we talked to condi rice, george w bush's national security adviser. you could find out a lot of information that way. history of meetings and conversations and teleconferences, etc. . the classification process takes decades. sometimes documents are never declassified, depending on what we're talking about. you think another ten, 20 years we might have the full documentary record or close to it when it comes to iraq? no, no, i don't think so. i myself submitted many mandatory declassification requests in order to get notes of various meetings of the national security council principal adviser is like powell and rumsfeld and and rice and the deputy national security advisers almost all my mdr mandatory declassification request notes were either denied in full or redacted or i still not have gotten the results of them. if in the future, i'm sure that the formal transcripts of the national security council meetings will be declassified over time, maybe ten, 15 years from now. you write a sequel, but most, most importantly, leigh, in terms of understandin

condi rice was in the nsc who became secretary of state. so a lot of what george bush is so good about is this huge network he built very deliberately, and that comes out in the book. >> it's something i want to get to. another personal angle, a few years ago when bush 41 was still with us i had the honor of visiting him up at kennebunkport. and i remember when i walked in that first front room and i paused for a moment and a look around at the array of photos capturing moments of his presidency, and i found myself over and over again saying, oh, yeah, that's right. oh, yeah, i had forgotten. and in some ways that's looking back to me as a read this book. because each chapter, each essay touches upon a moment in the presidency, many of which have been forgotten or not perhaps fully appreciated. all these things that occurred during the bush 41 presidency that are sort of lost to the midst of time are given as brent scowcroft suggested, maybe everybody looks and thinks of somehow inevitable. what do you think, this is to both of you, to each

so the good news about going into the administration was that i knew both condi rice by then secretary of state and hadley, steve hadley, national security adviser. very well. condi i'd worked together on the bush 41 nsc when i was deputy security adviser and and i had, as i said, i had known steve since 1974. so i was going in to work with a couple of people that i really knew well and knew. there be any backstabbing, knew that we would work together productively as a team. one of the things that i was committed to that would be easy with condi was. i, i had observed over much of my career, most of my career, the secretaries of state, secretaries of defense, not didn't get along mostly, didn't like other and sometimes really hated each other and and often were not even on speaking terms and and so i was determined and. i've always felt that poorly served the president. so i was the term and condy and i would have a positive working relationship i also had the other my other approach to it was you when you're the secretary of defense you never have elbow your way to the table. you got