test. >> rose: welcome to the program, we begin this evening with u.s. attacks on isis and iraq. joining me kevin sutcliffe, peter baker, seth jones and jeffrey goldberg. >> we often talk about iraq as an isis movement. the reality is of course there are many sunni groups that oppose the maliki government and have come together with isis on the battlefield like jrtn, like the islamic army of iraq, like the 1920 revolutionary brigade, which are not committed to an islamic emir at, certainly not like isis there are some sunni tribes that have supported isis at least for the moment. so one issue i think is to put together an iraq government that is more acceptable to sunnies. the other at the same time is to begin to break away some of the sunni support base for isis because again,

many of these groups and individuals including tribes do not support a long-term, the long-term vision of isis. >> we conclude this evening with a conversation with keith olbermann. >> i think to some degree it is the fact that i have never, ever been afraid to say what i think. i might be wrong, but i don't care about the consequences. i also don't, i am interested to know the viewers' reaction but i'm not doing the show for the view are and i'm not doing the show for a political party. i'm not doing the show on behalf of a baseball team. i am doing the show because i'm trying to achieve the best show i can. >> an analysis of u.s. attacks on isis and a conversation with keith olbermann when we continue. >> funding for charlie rose is provided by the following: funding for charlie rose is provided by the following:

>> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: president obama ordered limited air strikes against isis militants in northeastern iraq on thursday. the action was in response to what he called a potential genocide. the strikes have achieved their initial goal of liberating 20,000 yazidi refugees in the sinjar mountains. >> the deputy speaker of the parliament replacement for maliki is al-abadi but he refused to step down accuse the president of acting

unconstitutionally. president obama addressed the situation earlier today and here's what he said. >> this new iraqi leadership has a difficult task. it has to regain the confidence of the citizens by governing inclusively and by taking steps to demonstrate its resolve. the united states stands ready to support a government that addresses the needs and grievances of all iraqi people. we're also ready to work with other countries in the region to deal with the humanitarian crisis and counterterrorism challenge in iraq. mobilizing that support will be easier once this new government is in place. >> rose: joining me now from washington d.c. is jeffrey goldberg, an author and cull imnist for bloomberg view. seth jones director of the international security and defense policy center at the rand corporation. and peter baker white house correspondent for "the new york times". with me in new york kevin sutcliffe, he is vice news's head of european news programming. let me begin with peter. obviously we want to talk about what is going on in iraq and we have now a

change in government there. tell me how you think add this moment the obama administration sees iraq and its decision to go ahead and on humanitarian reasons to revent a genocide. >> well, you know, iraq is the ghost that will never quite leave this president. he wanted to get out. he wanted to get the country out at the end of 201 -- he ran for president originally to do that. and yet he keep its finding himself drawn back in. some would say that is partly or maybe even mostly his own part for not leaving troops behind in 2011. he says no, that is not the case this wasn't anticipated at that time and iraqis didn't want the troops anyway. but right now he finds himself once again authorizing air strikes as well as humanitarian air drops and the rational for it continues to evolve. it was originally to protect americans who were stuck in the con sal at in irbil to prevent a hein disaster, with this new government emerging in baghdad he says

we will coordinate new strongly with this new team to route and-- rout and bring down p in effect, isis or isil the islamic radicals who are threatening to take over. so it's, the worry i think among some people is slippery slope. some people think they need to slip a little bit further and go farther than they have. >> rose: seth, talk about the risk of this and also the urgency of it and the necessity of it. >> well, i think when you take a step back and look at the role of the islamic state of iraq in the region, they've retained control of territory in parts of syria, particularly eastern syria. they have expanded their control in multiple parts of iraq and now threatened kurdish areas. i think there was no question at this point that there needed to be a u.s. participation to prevent even more expansion by isis. i do think this is serious. i think the risk now that the president is facing is

that he is now entered in his administration has now entered the war in iraq. he's entered it on narrow humanitarian grounds. and generally sm support of kurdish forces particularly peshmerga forces. the challenge, though, ask isis is much bigger than kurdish areas. so on the one hand he is going to get a lot of pressure to expand it to other parts of the country where isis is entrenched. on the other hand there's still a lot of uncertainty about the future political situation, particularly with maliki in baghdad. >> rose: well, what about maliki in baghdad now with this new announcement that there is going to be a new prime minister? >> well, it's unclear at this point whether mr. maliki accepts that outcome. and there are some concerns that he has reached out to some of the security forces within iraq including in baghdad for support. now he may be bluffing in a sense to see how solid

support is moving forward. but there is a risk that we've got several power centers. there's been growing concern across multiple organizations now about a coup. >> vice got in to see isis. tell me what you discovered and how you got there. >> well, vice has been covering syria for now the last year. and we've made lots of contacts. we've been inside syria several times with militant groups. we've been able to contact them, been able to work safely. we've met jihadies before. so this time we reached out to isis several months ago to try and understand what was going on and whether we could get inside what they were doing. when we did that there were much smaller organization. they were fighting other islamic groups at the time. that changed. and by the time we got there with them they established the chall i faith. they-- chal-- chall i fate.

>> how did they do that. >> they did that by, i think, the sunni population in iraq had support for them. they may not have necessarily supported all their methods but because of the way they felt, oppressed by the shi'a government, they allowed space in iraq. and then certainly a vacuum in space appeared in syria. nd they grew. now when they became back into iraq, they've acquired money, weapons and robbed banks. they've acquired oil wells. >> rose: what did american intelligence know about isis and did they see this morphing into something much larger anmore dangerous? >> well, my understanding is that america intelligence officials were keeping pretty close track of the numbers of attacks. they had roughly quadrupled between 2011 which was last year that u.s. forces were in iraq in 2012. and then roughly quadrupled again by 2013. so violence levels were increasing.

there were also some concerns that american analysts had with he the callity of iraq's security forces. as well as grievances by the sunni community. so by early 2014 and as we moved into the summer, there was growing concern among u.s. analysts about the growing levels of violence by isis, the weakness of the maliki government and chiefances against him and then some fractures within the security forces community. this meant by june we really started to see isis move. there should have been little surprise that isis was trying to increase its control of territory. potentially some dispute over the timing, over when they would make that move, particularly to mosul. but this should not have taken anybody by surprise. >> ace understand it, last year the outgoing head of the dia, the defense intelligence agency was warning that isis is keen to

expand territory. i mean these-- none of this was a secret to the white house, as i understand. >> yeah, isis, you know, they routed the iraqi army much faster than we expected but once they take on the kurds they'll fine a much more capable force that didn't turn out to be the case either. i think they have continually underestimated the strength of our allies as they're fighting isis there. >> charlie, you know what is so interesting about that, is that if isis were headquartered in pakistan or afghanistan or yemin, it would have been the subject of drone attacks. american drone attacks for the last year or two. but because it's in syria, the obama administration has a hands-off policy as we well know, in syria. they've been allowed to operate unmolested. and that has had obvious consequences. >> rose: that brings me to your hillary clinton interview, a very good interview. >> thank you. >> rose: was she ready to talk on this, you think. she said in an interview with me, she knew she had to be more specific about

policy. she understood that. >> uh-huh. >> rose: give me a sense of the context of this and why she chose to make this link to syria and a decision made by the president as well as that really provocative statement about, you know, having an op rattive policy or an organizing principles. >> probably like you and like peter and everyone, i assumed that hillary clinton doesn't say things by mistake. >> exactly. >> and so i mean if you read the whole interview i posted on the add look web site the entire interview, you will see there is nuance and complexity and there is kind of on the one hand obama said this, on the other side he's great. there's a lot of complexity in it. but i think that she feels and certainly i know that people around her feel that the last couple of weeks things that have happened in iraq and syria, even lebanon have vindicated the view that we, the united states, should have tried much

harder three years ago to build up a moderate opposition in syria that was potent, to shape the nature of the opposition. but she said very specifically and very straightforwardly to me, you know, that the failure to be involved at an early stage in building that kind of opposition created a vacuum. and into that vacuum came isis. and that goes to a broader philosophy. and maybe a philosophical difference she has with president obama on these. one of the most interesting things she said to me in the course of, it was almost an hour and a half interview was that she started framing the struggle against jihadism, against islamic extremism in cold war terms. she retracted that current struggle through the prism of the cold war. that is something, maybe peter can correct me if i'm wrong, that is something that i don't think president obama is happy to do. he doesn't-- he kind of talks about we have a struggle against an organization, al qaeda. we decapitated the

leadership of al qaeda. but he doesn't frame it in cold war terms. and she is doing something here that's very interesting. she's saying this is big. this is lard. this is ideaological. and this is going to require us not to make believe that the things that are happening in iraq and syria and elsewhere aren't happening. >> rose: peter? >> i think that's exactly write. that is not the way president obama has framed this. president obama has wanted terrorism to be a challenge to the united states had to face but not the singular challenge the way your interview with secretary clinton seemed to indicate. he in fact has said on a number of owe case-- occasions, the tired of war is receding. we need to think about the ultimate end of terror some day. she doesn't seem to see it that way. she seems to see it more as a long-term existential threat closer to, in some ways, the way the previous president administration did. although i'm sure both sides would not like to talk about that comparison. >> she's try and lating to

borrow a phrase from a previous clinton presidency, she is definitely try and lating sherx is not bush and she's not o billiona. >> rose: i want to come back to isis though. what is it they really want? and how far do they want to expand. and what do they want to do with the state? >> i think what we found in the fill some that they are ideaologically and religiously driven. it is extraordinarily chilling the way they go b the brutal way they go about establishing what is effectively a growing, expanding fail state. 245 is what they are doing, it pushes out towards other countries now. they just want to keep expanding and expanding it and sending their message with that. the people we came across, we interviewed, were very, very clear. you're with us or you're dead. they're really straightforward about it. the brutality you see. >> rose: do they think that comes from islam. >> absolutely. >> rose: how do they argue that? >> in one of the episodes we go through the court system. they have imposed sharia law

with-- they are very, very clear that this is how life should be lead and people who are going to live under them live this way. and at the barrel of a gun. we see the religious police walking around enforcing this. this is an extraordinary things that's happening. what is also, i think, an issue here is that it's attracting people in. it's drawing people in. it's drawing in foreign fighters, it's drawing in europeans, americans to join this jihad who share these ideaological goals. >> rose: seth, so what happens? how do you stop them? >> i think the most significant way to stop them at this point is to do two things. one is to begin to address the grievances, particularly in iraq, that many sunnis have. we often talk about iraq as an isis movement. the reality is, of course, there are many sunni groups that oppose the maliki government. and have come together with isis on the battlefield, like jrtn, like the islamic

army of iraq, like the 1920 revolutionary brigade, which are not kmited to an islamic emir at, certainly not like isis there are some sunni tribes that have supported isis at least for the moment. so one issue i think is to put together an iraq government that is more acceptable to sunnis. the other at the same time is to begin to break away some of the sunni support base for ice is, because again, many of these groups and individuals including tribes do not support a long-term, its long-term vision of isis, an islamic emirate the way we've just heard described. that's not their vision. so as we saw in 2006 and 7 and 8 during what we called the awakening against al qaeda in iraq in al anbar and other provinces, to insurance to promote, to support a groundswell of opposition, but this is a much different situation than back then. they're better equipped now. they've got more money and

will be hard ter to dislodge from some of these places that isis has now overrun. >> rose: peter, you think the president is counting on other countries coming in to help him? >> well, you know, i think he would like that. i don't think history has shown that there is a lot of evidence of that. i think that-- i think he knows that the united states is uniquely responsible and canable of doing things that we wish our allies, we wish our regional partners would do. and yet they seem to continually operate sometimes at odds with us because to look at what-- has done and look at what the saudies have done. he's on the phone a lot these days with european leaders and trying to rally the traditional allies. but it's an american-iraqi situation right now with some help from the turks. >> rose: but my impression is that its sawedist have basically said to those-- saudies have basically said though those sunni groups and tribes as they did in the awakening,

polit off from al qaeda then but split off from isis now that they are actively urging them to do that, seth, you are nodding your head. >> yes that appears to be the case. the role of several of the gulf states including the saudiz has largely been clandestine or covert that is the same case with some of the governments in the region is their support, and this is where i think we're seeing some support for u.s. policy right now is largely clandestine or covert. and that is reaching out to some of these sunni opposition groups. and i think that's where they can be most helpful. in fact that is where i would say the u.s. role could be most helpful is supporting some of the air strikes with clandestine special operations and intelligence forces on the ground. but again i think it would be a mistake for the u.s. to start engaging this with larger numbers certainly of conventional forces on the ground. >> you say and you told martha rad imp that they don't fear the bombing from

the air, they think they can take it and in fact they may want it because it attracts more attention to them? >> i think so. i think that-- they're very sophisticated. and they know that they want notice. and they think that this will help their cause, you know. they will, they're extraordinarily sure of what they're doing, also. incredibly sure. and what we found was a certainty, the ideaological, theological isn't of their mission, which against, we heard earlier, the iraqi army disappeared. everybody was surprised that the peshmerga couldn't fight like we thought. it's because these guys are so certain, they will die for this. they will go on and on and push and push. >> rose: what makes their certainty is they have more equipment and money than ever before. >> they have, that makes them even more frightening and scary. but i think that they welcome the attention. they welcome this fight. >> rose: peter, this is not a good time for the president. he realizes that something has to be done because it approaches genocidal nature, yet at the same time's

reluctantly being dragged into this, and knows that it's not going to be over in a day. >> in fact he said the other day, right this is going to be a long-term struggle to prepare the country that this is not just a one offhandful of humanitarian air drops. and get the country comfortable with that idea while still reassuring the public that he doesn't plan to have a repeat of 2003. he done plan to put ground troops in there. and to try to define what his goals are. the definition of the goals has been somewhat elastic. it did start off as humanitarian, now, as of today with this new government emerging. it sounds more ambitious atly potentially ambitious in terms of rolling back, you know, the gains that isis has made, not just in kurdish stan but more broadly. even as he denied it originally that we were going to go in in order to protect americans and personnel in the ground, we have a lot of persons in different places around the country. obviously most specifically in baghdad and that by itself becomes a definition

for a fairly expansive field of battle if you are going to drop a bombs. the question is how far is he willing to go. how much is he willing to invest. and i done think we know that. >> rose: one last question. how much division within the administration at the national security council at the state department over the option of president had or should exercise. >> well, so far it's been relatively, they tell us anyway, relatively consensus driven. in fact there are people in the administration who wanted to do this earlier and thought they waited too long. they were allowing isis to strengthen its hand and they should have gone dpl earlier. they captured fallujah in january, mosul in june. this is not a new thing here. but for the moment, you know, you don't have as many voices on the other side saying don't do it i think there's a belief that there's not much choice inside the administration even if some of their friends in the democratic party elsewhere believe they shouldn't. >> rose: thank you, jeffrey, thank you, peter, thank you, selt.

thank you. >> thank you. >> back in a moment. stay with us. keith olbermann is here, he became a household name in the 1990s as an anchor on espn sportscenter from sports he jumped to politics for eight years, he hosted countdown, the popular political news show on msnbc. his program made waves for his provocative and outspoken opinion journalism. in august 2013 he returned to espn where he hosts a nightly show. it is simply called olbermann. i am very pleased to have him at this table for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, it's good to be here, finally. >> rose: exactly, finally. and it's about time, by the way. >> good. >> rose: i say this to you charles keralt at cbs used to say when somebody walks down the hall and they know how to write, you stop and salute. i don't know of anybody in sports journalism brights as well as you do. >> thank you kindly. >> rose: i really mean that i mean it's a gift to be

able to do that, to express yourself so well. none better, none better than tony gwnyy. >> well, unfortunately, you have a lot to work with under those circumstances. >> rose: the life of tony gwynn. >> to me in preparing something like the obituary of tony gwynn, got out of the way of the story. that one tells it ef is. sometimes you have to apply yourself to a story and make it work and really write it and think about it. but if you tell what you know of something, particularly if it is personal and it isn't full of statistics and it isn't, you know, anything but an attempt to convey who the human being was, it will resonate with people as i think that did. and i'm always flattered when somebody mentions it or something else like that. but i attribute whatever people felt about that piece, i attribute it to tony gwynn, not to my work. >> because you felt that way about that man.

>> yeah, i mean-- . >> rose: and that man deserved that kind of, the best thoughts you could possibly have. >> absolutely. there are very few people who are uniformly loved in any field. and you know, you sit there and you go well who, who didn't like him. i'm sure there were some pitchers who held grudges against him but i never met anybody who disliked him. and so you know in that environment that to wear your heart on your sleeve when it happens. when particularly a man is taken of that quality and that level of appreciation that people had for him. and at that young age, that you know, just tell what you know and tell what you feel. and you can't possibly offend anybody. you can't be telling them too much. they want to know that. i mean people want, people have a tex for so few public figures any more. public figures are there basically as easily hit targets. that's not the way people felt about gwynn and some

other figures of his time and others. but it just made it -- --. >> rose: was it a combination of talent and humility and character. >> well, character but there are a lot of guys like that who are also then deathly dull. i mean they just just toic, kind of, all right, here we go again. >> rose: i know how it hit that pitch. >> i mean another person public note derek jeter is a tremendously respected and liked and admired. but i done think anybody would ever think he's going to win some sort of america's got fall ent competition. i mean just because he doesn't choose to be that way. tony gwynn never lost for a moment the sense that you were doing him a favor by letting him place baseball, that you were doing a favor knowing who he was, saying hello to him, interviewing him, whatever it was, he felt every time i ever saw him and everybody i know whoever knew him, he felt

honored that he was in a certain environment. he was in a position to be, to specious the things he wanted to experience. the one story that i told in the piece was of the 1998 world series at yankee stadium. and i had known tony for about ten years. and one of the things he said as the san diego padres were om coulding into new york in these days of very limited interleague play, the padres had never played at yankee stadium. and he said i'm just delighted to be back in the world series. he said but the real thrill for me is i'm going to get to hear the great yankee public address announcer bob sheppard say my name over the pa system at yankee stadium. and just to say something like this indicates that what he happened to be was a big fan of baseball who turned into one of its greatest hitters, who happened to produce a .330 plus batting average. the only fan ever to hit .330 or more in the major league. so when i heard this i knew

bob sheppard and tony gwynn, i said they have to me. i arranged for that meeting, tony talked to bob sheppard about names and pronunciations and how do you hold the microphone and everything for half an hour. and at the end of it i got bob sheppard to record the introduction, and now batting for san diego, number 19 tony gwynn, and put it on one of these little, you know talking greeting card thing as long with the picture of the two of them, sent it to him, and 9 next time i saw him he said yeah, it's in my trophy case next to the silver bats they gave me for the batting championships. he thought it was, that is literally who he was. this memento of being a major league baseball player was as important to him as the momentos of withining the batting championships. >> rose: from the beginning of baseball did you love, love sports? >> it was instantaneous. if i could go back with a calendar i can give you the exact date that it occurred.

a kid named wolfgang who i went to grammer school with, 1967, i am at the party, the party favors for the kids, by the way this is a german american family from germany. and so the importants spoke with the accents and everything. and they all had the 60s german look to them. and wolf was there. and the party favors were packs of baseball cards. and everybody's baseball card had in it a special insert that they put out that year that had a small poster that was folded up inside and it was a pick your of willie mays or mickey mantle or whofer. my pack didn't have one. so i was so offended by this, that i immediately took a dime and went and bought another pack. by the end of that week, after the second pack of the baseball cards, i was bugging my parents to take me to yankee stadium which they did within a month. and then i was getting so annoying by the end of the year that my uncle bought me a baseball encyclopedia

which i read like page 1 to page 1,000 like its with a novel. >> can't put it down. >> so i knew who matt kill roif the 1883 baltimore orioles was bitten of the year. and i can remember actually my mother's uncle who did this, she said what the-- what the blank did you do that for. and then so now we're at this may 1967 to christmas 1967, by the spring of 1968 it was so bad that my parents used to refuse to acknowledge me if i spoke about baseball on an even numbered day. the odd even system, my parents invented it. >> rose: started it. >> and i never stopped talking about it since. >> rose: a lot of great, great political reporters come from supports. >> yes. >> rose: scotty reston for one, the great columnist for "the new york times". and covered sports. and there is something about describing sports that gives you the wattage to describe political events. >> yeah. i think that's true. it's historically true too. the name escapes me but

there was, westbrook-- daily baseball writer, he went into, you know, novel writing or at least short story writing and many other things. it's a great-- it's a great training ground in terms of determining cause and effect. you know a ball game ends, somebody won, somebody lost. >> i was going say that there is always a winner and a loser. >> and you can't, you may be able to say at the end of a 120-119 basketball loss that it was a moral victory that you were able to do that well but you can't go and claim that you won the game. and the reason that i think that almost everybody who goats from sports into politics is, i think it's fair to say, you just don't go and cover politics after you covered sports. you cover it acerbicly and doubtfully and dubiously. >> because? >> because there are people claiming that they won the game when they lost. >> i see. >> and you know better.

>> but the same thing that puts those brain cells in that order that says okay, you're leading, you're leading, you're leading, you won, refuses to accept anybody who says you were losing, losing, losing, you didn't win. and your opinion is not the most popular and you were not correct on this and your side did not, and that's not what the other guy did. you become, i think all of them and i will include myself in the group, i think all of us whoever tried this become to some degree angry at the politicians for trying to get away with this stuff that in sports would get them laughed out of the locker room. >> are you more comfortable in sports than politics. >> it's my original language. i mean literally explaining this to somebody. if you went to france and spoke beautifully in french and did say your show for ten years in france, and you loved it and it was, people liked it and you felt you had a positive influence, when you came back here you would suddenly go and remember i can do this three times as fast in english as i do it in french.

and so the politics show, and all the work that i did there was very rewarding and i own it and i don't repudiate any of it. but in terms of you know, the ease with which you can make your brush stroke and confidently know that you know what you're talking about and you've seen this event occur a thousand times before, it's just-- it's your natural tongue. >> rose: but you went back to sports. >> i did, yeah. >> most don't go back. >> yeah, well, i've done this several times. >> rose: i know. >> to trace the pattern, it's interesting. when i was a kid i used to have day dreams they were ridiculous that there would be some television network that showed nothing but news. and that there would be some television network that showed nothing but sports. and that i would get to work for both of them. which turned out to be literally my career pavment i didn't have quite the zigs and zags plan but i went from in college i did news and sports. and then the first job i was ever offered was sports because that was where the

first vacancy was. if it had been news they would have put me in news instead. so i wound up staying in sports. was offered a news job in 1984, and took it. and then the sports guy quit and they said do sports instead. okay, fine. then the nbc thing, first msnbc thing occurred in 1997 because i was asked to go an host the world series and be involved in the super bowl coverage when i was leaving espn. by the way we'll give you an hour a night on our new cable network, msnbc. i don't really remember hearing that, when they say you're hosting the world series and sweeping the floors. >> rose: you remembered the hosting the world series. >> i hosting world series. the rest of it was charlie brown teacher's voice. so the next thing i know i'm on a desperately bad attempt at a news magazine show on a nightly basis. and then the lewinsky story broke and we had 2 million viewers a night going from like 3 viewers to 2 million

overnight. and i had to do that all the time. so i did news and politics for about a year and a half and went screaming into the streets going get me out of here. and went to work for fox to do sports there. then after that ended, i want back and did news again. and then i went and did sports again. so you know, not many people go back but my career path does not match many other people's. >> you don't just leave people angry,. >> yeah. >> rose: i mean you leave them, i'm talking about the people that employ you. >> oh, this is overblown. >> rose: is it? >> it is. the i was thinking about this other night. since 2001 these are my employers. abc, cnn, nbc, at msnbc, espn radio, current tv and now again espn television. six employers in the last 13 years. five of whom i had previously worked for.

so if i am everything, i'm not saying some of the reputation is not true. i'm not saying i'm the world's easy employee and i have never won the employee of the month award. nor would i want to. >> rose: yeah. >> but the idea that you know you can't work with him and he's always, he has sparks coming out of his ears, this is not true. because why would they bring me back if i was thatted ba. we know they are television executives and perhaps, you know, they bang their heads against the wall periodically just for the fun of it. but why would they bring me back if it was that impossible to work with. >> rose: everything about you and the way you express complaint that makes them go a bit wacky. >> i would say these are things, almost all of these things are from the previous century. >> if you had been a model citizen since 2000. >> i would say my score of being a troublesome employee is a little bit, maybe a c minus rather than a c since that time. i'm just sort of in the mid el. >> rose: that would current current in that.

>> yes. you would be surprised. we'll just leave it at that. the story of that is best not told, just generally speaking. the whole thing. everybody made terrible mistakes. >> rose: nobody has clean hands. >> nobody has clean hands, no, i think nobody has clean hands. i didn't do the vetting that i needed to do. and they didn't do things that they needed to do. >> rose: vetting before you made the deal. >> yeah, yeah. >> rose: so what you thought you would get you didn't get. and what they thought they would receive they didn't receive. >> yeah. and i think, i think krarx yeah, i think that is a good sum aree of it that's a good sum aree of it to prevented anything further bad from happening. the network doesn't exist any more. but quite seriously to this point, if you are's not growing. i mean some of the stuff, the great line about oh, he didn't just burn his bridges, he-- that palmed. >> a guy named mike-- who i spent half an hour having drinks with at the sports emmies. we took a selfie and tweeted it out.

we did late literally put our hands out like in a bridge form and pointed at the bridge like we had rebuilt the bridge. but my point about mentioning this is the stuff that i did that caused him to make this memorable remark as a corporate pr officer, by the way, that's 1997. that is a long time ago. and if i haven't grown since 1997 then i'm hopeless. >> rose: i wanted to understand two things. one is what was it that made you the way you were -- >> are you going to charge me for that. >> rose: yes, i am. and what made you the way you were and how were you? because you never believe everything you read, you know. and you know that every story has two sides, you know. and you know there's nobody as smart as you learns from it, grows from it. >> eventually. >> rose: eventually. >> yes. so when did you come to jesus? >> i began to invest in

something called therapy when i was 389 years old. -- 38 years old because this was-- previous century, i'm 55 now so you can dot math on that but i was, i looked at a work situation that i was in. and i said i don't-- i don't know why i'm reacting this strongly to it. i mean i know, i knew in the past, again, i will go back to the first sets of espn years. and say that the things that i didn't like about how they were treating me or what we were doing or what i felt was limiting what we could accomplish, i think they were all legitimate. my inability was to express them properly. just keep it in the house. that's all we're asking. keep it in the house and don't break china. that's all you have to do. and i understood that i had a problem keeping it in the house and not breaking the china. then something else happened at nbc. that whole thing was so

discouraging to me that i thought okay, let me just see if there is somebody out there who can give me a fresh perspective on this. and that began the process. and the other thing that happened to me was i got dogs. i'm quite-- . >> rose: dogs made a difference. >> i grew up. my mother was allergic, deathly allergic to dogs or at least that was the story. so we couldn't have one. and i didn't have a dog until i was 53 years old. >> rose: two years ago. >> yeah. and the line about you're not a complete soul until you have loved an animal is 100% correct. >> rose: was it the fact that this dog loved you unconditionally? was that part of it? >> i think more-- well, i wasn't always sure of that. does this dog love me unconditionally or is it just because i have the food. the one in the house with the food. the girlfriend wasn't there to give the dogs the food. could have been just that.

no, what it-- to boil it down, here's what it was. going for walks with this dog. and to see this dog excited by everything. the joy of the puppy on the walk for, you know, down the same block for the thousandth time. the metaphors for human life in walking a dog, particularly in the streets of new york city, i think are endless. because they will give you, you know, this dog loves everything, loves everybody, treats every oncoming dog, person, and empty plastic bag like an adventure of world world travel proportions. >> rose: i know. >> and you're sitting there complaining about, well, you know, the lighting in the studio, just, just let it, just to bring somebody over, and act like your dog does.

hey, we got a great studio. can we put more lights on or just some? how would my dog respond. >> rose: don't complain,. >> i'm excited to be here. >> rose: true. >> so then you sort of back engineer what your own phobias were and complaints were about life. and why, so what is this dog tell me about my past behavior. but quite seriously, the introduction finally of dpauings into my life. two things i would recommend everybody to do far earlier than i did. get a shingles vaccination, and get a dog. >> and you're not including get a shrink in any of this. >> well, yeah f the first two don't work, shining els vaccination may not help that you much in terms of your own am mentality health except a sure you you won't get shingles. but the dog doesn't do it you and the dog should go see the shrink. >> for all the analysis that you brought to politics, i mean i remember this great line, i can't remember all of it. but i remember the way it was written, it said donald

rumsfeld is either a prophet or something, quite honestly i have forgotten. the next line was he is not a prophet. >> i think it may have been quack f not -- >>. >> the idea was, the that was the intention, he's not a a profit. >> dow miss or in any way sort of daily engagement with politics? >> or do you have a way to express that. >> no, i mean-- one of the things that we were insisting upon upon we why we meetings about my going back to espn, it was how do you take somebody who has been to an entire generation of now adults, has been a political commentary. i don't know about the sportscenter in the 90s. you and i would like to think that they're sitting at home with their notepad with our resumes in front of them. oh, yes, well, charlie, charlie this is his time in washington so here's some of the highlights of keith's

career in radio in the 1970 paragraphs. ohs that was a really good one. >> rose: they don't know. >> they don't know. and moreover we have no right to expect them to know this but one of the things that we sat down and said, i was very concerned with it. is it going to be a turnoff that people view me solely as a political commentar commentary-- commentator. >> or i don't want to watch him because i love his politics and he's not doing politics. so we had to sort of straighten all that out. so the idea was they gave me latitude. they said when politics touches sports, go right ahead. and i said i'm going to use that one out of every ten times it occurs am i will try to avoid it. there will be social issues. the washington nfl franchise name, that to me is a political topic that i try to use and touch carefully and as infrequently as possible. if the story does not rise to a certain height of importance we won't put it in the show. simply so that there is separation of to some degree

church and state, at least they may be next door to one another on occasion but that's a sports show and i want people to know it's a sport show. >> rose: what is it about you that you any has served you so well? >> i think to some degree it is the fact that i have never, ever been afraid to say what i think. i might be wrong, but i don't care about the consequences. i also don't, i'm interested to know the viewers' reaction but i'm not doing the show for the viewer. and i'm not doing the show for a political party. i'm not doing the show on behalf of a baseball team. i'm doing the show because i am trying to achieve the best show i can. >> rose: but are you saying who are you doing it for then. >> ultimately, me. if i'm not satisfied with it, it wasn't a good show. if i feel like i have conveyed what i was trying to von have a, then it's a success. and that's my concern. and people can throw stones at me walking outwards or weep with voy over what he

said. and as much as a appreciate their reaction, i do not factor their reaction into what it is i'm going to do. this is contrary to all the advice i have ever been given. there is an audience for t they will find you. if there isn't, go sell tires. it's very simple formula. but i can actually pinpoint again it's like its childhood thing with is ba baseball. there is a moment in which this dawned on me like the skies breaking and a little post-it coming down going don't do it this way: same scenario. i guess i was a sophomore in college preparing the 11:00 sportscast. and in thises days you went to the upi machine and ripped off the stories and separated them and wrote what the topic was as a slug on top and put them in piles and tried to figure out what order to read the united press international copy. nothing was written. i didn't write anything myself. other than good evening i'm keith olbermann. and at the end it was thanks for listening, i'm keith olbermann, that's all i wrote so one night on a slow

night hi my 11:00 five minute sportscast of upi copy ready to go. and very, very slow night. the top 40 station had a 10:30 p.m. sportscast. and the guy they had on the air had a lisp. and he had a upi machine and a lisp and i had a upi machine and i didn't have a lisp. and that slow night i listened, obviously he's got the same national story that night, he's got the same some nba game, i that's mine. and i'm holding the copy in my hand and i hear on this scratchy am radio he reads his second story, same as mine. his third is the same as my third, his fourth is the same as my fourth. at about the fifth that was identical i realized we had both been able to figure out what the lead story was and how these stories ranked in importance. that this was not some sort of divinely gifted skill that i had been given. and at the end of it i was shaking. because i realized that the only thing i had going for

me was a clearer speaking voice at that point. and i had damn well better put something of myself into the shows or i would never, i would never get his job let alone the jobs i wanted to get. so at that point, the inclination to want to express yourself in some creative form that i think is in every human being, became a channel to a broadcasting career. >> rose: howard stern did the same thing, did he not? he found a way that he could express himself. >> i'm just thinking back, we met, he and i met in college. he thinks it wasn't him but i know it was him. i went, i was in high school he was at bu. and there was, all i know is i went in to talk to them about their radio program. and i got the tour and went into the radio station. it was a skinny kid, with long curly hair, sunglass on in the middle. don't come here, kid, the grad students control the radio station. and it was him. so we met in 1974 or

something. and he-- i had gone through the details with him and he insists no, no, i would have remembered. how would you have remembered that. >> rose: so now you are back at espn. so how do you see this, i am-- i have come to understand myself better. >> uh-huh. >> rose: i have a dog, i have two dogsing i'm a happy man. >> the dogs told me to do it. >> rose: you're a happy man. >> yeah, yes. >> rose: happier than you have ever been in your life. >> yeah, definitely. >> rose: do you think about the next job or do you simply say this is fun, i'm going to do the best i possibly can. it's going to grow of what ever way it growsnd let it be. >> yes, more towards the latter because if there is anybody who is unqualified to talk about my career path it is me. >> rose: do you play any sports, are you good at any sports? >> no. i have not been good at any sports since i realized that a baseball hitting me here. >> rose: not where it is supposed to be. >> add the blood trickling down my face was

contraindicated. i was a decent bowler, if you want to go and presume bowling is a sport per se but i never had the-- i was a power hit never baseball but i struck out a lot. if i was starting now i could bat cleanup for any team in the major leagues. i if i was 8 years old now i could go on that path. but in 1967 in you struck out 100 times in the season they would send you to newark and i don't mean newark, new swrersee. they would send you somewhere far away. i said this is, i have no skill. i have no hand-eye coordination for this. >> is baseball if good shape? >> i don't think so, actually. >> the thing you love most. >> yeah, i worry for it. there was a recent espn poll that indicated and it's somewhat screwed because what it really is indicating is that kids like video games, and soccer video games are more interesting than baseball video imgas. 12 to 17-year-old boys, 15% describe themselves as avid

major league baseball fans and 15% describe themselves as a individual-- avid major league soccer fans. and again turned out those supposed soccer fans were playing the individual gro-- video game. they couldn't name teams in the league. but i don't know what baseball does to bring in more fans as time goes by. i mean if you hear kids chanting at a game today, you know it's a weekend afternoon, and there's some sort of special promotion going on. it was kids day. that's all we used to hear. go back and listen a tape of a ball game even from the 70s and will you hear a high pitched we want a hit chant every inning and a half. it was a kids' game. and that's why people stuck with it like a marriage. there's nothing like that for kids now because it's wall to wall wallpaper, bait ball on television. it's like the all-star game. what's the point of the all-star game. it used to be a chance to see players who never faced

each other or were never on television nationally, well they're on every night. >> rose: do you think football maybe notwithstanding, it is the number one sport in america? in trouble a bit because of concussions and increasing investigations into the level of violence? >> i would love to think so. >> rose: but you don't. >> as somebody who encountered this in my reporting, in 1982, when the football, one of the things, remember the football strike in the nhl strike, one of the things that made that s so-- why there was so much anger on the part of the players was there was a runningback from the new york giants who had been just retired because of bad knees and turned out he had a brain tumor. and we will never know if it was connected to something concussion related. but the layman's guesswork would suggest it would be a heck of a coincidence if it were not. because he had retired because of knee problems, the nfl would to the give him a dime towards his tumor. and they had to hawk the

money to get the operation. they had to hawk the house to get the operation. so this has been an issue for a long time even as medicine has finally caught up to what the issue is, quantitatively. >> i don't think it's going to be a killer factor. it may be in terms of participation by kids. but realistically, football fans even football fans of a particular team find most of the players fungible. i mean if a linebacker disappeared tomorrow and was replaced by a similar looking guy in the same uniform with the same name, how many fans in the stands would know? i mean this is just true in other ways in other sports but this is pertinent to head injuries because if these guys burn out at three or four years because they're the ones hitting their heads on every play rather than just occasionally like a receiver or quarterback, they're not missed in the way that we would see and ask questions about a baseball player who

has been beaned and you know, he wasn't a very great player but he died. we had that in 1920, ray chapman and it eventually lead to batting helmets and other protective efforts. so i don't think the nfl or college football will be in particular trouble, especially if they continue to accelerate their willingness to address this in a way that they had recently which has been to their credit. >> i leave you after this hour with this. this is where we began. all of us, since the time that we were young kids have looked up at people who marched with a certain grace, who encompassed in their mood and in their action and in their performance a certain sense of excellence none better than tony gwynn and we close with what keith said about him in this remarkable pose. >> when he hit that batting slump in the summer of 1998. it was nothing. he would hit higher in 1999

and 2000 and 2001. when this happened i did a piece on him for "sports illustrated" about giving out reassurance, i want to read just the end of the piece. >> when i saw gwynn in the dugout at dodger stadium he was holding a small metallic device, i asked about the hamstring he aggravated reaching for cal ripken's double at the all-star game. i pointed at the machine and asked is that your electric stimulator. is that your stim? gwynn laughed hard. no, man, that's my minicd player. will you relax? what i would not give to have him reassuring me that i'm overreacting right now. what all of us who knew him or just knew of him would not give to hear him laugh right now and say will you relax. >> for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us on-line@pbs.org and charlie rose.com

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this is nightly business report with tyler mathisen and suzie guerin. >> correction, please? market watchers say stocks have risen too far for too long without a 10% pull back. we'll ask two top pros what they think. where's the spike? why oil and gas prices aren't rising sharply, along with tensions in iraq. a gray nation, 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day. that could have a major lasting impact on our economy. tonight we begin a four-part series, aging in america. all that and the return of suzie on nightly business report. good evening, everyone, yes, i'm back. topping our news tonight. another positive day on wall street. as investors were able to look