverage, you know, i think there are issues about the way the media covers washington in general, about it's all politics, and the sort of hyperintensety of what's the scandal of the day of the week -- i mean, i can't tell you how often i've had reporters say this is the story that's going to bring down the obama presidency. a year ago, there were scandals that, of course, nobody writes about anymore because the sort of approach to them was all about -- you know, everybody's looking for the next big fire, but the fires burn quickly and

they move on to the next thing. so i think that's a problem with the way we cover. we don't take the long view as much as we used to, and i think that's driven by the immediacy of social media and internet media and, also, i think a lot of these news organizations have -- i oversaw this, in part, in my time, cut way back on the staff who do long form either on television or in print. they hire a lot of 23-year-olds to do the quick hits, which some of them are super talented, but they don't bring a lot of institutional experience and knowledge to the job, and they cut back on the foreign bureaus and they focus on, you know, the easiest stuff. >> charlie: most importantly, what are the teaching moments for you? in other words, where have there been moments you have said yourself, damn, this taught me

something important about what i do, what the president does and the relationship between the president and the press and the president and the american public and how he defines his responsibility and ambition? well, i guess i can answer that sort of anecdotally, that things that have stayed with me that told me a lot about the office, a lot about him, what his election meant to people and means to people. early on as press secretary, i remember we were in memphis and we went to a school that was in a tough neighborhood and a lot of minority students that was performing well, and he was going to speak. but before then, he went and surprised a room full of honor students from the graduating class. and this is still first term. it's year three.

the implausibility of him being elected president, i think, was still there, and in this tough neighborhood, he walked into this room, and these are good students and kids, and there was a young woman who just we want uncontrollably, and he had to hold her and just, you know, make her feel that he was real and he was proud of her. and the moment, you could tell for her, was profound and for a lot of the kids there. i think the -- similarly, one moment that i remember that tells you a lot about the weight of the office was the day of n newtown. all presidents have to deal with tragedy, and they have to go from one moment where you're having a hard news conversation with a foreign leader and

another moment where you're doing, you know, a happy event, and then another moment where you're meeting with maybe a family. i think there was something so devastating about newtown that it shook him visibly. i've never seen him so upset. >> charlie: partly because children suffered. >> exactly. and i think there was a sense that we all had, and it began with him, you know, that the horror of it and the injustice of it, that even when you're president of the united states, you feel helpless at that moment. so you feel the pain that those parents will feel forever. people also ask me the best times, worst times. worst, newtown. but we've gone through a lot of issues, ups and towns, policy

fights, successes, failures. i think it's fair to say that healthcare.gov, in my time, was probably the worst and was the thing that was so enormously frustrating to him because it was all on us. things happen when you're in the white house, a lot of what happens that's hard and challenging are events that you can't control and have to manage. this is one we created and owned and we blew it at first, and he was really ripped about it, but he also -- and this is what i -- you know, why i have, you know, so much confidence in him and faith in him is that he didn't lose it. he wanted to know, you know, was it fixable, show me that it's fixable, and then go fix it and get the right people to fix it, and he didn't -- you be, he didn't do a lot of superficial things. he did substantive things, in

the end, that bore the fruit necessary to get us to 8 million and has resulted -- i think we just saw a story today that the percentage of uninsured has dropped significantly, almost, you know, clearly because of the affordable care act. so, you know, those are things i won't forget. >> charlie: will they make it less a political issue in the 2014 mid-terms? >> i think that republicans will -- i mean, they're not going to abandon this. i think they'll keep hitting on it. i think it's harder and harder, as the policy becomes real, for the argument to be, we want to take away from you this benefit that you now have and, by the way, we're not offering you anything in return. we're offering you the status quo ante, which you kind of hated, especially if you were in the individual insurance market and especially if you were somebody who now qualifies for medicaid but, in the past,

didn't. so, you know, i'm not declaring victory on this as a political matter, but i think as a substantive matter, it's had already profound positive effects and is here to stay. >> charlie: "time magazine's" cover. >> yes. >> charlie: tell me what you say about that question. >> i think the answer is clear and it's easy. when your son or mine or daughter or anybody else's puts on the uniform of the united states voluntarily and goes to war, there's a compact that we make with them which sees, if you go missing, we come find you. and there's no condition to that. >> charlie: okay, but the question is raised, if you gave up five hard-core taliban members of guantanamo, would you have given up 100? how do you measure the price you're prepared to pay, or is no price too expensive to pay if it means doing what stan crystal

said today, we bring our people home, it's -- >> you weigh the risks, will he succeed? what are the down sides? in this situation, the opportunity presented itself after five years. it was not likely an opportunity that would be there for a long time and judgments were made this was absolutely the right thing to do. >> charlie: because? because we bring our people home -- >> charlie: and because you thought he was sick? >> because we had evidence that his health was not good and we had evidence that we needed to act quickly and discreetly or that could put him at further risk. and on the cost -- i mean at the

price -- look, these five taliban are going to a third country. we've received assurances from the highest levels of the qatari government about the monitoring that will take place, the travel ban that will be instituted, and let's be clear, a, we're winding down the war in afghanistan, but, b, should any end up back in afghanistan, the united states military is fully capable of handling five taliban. these are men who have been imprisoned in the custody of the united states more than a dozen years and we're confident we have the tools and resources necessary to deal with them if that becomes an issue, and it was absolutely the right thing to do. >> charlie: is it fair to say that you want to see the facts in before you make any decision as to whether he was a deserter or -- >> absolutely. >> charlie: -- or what happened to him so that he ended up in taliban hands? >> yes.

i think it's important -- the chairman of the joint chiefs, marty dempsey, the vice chairman, it's important to hear what they say about this which is there's no condition to bringing back our men and women in uniform. there's a process that will take place that will evaluate the circumstances of his disappearance an and his capture and that's how it should be. but right when he came to the last prisoner of these two wars, the two longest wars in our history, we absolutely had to get him back, should have gotten him back, and the opportunity that presented itself was the right one to take. >> charlie: but there had been negotiation to bring him back and make this deal earlier for at least a year, hadn't there? >> more than that. he's been gone five years. every option was examined, and every possibility when it came to negotiating his release was

explored. we had direct contact with the taliban for a while as part of the afghan reconciliation process, that broke down in 2012, and the discussions about exchanging for sergeant bergdahl were in the context of those -- >> charlie: what changed to make it right now? was there any difference in what the deal was? >> i don't believe so. i think it's later. there were obviously different circumstances on the ground. it may be true. we're not going to the bank on it, but it may be evidence that there's a possibility for restoration of reconciliation talks because, remember, the taliban are a part of afghanistan, and peace in afghanistan can only come eventually if there's reconciliation, if taliban agreed to abide by the afghan constitution and the laws of the land, they lay down their arms and renounce al al quaida. al quaida is why we went to

afghanistan. when president obama took office, he inherited a policy which our senior military leerldz told him and the vice president and others was pretty much in disarray. if you asked any, you know, five different people on the ground, our people on the ground in afghanistan in january 2009 what our mission was, you would get five different answers. the president when he ran for office made clear we needed to refocus what our clear mission was in afghanistan which was to go after those who attacked us on 9/11, and to be extremely focused on that as a priority. he increased troop levels in afghanistan pretty significantly. >> charlie: there was a search. >> as part of that effort. and i think it's fair to say that the focus on al quaida as opposed to a grander vision of trying to bring jef jeffersonian

democracy to afghanistan or defeat the taliban was the right policy to pursue and the policy that was in the interest of the united states and has been successful. we have done serious damage to core al quaida and afghanistan, and that is why we need to bring that war to an end, the combat mission, and why we focus our attention now, even more than ever, on al quaida affiliates in men and elsewhere. >> charlie: which the president seemed to indicate he considered the biggest threat to american national security. >> i think that's absolutely the case. >> charlie: and then are you hopeful that somehow, some way, whatever transpired in terms of negotiating this, which was corksful -- the taliban got what they wanted, the united states got what they wanted, that that might provide some, as you said, reigniting of the reconciliation talks that would somehow result to an end of the war in afghanistan, period, with the taliban? >> the only way the war ends is

where afghans and afghans to reconcile. we have long supported an afghan-led process in which we would play a participatory role, but it does have to be, you know, afghan-led. but i think as i said earlier, you know, i don't want to be overly optimistic because talks broke down in the past and they have been resumed, but we do believe that that's the path that has to be taken and that this might be indicative of a new willingness to pursue it. we'll see. you know, there are a lot of factors that are going on in afghanistan that affect that. what our focus on this was about was -- >> charlie: sergeant bergdahl. -- not about trying to park reconciliation. >> charlie: in time will tell what he did and did not do and

as general dempsey said, there will be appropriate action for whatever the behavior justified. >> and that's the separation that general dempsey has made clear is important to look at here. we bring him home. that's what we do. that's the sacred trust and compact we have with our soldiers, then we deal with these other issues. >> charlie: there is no way you can't write a book because you can't be in this process and see what you've seen and have the life that you've had, as you've said, at a time of great change in russia, 9/11 being on the plane with the president and having the experience you've had seeing more than you can tell, even, to write a book because, i mean, that is -- >> i have to get a little sleep first, then i'll think about it. >> charlie: thanks for coming. thank you, charlie. >> charlie: jay carney, press secretary to president obama, soon leaving for some new life. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gehring. >> uncharted territory. stocks propelled to new highs after the european central bank acts aggressively, doing something never done before. incompetence and neglect. that's what a massive investigation by general motors says led to the delayed ignition switch recall. the million-dollar retirement question, will a seven-figure nest egg be enough? all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for thursday, june 5th. good evening, everyone. you can thank mario draghi for today's stock market records. investors bought up stocks after european central bank president mario draghi announced early this morning a batch of stimulus measures to boost europe's economy and to encourage banks to lend more in the