larry king now donald rumsfeld the outspoken former secretary of defense why can't leaders say we goofed or you do we have to be willing to say we made a mistake taking on benghazi you don't put people in a place if you're not going to protect them and the i.r.s. scandal the american people do not want their government turned against them and advice for the president and rules he wants you to live by people lose trust in the white house and that what's being said and it makes it very difficult to lead all next on larry king now. welcome to larry king now on a great pleasure to welcome donald rumsfeld to our program twice served the secretary of defense under presidents ford and george w. bush former u.s.

congressman former ambassador served as a top aide to four united states presidents fortune magazine named him one of america's toughest c.e.o.'s for his work in the private sector a new york times best selling author and the latest book rumsfeld's rules leadership lessons in business politics war and life what a career do you miss washington no i don't love life i'm loved everything i've done i've been so fortunate we've had a lot of good times together indeed over the years second term presidents tough why i have no idea. i don't think it's hubris i think that maybe they get tired but clearly it's happened to a lot of presidents that they've had difficulties in their second term you think is because they don't have to worry about reelection and there's no way the post they going to i doubt.

well but let's discuss some of the current that you what do you make of benghazi. well you begin at the beginning they knew that there were terrorist connected to al qaeda the british decided they couldn't protect their people so they pulled them out our people knew they were terrorists and well armed and they asked for more security and they weren't given it so they were killed and so the first problem is that you don't put people in a place if you're not going to protect them and they didn't they didn't provide the senator is the department state secretary of state the of that office is the responsible one so hillary's with the buck stops with her sure you know and.

and then of course the next step is that you were around during the nixon period when when trust kind of was eroded away and the political leadership in our country didn't lead by ordering people around or commanding the lead through persuasion and to be persuasive you've got to be believable and to the extent people lose trust in the white house and that what's being said it makes it very difficult to lead what what donnie darko adani used to call it was the secretary no downs. what makes a good leader might be covered even in your book. the secretaries of state sectors of defense what do you look for what do you want truthfulness is critically important if you don't know something you've got to be willing to stand up and what's one of my rules and say i don't know and then you have to be willing to call

people into your office sit down and keep them there and find out ground truth to the extent you say things that turn out a day a week or a month later not to be the case even if it's well intentioned you lose your trust why can't leaders say republicans or democrats and as you say this is a start why can't leaders say we goofed or you do we have to if you have to be willing to do it after be willing to say we made a mistake kennedy said it in the bay of pigs sure other presidents have said it of you said it oh sure my goodness yes you know as well with what is what is napoleon say that then i've been mistaken so many times i no longer blush for. that a lot of rumsfeld's rules the rules in the rules are not rumsfeld's there are people a lot smarter than me. everyone will be humble some better it was bad to everyone how do you deal with leaks. i guess the answer is imperfectly it drives every

leader crazy all the goodness yes it leaks that damage your momentum are really a problem leaks that put people's lives at risk are a particular problem and anything that goes to national security for example a leak that compromises someone who's helping us imagine if the united states government today came to you and you're a foreigner and said we need your cooperation on something you'd be afraid to work with the a nine states one because we can't keep a secret it leaks out you're going to be compromised and the people for example the man who assisted us in getting bin lopping. is in jail now because he helped us because it leaked out. people's lives can be put at risk if we compromise a source or a method a technique that we use so it's a serious problem on the other hand what they've done with the associated press

i've never seen in all my life and i'm eighty years old i've but it around a long time be fed didn't republicans used to press people on finding out sources let's get it what they're doing well by and let's learn something beforehand didn't you want them to do things like this honestly no i've never seen that happen in my life in any administration it's most unusual and i think the attorney general holder said that he stood up at a press conference and said that he'd never seen it before and this ranked among the top two or three most serious breaches of security that he'd ever seen i don't know what he was talking about who ordered that president to head to meet with there have been other pick it ministrations that have looked for leaks to be sure but i've never seen anything of this magnitude and i think that nixon tap phones well i mean kennedy and johnson and nixon back in those days they they did some

phone tapping normally when when the f.b.i. or someone's going to do that however they go to a special court. over do that was one buys a little i doubt he did but. i have no he must have i have no idea. he was around in the nixon administration of course and jay is saying there's a few thing is it's big deal it's a big deal rumsfeld's rules is the book will get to that in the next hour what about this i.r.s. thing what do you make of that i again i think the hearings are going to bring out more information and before you make final judgments i think we need to see what what they're hearing show the idea that nobody knew about it and nobody is responsible and they fire someone who had been there fifteen minutes is not impressive the american people do not want their government turned against them of the been three things the benghazi the a.p. and the i.r.s.

issues that are currently causing the problems in washington i would rank the i.r.s. one the more serious in terms of the height of the american people well because first of all people are afraid of the law and they want the law to be judiciously applied and when and they know the strength of the i.r.s. with all the money all the people and the threat they pose when they furthermore none of us understand our taxes you don't understand your taxes i send a letter every year saying here my taxes i want your know i don't understand i don't know if they're accurate because it's too complicated i can't do it if you have a problem give me a call off i'll try to get you the answers i mean i don't understand it so people worry about it and by golly when they sense that the government's turn turned on them and it doesn't matter if it's conservative little amachree every militant as if i was the other guy as richard nixon about it and he said the thing that he was a little embarrassed about the most was when they had that quote when he said go if he should have been graham's taxes he should have been worried and in fact he tried

when george shultz was secretary of treasury and you're it's old said no and someone called them like candy. so who goes in as they fired the acting director of the that was a nonevent that person was leaving in another. thirty days they said they haven't they haven't given the names it clearly there was that at the minimum there was an environment that was hospitable to that kind of behavior of someone writing in defense of the seventy thousand applications every year for some sort of tax exempt status how do you best to get all of that will you pick and choose how do you approve the obama foundation in five minutes and and to take these others for a year and have them have to hire lawyers and spend seventy eighty thousand dollars trying to prove to the i.r.s. that what they're doing is what is the tea party seeking exemptions do you know i don't have any idea who i don't know which ones all i know is what they've said

they've said that they targeted conservative groups which they shouldn't have and it's wrong and they're right it is wrong it's just wrong it's fundamentally opposed to war system of course so harry truman had that little sign the buck stops here that's right does the buck stop with obama is obama responsible for the us i think i've certainly is i mean the only thing he's taken responsibility for so far is the killing of osama bin laden then he said pictures and they're involved in the decision and making the decisions and so forth everything else he's off in las vegas making a campaign speech so sort all everything every department head ever somebody if someone's doing something now in the department when you were department of the film i got to see what i was doing some how would you know you don't know ok so absolutely but but you need some kind of accountability i mean one when i will grab happened at the midnight. shift in iraq you didn't know about that i knew nothing

about it and i know what's going on halfway around the world and and i offered my resignation to the president i said i loved. it here it is it be better for you better for the department of defense and and better for me if i left. i do think i do think you need accountability. libyan government genie with a sour taste you know what was that like when that final meeting with bush all he knew it was it was awkward for him it wasn't for me real kalmbach you know i said relax let's once once i saw what was happening in the elections i knew it was better from a better for him better for the department no no no problem at all he said to me how's joyce. until like he did. he was is a good guy hard for him and this is fortunes it is hard for him or i mean one hundred for me and all of the presidents you worked with who was the toughest i suppose

richard nixon. gerald ford was certainly the the nicest oh was he is a wonderful great guy great guy and he was the only president i worked for that that was a personal friend from before he went into the presidency and and we did serve together in congress and i we've worked together on things and we did a show about him after his presidency i got a five page handwritten letter is now it's just so i'm thinking of writing a book about him and that he deserves more than he's getting he doubts coming up in his new book secretary rumsfeld spells out rules for you to live by which of his rules is he not follow we'll find out after this. morning's today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images.

from the streets and canada. operations to rule the day. wealthy british style sun. spot on the. market why not. going to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our. don rumsfeld former secretary of defense we go back a long way his new book is rumsfeld's rules we understand a president ford first told you to put together rules for how that happened well i been collecting him since i was a youngster my mom was

a schoolteacher and she told me to carry a three by five card which i still do to this day and if you don't understand a word write it down look at it up and i started reading down words then i started writing down ideas or thoughts and one day i was in the oval office with president ford he was a legislator never never been an executive and i said something like. never say though when the white house is calling or the white house wants because buildings can't call and he laughed and said well words you get that and i said i don't know i collect those he said well show me a copy so i had him typed up and and he called the label to rumsfeld's rules and asked me to send him to the senior staff at the white house and then later years later you write a book indeed well of course they gained a life of their own people started reading him and circulating him and i've just been rushing to i'm going to read it on the planes and i will be a quiz next time i see you and i know. a few of the rules don't avoid sharp edges you know well sometimes people try to blend differing views and the end up in the

middle with mush and it's on occasion you're better taken either of you rather than trying to compromise both and merge them into ted turner ruly lives by that is ever the harder i work the luckier i am that's true i mean you know that's what i learned wrestling i wrestled for ten years and i live in college and the relationship between effort and result is something you learn as a as a wrestler as louis and i was a late was and i was a great lawyer was a little luck in the court was you have a lucky in a court room he said no you get lucky at four am in a law library. trust leaves on horseback but returns on foot great it's true i mean you know in my lifetime and career i've said things and i want to take them back and all of a sudden they're there and they're there forever and you can't take them back so so

what i would say is i stand by what i meant. not what i say dogs don't bark at parked cars were exactly i mean if you do something somebody is going to like it and somebody isn't going to like it and therefore your only choice if you don't want anyone to criticize you is to do nothing and i almost name my book dogs don't bark at parked cars they don't they do some else to park cars but they don't bark at them if you don't like change you're going to like irrelevance even less that's true i mean the world changing think of that how we've had to drag ourselves into the twenty first century and the information age now some of your critics are going to use rules against the do all of the lead up to the iraq war was sure as you live by i mean hindsight is easy and mistakes were made they're sure my goodness did you learn for them i think so i think so one of the things we didn't do however i did is to is to write out a list of all the things i could see that could go wrong in the iraq war i mean we

listened to colin powell's presentation at the united nations about the intelligence we have read and were briefed on george tenet's intelligence presentations and who gave him this intelligence who gave powell where did he how i had more experience with intelligence than anyone in the administration he'd been national security adviser for reagan had been a four star general spent his whole life and one of the intelligence agencies in the department of state is saying it was very logical to believe that oh my but there's just absolutely i mean it if you go back people now say well they blame bush or cheney or somebody i mean the intelligence came from george tenet cia and powell analyzed it for days before he made that presentation he was in line he believed everything he said they presented to the congress hillary clinton voted for john kerry voted for it jay rockefeller said there was an imminent threat the brits the french agreed with the intelligence now what did they actually find they

didn't find stockpiles. but the u.n. inspector dulfer went in there he found the precursors he found the facilities he found the people and they could have ramped them back up in a matter of weeks he said in his report and they'd used chemicals against their own people and against iranians it was still said about all those losses of course might live or is it over the war is a god awful ugly thing just no question about it it think of they on the other hand you're looking at. the taliban in afghanistan are pushed out they were using soccer stations stadiums to cut off people's heads instead of for soccer it was a very brutal brutal regime in iraq the butcher of baghdad iraq is better off without that regime the congress had passed regime change during the clinton administration democrats house democrats senate clinton it's signed regime change

and the killing fields in iraq were normal hundreds of thousands of people and and it seems to me that it's no one can like war it's it has to be the last choice and my impression is that president bush understood that and then he did try to delay and try everything else the book or all those fellows rules will have to because looks like a delightful read one doing this i have had fun doing it no question ok what do you make of all these the sexual things going on. well. i suppose we all react differently but i had the thought of anyone imposing their will sexually on another person i find just so degrading inoffensive there's someone it's a man in authority. and it happens regrettably in the military it happens in the private sector and the data collection

in the military is probably better than it is in the private sector and therefore the we ought to be in the military ought to be able to do a better job than they're doing it and it may very well be that they're going to have to find an alternative line of authority for dealing with these things rather than straight up the chain of command. independent well somehow admiral rickover once said never give a command outside of the chain of command and never expect to learn anything up the chain of command he was. that you supported ending don't ask don't tell right yes. you think we've come a long way in that area i think we have i think it was an idea that time had arrived i think that implementing it is probably going to be easier in the air force and the navy i think the ground forces and unit cohesion have got to be very careful about how they implemented so that they don't weaken the unit cohesion i don't think we've arrived yet there we've we've known we've had gays and lesbians

in the military for decades and they've served very well go on to tell me there are a lot of crosses and stars at normandy that you bet do you support same sex marriage you know i'm i guess of a generation that i don't i wonder i listen to some of the supreme court justices and one of them said well what's next after that is it two people but you are a strange sheep order of civil rights in congress that i was throughout this signal . and i was proud of the work that the congress did in the one thousand nine hundred sixty four legislation and one thousand nine hundred sixty five legislation i guess i just don't equate the two when i've said not a subject i'm knowledgeable about and i guess the rumsfeld rule here is i don't know because it is a common. thing so i i can't tell what the court's going to do what you think it's just a little you know it's too early to judge he's he's obviously was

a fine soldier and fact i've got a call with him this afternoon. did you why did you attend the dedication of the george bush library i was at a wedding in florida which is the third generation of in a family friends getting married and being each in each other's weddings and i just couldn't do it i was down not too long ago and had a cup of coffee with the president. you got any takes i heard it was a great event you know i didn't go but i heard it was i was invited it was good i also miss mrs mrs thatcher's funeral service which i thought that i missed that you take general petraeus did you not to train iraqi security forces i did said what's happened them it is. he was always going to go back and teach and there is a second chance americans do give second chances to people in third and fourth yeah i'm going to read all some names give me some one word compressions nixon good

strategic thinker made some terrible mistakes ford one of the nicest human beings on the face of the earth restored trust. reagan. so a true strategic thinker when he was really oh my goodness when he was asked what's our policy on the soviet union he said we win they lose. it sounds simplistic but it's not that strategic dick cheney. oh one of the most solid talented people you have ever had the pleasure of working with powell powell an enormous success story and you had your differences sure sure well i think every person in the defense and state departments have difference of perspectives from time to time but about george bush the first you know we served in congress briefly together never were close he he went on to succeed in cia and the presidency and

i must say he jumped and he jumped out of an airplane at the age of eighty which neither you or i need to jump what. finally of all the jobs of. what are you proudest of. oh goodness i. i don't think about pride too much i guess i would enjoy the well i you know us and in the private sector i love being an ambassador to nato it really only it was a terrific experience for me and my family did live overseas look back at our country and and serve that same point you know we were in brussels well the closest relationship i had as i say was with gerald ford. the toughest job i ever had was with gerald ford as chief of staff of the white house right after the nixon resignation i mean it was just a monstrous moment stiff thank you good by the way if you've been rumsfeld's rules

leadership lessons in business politics war and life the former secretary of defense remember you can find me on twitter at kings things so you next time.

is it possible to navigate you carney with all the details of his diction misinformation and media hype will keep you up to date by decoding the mainstream have stated it's been your right. to. think that all the public outcry about the american government's use of drones that

the u.s. would perhaps consider scaling the program back or at least they wouldn't necessarily be expanding it right now but know not only is the u.s. continuing their practice of using drones to shoot down both suspected terrorists and. and unsuspecting civilians all over the middle east and africa it would appear that they are now bringing their health fire from the sky program to its own borders that's according to a u.s. customs and border protection report obtained by the electronic frontier foundation through a freedom of information act lawsuit it's really hard to read the document because much of it has been redacted huge swathes of it are just blacked out completely so that we can't read it which is enough to prove just how covert their intentions are but they weirdly whacked out in this report is this one crazy line of attack all that work to black out so much of it but then there's this one readable line

which states that border drones could be upgraded in the future to quote include expendables or of non-lethal weapons designed to immobilize targets of interest yep the u.s. government is actually leaving the door open to whether bin to there a manned aircraft patrolling our borders i guess that would be so that they could well strike down from the sky people trying to cross the border into america land of the free and of course the entire list of who or what their pickling would be a target of these weaponized drones is completely blacked out but the best part is even though there is an official customs document that literally eg knowledge is the government is open to adding weapons to their border drones the department of homeland security just swears it isn't true just flat out deny this.

the fact that they took the time to black out so much information in the document but didn't blackout the line about adding weapons to border drones shows one of two things. either they're incredibly bad at blacking out information that would really enraged the public or just don't care that people are outraged by their ever expanding drone program either way this scariest part about this story is thinking about all the stuff in there that they actually did choose to black out tonight let's hypothesize about that by filing on twitter at the resident. technology innovations of all the developments around russia we've got the future

covered. good afternoon welcome to prime interest i'm bob a list here in washington d.c. here is a story we're telling today the.